(Editor's Notes by Christina Myer - Photo Illustration - MetroCreativeConnection)

It can’t be easy being an elected official in this age of social media and full-term campaigning. The pressure to get and maintain political points must be enormous. One can sympathize with wanting to get the cheapest points possible, even as we constituents say we demand elected officials who hold themselves to higher standards.

So maybe that’s the real problem. Maybe voters need to do a better job actually demanding that — and holding accountable those who ignore the expectations we have of them.

But while we work on that part, we’ve got to hope elected officials start to develop a little self-awareness — a little fear of their own hypocrisy and being called out.

For now — understanding the nature of politicians, and that, frankly, they’ve been given little reason to believe over the last several years that their words and deeds WILL come back to bite them — I’ll keep the responsibility on the rest of us.

We’ve got to be careful about rewarding ugly double standards, particularly when it comes to the idea of “grooming” in our schools. We can’t applaud the rooting out of one form of what is labeled “grooming” in our schools while standing by and allowing another. For example, even if you agree with the sentiment that “in God we trust,” (and I do), you MUST understand that forcing its placement in our schools and hoping it will change a student’s or teacher’s thinking on the matter is certainly grooming. It just happens to be government-sponsored, despite clear instruction in our state and federal constitutions against such favoritism.

Further, to have already had in mind preferred businesses to design and fund the signs, rather than allowing school districts to choose their own suppliers, smells anything but patriotic.

We’ve got to be careful about pats on the back for executive orders that are clearly catering to a very small, but oddly vocal minority on matters quite literally of life and death, when just a few short years ago, the fight by the same person against executive overreach was rightly lauded.

We have to be conscious of playing by two sets of rules when we on the one hand go absolutely overboard trying to destroy even the barest mention of the word “equity,” but then hold our hands out asking for the quick dispatch of money to fund the expansion of high-speed internet access through the Broadband Equity, Access and Deployment Program. Yes, folks, the “equity” in this case is meant to support the needs of poor, rural Appalachians.

Please be aware of politicians who hope you won’t notice they’re asking out of one side of their face for that kind of support while demanding out of the other side that we eliminate support for anyone who is … you know … other. It makes you wonder whether our elected officials understand there are human beings of all races, ethnicities, faiths, identities, ancestry or whatever other label they want to use living even right here in West Virginia.

We, and, again, I’m referring to voters here, must take a hard look at why a governor would believe there was no problem with eliminating a paid day off for state employees for Juneteenth — a set federal holiday that honors the anniversary of the end of slavery in this country — while deciding two weeks later to give state employees a paid day off, just for the heck of it, on July 3.

Remember, for West Virginians, Juneteenth falls on the day before we celebrate the formation of our state, and previous governors understood both the need to observe the day AND the benefit of giving state employees two days off in a row.

But among the reasons given for why that didn’t happen this year was because of the state’s “continued fiscal challenges.”

You have to wonder if anyone in the governor’s office suggested it might not be a good idea to then turn around and grant a day with no particular significance of its own as a paid holiday to accomplish precisely the same thing ahead of the Fourth of July. If the governor does not have SOMEONE in his office who said, “Hey, this is at best a bad look,” he’d better consider finding such a person.

Back to my point, though. This is on us. Something about our response (or lack thereof) to all of this kind of stuff has made politicians believe they will win and maintain power if they believe the worst of us and then aim even lower with their stunts.

Either they don’t think we’re smart or compassionate enough to notice the hypocrisy, or they don’t think we care. If that’s the case, it’s our responsibility to show them. Not just for ourselves, but for the generations to come, for whom we still want Almost Heaven to be home, and Mountaineers always to be free.

Christina Myer is executive editor of The Parkersburg News and Sentinel. She can be reached via e-mail at cmyer@newsandsentinel.com.