Very few friendships can withstand the test of time. It is seldom that you keep in touch with others after a move, or high school, or college. Someone must be very special to you in order for you to go to the trouble to give them a call, or set up a date to see them.

This past weekend I got to enjoy the company of an old friend, who is actually an ex-boyfriend...but old friend sounds so much better, sweeter... and that is how I like to remember things. It has been about three and a half years since I met Adam, but I can still remember it like it was yesterday. The night we met we instantly connected, I gave him my phone number and the rest is history. The first time he ever called me we talked for seven hours.I was up all night; we eventually stopped talking when we both realized the sun was coming up again.

Earlier this weekend, I had been thinking about why I love this guy so much, and I found myself puzzled. Of course there is an endless list of things that are great about Adam, but the thing that I think sets him apart, and makes me so fond of him, are his quirks.

The first time Adam took me on a date...we ran out of gas on the Breese exit coming home from Carlyle. Most girls would think this could ruin a date, but for me it just made things ten times better. Adam quickly jumped out, took a look around, and ran to the Shell station. He was back in no time at all and said we would only have to wait a little while and his friend would be there. We sat and talked, and laughed at ourselves and the situation, and made a memory that would last a lifetime.

Another example of something I will never forget is my sophomore homecoming. Everything was a mess... we were both running late and we were a mess. Then, we encountered another problem: Adam didn't know how to tie a tie. You think, oh, no problem her dad could just do it for him. Oh wait, too bad my dad owns the newspaper... so he had to be at the school at least an hour before the homecoming ceremony would even start. So there we are stuck, my date tie-less, and pictures ready to be taken. We took the pictures without the tie but then on the way to homecoming we stopped at Kountry Store and Adam asked a random guy to tie his tie for him. It was a hilariously awkward moment.

Anyway, the point is sometimes the situations that should turn out badly can be made into great experiences, if in the right company. With a friend like Adam things will never be boring, and will always be remembered.

He is one of those people who no matter what, for whatever reason was in your life, made a huge impression, and will be there forever. Even if we haven't talked in months, when we do it's like we hang out everyday. Everything changes and it almost seems as if time goes back for just a night. No matter what, I will always have fond memories of my old friend, and hopefully I will have his friendship and support for the rest of my life.

Before cynicism took hold of me, I was an inveterate Meet the Press watcher. It was an integral part of most Sunday mornings: coffee, the newspaper, Meet the Press.

I haven't watched it, or any political news program, for a while now. There doesn't really seem to be much point, other than deluding one's self that such shows are informative. There are lots of news junkies out there, and delusion is the currency by which NBC, CNN, Fox News, CBS, ABC, and their subsidiaries purchase their fealty.

They delude viewers into believing that there is substance to their mostly inane blather. Politics, and news, have turned into a dramatic production, a morality play, if you will. We line up on the left, and we line up on the right, and we're the heroes and the other guys are the villains. You and I know that life is more subtle than that, and politics should be.

In pondering how it came to this, why we started gullibly swallowing whatever we are fed, I can only conclude that the totality of bull---- in the world finally caught up with us. The false claims marketers make about consumer products. The special interest politics. The "reality" television that doesn't seem like anything that happens in your neighborhood. The anesthetizing of the country by a pharmaceutical industry high on the rare air of a "hands off" regulatory policy. The enduring fable of "trickle down" economics.

Pick the subject, and you can bet you're being lied to about it. Not all the lies are overt, and not all of them are sinister, but the sheer volume of them is breathtaking. We're all lying, all the time, even if it's lying by omission. Apparently, it's part of the human condition.

Regrettably, after not tuning in to Meet the Press for several months, I decided to watch Sunday morning. The subject matter was presidential politics, as it usually is, and much of the hour was devoted to pointing up past statements made by some of the candidates, and their seeming reversals of position on the campaign trail.

It was a bi-partisan game of gotcha, at least. Host Tim Russert cleverly juxtaposed old quotes and videotape with more recent statements, and the end result was to make the candidates look like political opportunists, which of course, they are. Who runs competitively for president other than political opportunists? Honest, reasonable people don't stand a chance.

I lay there for a while, watching, and thinking, "Way to go Tim. You've got a real scoop there. This just in: Presidential Candidates Lie. A truly shocking development."

But as I considered it further, I decided that not only did the creative editing represent a somewhat lackluster journalistic exercise, it actually proved complicit in the whole tangled ball of political bull----.

We put politicians into boxes they can't escape, and then condemn them for changing their minds. We want simplicity. Good versus Evil. Right versus Wrong. Us versus them. And we won't tolerate one of our own going off the reservation. We expect our politicians not only to be perfect, but perfectly aligned with our own views. When they're not, we pounce.

Most of the "before" clips Russert used were from ten to fifteen years ago. I can tell you from a personal standpoint that I'd be embarrassed to acknowledge a lot of statements I made a decade or more ago. If your thinking hasn't evolved on any number of subjects during that period of time, it's because you're not trying.

I wonder what the fallout might be if a presidential candidate stripped away all the talking points and circular, uninformative answers to questions that require a lot more.

What would we do if one of these candidates actually spoke honestly, not with conviction but with sincerity, with doubt instead of certainty, with realism instead of false promises?

We'd blow them off the political map. There's no room for nuance when there are heroes and villains to be identified.