Counting the ways
the ‘best’ can get better

If you watched Wichita TV a few years back, you undoubtedly heard a set of catchy lyrics that, if you really liked Wichita, might have left you with a little lump in your throat:

There’s a feeling in the air

that you can’t get anywhere

except in Wichita.

I’ve tasted a thousand yesterdays

and I love the magic ways

of Wichita.

Working hard is what you do,

and the spirit shows in you

each time you touch the sky.

Where the river flows to,

where the sunset goes,

we’re all good neighbors passing by.

Makes no difference where I go.

You’re the best hometown I know.

Hello, Wichita.

Hello, Wichita.

Channel 3 loves you.

Accompanied by video of kids playing, balloons and airplanes flying, and local landmarks being enjoyed by people of all ages, it made for a uniquely loving and touching tribute.

Well, not exactly unique. It was so loving and touching that the exact same lyrics — with just the town name, TV station, and maybe one or two other lines changed — were used in other towns, too.

And not just a few. Do a YouTube search for “Frank Gari Productions Hello News Theme” and you’ll see them — dozens upon dozens of different towns serenaded the exact same way over the course of two decades. One YouTube compendium alone lasts nearly two hours.

Personally, I never heard the Wichita version until this week, but I heard the Milwaukee version (one of the first) and the Central Illinois version when I lived there.

There also was a Green Bay version, a Central Wisconsin version, a Madison version, a Western Wisconsin version, a Quad Cities version, a Kansas City version, a Tulsa version, a Nebraska version, an Oklahoma City version — you get the picture.

Each extolled the virtues of a one-and-only, truly unique hometown, clearly the best anyone ever could find — except that the praise always was exactly the same.

The jingles were hugely popular with townsfolk in the communities where they played and even drew volunteers to sing the lyrics. In Utah, Donnie and Marie and the Osmonds did. In Atlanta, the Commodores did. In Louisville, the symphony orchestra did.

Campaigns like this have slowed a bit now that it’s easy for people to go online and see just how many TV stations have bought into similar syndicated packages. Still, stations all over the country remain “on your side” with “action” or “eyewitness” news or whatever other phrases they’ve bought from central clearing houses.

The fact that “Hello News” had so much resonance among so many different people speaks volumes about what people, mainly those in “flyover” areas like Kansas, think about their hometowns.

Ask any resident (except, of course, a town sourpuss) and whatever town he or she lives in is clearly the friendliest, hardest working, prettiest, most welcoming, smartest, and most family-valued of all the communities anywhere you could go.

After all, that’s why we stay where we are or why those of us who left for a while returned. We truly believe it.

But it’s a dangerous belief, foisted on us by chain-owned media and marketers they employ.

Our communities have many of these values listed, but they are not nearly as superlative as the lyrics suggest. And for us, as communities, to improve, we sometimes have to face cold, hard facts that our towns may not be that much friendlier, harder working, prettier, smarter, more welcoming, or more family-valued than any of the other places where residents also get a lump in their throats as they hear lyrics like those from “Hello News.”

Being a good citizen is a lot like being a member of a good sports team. As any coach will tell you, the secret to success is to push yourself to get a little bit better with every practice or game.

To get better means to admit where you came up short and try to do something about it rather than just accept it as a permanent failing.

One local politician likes to excuse shortcomings by government employees here as if they are unavoidable.

“They’re not bureaucrats,” he says. “That’s just ‘Sally Sue’ trying her best.”

But the minute we accept the fact that we can’t do better is the minute we condemn ourselves to never doing better and giving up on the dream of actually living up to the lofty expectations of such things as “Hello News” themes.

A good example happened last week. We point it out not to be negative but to make sure we actually address the matter and improve.

For the second straight election, Marion County results were extremely late arriving. Yes, it’s a tough job. Yes, there was an unusually large turnout. But that was true in 104 other counties, 99 of which had their results in well before Marion County did.

Clearly, there’s something wrong with the procedures, training, or equipment used on election night here. We need to identify and address whatever it was — not so we can blame someone or something but so we can make sure it doesn’t happen again.

If nothing else, we don’t want our new county attorney — whoever that might be — feeling like George Bush or Al Gore in 2000, not knowing days later who won not because of hanging chad but because write-in votes still haven’t been counted.

Perhaps having two different ways to vote — by scanned ballots and by computer — is part of the problem. Perhaps it’s something else. We don’t want to heap blame on anyone or anything in particular, but we have to understand that it does make a difference where we go when deciding what’s the best hometown we know if problems aren’t transparently identified, and public efforts promptly made to correct them.

— ERIC MEYER