My Grand Pops used to furrow his brow, look me in the eye, and ask, “What’s the ding-dang-deelio?”

That was when I knew the lies were up. There was no more fudging the truth. There was no more putting the blame elsewhere. I couldn’t drag my brother into this. There was no more shrugging of the shoulders.

“I dunno nuthin!’” wasn’t going to cut it. It was me and the terse and tense question that hung in the air like a rain shower ready to let go the thunder and lightning and a torrential downpour.

I needed to fess up or be shown to be an out and out liar. Those were my choices. The jig was now up. The lie was so obvious I could not utter it without feeling horrific.

I had to tell the truth.

Grand Pops is dead now, gone many years in fact. But the ding-dang-deelio comes back into my mind every so often. I am reminded of it when I see someone so blatantly full of horse manure that I want to stare them down, look them in the eye, and ask the question my salty old Grand Pops pinned me with so many times growing up.

“What’s the ding-dang-deelio?”

Sometimes he poked an accusatory finger in my little boy’s chest and it hurt.

These days, I want to grab the suits responsible for putting on the entertainment sections of the major TV media-casts– what they now refer to as “the news”– and ask the same thing.

“What’s the ding-dang-deelio?”

There is a ding-dang-deelio going on alright, right in front of our American noses, and we are haplessly shrugging our shoulders as if it were acceptable.

And nobody is pinning the networks to the question. Or more accurately, those that are trying are still marginalized by the elite who control the networks. The eye isn’t fierce enough. The stare isn’t acute enough. There isn’t my Grand Pops’ awful-honest and wise visage backing up the eye with folded arms. There are no ramifications adding weight to the glare.

So far, the networks are allowed to shrug their shoulders, blame others, and wiggle around the question.

“What’s the ding-dang-deelio?”

Wolf Blitzer- “We are here in the situation room and we have done nothing wrong.”

Sean Hannity- “It’s THEM! They did it! Them! They’re spamming everything!”

Chris Mathews- “They want to play hardball? I’ll play hardball! I’ll be the pitcher! Catch this!”

Has it all become such a game?

One of the side effects of the unusual run of Ron Paul for President is that the fix is now so obvious, it is painful to watch. When Gravel and Dennis Kucinich slowly started to be exed out of the Democratic equation, there was a murmur and a ripple of understanding. People knew the media was pulling the plug on these two, and some people complained. But it was explainable and had wiggle room. The support was solid but it was not large enough or deep enough. The media could shrug their collective shoulders and say, “sorry fellas, but we need to move on”.

With Ron Paul it is different.

Why?

The inescapable fact that he is backed by a solid and broad base. The inescapable fact that he has the money to fight a good fight. The inescapable fact that the numbers for him are out there in America; the signs are all over– and I mean real signs, printed in ink and displayed on lawns and rooftops and everywhere in-between; the meet-up groups have formed; the grassroots appeal is “a fire on the prairie” to steal someone’s line.

Ron Paul is a phenomenon. His elect-ability is now definitely debatable, definitely news worthy, and definitely well within the thick of the likes of a Romney, a Guilliani, and a Huckabee. His viability is now a matter of taste, not media decision-making and backroom flimflamming.

So why is he still being left out of polls? Why does Fox “news” call him a “pinhead”? Why is there an obvious and blatant effort directed at him by all of the “news” media entertainment outlets, using words like “crackpot” to attempt to diminish his ideas which are catching on all across the country? Why?

Just who are pulling the strings and why are Americans going for it?

What I sincerely wish was that there were enough clones of my Grand Pops around that as a group (almost like a lynch mob) they would be willing to march down to these studios and raise the evil eyebrow at these evil lying potato-heads and glare into their souls and in front of the American people– no wiggle room allowed– simply ask “WHAT’S THE DING-DANG-DEELIO?”