Jaya has an interesting post about recent blogging trends. She looks at BlogPulse graphs of the seven deadly sins and the ‘Seven Deadly Sins’ and the ‘Seven Roman Virtues’. The two deadly sins that top the charts are Pride and Anger, averaging over four times as much traffic as the other deadly sins. I cannot help but wonder if these are related. After all, how much anger is a result of someone’s pride being damaged? Not only is this the case on the individual level, but where does national pride and national anger fit in?

When you look at the virtues, Hope runs away with the traffic, averaging over six times the traffic of the other virtues. Perhaps hope is the antidote to the pride and anger that is causing so much problems in our society today.

Friday, I went to see my daughter in her school production of The Music Man.

Music Man, originally uploaded by Aldon.

For those of you who haven’t seen, or don’t remember the musical, it is about a traveling salesman showing up in Iowa selling band instruments. The problem is that he doesn’t know anything about music. Typically, he sells the instruments and gets out of town before anyone knows better.

Yet in this small town in Iowa, he becomes interested in a local librarian, sticks around a little longer than he planned and has to confront what he has done. Yet it all turns out well, as the instruments and the band, even though it doesn’t play all that well, brings joy, meaning and hope to the children and their parents.

These days there is a man who spends too much on haircuts and another who is lacking in years of experience traipsing around Iowa trying to sell their wares. When we are lucky, people might talk about the issues they are discussing. More of the time, people are talking about what they look like or other unimportant minutiae.

Yet when you get right down to it, what they are really selling is hope, a commodity that has been in short supply the past six years. They are selling hope, an antidote to the pride and anger that has so damaged our political system and our standing in the world. Which one has the better prescription? Right now, I’m rooting for haircut guy, but they both have the right message and the right approach. Will they be able to deliver? Well, that is part of the magic of hope. The Music Man changed people’s lives for the better, even though people thought he wouldn’t be able to deliver. I believe that our candidates will do the same.