Tag Archives: CNN

If You Want My Lovin’

 

Man, are we getting repetitive.

To my colleagues in the media: Please stop saying this could be the scandal that topples the president.

At the end of every week since Trump took office, the 24/7 squawkers have been trying to justify Chicken Little bullhorns. “It’s been a rough week for the president,” a newscaster invariably begins. “The walls are closing in on Trump as his friends strike immunity deals,” cawed Rachel Maddow last week. After the “N-word” scandal, CNN’s Chris Cuomo actually uttered these words: “This one is big.” So what does that make the rest of them? The alarm bells have  become shrill political Muzak.

Image result for chris cuomo

But this week really may have been his worst yet.

Not politically, or course. Asking Trumpsters to defy or define his thinking is like asking a believer to defy or describe god’s. Good luck finding logic in either.

No, this was Trump’s worst week because his worst fears materialized: He wasn’t the center of TV coverage. Even on Pravda Light, Fox News.

What wonderful misery that must have brought. The man does two things: watch cable news and eat KFC. And a bucket will only last you so long. What was he going to do? Workout in a gym? Read a book? Talk to his wife?

No, Trump’s personal hell is to turn on Fox, CNN and MSNBC and find, instead of his plump visage, an earnest homage to the man Trump mocked to gain office (a mocking that became exponentially more monstrous when juxtaposed with renewed stories of McCain’s ordeal). Image result for line of people at mccain's funeral

Add to that lawmakers from both sides of the aisle — and his daughter, for god’s sake — praising McCain, without exception, as American bravery incarnate. That sure must have made Trump’s bone spurs itchy, poor guy.

Then, in perhaps his last, greatest tactical maneuver, McCain planned his farewells to the letter. And none of those letters spelled T-R-U-M-P.  They spelled out George Bush and Barack Obama (men who bested him in elections) to give eulogies. Even Mike Pence got an invitation to ceremonies, even though he never served a day in the military (the invertebrate’s  father and son did, however). That’s like sending out birthday invitations and listing the one person not welcome to the party.

And in case he had forgotten his unpopularity among real people (common in Narcissistic Personality Disorder), Aretha Franklin passed away in what was arguably the most joyous, appreciative funeral in Detroit’s history. Stevie Wonder sang the closing song. A teary eyed Bill Clinton played one of her songs to the church through his iPhone and referred to himself as a “groupie” of hers.

Trump didn’t even need to be uninvited to that funeral. Michigan may be a red state, but Detroit is black and blue. You think Secret Service would have protected him from the D, which never needed rumors of tape of the N-word to know he uses it. Belief runs both ways. Image result for aretha franklin funeral stevie wonder clinton

Russian collusion? Yawn. Campaign donations? Next. Racism and sexism? What else is new?

No, what most stings Trump is a lack of attention. How fitting that ceremonies honoring an iconic woman and esteemed political foe would relegate Trump to back page news. And it’s no coincidence Franklin and McCain found fervent, universal love through the understanding of a concept as foreign to Trump as Sanskrit.

R-E-S-P-E-C-T.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Donnie, Go Put Your Name on the Yes Board

 

My mother, a first-grade teacher her entire career, implemented the greatest inspiration/discouragement tool  I’ve ever seen in education: The Yes and No Board.

It was a simple chalkboard, divided in two, with the words YES on one side, NO on the other. If a child was especially good, the youngster got his or her name emblazoned under YES. Miscreants and the mischievous went under NO.

The board was clever enough, but here was the coup de grace: Mom had the children write their own names on the board, an act of public pride or  penance. Either way, it was effective: Children beamed like stars to write their name on the YES board, wept like widows at the other fate (though they always had a chance to redeem themselves with good behavior and an eraser).

Washington needs a YES and NO board.

God knows I would have Trump get as used to the NO board as Bart Simpson. From his ever-growing flock to his ever-growing need for one, Trump’s deification in the Republican base has put his ego on steroids. And his love of despots may become our fate of living under one.

But homie deserves to write his name on the YES board for his meeting with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un this week.

I say this grudgingly. I say this with the taste of crow on my breath. I was prepared for him to tweet the nuclear code after the meeting.

Instead, we got a hugfest. A disingenuous, duplicitous  globular hugfest among egomaniacs. But would we have wanted any other message coming from the confab? Perhaps them angry waddling away from each other? Trading translated barbs?

But it’s inescapable, the reticence of CNN and MSNBC to give the president credit for the meeting. And they do raise valid points: Kim played Trump like a fiddle, earning praise from the leader of the free world. The de-nuclearization process takes a decade at minimum. The letter Kim and Trump penned was, at best, vaguely optimistic.  Trump’s decision to end war games in South Korea was capricious at best, an outright lie at worst.

All of which might be true. To which I say: Who cares? Who gives a shit if a nation the size of Pennsylvania wants to parade Kim’s photos with world leaders, establishing him as a peer? Who cares if the letter wasn’t specific? Did we really expect either of those pudgy lunatics to emerge with a well thought-out plan of disarmament?

The problem appears two-fold: The major outlets’ reluctance to praise anything Trumpian, lest they invoke a boycott or, worse, a decline in ratings; and a misread of the Singapore sit-down altogether.

The first is understandable. Trump invites skepticism in anything he says or does, largely because he says or does nothing. Fool me once, shame on me. Fool me 17 straight months and, well, I’ve got that coming.

It’s the second media complaint that confuses me. We keep casting Kim as a dictator of a hermit nation, which would be impossible to deny. But I was a cop reporter for 15 years, and I know a hostage stand-off when I see one. And this was a hostage stand-off.

In this case, the hostages were 60 short-, medium- and long-range missiles, including those of the inter ballistic persuasion.  What is Trump going to come out and say? “Dumbo’s gotta get rid of em?” Have you ever seen a cop, trying to negotiate the release of hostages, go on the local TV news and say “That guy is a real nut job. I sure hope he doesn’t kill everybody.” You say what needs to be said til nutso puts down the gun. Isn’t that the hope for both men?

Perhaps Kim will pick it up again and fire away. Perhaps de-arming never happens. Perhaps this was all just a ruse to hack Trump’s iPhone after he left it in the toilet, which he surely did at least once.

But again, who cares? So far, there are no bodies. In any hostage stand-off, you want a lack of corpses, a dearth of gunfire and both sides talking and smiling, even if it cloaks consternation. What’s the alternative?

 

The Arithmetic of News

 

The Pew Research Center just released a study that must awaken newspaperpeople in cold sweats, or urine: 81% of Americans get their news from a screen —  either online outlets or social media (a putrid redundancy) sites. That doesn’t even include TV. Of the stragglers left over who get their news from papers or magazines, more than 60% are 65 and older.

So newspapers are literally dying.

That’s hardly new, news or surprising. I’m in the business, and can’t say I really support the concept of newspapers in a modern era. One day, historians will look back at our cultural institutions and think it quaint that we used to get our news from day-old parchment. That living things needed to be killed, shredded and delivered manually for  mankind to learn who won yesterday’s game shows.

Still, the death of papers is not like the death of coal. There has been little evidence that news coverage contributes to global warming (unless you count Trump as a carbon  emissions threat). In fact, consumption of news is at a record high.

So there are elements of newspapers that could still flourish, if not most newspapers themselves. The New York Times and Washington Post have seen a revival of scoops and influence unmatched since the Nixon years. So, they’re likely safe, if Jeff Sessions doesn’t equate reading news to heroin.

But, for the few who have little access to or interest in the Post or Times, the question over what constitutes news becomes as gray as uncertainty.

Our preeminent TV news outlets aren’t helping things any. Every MSNBC segment is simply asking a commentator, ‘Don’t you think Donald Trump is a nincompoop?’ The answer — and endless supply of examples — make for great comedy.  Just ask Alec Baldwin. And it soothes the confirmation biases of two-thirds of the country.

CNN is entering similarly shark-infested waters, accentuating sermonizers over strategists. Still, they’re the only network that gets A-list commentators Woodward, Bernstein and the NYT’s Maggie Haberman, the Three Musketeers of the White House. But they are three in a house of neophytes — who make enough errors to provide the administration defensive mortars.

That leaves the short-bus student, Fox News. For the first time, the network is losing regularly to MSNBC, once unthinkable. The state news agency is learning the limited punditry appeal of columnists from obscure outlets like Axios and The Washington Examiner, whoever the fuck they are now (I worked in DC for six years and never saw a copy). Hint: the outlet is the only measure of a commentator, who are interchangeably uniform.

So who to watch? When does news actually occur? Who to watch when it does?

There may be a simple but pretty accurate algorithm to measure the issue, and perhaps an answer that won’t even require you listen to a single word from the blowhards. Plus, it’s color-coded, so Alabamans can understand it.

It works this way. If possible, put CNN, FOX and MSNBC next to each other on the TV guide, so you can quickly flip up just two clicks for the world pulse.

Don’t bother listening, or even making out he pictures on the screen. Just look at the bottom of the screen: There will be a blue strip or a red one emblazoned across the bottom. Marketing research must dictate those colors — only.

Now click quickly twice, noting the color bands on the bottom.

If you see three red bands splashing BREAKING NEWS, you know that something real happened. An example of this would be the hurricanes or the Vegas shootings, incidents that demanded attention across all manner political spectrum.

If there are two red banners and one blue banner, the news will be negative against trump. The alleged Bannon-Trump split, for instance, dominated the broadcasts of CNN and MSNBC for an interminable span. Fox’s lead stories on the day of Fire and Fury’s release were the cold temperatures in the Northeast, and Jeff Sessions consideration of an investigation into Hillary Clinton’s role into Russian meddling.

If there’s one red banner, the news is good for Trump. Trump’s strike on Syria. His choice of Gorsuch. Stock news.

Finally, if all the banners are all screaming in blue, there is no real news that day. Turn off the TV. Step outside. Forget the Gnash.

We’ve come to measure our world in analytics. Why not the news that dictates it?