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?
