Tag Archives: MSNBC

The Great News Blackout

Blade Runner 2049 Review | Movie - Empire

There’s a terrific contrivance in Blade Runner 2049. The 2017 Blade Runner sequel posits that there was an epic blackout of electricity in 2022 that made it impossible to tell human beings from their synthetic counterparts, Replicants.

What a prescient notion.

For today, Tuesday, June 16, 2020, we experienced a tragic, heretofore unnoticed, blackout across the news landscape.

Only the day before, a Republican-run Supreme Court voted 6-3 (a near-unanimous vote in today’s politically bipolar times) that the 1964 Civil Rights Act extends to gay, lesbian, and transgender employees from discrimination based on sex. On top of that, Trump’s first appointee to the court, Neil Gorsuch, wrote the majority opinion.

When the news broke, it thundered and properly shook homes in all news neighborhoods, from print to TV to online. It was at least a 7.0 Richter scale rumbler, and was properly compared to the Civil Rights and Women’s Rights victories of the 1960’s.

So why the hell did we not treat it that way the next day?

After reading about the news yesterday afternoon, I immediately tuned to the 24/7s. There, from CNN to FOX to MSNBC, I found nothing but protest and pandemic news. Some to applaud mask-wearers and sign-holders, some to condemn them.

On the late-night circuit, the ruling took a backseat to the shows’ cold-open toppers: Trump geezer-stepping down the ramp at West Point. Trump defends cautious walk down ramp, which raised questions ...

This isn’t to say that those stories aren’t news. Both pandemic and protest deserve front-page coverage. The New York Times noted that Trump’s physical frailty, from his arm spasms to slurred words to geriatric gait, could be personal trouble for the president and political trouble for his party.

But take a look at the picture atop this post. It’s a screenshot of the Apple News feed from this morning recapping the most important events of the day. A next day.

You will find nothing there about the ruling.

If what happened yesterday was the tectonic shift all outlets claimed, how could that news not merit remaining a top-of-the-fold, lead-the-newscast, editor’s-pick story today? Did we cover passage of the Civil Rights Act with the same short-term memory?

I pray not, and I suspect not.1964 Civil Rights Act Fast Facts - CNN

I get the demands on news that it be clock-current in coverage. We will once think it quaint that we got our news on parchment a day after an event. Now we want a full-blown analysis of the game we just watched waiting for us by the time we get to our phone or computer.

But there is a darker truth about the way we covered the ruling — and news writ large. We largely ignored it because it was good news (at least for those who agreed with the ruling, which is likely a vast majority, given the judicial panel speaking).

That truth becomes undeniably clear when you think of how this story could have been written today. Where are the pieces on joyous reactions of Americans who finally feel recognized? Where’s the story on a worker relieved that she won’t be fired for joining her gay softball team? Those would make for fine TV/online/print/social media articles.

There are also complex news stories to pursue. On Friday, for instance, the Trump Administration finalized erasing Obama-era transgender civil rights protections in health care. The Times noted that Friday’s ruling meant that the Department of Health and Human Services no longer had to recognize gender identity as an avenue for sex discrimination in health care.

Given their leanings, you’d think CNN and MSNBC, at the very least, would be all over this troubling news for the administration, particularly with a presidential election a few months away. Or that FOX would be lamenting the snowflaking of a Supreme Court it once considered it’s literal Trump card. Gorsuch was supposed to be a puppet. Is this dissent in the cult? Neil Gorsuch: 'Do you really want me to rule the country ...

Speaking of the Supremes: What does this mean for civil rights, which will inevitably be in the Court’s cross hairs, given the tumult that has followed the George Floyd death and ascending Black Lives Matter movement.

Maybe these stories are being aired. But I need prospector’s luck finding them.

You’d think the story would have gotten more traction simply because it is a new beat in the two-note symphony that has become news.

Perhaps part of the problem was that the initial stories mislead readers. The truth is that the ruling is not on a scale of the Civil Rights and Women’s Rights breakthroughs because it involves fewer people.

It’s important news, to be sure. But it should be put in context, which is that the LGBTQ ruling may have been as big as its predecessor, but the monster wave was in a smaller ocean. Maybe even a lake superior.

This is how news became a Labrador puppy, blindly leaping to get out from under the blanket we call Fake News.

That news, too, should be put in context. We know the cliche If it bleeds, it leads.

The truth is it doesn’t lead. It drowns.

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?