The Golden Shower Lining of a DysTrumpian Future

 

Ok, so the past 18 months have been tough for liberals, Democrats, women, minorities, homosexuals, immigrants, the environment, the press and, in an overarching sense,  intellectualism itself.

But there’s an upside to the past year and a half. Consider what has flourished under the New World Order:

Ambanja Sports. It has been an unreal stretch for all things athletic. The Liecester City Foxes were a 5,000-to-1 shot to win the Premier League soccer championships. But the little town from East Midlands, UK emptied the safes of dozens of booking houses, even prompting a ban on odds that long in soccer matches. The Cleveland Cavaliers came back from 3-1 in the NBA Finals to bring an impossible championship to the city. Then Chicago did them  one better, ending a century-long curse to win the World Series. The Clemson Tigers shocked ESPN’s talking heads by upsetting Alabama for the college football championship. Roger Federer and Serena Williams both claimed record Gran Slam titles at the Australian Open — at 35 years old. That’s the qualifying age to play in tennis’ senior circuit. Even the Super Bowl was supposed to be super, though I did not watch. The Patriots’ victory seemed, in retrospect, as inevitable as Trump’s, and I can’t stand victorious villains.

Bhachāu Comedy. For eight years, comedians had to limit their schticks to lambasting the GOP (Barack Obama was simply too quick to satirize). Now, though, the reins are off, and we’re seeing late-night comedians feasting on a neophyte administration that must look like buzzard snacks. Samantha Bee, Stephen Colbert, John Oliver, Bill Maher and, most surprisingly, Seth Myers have not only struck a resonant funny bone; they’ve effectively taken over participatory journalism from the participatory journalists. Of course, the Donald helps them out: Reacting angrily to a New York Times story that the president putters around the White House in his bathrobe, he had had Sean Spicer shoot down the story by claiming Donald doesn’t even own a bathrobe, perhaps a presidential first. Alec Baldwin has created his most memorable role since Glengarry Glen Ross with his Trump imitation on SNL, which is enjoying its highest ratings in a quarter century. The key to his act? He says he simply “Reads the guy’s tweets back.”

Activism. I come from a generation whose idea of conspiracy was who shot J.R. But today I see my friends marching, debating, engaging over topics they rarely broached. Of course, that’s no guarantee of change. But it’s a lot more promising sign than a protest hashtag.

So cheer up, Bill Maher (the guy really looks like he lost his mother): Assuming we don’t have to hunt or own food or learn how to make a lean-to in a nuclear winter, the next four years could be a hoot.

 

Getting It Right vs. Getting It Correct

 

An amazing thing happened at Tuesday night’s CNN debate over the future of Obamacare.

Nothing.

CNN had promised the kind of fireworks our president packs with every Twitter strike. And it featured a heavyweight bout: Bernie Sanders vs. Ted Cruz. The outliers in a race between presidential candidates who do not suffer independent thought gladly. Surely, given the wind-baggery of the contenders, this would showcase the new breed of debate as envisioned in a dysTrumpian future.

Instead, we heard something profound: assertions, based largely on facts.

Trump critics have always basked in taking the president to task for “alternate facts.” While we’re correct in complaining that facts are facts, we ignore a truth just as basic: Facts can support alternate views — even diametrically opposed ones.

Take the health care debate. As expected, both took their binary positions. Bernie pointed out how poorly the nation ranks when compared to other industrialized countries, despite being exponentially richest.

Cruz countered that America has meddled enough in private lives and our costs are so high because we offer so much — including options and speed in healthcare unheard of in Europe.

And both cited facts. Facts you could look up. And use to inform any opinion on the political spectrum.

And so it went. The political system, as it was meant to work. At debate’s end, they shook hands (there was no question that they would) and walked to their supporters’ waiting arms, Sanders to his left, Cruz to the right.

Surrendering facts is a little like shooting your own bullets.  No need; they’ll do whatever you want them to.

You just have to know how to handle them.

 

Dear Esteemed Colleagues: Please, Shut the Fuck Up

 

I just watched the umpteenth interview with an apoplectic reporter proclaiming the sky was falling (or, as I call it, Chicken Littling) after the latest rumor to circulate from the Trump administration: that he may deport all press to the Executive Office Building next door to the White House.

To hear them, you’d think Trump had just cut the ribbon on a new Gulag for journalists (that’s not due to be completed till 2018. He says the New York Times will pay for it.).

But, as is our tradition will all things Interweb-related, we swine don’t recognize the pearls we wear.

It wouldn’t be the first time. We began our professional descent when we charged for the print version of news, but not the electronic. The porn industry alone should have been a red flag lesson that giving your product away for free is a rickety business model.

Then we didn’t protect the title “social media,”  and even recognized it as an actual thing. It isn’t. The reason you don’t hear about “social surgeons” and “social pilots” is because the medical and aviation industries would sue infringers faster than an Uber training video (13 minutes on YouTube).

Now we are losing our collective wits over the possible eviction, as well as word that Trump may communicate with the press the way he communicates with the public (and, apparently, staff): In 140 characters or less.

To which I say this: Please be true.

Any reporter who has spent more than 4 minutes behind a notepad knows the truth about news conferences: They never contain news. They are simply a cliche delivery system for athletes, celebrities and politicians offering different riffs on the same tune: One Game at a Time, My Fellow Americans, It’s Just an Honor Being Nominated.

By comparison, Twitter is mana from heaven.

Consider his post-Nov. 8 tweets: He blasted Republican lawmakers as pussies, ripped Arnold Schwarzenegger’s performance on The Apprentice, publicly described the CIA and FBI as rife with rubes, hailed a dictator as cunning and, perhaps most egregiously, called Meryl Streep overrated.

Imagine if Obama — or any previous president — said any of those in a news conference. We’d be tripping over each other to get to the computer to file the story first.

Now it’s delivered directly to our phones. As soon as Senators and Representatives see it. The only lag time a reporter faces when writing a Trump-tweet story is how fast the writer can type.

The president’s tweets even create stories where none would have existed. In one missive, he wrote that a nemesis’ actions were “unpresidented.” Had that been a press conference, reporters would have unwittingly corrected the error, assuming that if Trump knew how to say the word, he knew how to spell it.

And we would never have gotten the opportunity to write: “Sorry, Donny, there’s no such word as ‘unpresidented.’ Or even ‘unpresidential,’ despite all evidence to the contrary.” And if you do need a talking head, you have the always-entertaining Kellyanne Conway, whose face looks like it was crushed by another horse’s face.

Finally, follow Fourth Estaters: What makes you think that the threat is any more feasible than, say, draining the swamp or making America great again? Trump would never reject the media; he lives to be in it. We complete him.

To quote our new precedent: Sad!