So Where's Walter When We Need Him?

So, here we are, far closer to a new Congressional election than we are to the last national vote for President, and it’s long past the time to look around and see just how things have changed since Donald Trump was elected and the Republican Party had firm control of every branch of government.

Certainly, we can’t count on our local newspapers or cable television to do that kind of long, complex and expensive analysis. They are no longer up to the job, because it would mean having to pay reporters and researchers and even data entry people, and small media outlets just don’t have the money for that kind of staff. Still, a few national papers are trying to tackle it.

If you feel generous, give them a B for effort. But, in a lot of small media markets - which is the only source of news for a lot of our nation - we have substituted cheap opinion for actual news coverage. That barely gets a C.

It’s mostly our fault, of course. Our newspapers and our television networks were once more than capable of throwing a bright spotlight on the problems of our society, and the directions our nation was taking. And, mostly, we threw it away.

Don’t believe me? Then I have just one word for you - ratings. Yep, after a lot of us stopped watching all those long and boring documentaries, the networks and the local stations discovered that just two or three people behind a desk reading the headlines held the attention of an audience just as well as a whole team of reporters in the field.

It just looks like news. And, in a way, it is. How do you know they are going for image over substance?  Ever see an ugly weather reporter? Or an elderly one?

So, cheap is precisely the word I want to use. You don’t have to pay reporters to work for weeks or months on a single story. And it costs a lot less to buy two or three opinion pieces a week from some nationally syndicated commentator than to have a full-time reporter looking at how local issues mesh with national and international trends.

                                           And, That's My Problem

Why does that bother me? Well, a one-size-fits-all commentary doesn’t begin to touch on all the facts that should be important to different people. Is an agreement on soybean imports in Russia good or bad for Indiana? Do intellectual property violations in the Middle East mean anything at all to North Carolina? Does the fact that my grass seed spray may come from China mean anything to the people in New Mexico?

Local reporters might figure that out, if they had the time and the space to write about it. But, it really is easier to just run one opinion piece from the left or the right and pretend the newspapers are doing their job. Or, more to the point, that readers are doing their job of demanding the information they need.

On television, all we seem to worry about is ratings, and advertisers are more than happy to pay the salaries of big name commentators.  A year ago, Forbes estimated Sean Hannity’s annual salary at $29 million, while Rachel Maddow made about $7 million.

 But, neither of them go out and report on the tough “how are we doing” questions. They mostly comment on news reported by others. (To be fair, Rachel’s staff regularly breaks some interesting news, and Hannity gets to talk with Donald Trump.)

This would be a good place to point out that Walter Cronkite - one of my heroes of journalism - went to Vietnam himself to report on the war. The first time, he reported what the military said - that we were winning a long and bloody struggle. The last time, after the Tet offensive, he told his audience that it was a war we could not win.

Lyndon Johnson - who bitterly fought not to be the first President to lose a war - reflected that if he had lost Walter Cronkite, he had lost middle America.

Now, we can only ask “where’s Walter?'

                                  A Tip Of The Hat To Just One Person

Today, the only place where I regularly see someone in the media taking the time to look at the complex “how are we doing” questions - one issue at a time - is Wyatt Cenac. If you aren’t familiar with this work, go find it, then go watch. It’s well worth the time.

So,  being cheap myself - after all, you read this for nothing, and you get what you pay for - I will offer some opinions on just how much we have changed in the time the Trump administration has been running our nation. You may find some surprises.

First surprise, not very much has changed. What has happened is that things have become more visible. A lot more visible. to those who do the hard work of really looking. The rich are getting richer. The powerful are getting more powerful. The social fabric is fraying just a little bit more each month.

Of course, a lot of people are still in denial.  And there is an old saying about willful denial. It starts “Where there is no vision...”

“What should we all be seeing?” you ask. Well, I would start with the corrupting influence of absolute power. Remember when Republicans in Congress refused to appoint a Supreme Court justice nominated by President Obama? Well, what happened? Not much. 

The Democrats in Congress took the high road of making loud speeches and not actually doing much of anything - lest they be blamed by the GOP for being obstructionists - and so we got Neal Gorsich. 

And, what did we get with him? Well, he recently voted with a 5-4 Supreme Court majority on an arbitration issue, which is a really big deal. Now, the law says that if a company with 500 workers does something wrong like not paying them what they should be paid under their contract, they can sue. 

But, if the company first demanded its workers must agree to arbitration instead of going to court as a condition of employment - and more and more companies are doing this every month - those 500 workers must each go out and hire a lawyer to press their case. If they all did it, the cases would fill up court calendars for years.

 Ah, but fear not. Most workers probably can’t afford to hire a lawyer, and most lawyers would not take an individual worker’s case that pays so little. And, arbitration often favors employers, not employees.

See, nothing changed. And, a lot did. The same way that the nation’s ever-growing loss of union jobs - and we are talking about something happening over decades - has no real effect on our daily lives. Only on how much people earn, and how the middle class is shrinking. Just the way it was shrinking last week, and last month, and last year. Try to do a story on that in a two minute news clip.

                                     One Story You've Probably Already Seen

Then there was the story on TV the other day about Harley-Davidson closing down one plant and shifting some jobs to another one. A win of about 300 jobs for Pennsylvania, and a loss, overall, of about 800 jobs for Harley-Davidson workers. The TV reporter went to the plant that was closing and interviewed one worker, who said he was not happy, but that he still believed in President Trump. Balanced coverage, I guess. He never said why.

So, Harley ends up with millions in tax breaks, which it uses to buy back stock and increase the value of the company to its shareholders, and the workers lose their jobs. Harley explained it was only moving jobs to Thailand to meet regional demand, and had nothing to do with their tax break.

The public debate that followed focused on Trump’s massive tax cuts and proposed tariffs, but the decision by Harley to close its factory was made long before Trump was elected, and mostly involved the declining market for big motorcycles in the U.S.

Read that in your papers? I did, but it took some searching to find that news. Different pieces of the story in different papers. See it on TV? Well, why not? Extra credit question. Was the soon to be unemployed Harley worker right to stay fast to his faith in Donald Trump? 

Feel free to submit a written response, but it has to be thoughtful - which means no cursing - and it must be at least three full pages long, so I know you put some effort into it. Tweets need not apply.

What else haven’t we been reading about? Well, chaos has become the norm in Washington. And it hasn’t. 

Certainly our foreign policy seems to be a bit confused. We are out of treaties, then we are in treaties, then we are out of them again. We are taking strong steps to protect our industries from foreign competition, then we are weakening the strong steps, even before they have been taken. But, we still have our phones made in China. I just hope the Army and the Navy aren’t using them. 

That’s because those phones may be able to spy on us even when they are not being used. I think.

Maybe I’ll find a long story on it in the Post. The New York Post or the Washington Post. Or the Wall Street Journal, which more people should actually read once in a while.

Just pick your side and watch it faithfully. See, nothing much has changed.

Dear Ms. Manners

Dear M. Manners

I recently received * several letters which touch on the same problem, but come at it from different directions. Mostly, I ignored them, because it was just good manners.

Still, reading a story in the Times about a scandal involving a long-time gynecologist at the USC student center makes me realize there is a common thread with those letters. (In his case, the doctor was protected from public exposure for years despite numerous charges from women patients about his alleged inappropriate behavior and his racist and sexual remarks about their bodies. None of those charges were forwarded to the state medical board.)

So, was that just a lack of good manners? Wait and see. Here are the letters.

Dear Mr., Miss or Mrs. Manners - So what is it with that stupid M., some kind of new liberal way of trying to hide your sexual identity? Men are men, women are married or not married, and all of that should be put right in front of us so we can figure out just who is giving us advice. Spare us the politically correct speech. If you can’t use any of those fine honorifics, just call yourself “Manners.” That’s what we call one of the guys who hangs out with us at a bar, and always asks for a coaster to put under his beer.  - MR!

Dear M. Manners - I am having a problem with one of my new employees, and see no good way to handle it without stirring up a hornet’s nest with the union. She is, well, a little priggish. Every time I call her “honey,” she either gives me a dirty look or just ignores me until I go over to her desk and yell at her. None of the other girls in the office mind a little compliment - I call all the women I work with honey, whether they are 18 or 60 - and see no reason why she can’t be more like everyone else.

I asked Human Resources if I could just fire her or transfer her, and they said it would be more trouble than it is worth. But, I can’t live with this insubordination much longer. So, what can I do? - Frustrated Boss.

Dear “M” - So, Trump won and Hillary lost, and the world has not come to an end. My taxes are lower, and our country is finally getting some respect. So maybe I don’t agree with all the things our President does, but it’s a big country, and you have to give something to all the people who voted for him. So, why can’t those liberal Democrats just get over it and support our president, just the way we did for the other guy when John McCain lost. Yeah, now that he is dying those Democrats suddenly like McCain. What hypocrites. - God Bless America.

Well, can you see how good manners links all those complaints together?  Don’t take this the wrong way - Democrats are just as guilty as Republicans for this one - but what we are talking about here is certainly good manners, but also an effort to talk truth to power.

And what’s the truth? Well, Aretha Franklin wrote a song about a vanishing social need back in 1967, when it was already becoming a little hard to find. 

She spelled it out. R E S P E C T.

Yep. We no longer respect the people we feel are somehow below us. Too poor, not well-educated. The wrong race. The wrong political party. People in the country don’t seem to respect the needs of city-dwellers, and we all know what city dwellers think of the folks in flyover country. 

Now, let’s get specific.

First we will look at Frustrated Boss, who sees nothing wrong with calling someone “honey.” Now, I bet he never calls his boss “honey,” or the cop who stops his car for speeding. And, he probably would get mad if one of the secretaries in his office called him “cutie” or  maybe “chubby cheeks.”

The problem is that nicknames and endearments always flow in just one direction  - down They go from the person with power to the person without it. It’s always from the boss to the subordinate. Heck, even George Bush and John Kennedy felt free to give nicknames to their staff, and to the reporters who covered them. Just a little pat on the head from someone who can make your life miserable.

Anyone ever hear of a school teacher who felt free to give a nickname to some of the kids in their class, but would get really mad when they made up names for him. And do  you really think Fat Vito picked that name for himself, or did the mob boss give it to him?

Now, Mr. may find it annoying that some people he has been calling Mr. or Mrs. all his life may want to change the form of address to Ms. Kind of like the way some Democrats don’t like hearing the party they have called the Democratic Party all their lives react when some radio host calls it the Democrat party. It’s my show, and I can say anything I want, unless I want to criticize the current party in power. 

So, really, who gets to decide what people - particularly groups of people - should be called. Isn’t it up to society at large to agree on what to call groups like radicals, or ultra liberals or ultra conservatives? 

Well, no. It is not. Ever see any of those movies from the 1930’s, where the script had the white actors calling the black actors “boy?” Or today’s election ads where no Democratic candidate is just liberal, but always ultra-liberal. And, in truth, not every Republican is a closet dictator. But the names certainly make it easy for the loyalists in both parties to figure out who to vote for.

Well, here’s an idea. People should be called what they want to be called. Individuals. Groups. Even the Freedom Caucus. Works for me, at least. Shows the FC people have a sense of humor.

Now, the letter I have the most trouble with is from God Bless America, which is a fine slogan for most people. But he seems to forget the lack of respect that came when another party was in the White House. We don’t really have to spell it out - just look at the news any day of the week, and listen to how respectfully the Republicans in Congress - and, sadly, some of the Democrats as well - talk about the people who disagree with them.

Oh, well, maybe when the Democrats are in charge of the House of Representatives again, they will let some Republican-sponsored bills get to the floor for a vote. We can always hope.

 * (read that as “made up”)

A Modest Proposal

Let me step away, for a moment, and get away from the problems our national media seems to have in covering Presidents, especially the one we have now.

I want to go back and cure an injustice. In doing so, we may set a pattern that could eventually be helpful to Donald Trump, and so will win the support of all right-thinking members of Congress, of thoughtful citizens everywhere, and even of those people who still think that Hillary had the election stolen from her and is now suffering the consequences of being on the losing side.

What kind of magic cure is this? Well, you will probably see what I mean as soon as I suggest my plan.

Let’s pardon Bill.

Yes, our organized Feminists will probably object to this move, and so will Republican donors and members of Congress. But I can’t see how any Evangelicals will object to finally getting rid of the stain on the reputation of our past President. After all, they hate the sin and love the sinner. Just look at how they are more than willing to let Donald Trump recover his moral high ground and keep their support.

Mike Pence explained it well. Our current president is but an imperfect man - as are we all imperfect men and women - and is really trying hard to become better. So is everyone else, except the Russians and Chinese and North Koreans. (Historic note - that was when we didn’t like Russians or Chinese or North Koreans, before Donald Trump’s personal charm won them all over and made them our best of friends.)

So, what is a stained dress and a sullied reputation against the great good that Bill Clinton did as president. He kept us from adopting a national health insurance program by turning the job of creating the program to someone so mired in details and detached from the common folk that it never got off the ground. I forget who that was, but I remember that it didn’t work out too well.

And the idea that a President’s reputation can be stained by some kind of sex scandal, any sex scandal, is something that I am sure our current president wants to forget. Pardon him, and dump his innocent locker room actions to the dustbin of history.

So, we should pardon Bill. And, who else?

Well, the list is long and goes way, way back. We could start with Thomas Jefferson, and Ulysses S. Grant. All those people who drank from the Teapot Dome. And certainly all those fine Southern gentlemen whose statues were so rudely removed from those very public Southern squares.

Then there is Ronald Reagan for the Iran-Contra deal. Now it was never proved just how much he knew about the deal, but the plan was supposed to free seven Americans held hostage in Lebanon by Hezbollah by letting Israel secretly ship some weapons it had gotten from the United States to Iran, and in turn we would quietly replace those weapons with better ones. Everybody wins. Except for the part where some of the money to pay for the weapons ended up going to anti-Sandinista terrorists to use against the government of Nicaragua. So, top of the line anti-aircraft missiles went to Iran, money went to terrorists in South America, and our hostages were freed.

It’s all kind of complicated. To figure it out, you might ask the military officer in charge of the whole thing, Lt. Col. Oliver North, who was on the National Security Council at the time.

 But let’s not get too distracted. We have to finish the Presidential Pardon Plan (we can call it PPP if you like) by getting to the  one really hard pardon that really must be given to heal our great nation. The one that will stop dividing us all.

Donald Trump has to pardon Hillary.

We all know how much our President hates witch hunts, and years of investigation into the supposed wrongdoings of Hillary Clinton have just gone on too long. I am sure that he would say it’s time to stop. Certainly, Mike Pence could explain that. He does it so well.

Now - and I know this will be hard for some Constitution-loving Republicans to hear - there are even some people who want to punish Hillary Clinton even before she has a trial. It may be hard to believe, but they actually chant “lock her up” at political rallies in some places we need not name. If you don’t believe me, just Google it. I did just that the other day and got 158 million hits.

Think of all the problems these pardons could solve. All the anger that will evaporate when these old and new issues are resolved. All those pieces of paper Donald Trump could sign and wave in the air. All the commentators saying it was historic, and that nothing like it was ever done before.

And there might even be two or three extra pardons left for him - or someone else - to use just in case. That could give a new job to someone without much to do now except praise our President, and we could even use the same PPP name - Pardon Providing Pence.

A Reluctant Time Traveler

Every week, I fall behind a little bit more.

Sometimes, it makes me feel like a time traveler, stuck in reverse in a slow-moving time machine, dropping back a week or two every week, with no hope of ever catching up.

It is, of course, the fault of those darn newspapers. And, maybe, television. Or the Republicans in Congress. I also blame the Democrats who still support Hillary and are not in Congress, or just my friends and neighbors.

Nah, cross out my neighbors, who seem to have very little interest in politics or world affairs. And, as for my friends, I won’t go there. I just can’t afford to lose any more friends because of my rantings.

So, we will stay with that simple fact - there is just too much news in the daily papers - and on cable (if you keep a mind open enough to watch more than one news channel) to digest in just one day.

Heck, every Sunday the New York Times alone gives enough information to keep me busy until sometime next Wednesday afternoon - more if you count the several weeks of the Times Book Review. That part of the Times is particularly insidious, because I take it with me when I start to read something, only to put it away for later.

You can find old Times Book Reviews in the big stack on a dog crate in my dining room, in our bathroom magazine rack, a desk in the office, or someplace else where it seemed to make sense to put it down.

My wife helps me cull the stacks of newspapers, of course. So, too, do our cats, who can’t resist using a stack of newspapers as a spare litter box. Of course, once the smelly papers are taken to the recycling bin, they only expose other, older papers that were also set aside. Kind of like a perverse, four-legged archeologist.

Now, I could probably read all the papers in a week or two if only I weren’t reading other things on-line, and listening to the news develop in real time on cable television. And, sucker that I am, I watch the same news developing each day on different programs - some of which are on different networks. I get a kind of subtle joy in watching how little a story has changed from day to night, or how the stories that are reported in the evening are picked up unchanged the next day.

That is probably what started the time traveling. Blame television for not letting me finish the stack of papers I have left to read, and blame the cat for not ruining the remains of that stack. And, too, blame the media for putting so much stuff in the daily news mix that I just can’t ever finish. Sort of like going forward to the past.

It reminds me of a Greek myth. I am pushing a stack of newspapers toward the edge of a cliff (in this case, a big recycling bucket) and no matter how hard or how long I push, while some papers fall off the edge, the pile of papers just keeps getting bigger and bigger.

So, what is in those papers and on-line magazines and other spigots of information that keeps flooding my pool of slightly out of date news?

Well, there’s a Sports Illustrated piece explaining just what went wrong with Mets former Ace pitcher Matt Harvey, the criminal charges against Martin Winterkorn - the former Volkswagen Chief Executive who was in charge when VW’s diesel emissions cheating scandal was discovered, and a fine story on how Facebook’s expansion into Artificial Intelligence was draining robotics professors from some of our finest universities.

Not to mention the difficulties our nation’s new tariffs are creating for the solar panel industry, the long-delayed toxic cleanup in the Red Hook section of Brooklyn, and Zora Neale Hurston’s book on an Alabama man believed to be the last living person captured in Africa and brought to America on a slave ship. Well, he’s no longer living, and she wrote it in 1931, and it was just about to be published - two stories in one.

When I started writing this, I was holding the Sunday Times news section, with several long stories that I want to take some time to read. One is a well-researched and well-reported stories on a Pennsylvania state lawmaker who had to get a bodyguard to enforce an order of protection she has against another Republican state lawmaker she used to date. Another is about how Trump fixer Michael Cohen built his financial empire. The third is a touching story about how Senator John McCain is looking back on his amazing life.

That was last week. Now, Sunday is here again, and I have to put away the things I haven’t read. More news in the driveway, and on television. And just waiting to jump out of my computer, my tablet and my phone.

The point of sharing all this information inundation is to show just how difficult it is to be well-informed nowadays. There’s just too much happening to keep track of, which makes it a little hollow and pretentious to have opinions on everything under the sun. 

You can, of course, just hate everything the other party does, which does not require much thought. Or you could look some stuff up and make up your own mind, of only you knew what subjects you should be looking at.

Well, have no fear, I will continue to have opinions, and to share them, and even to explain why I feel the way I do, which is something sorely missing from some talk shows. 

(Tip - never take a political comment from a sports commentator seriously. Or from any commentator on a network where everyone has the same opinion. But, if you must find someone else to echo, take your opinion from the host who makes the least noise.)

So, seriously, how can you ever make sense out of anything with this deluge of information going on around you 24/7? 

Well, International Business Machines used to have a slogan that kind of pointed the way for us, although they haven’t been using it lately. I am sure they dropped it long before Watson became their spokesperson, or spokescomputer, or cloud-based message targeter.

You may remember it. THINK.

It’s a good start. And let me add a thought of my own. DON’T REPEAT UNLESS YOU HAVE SOMETHING WORTHWHILE TO ADD.

Well, maybe that’s too much. THINK is shorter, and better, and more to the point. But, IBM had a lot of time to work on its slogan*, and I came up with mine in about five minutes. 

It shows why journalism is only  a first draft of history.

• - Historic footnote. Thomas J. Watson Sr., brought the slogan “THINK” to the Computing-Tabulating-Recording Company in New York City when it was formed in a merger in 1914. He actually thought up “Think" when he was managing the sales and advertising department of the National Cash Register Company in December, 1911.  Kind of gives you something to think about.