When The Spores Finally Wear Off

Here's an observation I'm pretty sure the lady mentioned won't mind me offering.

Rachel Maddow lost her shit last night.

In the final minute of her show, she was handed information that she was unable to read on air. Unable to read because she could not prevent herself from crying.

She apologized, as gracious people do, even if there is no fault involved, and handed her show off to the next show's host.

The information is available anywhere and everywhere. I'm not going to get into that here.

In fact, I only mention Maddow's response because it is, at this writing, the most up to the minute addition to "the list".

And it's that list that is the subject of this piece.

At some point, the list becomes too long to read in its entirety in the time available in the limited brain cells of those who need to hear the list. And, of course, irony is alive and well, as always, in the fact that those who need to hear it will be willing to hear it only if and/or when hell freezes over.

At some point, even those who still have their wits about them and have the ability to reason, not to mention possessing any semblance of a brain, a heart...or a soul find themselves mentally exhausted trying to absorb it all.

In a nation fighting to weather through an historically record setting downward spiral, the unspeakable becomes possible at any moment and the outrageous becomes standard operating procedure.

So, outcry, exclamation, commotion, even garden variety commentary on the situation starts to sound, at some point, out of a need to try and stay sane,  like white noise or that sound the Peanuts gang heard whenever teacher started to speak.

Because, again, at some point, it really becomes to much to bear. Too much to process. Too much to even allow in.

Therein, of course, lies the critical danger. Because the fight, actually, any fight, is always lost by the next to last participant in that fight. And always won by the last man standing.

That's where that expression comes from.

And because all of us who still have our wits about us, have the ability to reason and still possess any semblance of a brain, heart...or soul continue to weather the daily, even hourly, now, battering that comes with each new addition to the list, daily conversation and, most especially, social media is saturated with outcry, exclamation, commotion and, still, if only for the time being, garden variety commentary.

They are part intellectual exercise, emotional relief and psychological catharsis.

But, ultimately, they are like a glass of water splashed against a massive brick wall. Sometimes you just wanna splash water against a wall. But, deep down, you don't delude yourself for a second that it's going to do a thing to bring the wall down.

Put another way, we offer all we have to offer about what we truly believe to be happening, what we wish would be done about it, what we hope and/or pray will be done about it and, and here's where it gets tricky, what we think/believe and/or assume will be done about it.

When,in a pile of cold hard truths that we are both angry at and tired of facing, the cold hard truth is we simply don't know what will be done about it.

Or how it will play out.

I'm a pretty intelligent guy. And I don't offer that to tickle my ego, strut my stuff or shine any kind of light on myself at all.

I offer it by way of underscoring how difficult, impossible, actually, it is to determine what is going to happen next.

Or ultimately.

Because, and, again, only to validate the point and not celebrate my own savvy, if a pretty intelligent guy can't figure it out, then it's clearly not possible to figure.

And, yet....

It's important, at this point in our plot, to take a moment, or two, and a breath, or two, and put a stop to the wasting of time and energy pointing out and re-pointing out (and re-pointing and re-pointing) what we all already know.

And spend that time and energy focused on what we do now. And what our approach, actions and behavior should be from this point.

Allow me, if you will, to get us started.

We don't know how all of this is going to end for Donald Trump.

In the spirit of live by the all things are possible, die by the all things are possible, Trump's end, at least as it applies to his current gig, all things...are possible.

He could be re-elected in 2020.
He could be defeated in 2020.
He could resign at any time.
He could be impeached.
He could die a natural death.
He could be assassinated.
He could be overthrown.

We don't know how all of this is going to end for him.

But, and, so as not to discourteously speak for you, allow me to phrase what follows as follows:

I do know, though, how it is going to end for those who continue to support him.

You're going to be disappointed, if only in some small way, because he is a demagogue, a con man, a hustler, who got elected by pulling off the most massively successful con ever pulled in the history of grifting. And the most successful element of that most successful con was taking a tried and true technique of every politician who ever asked for a vote and elevating it to a previously thought unachievable art: telling you exactly what you wanted, even needed, to hear. A technique that he continues to employ, each and every day, if not each and ever hour, via the 21st Century dream tool of the demagogue: Twitter. Your disappointment will come, if only in some small way, when his inability to make good on 99.9 % of his promises touches your life directly.

Perhaps you're a coal miner who believed in 2016 there would be a new job for you in January 2017.

There won't be.

Perhaps you'll arrive at the local hospital to be with your Mammaw or Pappaw to see them through their life saving surgery, only to find that cuts to Medicaid and Medicare have resulted in ending payment for that particular surgery. You'll head for the management office to get an explanation,

There won't be one.

Perhaps you, or an elder loved one, will open their monthly envelope from Social Security, delighted that now there will be money for the cable or rent...or food.

There won't be.

Perhaps you'll feel safer now that North Korea and it's psychopathic supreme leader are America's sparkly new BFF.

You won't. They're not. And they won't be.

Perhaps you'll have to say goodbye to a son or daughter or mom or dad as they ship out to fight a war we shouldn't be in, a war that never would have started had there been someone with some, any, kind of experience in the world of global diplomacy. Or even someone with an ability to see any other point of view but their own. And you'll do your best to come up with some rationalization for sending that son or daughter or mom or dad into harm's way.

There won't be one.

And if you're one of the many, many, many more than many of us wanted to believe there were in 2018 America, one of those who's not only satisfied, but, pleased, even celebrating that national parks are being reduced, industrial pollution is now once again free to flow into public water and air, that Nazis and white supremacists, at least some, are "very fine people", that your healthcare is, at best, no better and, at worst, worse than it was the day you voted, that you're fine with almost all of the nations that are NOT our enemies consider America damaged goods and is a country to be ignored for the foreseeable,  that you're just fine with children, toddlers, infants being taken away from their parents for no other reason than to be used as hostages in a political negotiation to acquire funding to build a wall that, first, will never be built, second, won't accomplish anything if it is built and, third, will eventually come to be the most symbolic of all the available symbols of a presidency spawned in vanity and ego, grown in a Petrie dish of fear, ignorance, prejudice, bigotry and simple human stupidity and, still, validated, endorsed, even celebrated on a daily, even hourly basis, an illiterate rejection of our better angels and a celebration of our darker sides.....if you're one of the many.....you're going to lose.

If you're one of the many who are mocking Rachel Maddow because she was moved to tears by the unspeakable.

You're going to lose.

Eventually...
fear always loses.
Ignorance always loses.
Prejudice always loses.
Bigotry always loses.
Heartless and callous and cruel always loses.
Stupidity always loses.

The dark side always loses.

It may take awhile. Good people may suffer great loss. Even life.

But you're going to lose.

And here's something you won't hear now....and if you hear it, you'll neither believe it or accept it....

Those of us who still have our wits about us and a semblance of a brain, a heart and...a soul.....we're not going to forget.

We won't seek revenge. Or retribution.
Good people with their wits about them don't do that.

But you'd be well advised to seek out others who feel the way you do.

Because, if you don't, you're going to be very lonely.

And that's sad.

The kind of sad that makes decent people feel like crying.

Not Rachel Maddow moved to tears by the unspeakable crying.

But crying.

I just know it.

One From Column A, One From Column B, None From The King James Version

It's Father's Day.

And it's Sunday.

So let's talk meals.

But not religiously ritual Last Supper type meals...or even orgiastic indulgence at the local Texas Roadhouse in honor of dad and his day.

I'm thinking more buffet.

And just so you don't waste any more of your time if you're starting to smack lips or intestinally growl, we're talking metaphors here, k?

Keith Giles is part of a house church in Orange, California where no one takes a salary and all offerings are given to help the poor in the community. Giles has also been a published writer since 1989 and is the author of five books.

This is a portion of an essay he published online this past week.

Just in case you’re not paying attention, American Christianity is a Christless Christianity.

We demand the Ten Commandments to be displayed in our courthouses, but we never give a thought to Jesus’s Sermon on the Mount.

We justify our cruelty to immigrants by quoting random passages from Paul’s letter to the Romans, but skip over dozens of commands from Jesus about showing mercy, caring for the weak and vulnerable, and totally ignore his warning that “whatever you have done for the least of these, you have done it to me.”

We cry out for “an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth” to be our standard for justice, but ignore the fact that Jesus specifically corrected this teaching by saying:

“You have heard it said, ‘an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth’, but I say to you, do not resist an evil person with violence, but if anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to them the other cheek also. And if anyone wants to sue you and take your shirt, hand over your coat as well. If anyone forces you to go one mile, go with them two miles. Give to the one who asks you, and do not turn away from the one who wants to borrow from you.”

In other words: Endure the injustice and take the opportunity to put the extravagant love of Christ’s Kingdom into practice; bring the audacious and everlasting love of God into the daylight and dazzle those whose eyes have never seen or imagined such overwhelming and sincere love. This is how we change the world. This is how we transform our enemies into friends. This is how we end the violence. This is how we push back the darkness – not with more darkness – but with true, undeniable light; the light that only comes from God.

If the best we can do is take an eye for an eye, we will never escape this world of blindness.

If the best we can do is to continue to behave exactly the way we would had Christ never come and spoken these words of life to us, we will never experience freedom.

Giles wraps up the piece with a glass half full style call to all Christians to reconsider their commitment to faith and to a lifestyle more in keeping with Christ's teachings. 

I respect that he chooses to try and re-light the high road for those who seem to have lost sight of it, but, the cynic's dark side of my force has me revisiting an observation I made a long time ago in a somewhat different context.

Someone on my conversational radar was overtly, and irrefutably, rude to someone. I employed one my own gifts from God and pretty much sliced and diced the guy, verbally speaking, in front of everyone, leaving them all both startled and a little satisfied, with one exception. A friend took me aside for a moment and asked if I thought I might have spared the transgressor the public humiliation and simply taken them aside and tactfully, but firmly, let them know that they had been insensitive in their rudeness.

My response was, to my mind, involved a simple combination of etiquette, logic and common sense.

"If," I offered, "they were capable of being sensitive to the idea that they had been rude and insensitive....they wouldn't have been rude and insensitive in the first place."

Religion in general, but Christianity in particular, re-rings that bell for me a lot lately. And I recognized it as an inadvertent sub-text to what Keith Giles says in his piece. I'm not (watch I how I do this) insensitive to the notion that we all make mistakes and we all sin and, if we acknowledge those sins and mistakes, we deserve the chance to have some slack cut our way or, ideally, make it right, either in the instance or from that point forward, or perhaps even both.

But, then, there's that tricky business of acknowledgement, regret, even apology.

The give me that old time religion term for it is repentance.

Turns out, these days, at least three things we're not seein' a whole lot.

Quality customer service from Comcast.

Job well done bouquets delivered frequently by FTD from Donald to Jeff Sessions.

Repentance.

Hold that thought.

Let's talk immigration for a minute or two.

And turn our Bibles to Leviticus 19:33-34.

"When a stranger sojourns with you in your land, you shall not do him wrong. you shall treat the stranger who sojourns with you as the native among you and you shall love him as yourself, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt. I am the LORD your God."

Couple of clarity notes for the vocabulary challenged (and larger portion of the MAGA cap owners club). Tomato. Tamahto.

"Sojourn" means temporary stay, sojourner, stay with me, means one who stays temporarily. In other words, not a citizen or permanent resident. A visitor, a tourist, a...wait for it....immigrant.

Oh. And that I am the LORD your God thing that put the period and exclamation point on the Scripture verse there?

That would be the Old Testament version of what you would probably hear today as "I'm God, the creator of all things and the father of all mankind and I approved this message."

Which brings us to that Father's Day Sunday meal I promised you a few minutes ago.

Actually, as I mentioned, more of a buffet.

I call it the morality buffet.

It's very popular all across America these days. And word has it that it's a particular favorite of many of America's more vocal and passionate Christian groups, organizations and congregations. 

Works pretty much like your traditional buffet.

You simply pick what you like. And pay no attention to any of the rest of it.

Keith Giles inadvertently alluded to the idea in his essay.

I hear the buzz around the buffet sounding a lot like this.

"...Let's have a big ol' helpin' of them Ten Commandments....but, nah, I'm not in the mood for any Sermon on the Mount...."

"...Oh, yeah, double spoonfuls of getting them damn immigrants out of here.....Jesus' mercy, caring for the weak and vulnerable?......tastes kinda flat to me.....gonna pass..."

"...yum....look here...it's Trump tweets.....delicious....can't swallow fast enough.....huh? what's this? Deuteronomy 12:32, 'everything that I command you, you shall be careful to do...you shall not add to it or take from it'.....yeah, whatever, I just don't have room, you know? all full up on the scrumptious...wait, make that Trumpious......"

"....Psalm 72:4...may he vindicate the afflicted of the people...save the children of the needy and crush the oppressor"..?...nope, just ain't got no more room on my plate...all filled up with Trump's lockin' them kids up and oppressin' all them illegals from invading our sovereign land......"

Interesting thing about law.

It gets progressively easier to live with the effects of law when you can pick and choose the laws you're in a mood to obey.

Just like that buffet.

It's a much more enjoyable meal when you can eat what you're in the mood to eat and pretend the rest of it ain't even there.

A much more enjoyable meal.

Maybe even the kind of meal that let's ya sleep like a baby.

Enjoyable.

But not very nutritious.

In fact, in the end, not very good for you at all.

Bon appetite.

And God forgive you.

When it's time to pay the check.

You Don't Have To Be An Artist To Draw The Correct Conclusion Here

As is too often the case, these days, the argument we're having isn't the argument we should be having.

Rob Rogers joined The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette as an editorial cartoonist in 1993. He worked there until this week. In 1999, he was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize.

This week, he published the following op/ed piece in the New York Times.

After 25 years as the editorial cartoonist for The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, I was fired on Thursday.

I blame Donald Trump.

Well, sort of.

I should’ve seen it coming. When I had lunch with my new boss a few months ago, he informed me that the paper’s publisher believed that the editorial cartoonist was akin to an editorial writer, and that his views should reflect the philosophy of the newspaper.

That was a new one to me. 

I was trained in a tradition in which editorial cartoonists are the live wires of a publication — as one former colleague put it, the “constant irritant.” Our job is to provoke readers in a way words alone can’t. Cartoonists are not illustrators for a publisher’s politics.

When I was hired in 1993, The Post-Gazette was the liberal newspaper in town, but it always prided itself on being a forum for a lot of divergent ideas. The change in the paper did not happen overnight. 

From what I remember, it started in 2011, with the endorsement of the Republican candidate for Pennsylvania governor, which shocked a majority of our readership. The next big moment happened in late 2015, when my longtime boss, the editorial page editor, took a buyout after the publisher indicated that the paper might endorse Mr. Trump. Then, early this year, we published openly racist editorials.

Things really changed for me in March, when management decided that my cartoons about the president were “too angry” and said I was “obsessed with Trump.” This about a president who has declared the free press one of the greatest threats to our country. 

Not every idea I have works. Every year, a few of my cartoons get killed. But suddenly, in a three-month period, 19 cartoons or proposals were rejected. Six were spiked in a single week — one after it was already placed on the page, an image depicting a Klansman in a doctor’s office asking: “Could it be the Ambien?” 

After so many years of punch lines and caricatures, skewering mayors and mullahs, the new regime at The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette decided that The Donald trumped satire when it came to its editorial pages.

This has been my dream job. It makes the experience of buying a coffee or checking out at a grocery store a thrill. I go to pay and the person looks at my credit card, sees my name, asks me if I’m the Rob Rogers and then tells me about a particular cartoon he or she loved. The outpouring of support I have received in recent days from the people of this city, including its mayor, has been overwhelming and uplifting.

The paper may have taken an eraser to my cartoons. But I plan to be at my drawing table every day of this presidency. 

Reaction to the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette's actions in firing Rob Rogers was, and continues to be, both swift and predictable. Not just a little ironically, the increasing awareness of how often these kinds of incidents are occurring is also both swift and predictable.

Aside from a few swift and predictable peeps from the Donald Donald He's Our Man peanut gallery, (and, as long as we're articulating alliteratively here, let's add in "pathetic" to the "p" pile), the consensus is clear as crystal.

Put simply, as offered up by one social media poster, "well...there goes the 1st Amendment".

Yeah....while, actually.....no, not so much.

"Free speech", as a practice as opposed to a concept, is rapidly climbing the overused catchphrase charts at a pace that may find it, sooner rather than later, taking over the top slot from the several many weeks in a row crowd favorite.....

..."fake news".

And, at least in this instance, free speech and freedom of the press are pretty much interchangeable when it comes to dissecting the dissent created by this seeming assault on the ol' number one, the amendment to begin all amendments, numero uno and, for all you mother of language lovers out there, "qui emendatione".

The rub, here, perchance dreamers, is that we all have a natural predisposition to latching on to that word "free" without allowing any intellectual wiggle room for accommodating the limitations that come in the box with it.

Say what? Limitations. What you talkin' bout, Willis?

How can there be "limitations" on "free"?

Well, for starters, we could get into a thing about "buy one, get one free....just pay shipping and handling", but that's a birdie for a different badminton game.

Let's just paint the picture with this anecdote.

A number of years ago, a colleague of mine in the radio business shared with me the story of an on air personality who, after being repeatedly warned to stop saying a certain few things on his daily show, was fired, after continuing to say those certain few things a few more times. Or at least exactly one more time than management was willing to consider forgivable.

The reaction of the on-air was (we all know where this is going, right?) both swift and predictable.

"This is America. First Amendment. Free speech." And a few additional spits and sputters about infringement, denial and, probably, a little allusion to fascism, sprinkled in here and there.

My colleague, at the time working as program director for the station, listened patiently and professionally, to the protestations of the suddenly ostracized on-air. Then, he responded, also patiently and professionally, as follows:

"I absolutely agree with you that this is America and that the First Amendment guarantees you, and me and all of us, for that matter, the right to say whatever we want. And I, personally, respect and defend your personal right to say whatever you want. You're simply no longer going to be given the opportunity to say it on "our air".

The simplified moral of the story is "we are free to say what we wish to say. We are not, obviously, free from being held accountable, responsible and subject to the consequences resulting from what we say.

For the deep thought impaired amongst us...." you say it. you own it."

At this point, it's important that you do not make the mistake of misunderstanding me.

The firing of Rob Rogers by the Pittsburgh Post Gazette for his continued cartoon lampooning of Donald Trump is a slap in the American mouth. 

But it's not a violation of his First Amendment rights.

No one prevented him from drawing the cartoons.

The Pittsburgh Post Gazette simply decided that Rogers was no longer going to given the opportunity to present those cartoons "on their air." 

And arguing Rob Rogers' rights as citizen of the United States of America to say what we wants, be it verbally or via' cartoon caricature, is the too easily taken path that is, in fact, the wrong road.

You see, where you really want to go is here....

Letting it be known that the really damaging slap in the American face that took place was an American newspaper in an American city either endorsing the very un-American behavior of a demagogue who rode fear, ignorance and hatred into the Oval Office by silencing a single voice of criticism coming from inside their house.

Or, in the worst case, cowered and caved in to the pressures almost surely applied by the other endorsers of that demagogue...or, perhaps, even the demagogue himself.

Rob Rogers is a talented, accomplished guy.

Pretty sure he's gonna land somewhere successfully and carry on the classic lampooning.

The Pittsburgh Post Gazette, meanwhile, will continue, at least for the time being to, create the illusion that they are serving their community and, to some extent, the nation by providing that community, and the nation, a professional, powerful and, ideally, productive assembly of the events that shape, and change, lives.

The news.

Thing is, by firing Rob Rogers, the Pittsburgh Post Gazette has set off an alarm in the minds of reasonable people.

Not so much about the news they might be providing.

But about the message they are sending.

God Save The King...Just Do It Somewhere Else...

Michael D'Antonio is an American author, journalist and commentator. He shared the 1984 Pulitzer Prize for local reporting with a team of Newsday reporters for their coverage of the Baby Jane Doe Case.

In a few moments, his accomplishment in that coverage will ring a particularly ironic, even darkly comic, bell.

First, though, an online essay from D'Antonio recently published.


Time magazine has connected the dots of Donald Trump's intensely personal presidency. The magazine's cover features Trump in his business suit, staring into a mirror that reflects him in regal splendor, complete with crown. "King Me," declares the cover line, but the good stuff is announced in the headlines below: "Visions of Absolute Power," "Trump vs the Constitution" and "Why Mueller Won't Indict."   

In those pieces, Molly Ball, Tessa Berenson, Neal Katyal and Jack Goldsmith define the style and practices of a man who leads in the brutal and imperious fashion of a cartoon monarch. The roots of this ignoble attitude run all the way back to the President's childhood as the scion of one of America's wealthiest men in a family where he was groomed to royal ways.

 

"You are a killer, you are a king," was the mantra intoned by President Trump's father Fred as he taught his boys to believe in their right to rule. This detail, reported in Harry Hurt III's biography "Lost Tycoon, The Many Lives of Donald J. Trump," is a chilling marker for anyone trying to understand the degraded condition of politics under our current president. 

 

In biographies of Trump, including my own, "The Truth About Trump," one is introduced to a man raised by an imperious father and a mother besotted by the British royals. Ask Trump about his mom, as I did, and the most acute memory he relates finds her gaping at the television as Queen Elizabeth was coronated. 

 

In every telling, Fred Trump comes across as a stern, absent father devoted to his real estate empire. He was so insistent that he be obeyed that a 13-year-old, troublesome Donald was forced to enroll at a military academy. And yet it was one of these men, young Donald's role model Theodore Dobias, who told me that he regarded Fred Trump as overly tough -- or as he put it "a real German."

I touch on Trump's childhood because his behavior, bullying and heedless, challenges everything we have come to expect from a president. Seemingly incapable of recognizing his responsibilities to institutions that make the country a more just and peaceable nation, Trump acts more like a boy tyrant than a mature political figure. 

 

He can perform like a facsimile of a president under extreme circumstances; remember the notecard that coached him on empathy when he met with school shooting survivors? But when he is on his own, he reverts consistently to childlike displays of cruelty and gloating. 

 

The infantile, all-about-me aspect of Trump can be seen in the way he abuses his pardoning power to score points against his political foes and law enforcement officials, and made nuclear diplomacy into a performance piece featuring his own ego. Trump so personalized his approach to North Korea that he made Kim Jong Un his equal -- just another child in the sandbox -- and failed to establish a position that seems likely to allow for real negotiations at the upcoming summit. 

 

Trump's personalization of the presidency has crippled him in his dealings with Kim, inspired him to degrade institutions like the free press and judiciary, and attempted to make a mockery of special counsel Robert Mueller's investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 election. Unable to see outside himself and value the system that transcends one presidency or one moment, Trump sacrifices the future for the sake of himself.

All that makes Trump regard himself as Time's "King Me" has been evident since he became a public figure in the 1970s. His father's intonation -- killer, king -- was so powerful that, combined with the son's talents, it produced the ongoing crisis that is his White House rule. 

 

The founders of our republic fashioned a government in a way that was supposed to constrain a kingly executive like Trump. Now that we have one, we will see if what they built will stand the test. 

 

 

To D'Antonio's assessment, I'll only offer a few brief, assorted thoughts.

First...yeah, what he said.

Second, not to pile on or even to call on a common Trump quirk and find a way to step into somebody/everybody else's limelight, but, I offered pretty much the same conclusion almost two years ago in that week after the election of 2016 when there was no waking up from the surreal dream that America had suddenly decided that the answers to all of their hopes and dreams and fears and schemes had been delivered to them in the form of an obviously spoiled rotten little rich kid who had grown up to be a crude and obnoxious little rich man who would, bet any bucks you got, go about "leading" in the brutal and imperious fashion of a cartoon monarch.

That conclusion, of course, being that this "presidency" was very likely going to be one of the most, if not the most, powerful, stressful and, in many ways, dangerous tests ever conducted on the system the Founders designed. Proving, or, God forbid, disproving the perfection of the design of that system to prevent a king, or dictator, from getting their hands on the wheel of the ship of state or, in the worse case scenario, if they did, in fact, get hold of that wheel, they wouldn't have control of it for very long.

Five hundred and five days, at this writing.

 

By the way, the ironic, even darkly comic bell I mentioned would ring regarding Michael D'Antonio's back story, chimes in as follows:

 

What better credibility could a writer/journalist have to offer insight on the personality, and potential danger, of the, for now, infantile, spoiled, tantrum throwing resident at 1600 Pennsylvania than a guy who won a Pulitzer Prize for his reporting on...wait for it....Baby Jane Doe. 

 

To that, I'll just add a point to ponder for all those who continue to support, endorse, encourage and, by doing so, enable brutish and imperious cartoon wannabe monarch.. And, just so we're clear, I don't delude myself for a second or harbor any illusions that you'll give this ponderable point a second's thought. Five hundred and five days into this wanna be monarchy and it's time to paraphrase the great 70's band, Harold Melvin and the Bluenotes.

 

"If you don't know him by now / you will never, never know him"

 

 But, back to the point. And it's one of those kinds of points that parents will appreciate. One of those "well, I can't prove this to you now, the only way to prove it to you is to let it happen and then wait for you to see what the consequences will be" kind of points.

Trust me, kid. You don't want a king.

 

Because.... and I fully acknowledge that I can't prove this to you now, the only way to prove it to you is to let it happen and then wait for you to see what the consequences will be"...... 

If and when America ever gets a king....especially this "king", it ain't gonna be Harry and Meghan and William and Kate time.

Think....Longshanks.

Kim, Khloe, Kourtney...and....wait.....oh, yeah...Katrina....Right?

from a tweeter......

Hurricane Katrina killed 1,833 people.

September 11th killed 2,993 people.

Hurricane Maria killed 4,645 people.

Stop covering Roseanne & Samantha Bee. Start covering the biggest political disaster since 9/11.


---------------------------------------------------------------------------
NOW here's how these stories affect the masses:

Katrina--yeah, yeah, tragic, what's on HBO? 

9/11---yeah, yeah, tragic, never forget, yada, yada, what's on Hulu?

Maria--yeah, yeah, tragic, like, uh, Katrina, right? What time does Westworld come on?

Roseanne and Samantha Bee---she said what? are you f***in kidding me? quick log on and...what? yeah, quick, turn it on...what are they talking about?....Maria? Maria who? Change the channel....find that guy talking about Roseanne....find that woman talking about Samantha Bee......

THE MEDIA....is a "for profit business", their purpose and goal is to get as many people as possible to pay attention to what they are offering.......

In a culture that doesn't know, or care, what the name of their elected representative is, but can name all of the Kardashians (in order, by age, ascending and descending), BLAMING THE MEDIA for what they cover is like blaming Dairy Queen for offering Blizzards instead of Wheat Grass Smoothies......

"Stop covering Roseanne and Samantha Bee"???

Deal.

You stop lapping up Blizzards and start caring about wheat grass.

Oh. Yeah.

Thought so.