media news, national news, political news, State news

Trump increases pols’ antipathy toward media

What is it about politicians who make lame jokes and then fail to own them?

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott is just the latest in a long and growing line of pols who have committed that transgression.

But here’s the deal: Abbott’s lame joke is speaking to a larger — more serious — issue involving the media and the politicians they cover.

The governor this past week signed into law a bill that reduces the amount of money that concealed handgun carry applicants must pay to obtain their license. Then he went to a shooting range, fired a few rounds at a target and then joked that he would carry the target around “in case I see any reporters.”

Few folks are laughing.

You see, it’s the context of Gov. Abbott’s remarks that are so damn troubling.

We can thank the president of the United States for it.

Donald Trump has all but declared war on the media. He calls them the “enemy of the people.” He accuses mainstream news outlets of producing “fake news.” He refuses to answer tough questions from the media. He calls news media outlets “a disgrace” and calls reporters “among the most dishonest people” anywhere. He reportedly told the then-FBI director that reporters should be jailed if they report on leaked classified material.

Trumpkins show up at his rallies wearing t-shirts that suggest journalists should be hanged.

Now the governor of Texas makes a goofy joke that seems to suggest it’s OK to shoot reporters. He won’t take it back. He won’t apologize for the hideous timing of the remark, coming as it did just two days after a Republican congressional candidate “body slammed” a reporter for asking him about the GOP health care overhaul.

Is this the era into which we have entered? That it’s OK to intimidate reporters for doing their job? That the First Amendment protection of a “free press” isn’t to be taken seriously, let alone literally?

Mimi Swartz, writing for Texas Monthly, has asked the governor to take it back. You can read her essay here. I don’t expect Abbott to do as she asks.

Sadly, neither do I expect the president of the United States to back off his own campaign against the media assigned to report his actions to the people he governs.

 

Sports news

Tiger hits another bump on the road back

When TV commentators and other media representatives refer to you as a “legend” in your particular profession, everything that goes wrong in your life is magnified exponentially.

So it is with “golf legend” Tiger Woods.

The fellow who has won 14 major golf titles got himself arrested and charged with “driving under the influence” in Florida.

Woods has been sidelined for some time now. He’s seeking to recover from injury and at least two surgeries on his back. He’s also had some more personal difficulties, stemming from a 2009 incident involving his then-wife and reports that surfaced later about his serial marital infidelity.

Now this.

Woods had said something just the other day about how he hadn’t “felt this good in years,” meaning, I suppose, that his back pain is subsiding and that he might be able — maybe soon — to return to golf.

We don’t yet know whether he was “under the influence” of alcohol or something else.

I am a fairly avid golf fan. I am pulling for Tiger to come back. It’s just not the same without him competing for tournament victories on Sunday.

But, c’mon man! This isn’t the way back to where you need to be — or where your many golf fans want you to be.

International news

Mitt Romney: ahead of his time in 2012?

Mitt Romney issued a warning in 2012 that many Americans — yours truly included — derided as hopelessly out of touch.

Perhaps you’ll remember when he declared Russia to be the world’s “No. 1 geopolitical threat.” President Obama all but laughed him out of the proverbial room.

The president spoke instead of the threat presented by international terrorism. Many of us agreed with the president and not the then-Republican Party nominee who was running against him.

It well might be that Mitt was ahead of his time five years ago. Republicans in Congress are starting to echo their party’s one-time presidential standard bearer.

Sen. John McCain is one of them. Speaking to an Australian radio station, McCain said: “I think ISIS can do terrible things. But it’s the Russians who tried to destroy the fundamental of democracy and that is to change the outcome of an American election.”

It’s still to be determined just how much impact the Russians had on the 2016 electoral outcome, but they surely have succeeded in throwing the U.S. political debate into a tizzy.

Indeed, the Russians still possess a lot of nuclear weapons. They have a formidable conventional military force, which they have used in places like Ukraine and Syria.

Are the Russians the most fearsome political foe we face?

Yes, it looks that way to a lot of us — and, yes, that includes yours truly.

I regret that I doubted you, Mitt.

military news

Paying tribute to those who fell in battle

My sappiness is a pretty well-known quantity to those who read this blog.

It was on display again today as my wife and I attended a Memorial Day ceremony at the Texas Panhandle War Memorial.

The event drew a substantial crowd, which is no surprise to be sure. Many of the men in attendance sported their gimme caps proclaiming their own service to the nation. I wore one of mine and did so with considerable pride.

The aspect of the hour-long ceremony that brought a lump to my throat is the kind of thing one sees these days at events commemorating military service.

It’s when the band strikes up the anthems identified with various military branches. The emcee asked those who served in that particular branch to stand and be honored while the music played the pertinent anthem. That part of the service began with “The Army Goes Rolling Along.” I got to stand. It does fill me with pride. I am unafraid to acknowledge it.

It was a great way to start a day full of remembrance and honor for those who paid their last full measure of devotion.

We owe them everything. I am grateful them all now — and for eternity.

national news

Attack ‘unacceptable’? That’s it, Mr. President?

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A man believed to have white supremacist links stabbed two other men to death on a Portland, Ore., mass transit rail line the other day.

The victims were breaking up a disturbance involving a man and two young women. The man was verbally attacking them; one of the women was wearing a Muslim hijab.

Police have arrested Jeremy Joseph Christian, who’s been charged with murder.

Meanwhile, back in the White House, the president of the United States was blazing away on his Twitter account blasting “fake news,” and congratulating the winner of a Montana special election after he “body slammed” a reporter.

Where was Donald Trump’s outrage at the senseless murder in Portland?

No mention of hate crime

He weighed in today — finally, saying that the “violent attacks in Portland are unacceptable. The victims were standing up to hate and intolerance. Our prayers are w/them.”

According to the Huffington Post: “Not one of Trump’s personal Twitter messages mentioned Portland, the two deceased men being hailed as ‘heroes,’ or a condemnation of the attacker’s actions that are being investigated by police as a hate crime.”

Is it me or does this expression of presidential emotion seem just a bit tepid?

national news

JFK’s life will be forever unfinished

It sounds strange to consider that John F. Kennedy would turn 100 years of age today.

Those of us who are old enough to remember the 35th president of the United States remember him as a young man who, even stranger as it seems, seemingly gets younger the older we all become.

JFK was the youngest man ever elected president in 1960. He was 43; the youngest ever to become president was Theodore Roosevelt, who ascended in 1901 to the highest office at 42 upon the death of President William McKinley.

Less than three years after taking the oath of office, President Kennedy’s life ended as he took a rifle shot on that street in downtown Dallas.

I have resisted the temptation to rank President Kennedy among the greatest who ever held that office. I consider his life to be an unfinished work. I bristle a bit at those surveys that place JFK at or near the top of such lists. How can we measure what he actually accomplished? The truth is we cannot.

I prefer to think of the president in terms of what he might have done. Even that is an exercise in futility because we cannot know with absolute certainty how history would have played out had he served the entire length of his presidency. I’ll presume he would have been re-elected in 1964. Then what? How would the Vietnam War have gone? What would he have done, say, by the end of his second term?

His life is frozen in time. For the president, it ended after just 46 years on Earth.

Still, the man’s legacy remains in large part due to the work done by those who came after him. President Lyndon Johnson’s “war on poverty,” his landmark civil rights legislation and, yes, the tragedy that continued to unfold in Vietnam all are part of JFK’s historical record.

I have trouble even grasping the notion of John F. Kennedy becoming an old man, let alone one who might have lived long enough to celebrate his centennial birthday.

If only he could have finished his marvelous life. JFK will remain, as the song suggests, “forever young.”

media news, military news, national news

Get ready for a major history lesson on Vietnam

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Oh, how I love public television.

Americans are going to receive, via what looks like a spectacular PBS documentary series, a history lesson for the ages.

The subject: The Vietnam War.

Documentary filmmaker Ken Burns has assembled yet another masterpiece that airs beginning on Sept. 17 on Panhandle PBS. I just watched a 30-minute preview of the multi-part series. I have a few thoughts to share about it … and about the series that I want to urge all Americans to watch.

Burns calls the Vietnam War the nation’s “second civil war,” in that it tore this country apart to a degree not seen since the actual Civil War that was fought from 1861 until 1865. Perhaps just like the Civil War, this nation hasn’t yet come to grips fully with what happened here while young Americans were dying in a foreign land.

My interest in the series, of course, is quite personal. I was one of about 3 million Americans who went to Vietnam. My tiny contribution to that effort as an Army soldier is not worth detailing here. I went there, came home — and was privileged to return to Vietnam two decades later on assignment with a group of journalists.

My major takeaway from the return to Vietnam in 1989 was that I shed some emotional baggage that I never even realized I was lugging around. Perhaps this PBS series will allow other Americans to do the same thing.

Burns and his crew interviewed American veterans, South Vietnamese veterans, Viet Cong fighters, North Vietnamese veterans. One former VC soldier tells how he witnessed American soldiers weeping over their dead comrades. He said he realized then that “those Americans are just like Vietnamese,” in that both sides had a shared sense of humanity.

One of Burns’s producers talked about the music of that era, calling it “the best music in American history.” Yeah! Do you think?

The Kent State riots in Ohio in 1970, according to one of the historians interviewed, symbolized the fracture among Americans. “They were kids on both sides; National Guardsmen and student protesters,” he said.

And, oh yes, how did some of those who protested the war treat those who returned from that battlefield? Not well. One of them expresses profound sadness over calling these warriors “baby killers and worse.” That has changed as Americans today profess profound gratitude for the young men and women we send abroad in defense of our nation.

This Vietnam veteran is filled with gratitude for that change.

Burns believes that PBS is the only network in the nation that could present a series such as the Vietnam special that will air in a few weeks.

Thus, I am grateful beyond measure as well for public television’s willingness to teach us what we need to learn about this important chapter in our nation’s ongoing story.

International news

It’s called ‘disrespect,’ Mr. President

The Hill and other media are reporting a strange incident that occurred at the G-7 summit in Sicily.

It involves Donald J. Trump’s tardiness in showing up for a group photo with the leaders of the other nations attending the conference.

Rather than walk 700 yards to the photo location, the president waited for a golf cart to haul him there.

Here’s how The Hill reported it: “President Trump chose to ride in a golf cart while his foreign counterparts took a walk through Taormina, Sicily, on Saturday during the Group of Seven summit.

“The Times of London reported the six other world leaders — from Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy and Japan — walked 700 yards to take a group photo at a piazza in a hilltop town. The U.S. leader decided to wait until he could get a golf cart.

“Trump was late for the photo, but joined the other world leaders during the walk down from the piazza.”

Hey, I know it’s not a h-u-u-u-g-e deal. But really. The president couldn’t have strolled to the photo site, engaging in a little small talk with his colleagues? Maybe he could have cut a deal or two along the way.

Instead, he chose to disrespect them in that inimitable fashion that has become one of the hallmarks of Trump’s time as president.

Just think: There likely will be plenty more of these opportunities along the way.

national news

Trump needs to deal with hard truth about leaks

Donald Trump says the leaks that have sprung throughout the White House are the product of “fake news” and conspiracy mongers intent on destroying his presidency.

I’ll offer another take on it. The leaks just might be the product of individuals within the White House who are concerned about the direction the country is heading under the 45th president’s leadership.

Someone or several individuals are blabbing to the “enemy of the American people” media representatives who are reporting this leaked information to the public. Instead of dealing openly and publicly about the crux of the issues being reported, the president is lashing out. He is attacking the media. He is alienating himself and his inner circle even more from the media representatives assigned to report on their activities.

How can this possibly be constructive? How can it possibly end well for the president?

http://www.politico.com/story/2017/05/28/trump-russia-advice-238911

Trump tweeted upon his return from Europe and the Middle East that “fake news is the enemy.” His outright dismissal of mainstream news outlets, such as the New York Times and the Washington Post, suggests that these organizations are fabricating these reports. He accuses them of violating every known principle of sound journalism. By doing so, the president demonstrates time and again that he doesn’t understand the role the media play (a) in informing the public and (b) holding public officials accountable for their words and deeds.

The president returned from his overseas trip and did not conduct a press briefing. He stiffed the media seeking to ask him questions about his meetings with international leaders and, yes, about the ongoing “Russia thing” controversy with which he must deal.

No, this kind of spiteful relationship with the media cannot end well for the president.

If he keeps it up, I am prepared to predict that it will not end well. Not at all.

International news

German leader doesn’t share Trump ‘home run’ view

This is a hunch on my part, but German Chancellor Angela Merkel doesn’t believe, as Donald J. Trump does, that the U.S. president hit a “home run” on his first overseas trip as head of state.

Merkel, arguably Europe’s most popular and potent leader, said at the end of the G-7 summit in Sicily that Germany no longer can “depend” on the United States as a reliable ally; she said the same thing about Great Britain, which is in the midst of pulling out of the European Union.

“The times in which we could completely depend on others are on the way out,” she said at a campaign rally in Munich. “I’ve experienced that in the last few days.”

Is that how one would describe a “home run” in the U.S. president’s view?

The United States’ alliance with NATO has come under intense scrutiny. Donald Trump himself scolded NATO leaders publicly for not paying enough to defend themselves against external threats. The public dressing down didn’t go over well. But, hey, the president hit a home run!

The G-7, which comprises most of the world’s wealthiest nations, also is supposed to showcase U.S. solidarity with these important allies. Reports from the summit suggest, as Merkel has indicated, that European reliance on the United States is fading into oblivion.
So, we’re left with an “every country for itself” mind set, led by the man who wants to “put America first.”

Home run, Mr. President? Nope. You seem to have whiffed.

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