My immediate family and I sat in the middle of one of America’s “battleground states.”
Yes, Joe Biden and Donald Trump believed Texas’s 38 electoral votes were worth the fight. Those votes will go to Trump when the Electoral College meets next month, but not before both sides emptied much of their campaign cash into our TV sets.
They blanketed the air waves with ads. They were incessant. They were harsh. And oh they were frequent.
Well, I am so happy to disclose the obvious: the election is over … and the ads have ceased!
I found the ads annoying. I suppose it was due mostly to the fact that my mind was made up long ago. Still, they were so very repetitive.
I don’t know about you but I am going to cherish the silence.
Back when I worked full time for newspapers, this was the night we all cherished and perhaps even dreaded.
Election Night would bring us into our newsroom; I would be stationed in the editorial page office. Our reporters were spread out, manning phones or in the field covering election returns from polling places, or from campaign headquarters.
I generally would await election results and then prepare a next-day editorial commenting on the news of the day, which dealt with who won or who lost. We would try to offer a modicum of perspective, even as events were unfolding in real time in front of us.
I no longer do that. I sit at home. My wife and I are watching news shows that are telling us all we need to know, and even all we might not want to hear.
However, nights like this remind me of the thrill that came with reporting and commenting on issues, seeking to put it into context and to ensure we deliver the next day as complete a package of news reports and commentary as we could to thousands of folks who actually — in the old days — used to depend on their daily newspaper to inform them.
The old days are gone forever. However, my interest in politics and policy remains quite strong. I no longer attend newspaper vigils awaiting election returns. I do retain a serious interest in what those returns mean to the community where I live and to the nation I love.
This year certainly has heightened that interest, elevating to a level I cannot recall since, oh, the first time I got to vote for president in 1972. I was a youngster then, full of pi** and vinegar. These days I am so much older and decidedly less, um, zealous.
The interest remains high. But I’ll leave the deadline pressure of getting the news out on time to the youngsters. Have at it, gang. I’ll pick my newspaper off the driveway in the morning.
(Photo by BRENDAN SMIALOWSKI/AFP via Getty Images)
By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com
Donald John Trump is an angry man.
He is too angry. He is too riven with insecurity. His narcissism is beyond belief and redemption.
I want to speak briefly today about the anger. I am sick of watching him rail against “fake news” that is nothing of the sort. I have had my fill of him contending that the media are against him because, well, they just are. I long ago lost tolerance for his anger-laced epithets against his presidential predecessors, chiefly his immediate predecessor, Barack H. Obama.
I didn’t watch the final debate Thursday night he had with Joe Biden. I didn’t need to watch it to help me decide who to support in this year’s election. I was without TV reception, so I’ll catch it later.
I keep reading that Trump was on his better behavior, that he didn’t interrupt Biden or the debate moderator as he did in that first sh** show.
Imagine getting four more years of Trump’s anger emanating from the White House. I cannot go there. I will not go there. I cannot stand the thought of him being re-elected to a second term.
Joe Biden is not pretending to be Mr. Happy Joy-Joy. He is a serious public official. He also is devoid of the anger that Donald Trump demonstrates every single day.
I want my president to speak to me seriously, but without rancor.
You are the cause of my loss of friends. So help me, I’ll never forgive you for that!
Since the advent of Facebook I have categorized friendships through the social medium into two forms. I have Facebook “friends,” and I have the real thing. My Facebook “friends” come and go. I have a number of those folks with whom I might have a casual acquaintance; or perhaps have no interpersonal relationship of any sort.
It’s the number of real “friends” that has begun to dwindle over time. What does this diminution of friendships have in common? The folks who have severed relationships with me are Trumpkins. I am not.
I want to bring to attention one actual friend who bid me adieu about six months ago.
We worked together in Beaumont, Texas. We became pals. We would spend about 20 to 30 minutes each morning chatting about issues of the day. He sat on one side of the fence, I sat on the other. We knew that about each other. We never let it interfere with our friendship.
Then along came Donald Trump. I detest Trump. My friend seems to think Trump is the man to solve all the problems of the nation. My friend and I parted company about 25 years ago, but we stayed in touch. We continued to chat over the phone and occasionally over social media.
My wife and I returned to Beaumont once and met up with our friend. We chatted amiably. Indeed, my friend told me his wife couldn’t understand how we could remain pals despite our vast political difference. My pal’s response to her? He said he told her that “our friendship transcends politics. I never will let politics interfere with that.” I am paraphrasing, but that was the clear message.
It turns out my friend overstated the value of our friendship. He severed his ties with me. We got into a Trump snit. I guess that was all he could take.
Who’s to blame for that? It’s the idiot in chief in the White House.
There have been others. This one, though, still stings a bit. I lay the blame squarely at the feet of Donald Trump, the man who should not be president and who I hope for all I am worth gets his a** whipped in the next 13 days.
I doubt the friendship about which I have just told you will revive itself. I am going to hope it does.
Every now and then someone asks me this question about High Plains Blogger: How can you put these views out there living as you do in the middle of Trump Country?
OK, the question is paraphrased, but the message I get is the same. Someone such as me who tilts to the left must be nuts writing while sitting in a home built in the middle of a neighborhood full of Donald Trump fans.
Well, that leads me to tell the questioner that my blog goes far beyond the folks who live on our Collin County, Texas, street.
I am able to check the worldwide reach of this blog. At last count, I has been read by folks in more than 100 nations around the world. I recently had a first-time reader look at the blog in Moldova. So, I hope the Moldovan reader shares the blog with his or her neighbors.
This is one of the cooler aspects of writing this blog. The vast majority of page views and visitors to the blog reside in the United States. Ireland provides the second-most number; it’s a distant second, to be sure, but those Irish are reading the blog.
The scope of cyberspace gives folks like me to express my views openly, candidly and freely. There once was a time when I worked full-time for newspapers when I had to dial back my own bias and write editorials that spoke for the newspaper. I worked for conservative publications in Oregon and in Texas. So, while I was able to express my own views somewhat freely in my signed columns, the editorials I wrote were another matter altogether.
Those days are behind me now. I am writing this blog totally unencumbered by corporate considerations. It’s all mine. It also enables me to speak far beyond my neighborhood or even far beyond the borders of the state where my family and I have lived for the past 36 years.
I understand that Scripture tells us about new doors opening when one slams shut.
It happened to me in 2012. A career in print journalism came to a screeching halt in August of that year. I was adrift for just a little while.
Then a friend from Panhandle PBS got in touch with me. Linda Pitner was general manager of the public TV station — affiliated with Amarillo College — at the time. She wanted to know if I would like to write a blog for the stations’ web site.
Would I? Of course I would! With that, a career that came to an end got restarted in an entirely new form at Panhandle PBS. I was doing things for public TV that my former employer at the Amarillo Globe-News didn’t think I could do. I had joined the world of online journalism.
I have to say that I had a serious blast writing that blog and doing the kind of video blogs — such as the one I attached to this brief post. The gig didn’t last an overly long time. Panhandle PBS brought in a new GM eventually and he decided that my services no longer fit the direction he wanted to take the station.
We parted company. That didn’t end my blogging time.
A local CBS affiliate GM asked me the same thing Pitner did: Would I like to write for KFDA-NewsChannel 10? Of course I would, I told Brent McClure. So, he hired me as a freelancer to write features for the website. I would write them and then the on-air news anchors would introduce the features in a brief segment during the evening newscasts. They would assemble video presentations to complement the text I had submitted to the website.
That, too, was a seriously good time for this longtime print guy. The KFDA gig, though, came to an end when budget constraints kicked in. No worries for me.
My wife and I gravitated from Amarillo to the Metroplex in 2018. The fun continues.
Another friend of mine — who is news director at KETR-FM public radio — gave me a shout. Mark Haslett and I worked together at the Globe-News for a time; prior to that he was an executive at High Plains Public Radio in Amarillo, so we knew each other pretty well.
Haslett asked if I would — you guessed it — write a blog for KETR, which is affiliated with Texas A&M University-Commerce. Why, yes! I would! So I have been writing a blog for KETR and once again am having the time of my life.
That’s not the end of it. When we settled in Princeton, just east of McKinney and just a bit northeast of our granddaughter in Allen, I put a feeler out to the publisher of the Princeton Herald. Did they need a freelance reporter? The publisher, Sonia Duggan, said “yes.” So … she and I agreed that I could write for the Farmersville Times, which is another weekly newspaper in a group of weeklies Duggan owns with her husband, Chad Engbrock.
Therefore, I have come full circle. I am now covering city council and school board meetings for a weekly newspaper, along with banging out the occasional feature article.
I get this question on occasion. It’s fairly rare that someone asks, but given that I get the query, I’ll speak to it briefly here.
The question: Why don’t you engage people who disagree with statements you make on your blog?
I generally dislike engaging in a give-and-take because people’s minds are made up. As is my own mind. I am not going to change anyone else’s view of a public policy issue and, I dare say, neither will anyone likely change my own mind.
That’s the short answer. A more expansive response seems appropriate.
I write this blog as my final statement on an issue. For instance, I have published an endless stream of posts that assert that Donald J. Trump is fundamentally unfit for the office he occupies. I have sought to say why I believe that throughout this man’s foray into political life. My mind is made up. I will not be persuaded to change my mind that Trump is somehow actually fit for the presidency. What would be the point of going back and forth with someone who believes Trump is the next “great president”?
It’s pretty much true on most issues. I tend to make up my mind before I post something on High Plains Blogger.
This does not mean I do not welcome critical comments. I most certainly do welcome them. Whether you respond directly to the blog’s site on Word Press, or on Facebook, or any other social medium that distributes these posts, I say, simply: Bring it!
I am highly unlikely, though, to argue with those critics. I am too old to waste my time trying to persuade someone that their views are all wrong and that mine are all right.
I just know it all to be true. That’s good enough for me. It’s also good enough for my critics.
Social media in the Age of Donald Trump have claimed two more casualties … who happen to be members of my family.
I get that two such “injuries” don’t by themselves represent a trend, but I do believe they are indicative of the national mood that Trump has perpetuated since the day he rode down the escalator to declare his presidential candidacy.
These two fellows got into a beef over the Black Lives Matter movement and the behavior of police officers in relation to African-American citizens. One of them decided to “unfriend” the other from Facebook and vowed never to speak to him again. Not ever!
That outcome saddens me, as the two of them once were a lot closer.
This is the kind of thing that has erupted in families and other social circles nationally in this Trump Age.
Donald Trump promised to unify the nation. My goodness, he has done precisely the opposite. He has fomented division, increased the chasm between the political parties and his rhetoric has spawned the kind of anger — among family members, for criminy sakes! — that leads to severed relationships.
Social media haven’t helped, either. The various media have given us a shield behind which we can fire off angry messages, responses to messages, and responses to the responses. On it goes. It never ends.
I am acquainted with many individuals who become crazed ideologues when they sit behind a keyboard. For all I know, many of my friends think the same thing of me. If so, well … too bad.
Others, though, have actually become different people than I know them to be. One of my former friends cut our relationship off after he and another member of my family got into a snit about something; I cannot remember what it was. I took up for my family member. My friend became highly agitated with me — and we parted company. We haven’t spoken since.
These examples are what I am talking about.
Politics isn’t supposed to be a contact sport. At least that is what I long have thought and believed. At some level I still do. I choose not to engage good friends — actual friends — and family members in the nuts and bolts of policy disagreements. I try the best of my ability to let it all roll away.
It’s tough, especially in this Age of Donald Trump.
Thanks, Mr. President, for “unifying” us … my a**!
I was speaking the other day to a member of my family; we were talking about two issues simultaneously: the growth and maturation of Amarillo, Texas, and the long, slow and agonizing demise of the newspaper that formerly served the community.
It occurred to me later that both trends work at cross purposes. I find myself asking: How does a community grow and prosper without a newspaper telling its story?
That is what is happening in Amarillo, I told my family member.
The city’s downtown district is changing weekly. New businesses open. The city is revamping and restoring long dilapidated structures. Amarillo has a successful minor-league baseball franchise playing ball in a shiny new stadium in the heart of its downtown district.
The city’s medical complex is growing, adding hundreds of jobs annually. Pantex, the massive nuclear weapons storage plant, continues its work. Bell/Textron’s aircraft assembly plant continues to turn out V-22 Ospreys and other rotary-wing aircraft. Streets and highways are under repair and improvement.
Amarillo is coming of age. Its population has exceeded 200,000 residents.
What, though, is happening to the media that tell the story of the community? I can speak only of the newspaper, the Amarillo Globe-News, where I worked for nearly 18 years before walking away during a corporate reorganization of the newspaper. The company that owned the G-N for more than 40 years sold its group of papers … and then got out of the newspaper publishing business. It gave up the fight in a changing media market.
The newspaper’s health has deteriorated dramatically in the years since then. Two general assignment reporters cover the community. That’s it. Two! The paper has zero photographers and a single sports writer.
The paper is printed in Lubbock. It has a regional executive editor who splits her time between Amarillo and Lubbock and a regional director of commentary who does the same thing.
There exists, therefore, a serious dichotomy in play in a growing and increasingly vibrant community. I see the contradiction in the absence of a growing and vibrant newspaper that tells the whole story about what is happening in the community it is supposed to cover.
Spare me the “it’s happening everywhere” canard. I get that. I have seen it. None of that makes it any easier to witness it happening in a community I grew to love while I worked there. I built a home there and sought to offer critical analysis of the community from my perch as editor of the Globe-News editorial page.
I do not see that happening these days.
Meanwhile, Amarillo continues to grow and prosper. If only it had a newspaper on hand to tell its story to the rest of the world.
I am coming down with a touch of a headache watching and following the The Atlantic Monthly magazine’s story on whether Donald Trump referred to military personnel as “suckers and losers.”
First of all, I take my hat off to editor in chief Jeffrey Goldberg for some first-class reporting on statements attributed to Trump as he denigrates the service of men and women who have been injured or killed in battle.
Here’s where the head starts throbbing.
He uses four anonymous sources. Not one of them was willing to put his or her name on what he or she heard Trump say. Goldberg stands behind his decision to protect their identity. He said he knows who they are, their names and perhaps even their loved ones’ names, too.
He believes what they told him. Frankly, so do I, based on what I have read; that includes The Atlantic story, which I have read three times.
I confess to some discomfort over keeping their identities secret. I never was able to grant anonymity to news sources while I was working for daily newspapers. I always believed that if someone had something to say, they should offer their names to enable the public to judge the veracity of the story they were telling.
If I had been in charge of The Atlantic and a reporter (in this case, Goldberg is editor in chief of the magazine) came to me with anonymous sources, I likely would insist they allow their names to be published along with the tale they were telling.
Then again, you get a story — a once-a-career kind of story — that is so compelling that the only way the source will talk to you is if you offer him or her anonymity.
That might have been part of Goldberg’s calculation as he prepared the story for publication. If that’s the case, then I respect his decision to grant anonymity to his sources. Goldberg’s journalistic reputation is stellar enough for me to believe him when he endorses their credibility.
Take my word for this final point: No journalist worth a damn is going to pi** away a career for the sake of a fake story.
