Category Archives: media news

media news, national news

Memo to Melania: Rein in your husband

Dear Melania …

I hope you don’t object to my addressing you by your first name. I mean no disrespect. To my point …

I greeted your call for an end to cyber bullying with a bit of skepticism. My first reaction, along with that of millions of other Americans, was that you need to start at home in that noble effort.

You need to curtail your husband’s use of Twitter, I suggested, as a weapon to bludgeon foes and assorted critics.

Later I posted a blog entry extolling the virtue of your effort. You are right to use your high profile as first lady of the United States to end this scourge of Internet bullying. I applauded you then and I applaud you now.

However, your husband is at it again. I’m sure you’ve heard about that ghastly tweet he posted this morning about Mika Brzezinski, about how she was “bleeding from a facelift.” He called her “Crazy Mika.” Then he aimed his Twitter barrel at Joe Scarborough, her MSNBC morning talk show co-host, calling him “Psycho Joe.”

Just as a reminder, here is what he wrote: “I heard poorly rated Morning Joe speaks badly of me (don’t watch anymore). Then how come low I.Q. Crazy Mika, along with Psycho Joe, came …” Trump tweeted before adding “to Mar-a-Lago 3 nights in a row around New Year’s Eve, and insisted on joining me. She was bleeding badly from a face-lift. I said no!”

The recriminations are going to come quickly over a period of time, Melania. Your husband’s fellow Republicans are incensed. Some of them are as incensed as the rest of us who didn’t vote for your husband.

I am reminded of the question leveled at the reviled late U.S. Sen. Joseph McCarthy, who in the 1950s said there were communists employed at the State Department. “Have you left no sense of decency?” came the question from U.S. Army counsel Joseph Welch to Sen. McCarthy during one of those infamous Senate hearings.

It’s time to ask the same thing of your husband. I never thought I’d wonder this about the president of the United States: Has he no sense of decency, or decorum? Does he disrespect the high office he holds so much that he stoops to the level of juvenile petulance to communicate in such a crude, hostile and undignified manner?

I guess, Melania, we’re back to where we began. Isn’t it time you reined in that husband of yours before you launch your campaign against cyber bullying?

media news, political news

POTUS has sunk yet again to another new low

Donald John (Internet Bully in Chief) Trump has done it yet again.

He has demonstrated that there is no bottom to the level of crassness he is able and quite willing to exhibit on social media.

The president of the United States of America has decided to engage in a vile insult campaign against a member of the media, this time suggesting this individual was “bleeding from a facelift.”

The target is Mika Brzezinski, co-host of the MSNBC morning talk show “Morning Joe.” What did Trump say about this women, whose father, former national security adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski, recently died? He called her “Crazy Mika” and said she and her co-host, former U.S. Rep. Joe Scarborough, wanted to spend some time at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort. “She was bleeding badly from a facelift. I said no,” Trump said this morning on Twitter.

Read the NY Times story here.

According to the Times: The graphic nature of the president’s suggestion that Ms. Brzezinski had undergone plastic surgery was met with immediate criticism on social media. Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina wrote on Twitter, “Mr. President, your tweet was beneath the office and represents what is wrong with American politics, not the greatness of America.” And a spokesman for NBC News, Mark Kornblau, wrote on Twitter: “Never imagined a day when I would think to myself, ‘It is beneath my dignity to respond to the President of the United States.’”

I am running out of ways to express my revulsion over the president’s conduct. His “war” against the media rages on.

This individual was elected to the nation’s highest office. It demands respect from those of us who revere what it stands for. It also would seemingly demand respect from those who occupy it. That the current White House resident, the commander in chief of our armed forces, our head of state and government would resort to this kind of ghastly insult campaign denigrates the office to a whole new level.

Now, I fully expect some criticism of this blog post from those out there who are going to change the subject by suggesting that other presidents have acted badly while holding this office. Spare me the diversionary tactic. This has nothing to do with them. It has everything to do with the here and now — and the individual who was elected to be our national ambassador on the world stage.

If only I could expect that there is nothing more hideous that the president can do. Sadly, I now fully expect him to go even lower.

Let’s all just wait for it.

media news

‘Fake news,’ Mr. President?

Donald J. Trump keeps yammering about “fake news” media outlets.

OK, let’s try this one on for a moment.

The president has been displaying some fake Time magazine covers at his golf and country clubs. The covers tease those who see them about how his reality TV show is a rating smash.

Except that the magazine cover is fake. It’s phony. It’s made up, courtesy of Photoshop.

The White House doesn’t deny they’re fake. Time executives have asked that the covers be taken down. The Washington Post reports as well that Time didn’t even publish an issue on the date posted on those bogus covers.

Trump’s fake news mantra is getting tiresome in the extreme. It also long ago ceased being effective, given the president’s own record as a perpetrator of “fake news.” Indeed, the president is an expert at fake news, as he kept alive his own lie about President Barack Obama supposedly being ineligible to hold office because, according to Trump, he was born in Africa.

Fake news? There you have it. Now this bit about the phony Time magazine cover. More fake news? You bet.

And this president will keep yammering about the media and his political base will lap it up.

As CNN’s Chris Cillizza writes: “Truth, in Trump’s world, is what he believes. So, even if he wasn’t on the cover of that specific Time magazine, he should have been. What difference does it make then if he puts himself on there and passes it off as real?”

Cillizza clearly asks a rhetorical question. It makes a lot of difference to those who place value in truth. To those who are habitual liars — such as the president of the United States — well, not so much.

media news

Why let ’em squawk? Here’s why

I received this inquiry today from a longtime friend and former colleague; I figure I’ve known this fellow for just shy of 30 years. He asks:

Why do you let these crazed Trump troglodytes comment on your blog? You know you can set up your blog to screen that stuff. This … dingbat and her dingbat Trumpster pals are mucking up what is otherwise a thoughtful message. They hate the free press. Let ’em go somewhere else and make their ridiculous, baseless comments. Let ’em tell it to Hannity. He loves that sort of crap. (She)  is obviously an elitist ne’er-do-well snob who, for lack of real work, spends her waking hours trolling progressive sites like yours, looking to pick fights with folks like me, thinking her silly and childish retorts will somehow make her seem like a real force to be reckoned with, when, in fact, she comes off merely reaffirming to the world that she really is the jerk she appears to be. Why, John, why?

He asks “why?” The answer is pretty straightforward.

I consider this blog to be a forum for the free expression of ideas. I distribute it along a number of social media platforms; Facebook gives High Plains Blogger its greatest exposure. I long have followed the policy of declining to block anyone simply because I disagree with their view. I’ll admit, though, to some trouble with Facebook becoming so political. I like it as a sort of social media gathering place where people at varying levels of “friendship” can talk among themselves about their lives, or about life in general.

Politics at times poisons that interaction. Indeed, my blog has cost me some friendships over the years. We’ve gotten entangled in some angry discussions about this and/or that. One fellow “unfriended” me from Facebook over a snit, which tells me he didn’t regard our friendship as greatly as I did. I regret it, but as they saying goes: It is what it is.

Thus, I don’t intend to block individuals from expression themselves. After all, I use social media to distribute my own world view to the world. Doesn’t it seem more than a little presumptuous to block someone simply on the basis of a political disagreement?

It’s a big ol’ world out there. Let ’em squawk.

media news

CNN does that rare deed: retracts a story

CNN officials don’t need me to take up the cudgel for them, but I’ll do so anyway.

The news outlet has just done something quite rare in journalism. It has retracted a story it broadcast. There was no mere “correction” or “clarification.” CNN took it all back. Moreover, the principals involved in the bogus story have resigned; they well likely would have been fired by the network.

I mention this because of the Twitter tirade that Donald John Trump has launched against the network. The president calls CNN “fake news”; he says the network’s ratings are plummeting; he is castigating CNN for the story that was broadcast.

Trump unloads on CNN

The president is an angry man! Then again, he’s always angry when the media are involved. Am I right?

The CNN story alleged that a close Trump ally was tied to a Russian investment fund that the U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee is investigating. The story is false. CNN admitted its mistake, took it off its website, accepted the resignations of the reporter, editor and producer involved in the story.

My experience in journalism — which totaled nearly four decades — tells me that CNN acted responsibly in reaction to the mistake it made. Do I know whether the story was published with a willful intent to do harm to the president? No I don’t.

I do know, though, that for a media organization to retract a story means that it has acknowledged an egregious error. And, yes, by golly, journalists — those fallible human beings — do make mistakes.

That won’t stop conservatives, though, from unloading on the “mainstream media,” a term that has become a four-letter word among those who detest the media.

The simple truth, though, is that CNN acted responsibly and with integrity in taking back a report it learned to be untrue.

media news

Trump vs. Media battle rages on … and on

Donald J. Trump in one important way is no different from the 44 men who preceded him as president of the United States of America.

They all disliked, distrusted and at times disrespected the media.

The difference between Trump and those other guys is the tone and tenor of the response he levels at the media for doing their job.

Trump has branded all media that report stories that aren’t totally favorable as “fake news.” Moreover, he is making admittedly superb use of social media to carry that message forward. Beyond that, his base is loving it! The folks who voted for him and who bought into his “tell it like it is” mantra continue to give him a baseline of support that barely creaks under the weight of the negativity that the president heaps onto himself.

Is this guy, though, any different from his predecessors in his dislike of the media? Nope. Not at all.

Trump assails media again

Every single predecessor — certainly those who served as president during the past 60 or 70 years — have griped openly about the coverage the media provided. Even when they complained, though, many of them did so with a smile/smirk on their face. I believe it was President Franklin Roosevelt who referred to the media’s coverage of his dog Fala, noting how reporters should lay off the presidential pooch.

On and one it has gone.

Do you think President Kennedy wanted the media to cover the Bay of Pigs fiasco in the manner that they did? Of course not. He took the criticism like a man.

President Johnson didn’t much care for the media’s coverage of the Vietnam War, either. He understood the role of a free press and accepted it as part of the job he inherited when his predecessor was gunned down.

I don’t recall hearing President Reagan bitching loudly about the coverage of the Iran-contra controversy.

President Clinton was bombarded with negativity during his eight years in the White House. His wife was a frequent target, too. And occasionally, the media actually poked maliciously at their daughter, for crying out loud.

Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama also took their share of hits over the course of their combined 16 years in office. And, by the way, President Obama was the victim of actual “fake news” promulgated by the likes of, oh, Donald J. Trump — the originator of the lie he kept telling that Obama was constitutionally ineligible to serve because he was born in a far-off land. Can there be a greater example of presidential hypocrisy than that?

The rules of president-media engagement have changed in the Age of Trump. The media are doing the job the U.S. Constitution allows them to do. The president doesn’t like what they report, so he — in effect — defames reporters and editors for serving the public interest.

Worst of all? The complainer in chief  is getting away with it!

International news, media news

Who in the world can trust POTUS?

Donald J. Trump’s obsession with Twitter is diminishing his standing around the world, or so it would appear.

I keep circling back to a question: How do world leaders trust anything the president of the United States tells them when he continues to tweet ridiculous messages?

Take these instances involving Trump and his tweets:

* He said former President Barack Obama ordered the wiretapping of his campaign office. That was false.

* The president said Hillary Rodham Clinton’s popular vote margin “victory” in the 2016 election was because of “millions” of illegal immigrants voting for her. Another falsehood.

* He says Germany is making “too many cars” and selling them to Americans.

* Trump ripped into London’s mayor after the Manchester shooting by misquoting what the mayor said about the threat of international terrorists.

I am missing many more examples just since Trump became president, but you get the idea.

The man cannot control his impulses. He fires off these tweets and then changes the subject. He meets in private with world leaders and then blabs his brains out about them.

The president’s Republican allies in Congress, though, give him a pass. House Speaker Paul Ryan blithely states that Trump is “new at this,” meaning he’s “new” at governing, new at understanding the limits of presidential power.

The world is a volatile place, which I am sure the president understands. What I do not get is why he cannot control himself. I’m pretty sure we’ve got leaders all around the planet who are wondering the same thing.

media news

No more ‘Fair and Balanced’

Fox News Channel is dropping its long-standing mantra of being the “fair and balanced” news network.

I don’t quite know whether to cheer loudly or to sigh out of exasperation.

Fox is going to adopt a new slogan eventually, according to reports. For now it’s dropping the “fair and balanced” label, which was the creation of ousted Fox president Roger Ailes, who lost his job in 2016 after being accused of sexual harassment.

I’ve long believed the network is neither “fair” or “balanced” in its presentation of the news. I also have long acknowledged the impressive audience it has created out here in TV Viewer Land with its decidedly conservative slant.

Go to any public location in the Texas Panhandle where you’ll see TV sets — doctor’s office, dentist’s office, restaurants, banks or other financial institutions — and you see Fox News anchors giving you their version of the news. That is the power of the network that Ailes founded as an antidote to what he believed was a liberal tilt to the presentation of news.

Fox has done a number of things well. For instance, it spiced up its news programming with a bit of pizzazz, bringing other cable news outlets along to do the same for their presentation.

Fair and balanced? It never was any of that. At least not to my eyes and ears.

media news, national news

Happy Trails, Part 26

Retirement has changed many of my habits. I don’t roll out of the sack early every single morning; I am no longer obsessed with the time of the day; indeed, there are times when I forget what day it is.

I also have changed one of my major travel habits.

No longer do I look for newspapers to purchase when I travel around the country. My wife has kidded me at times over the years about how much more stuff we are carrying home than when we leave.

My journalism career seemed to compel me to look at local newspapers. We would stop somewhere, I’d ask for a local newspaper stand and then I would purchase the paper.

Why? Well, I was always looking for new ideas on how to present, say, opinion pages. Since I edited opinion pages in Beaumont and Amarillo, Texas, for nearly three decades, I thought it helpful to see how other newspapers presented their opinions — and the opinions of contributors — to their readers.

These days, my newspaper-purchasing habit has virtually vanished. I no longer work for a living. I no longer have a need to see how other editors do their job. I no longer feel virtually obligated to fill my vehicle with newspapers, to bring them home, cart them into the house and pore over them to search for better ideas.

On our latest adventure, I did purchase one newspaper: the Memphis (Tenn.) Commercial-Appeal. It’s still a pretty good read. So, I read it — and then tossed it.

Life continues to be so very good.

media news, national news

Why give Alex Jones a platform?

People such as Alex Jones give me heartburn.

I happen to be a First Amendment purist. I believe in the amendment’s guarantee of free speech and I do not want it watered down.

Then along comes people like Jones, the radio talk show blowhard who’s been thrust into the news yet again. Broadcast journalist Megyn Kelly has booked him on her NBC News show and snippets of her interview with Jones have enraged some survivors of one of the nation’s worst tragedies.

Jones has spoken infamously about how the 9/11 attacks against the United States were an “inside job” and then — and this goes way beyond anything resembling human decency — he has alleged that the Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre in Connecticut was staged; he says the children who were slain were “actors.”

Kelly is giving this guy’s moronic views a platform.

Should he be allowed to spout that trash? Should he be given air time on a major broadcast network? That pesky First Amendment says “yes.” Tenets of good judgment and basic humanity suggest that this guy shouldn’t be given a platform to spout the filth that pours out of his pie hole.

Kelly deserves the criticism she is getting from at least one of the Sandy Hook parents who lost a child in that hideous act of cruelty.

And that damn heartburn continues to churn in my gut.