The TV Don Who Stole Christmas

Starting with the SNL cold open Dec. 15: “It’s a Wonderful Trump,” there have been several examples this week of how tied to TV our president is.

I don’t know exactly which dig touched Donald’s not-funny bone: Maybe it was imaging Melania divorced and speaking perfect English because Trump had been holding back her language skills. Or the repeated “Everyone is better off without me being president.”

Whatever it was, the president was pissed. And he threatened legal action in a post-SNL tweet:

It was a ridiculous tweet, but let’s not so easily let go of the fact that Trump thinks he should have some legal recourse for this SNL segment, and also sees some vast conspiracy, tying an NBC comedy show to news coverage.

Was the SNL bit harsh? Sure. Was it illegal? Hell, no. Not even close. The whole bit was so over the top nobody would this in was asserting actual facts. And even if the criticism of the president was over-the-top, it was totally fair. Americans get to be critical of their leaders—as Donald was of President Obama not that long ago.

And, honestly, I didn’t find any of the criticism to be all that extreme. Ever since his party lost control of the House, President Trump’s administration seems to be lurching, leaderless and falling apart. We seem to be entering a new a sinister time.

And the president’s relationship with TV is a huge part of the problem. Not one week after his odd, inappropriate and, frankly, un-American reaction to the SNL skit, Trump was at it again in a more serious way.

At the end of the week, the House and Senate passed temporary funding bills. The President spent the week sending mixed messages about whether he might sign the bill, based on whether money for his favorite bad idea—the Trump Tolerance Monument known as The Wall—was included.

It looked on Thursday like he would accept it. After all, it wasn’t that long ago that Mexico was going to fund the TTM, was it? But then, Fox News and Rush Limbaugh intervened.

And Trump blinked, decided to go ahead with a shutdown. Colbert sums up the flip flop:



What is the end game? I don’t know, but I am not filled with confidence. The adult rats are all busily scurrying from the Trump Titanic presidency—and, meanwhile, President Trump is taking his cues and advice from “Fox and Friends.”

Republicans in the Senate, especially from Iowa—do you not see this? Ernst, Grassley, is this presidential leadership?

We’ve hit a wall here. And it’s a wall partly built on an odd, inconsistent president who is easily manipulated by the boob tube: President TV Trump.

Assembling Campus Views for Student Use

Fall view of MMU Warde Hall cupola. With blurry birds.

A student of mine in a one-on-one directed study is doing a student media project—he is building a new web site for the campus newspaper, using an online template.

The site he’s posting to uses banners on pages—very cropped, horizontal images. For that use, and for other possible random use on the site he is creating, the student wanted a variety of images of the Mount Mercy campus.

Over the years, I’m sure the student paper’s photographers have shot the campus many times, but mostly those images are narrative—they are part of telling a specific news story. They aren’t background or scenic, so were not the kind of image he wanted.

I, on the other hand, sometimes waste my time by shooting stuff just because I think it’s pretty. And the student wanted lots of campus shots showing pretty views, some MMU icons and the campus in a variety of seasons. So, I did a quick scan of recent (past two years or so) Facebook photo galleries of mine, and came up with these images.

I liked the results. I was surprised I didn’t have more pictures of the Grotto or Chapel of Mercy, and I am sure over the year I have more of those pictures, but again I was sticking only with recent images.

Sit back, relax and enjoy what I hope is pleasing look at some of my recent images of the pretty Mount Mercy University campus:

Another view from fall.

Sister Mary Frances Xavier Warde. Often called Sister Frances Warde.

Wall of Sisters of Mercy University Center.

Oldest image in this set--I think this came from inauguration of current president. The MMU Mace carried at key ceremonies by a senior faculty member.

Sun shines in Chapel of Mercy.

Spring at Warde Hall is announced each year by magnolia bush.

Daffodils in Our Lady of Sorrows Grotto.

Cheers at Plaster Athletic Complex.

Mustang Sally.

Iowa hawk eyes campus from Warde Hall.

Several sky images--MMU is on a hill and is one of the prime places in Cedar Rapids to watch the sunset.

Rohde Family Plaza.

Central campus at twilight.

And, of course, tunnels!

Walking in late afternoon light, Basile Hall in Background.

The woman, the legend, the mother of us all--Sister Catherine McAuley.

Blue winter sky.

Ceremony on plaza.

Cupola.

Green space turns many colors.

Inside the Sisters of Mercy University Center.

School colors held by Sister Catherine McAuley.

Final view--top of cupola of Warde Hall framed by leaves.

The Queen of Movies

I’m not a movie reviewer. But a Facebook friend of mine was recently gushing about “Bohemian Rhapsody,” and to be honest, I thoroughly enjoyed the movie, too.

For me, it was possibly nostalgia. I have several Queen albums in vinyl from my teen years—and I horrified a college newspaper crew recently by playing for them a song they had never heard from "Sheer Heart Attack,' still my favorite Queen album.

But one surprise to me is how many younger people with no memory of the heyday of Queen are also into the movie. The Facebook Friend is in her 30s, which means she was born back in the 1980s. The movie is a bit of a family affair for me, with my youngest daughter recently seeing it and saying she liked it, too. My wife and I saw it twice in the theater—a thing we rarely do (repeat a movie), and we took our youngest son the second time. He liked it.

I don’t think it’s a great movie. It’s a little manipulative, setting the stage for the Live Aid appearance of the band and perhaps overselling their impact there. But the story it tells was still well done, and I really enjoyed it.

Locally, the movie is playing at the Collins Road Theater. If you have not yet, you may want to check it out—with its sometimes-lush visuals and its rock and roll soundtrack, I think this is a good movie for the theater experience.



I don’t know much about music, but one aspect of the movie that I especially liked was the montage where the band was working on “Bohemian Rhapsody.” The peek at the creative process was interesting. And it was also interesting too that, for a band that was so into tricks in the studio while recording, Queen was also oriented to live performance.

If you’re like me and you were a Queen fan back in the day, you’ll like this movie because it will make you feel briefly young again. And if you are too young to recall those days, apparently the movie still will rock you.

What Music Lifts My Mood

The mid-term election unleashed the monster Trump, it seems. Banning reporters on trumped-up intern harassment scandals, firing an attorney general, claiming great victory in the face of pretty substantial Democratic gains—Trump seems to have become unhinged.

I shudder to think what he would have been like if the GOP retained the House.

So, I want a break. And here is what I have been listening to when I want to boost my mood. First of all, a couple of songs by the Cranberries, just because they’ve been in my ears a lot recently:





Randomly, on my You Tube recommended list, a video from a youthful LA punk band The Regrettes showed up. They can sure cuss up a storm, but they rock it too, and I confess I’m enjoying their in-your-face teen angst attitude:





I don't think I should post a female-dominated playlist without some Tessa Violet. Her latest has kind of grown on me. I think seeing her do a version of it with Hank Green maybe helped (Vlog bros fans hang in there, Hank shows up about 2 minutes into the second video, the Disneyland one):





Finally, a nice one from Garbage, because who doesn’t need some Garbage now and then? And it sums up my post-election mood:

The Leadership Style of Duck the Media

Official portrait of Spiro Agnew.

In Des Moines Iowa almost 50 years ago (Jesus, I just made myself feel really old), Vice President Spiro Agnew famously decried the news media as the “nattering nabobs of negativism.”

Well, he didn’t call journalists “enemies” of the American people, but we’ve seen a thread of political vitriol from the right spreading over the decades. It turns out rejecting “coast” culture and decrying the media snobs who look down on the “real” America is a winning brand.

Agnew was a crook who worked for a crook, and both he and his boss Richard Nixon left office in disgrace. But Nixon was an evil political genius, and many of the strategies he unleashed during the turbulent late 1960s have become embedded in American political fabric. The GOP as a party of the White South? See Nixon. The “mainstream media” as a distrusted punching bag? See Nixon.

And now we are in the fragile election year of 2018, waiting to see how potent the poison in the well has become. We have an ignorant, misogynist, narcissistic president who is pumped up and rallying the boob troops. True, it’s too easy to underestimate Trump—he does have some entertainment instincts that seem to serve him eerily too well in American politics, where government seems to becoming show biz.

In the run up to the election, Trump is ratcheting up his delusional, politically charged lies. See this PBS interview with a media fact checker.

Image from Wikimedia Commons, by Gage Skidmore. Donald Trump in happier times--2011. He wasn't yet the liar-in-chief.

Trump says crazy stuff: Democrats are a liberal “mob.” A caravan of migrants is full of “bad people” were probably funded by Democrats. This self-described nationalist (the reason, sir, that you’re not supposed to use that word is because in politics it is the philosophy espoused by facists) lies, lies and lies some more. Because it works for him. His base doesn’t care—they just like the message.

And most of all they like to see those enemies in the media squirm.

The tragedy, to me, is not that it’s unfair to accuse the American media of bias. There are all kinds of bias built into our media system that should be recognized. But to term journalists as enemies of the people is breathtakingly ahistorical. We have a First Amendment that protects the press because our founding political philosophers understood that, perfect or not, independent purveyors of information were vital for democracy to maintain itself.

I don’t think Trump cares about democracy. He is way too chummy with authoritarians, and makes too many wild assertions to be taken seriously as a man who wants to lead or convince or persuade. He’s a bully with a bully’s worst instincts—and he loves leading a bully mob.

Anyway, the deterioration of respect for sellers of information has led Republicans down to the local level to shun media. I read a post on Facebook by a local state representative, Ashley Hinson, who was calling on this local newspaper to publish an op/ed written by her leader, the Republican speaker of the House of Iowa. But Representative Hinson herself is part of an awful trend. In 2012, running for the U.S. Senate, then candidate Joni Ernst eschewed meetings with major Iowa newspaper editorial boards.

Hinson herself did the same with the Gazette this year, and she is not alone. I’m sure she has an explanation for her decison, and I’m also sure I don’t want to hear it. Because whatever it is, as a former TV anchor she should know it's BS. Shame on her. Shame on Senator Ernst. Shame on Republicans who shun editorial boards in general. It’s fair to be critical of the media—but to refuse to sit down with working journalists and discuss issues with them is to disrespect the role that the press serves in our democracy.

The Gazette was right to complain about the trend. See their editorial.

Vice President Agnew had a bit of a point, even if he was a crook. In his time, print media were more conservative than today—his main complaints were about network television, which then was way more powerful than now in shaping public discourse. As a media professor, I think the spreading of outlets, the ability of anybody to publish anything (including this blog) can have positive impacts. Voices that were silent can be heard. Diverse points of view are readily available.

But the rallying cry of “fake news” that Agnew’s remarks eventually unleashed have reached a dangerous fever pitch.

And the right has won the war against news, in many ways. Mainstream media is in retreat.

But, what’s left in its place? Fox “News,” Russian trolls, Brietbart? It’s a vapid swamp of delusion and misinformation. Sort of like any political speech theses days by that national embarrassment, the liar-in-chief, Donald Trump.

The Darkness at our Door

Saw this today in a restroom at the university where I teach. It makes me think of what we are without journalism--earless, eyeless, brainless. And we're getting too close to that point.

The Washington Post’s motto is “Democracy Dies in Darkness.” Democracy is not dead in the U.S. yet, but I feel the fever is getting serious. Too much has happened recently that points to the rising darkness.

President Trump joked this week at a political rally in Montana about Rep. Greg Gianforte, who pled guilty to a misdemeanor assault charge for attacking a reporter for The Guardian during a previous election campaign. Trump has called journalists enemies, but making a joke of an assault in the same news cycles dominated by the murder of a Washington Post columnist is beyond being obnoxious or thoughtless, Trump’s usual base level of discourse.

It’s dangerous.

Jamal Khashoggi was murdered in Turkey, two weeks ago. President Trump has finally started to admit he is dead, although he has been full of inconsistent conspiracy theories to explain it away in some politically convenient fashion. As is so often the case, our addled president awaits enlightenment from the darkest corners of Fox News before he, standing at the levers of power of the American government, can make nonsense of events.

I was not familiar with Khashoggi’s work, but he was an American journalist. True, not a citizen, but a legal resident of the United States working for The Washington Post. And he was killed for it.

It’s not the only sign of journalism’s decline in what increasingly seems like a noisy Dark Age. This is fall break at the university where I teach, and my wife and I took a couple of days off to travel to central Missouri to ride on the Katy Trail. While there, I stopped in the town where I had been a newspaper editor 30 years ago, and purchased a copy of the paper.

A not-local paper. Sad.

I almost wish I had not. The “local” paper was hardly local at all.

The sorry state of local journalism is a tragedy in this country. We are slowly closing our minds to the role that a town conscious can fulfill. And we are becoming too frighteningly like those countries in other parts of the world where the press is dull, official, and irrelevant.

Jamal Khashoggi had his last column published by The Washington Post. In it, he wrote eloquently of the Arab world’s need for a free press:

“The Arab world needs a modern version of the old transnational media so citizens can be informed about global events. More important, we need to provide a platform for Arab voices. We suffer from poverty, mismanagement and poor education. Through the creation of an independent international forum, isolated from the influence of nationalist governments spreading hate through propaganda, ordinary people in the Arab world would be able to address the structural problems their societies face.”

Erase the word “Arab.” In this now great again country, we suffer from poverty of mind, mismanagement by our top leader and poor education in small towns where local events are no longer covered by local journalists.

Jamal thought he was writing about Saudi Arabia. His words come too close to describing America today.

President Trump makes jokes about assaulting journalists, who he terms as “enemies.” And his fans, betraying their ignorance, cheer.

The enemy is those who enjoy siloed lives, isolated form the world as it is. I hope darkness is not closing in too much, although I find myself more filled with dread as the mid-term election approaches and the Trump base is fired up for all the wrong reasons.

I hope voters decide to turn the lights on.

Hope to See You at A Sustainability Event

Mount Mercy University has announced its Fall Faculty Series for 2018, and posted its list of events on the MMU web site..

It’s a bit smaller than some past series, with just seven faculty or staff presentations listed. That may be a good thing—an issue in previous series (which I coordinated in 2014, 2015 and 2016) was the tendency for the list of events to grow and grow. Maybe having fewer events will make each stand out a bit more—I hope so, anyway.

The series begins soon, on Aug. 29, with an overview by Dr. Joy Ochs, an English professor who now coordinates the series, and who has been very active in environmental issues. She was important in MMU obtaining a large grant that funds a more robust sustainability effort on campus. For a full list of events in this fall’s series, click here.

“Sustainability” is a key issue—maybe more now then ever. Not only does the Earth continue to heat due to human emitted gasses, but our current political leadership seems determined to exacerbate environmental problems as much as possible.

Anyway, one aspect of the issue is that big environmental controversies are not always covered well by media. Partly that’s because it’s not easy for a non-scientific journalist to understand and translate science. Scientists themselves are not always good at stepping out of the lab and communicating with the public.

As for the news media: Big science involves long-term trends that don’t always translate into daily dramas the way an Omarosa book does. And scientific concepts are sometimes resisted by the public and journalists (the newspaper that the Franklins ran in Boston early in the 18th century, for example, campaigned against smallpox vaccinations—the first health advice given in early American media was totally against science).

I’ll be exploring the interesting and twisted history of media coverage of global warming on Oct. 11 in a presentation called “Hot Story: How the Media Struggles to Cover Climate Change.”

There are many other interesting presentations planned. The fall series is one of my favorite things at MMU—it’s a chance for faculty to engage with students they don’t normally see, as well as to bring in any members of the public who are interested in a topic. Each series leads, I hope, to big conversations on important topics.

And this year’s topic is about as big and important as it can get. I hope to see you at some of these faculty forums!

The Newest Attack on the Fourth Estate

Newsprint—it’s the news media’s Achilles heel.

President Trump has called mainstream news media “enemies of the American people,” a rather startling escalation from “fake news” by an irresponsible national leader. It’s language that echoes sentiments of dictators and totalitarians, rather than a responsible U.S. President.

But I don’t think many intelligent adults would consider Trump to be a “responsible U.S. President.”

Earlier this month, in the wake of another Trump attack on the media, CNN’s Jim Acosta asked White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders to say the press isn’t the enemy. “It’s ironic Jim, that you attack the President,” she shot back. And she listed a litany complains, noting she is the “first press secretary to require Secret Service protection.”

Well, that’s terrible. But Sanders doesn’t own any of her own part in creating the divisive discourse that tears at the fabric of our democracy and makes it seem impossible these days to have a civil discussion of real issues. And she never acknowledges the bedrock principle that Acosta asked her about: The press is listed as being free in our First Amendment because a free press is a necessary ingredient for a self-governing body politic to function well.

And we, that body politic, are growing less functional, partly due to the current horrible administration that keeps scooping sand into the grease of the gears of our government.

Still, it’s not news that Donald J. Trump, an immature narcissist, only likes sycophantic media attention. And Sanders is a spokesperson for Trump. Her job is to preach his message, no matter how bad or wrongheaded that message is.

And Trump’s message, on this point, is authoritarian. It steps over the line of endangering an already endangered species—the few journalists that remain active in this country, nowadays. Those reporters work with targets on their backs placed there by an unashamedly shameful President Trump.

Yeah, as a journalism professor, former reporter and media writer, I’m bitter about the horribleness of Donald J. Trump and his minions and his alternative media universe. But I think I have rational grounds for that bitterness.

Remember how President Trump as a candidate mocked a New York Times reporter’s physical disability? I’m sorry, Sarah Sanders, that you feel you’ve been personally attacked. But look at the conduct of your boss and tell me he’s not setting a low tone for public discourse.

Image of early press in Oregon from Wikimedia Commons.

And Trump’s war on the press includes an important recent jab. The free press in this country grew historically with loads of indirect government support. Newspapers used to be sidelines of print shops that sprang up in county seats as the country grew, partly to handle government printing. The U.S. Postal Service, the internet of the early Republic, offered very favorable rates that allowed newspapers to circulate and exchange information easily.

Of course, the press-government relationship can be too cozy, and a free press needs to guard its own independence. I recall once on the final day of the legislative session in Missouri, excitedly entering the tiny office of the newspaper Capitol bureau in Jefferson City and telling my editor that “they are offering free hot dogs in the halls.”

My editor fixed me with a dour stare. “I. Do. Not. Eat. With. Those. People,” he informed me.

Well, from his physical appearance, I’m not sure he ate anywhere—he was a wiry old codger who seemed to subsist on caffeine and nicotine (It was the ‘80s, a world that has long passed away). (Note that I'm attacking the physical appearance of a person who I respect and who I agree with—for effect, by the way. Sarah, if you are reading, that's an attack on physical appearance--you burning lies for a perfect smokey eye isn't the same.) But I mostly remember his point. He didn’t say I couldn’t have a hot dog if I wanted (and truth be told I’ve never let my sense of professional ethics stand in the way of free food), but I admired his spirit.

And his idea. Be independent of your sources. Don’t get too chummy. You are you and they are they and you both need to understand your often-adversarial roles. But I didn’t hate the Missouri politicians that I wrote about, and I don’t think they hated me.

I don’t trust politicians, yet I still have respect for them. Their motives aren’t pure and they bear watching (which is what a press is for), but they are also, most of them, motivated by a sense of mission and public service.

Government is messy, sometimes corrupt and often inefficient, but since we try to be governed by “we the people,” we can’t point our finger at “them” without some fingers pointing back at us. Or as Pogo put it: “We have met the enemy and he is us.”

Anyway, one of President Trumps recent initiatives is to instigate trade wars as a bargaining ploy for better trade deals. I am not an economist, and despite my trepidation at what seems to be a wrong-headed policy, I’ll conceded it’s possible he’s playing some international game of chess that may help equalized past inequities in trade. Frankly, I doubt it, but it’s something that I can strain to imagine.

However, his targets are often odd. Canada? We have an intertwined economy with our friendly frozen neighbors to the north, and we can’t hurt them without hurting us, too. And one product in particular that’s caught up in the this tariff tiff is newsprint, the price of which is expected to rise 30 percent due to Trump’s import tariffs.

This comes at a time when newspapers are already in a steep decline as a part of the overall news media system. Trump didn’t cause that decline, but he’s kicking a part of the historic media system when it’s down.

Making the Trump paper tariffs go away won’t revive the newspaper business. It’s likely the New York Daily News would be letting go of half its news staff anyway. But Trump's trade policies are yet another blow to an ailing free press, another hit on his “enemies.”

And democracy in American is less healthy as a result.

Sarah Sanders, if it were up to me, you would not need the Secret Service to protect you. But don’t blame the “enemy press” for your personal safety issues—you are caught up in a firestorm that your own boss keeps pouring gasoline on. As I’ve said before, the current biggest enemy of the American people isn’t the press that brings them the bad news of the day.

It’s the incompetent president who keeps generating more bad news—and is now making that news more expensive to print.

What Is Missing in Trump’s Prayers

From Facebook, image on CNN posted by Dennis Stouse: Victims of Maryland shooting.

On Facebook, I saw a former student post a meme from “Occupy Democrats” that stated “President Trump has blood on his hands.” I reposted it, because I liked what the former student had written, but sadly just got the meme.

For the record, I think that meme goes too far. I don’t think President Trump is to blame for the tragedy in Maryland. But I don’t think he’s innocent, either.

Starting in his campaign, our current president has carried on a Republican tradition of using news media as a punching bag. It’s useful to note that was also the approach of President Nixon, who initiated so many political strategies that have both benefited the modern Republican party and hurt our democracy—the new southern strategy, the crude emphasis on “law and order,” the win-at-all-costs ethos that isn’t unique to Nixon among politicians, but that certainly in his case went a few evil and illegal steps too far.

And, just as global warming doesn’t cause every hurricane, President Trump doesn’t cause all acts of violence against journalists. Then again, hurricanes are more powerful and more numerous due to climate change—so it’s not an error to think that action to mitigate global warming might be a good idea in the aftermath of a hurricane (or, honestly, why wait—in the before math, too).

So it is with Trump. His hectoring of journalists at weird Trump campaign-style rallies, his penning them in and singling them out, his insistence on lies and calling media “fake” because they don’t accept his clearly non-factual statements—the drumbeat of “they are the enemies” is bound to have an impact.

That impact is not direct to the Maryland shootings, I’ll accept that. But I also just read Katy Tur’s book on the 2016 campaign. The level of hostility towards reporters encouraged by The Donald is horrifying to read about.

March 14, 2016 cartoon by Gary Varnel of The Indianapolis Star. From editorialcartoonists.com, the web site of the Association of American Editorial Cartoonists Sadly, still true today.

The front page of the Capital Gazette today was tragic to see. Go to their web site for profiles of Rob Hiaasen, Gerald Fischman, John McNamara, Wendi Winters and Rebecca Smith. They were members of a shrinking class in America—most were professional writers toiling to bring the best version of truth that they could obtain to their readers.

Image from Newseum.org.

They weren’t fake. They weren’t enemies of the American people. They should not have been targets of anybody’s wrath.

I do feel a heavy heart today. Talented, bright people who labored in service of others—that’s what most newspaper journalists do—were gunned down. The tribe has lost some talented souls.

No, President Trump is not directly to blame. But his responses have been tepid and timid. He tweeted “thoughts and prayers,” which seems like political code for “I don’t take any responsibility and wont’ take any action,” and thanked the first responders. Well, OK—thank you first responders. But there was no recognition of the victims as journalists. And he ignored reporters’ requests for comment during a walk-by photo op.

Of all people, Sarah Huckabee Sanders did better. She tweeted that a “violent attack on innocent journalists doing their job is an attack on every American.” Sarah, can you talk to your boss about that?

Justin Trudeau, prime minister of Canada, also did better. His tweet about the shooting was: “Journalists tell the stories of our communities, protect democracy & often put their lives on the line to do their jobs.”

It would have been nice to have our president echo ideas like those. But his anti-media bias is too deep, and I can draw only one conclusion.

The great enemy of the American people and of democracy? His name is Donald.

The Unexpected Longevity of The Beatles

CBS image, downloaded from The Daily Mail, James Corden reacts to singing "Let it Be" with Sir Paul McCartney.

I don’t usually watch TV that late at night, but I was downloading and editing pictures last Thursday, and at 11:30 happened to have the TV tuned to “The Late Late Show with James Corden.”

As you probably know, he does an amusing segment called “Carpool Karaoke.” I happened to catch the 45th installment of that segment, which was his ride with Sir Paul McCartney.

Well, that segment generated a lot of buzz, and it was pretty delightful to watch. At one point, Corden choked up during the song “Let it Be,” which McCartney said was inspired by a dream visit from his dead mother.

Corden said his father and grandfather had played the song for him, telling him it was the best song ever recorded. “I wish my granddad were here now,” he said.

“He is,” McCartney replied.



The segment made me think of how enduring the Beatles music has become. McCartney himself said the band never expected their pop music to be popular for more than 10 years, and here we are, generations later, still choking up to sounds of “Let it Be.”

At some point, my own children discovered The Beatles. My youngest son blames “Yellow Submarine” because we had a VHS tape of the movie and it was one that they watched repeatedly when growing up. Songs like “Yellow Submarine” and others, such as “Octopus’s Garden,” have a particular appeal to young children, my son noted.

I suppose he has a point. But my own children, in their teen or young adult years, learned to appreciate other Beatles music, too.

The White Album endures.

Anyway, it’s not just my children’s generation. I have a 2-year-old grandson who is at the age where he is learning simple songs that he loves to have repeated. The alphabet song is a favorite, as is “Old MacDonald Had a Farm.” We re-worked the lyrics to “I’ve Been Working on the Railroad” to feature his name, and on a car trips he often likes to hear that song.

But when he sings to himself, what comes out of his mouth are often Lennon-McCartney tunes. Three of his favorites are “Dear Prudence,” “Yellow Submarine” and “All Together Now.”

I graduated from high school in 1976, and I recall taking a fine arts class my senior year where one of the three teachers—it was taught by a trio including an English teacher, art teacher and music teacher—asserted that we were silly to be listening to an English band that had broken up a half decade before.

“Nobody will be studying The Beatles in 50 years,” he said. I had just purchased my first stereo and was starting to build a small record collection—featuring, among others, numerous albums by the fab four.

I very much disagreed with the teacher’s remarks and resented them. Although, in his defense, even Sir Paul didn’t think the music would endure beyond a decade.

It’s 2018 now. The 1960s and its music was long ago. Among the soundtrack that endures from that time, nothing matches The Beatles. It’s probably not the best music or most complex or most deeply meaningful. I think one reason that the sound of that band still resonates is that they came on the scene as popular music evolved from frothy pop rock and roll to other, deeper themes and sounds. And the Beatles catalog features such diverse songs as “She Loves You” to “In My Life.”

McCartney was wistful on the TV as he contemplated the long, strange journey the band its music has been on. I’m not a music expert, but I am pleased to have lived long enough to realize my high school music teacher was mistaken on this point--that five decades after they were first popular, plenty of people still care about and talk about The Beatles.

And it’s wonderful to hear “All Together Now” in the light, fun voice of a 2-year-old newly minted Beatles fan.

Videos of my grandson’s favorite Beatles songs, for your listening pleasure now and in future years:

MMU Student Publishes Story in The Gazette

Image from The Gazette's web site--taken by Madelyn Orton MMU student, who wrote a feature about women who coach college men and high school boys. Shown is Hudson boys’ soccer coach Sue Rink during a Friday night game.

It was especially nice to see the Sunday Gazette this morning, due to the sports section.

This feature story, the visual anchor of the front page of the sports section, was a project a Mount Mercy University student did in an MMU journalism class.

Madelyn Orton is identified as a junior by The Gazette, which is true since her sophomore year has just ended, but basically, she did this project as a sophomore.

For a class I was teaching, Madelyn came up with the idea of a feature story on women who teach men’s sports. She did a lot of research to identify such coaches in Iowa, including contacting the state’s high school athletic association and prowling college web sites. She also pitched the story idea off campus.

JR Ogden, sports editor of The Gazette, liked the idea and agreed to meet with Madelyn to help her plan the reporting.

Madelyn spoke with the coaches, tracked her contacts on a spreadsheet, asked for images and even drove to a high school soccer game to make her own image to go with the story.

And the results were on the front page of the sports section today. It was a nicely done story, and I’m thrilled that The Gazette was interested in it. Congratulations, Madelyn, and if you get The Gazette and can spare your copy of today's sports section, please let me know.

What I Think of The Post

An old friend, some weeks ago, posed a question to me: What do I think of the movie “The Post?”

Well, spoiler alert, I love it.

For one thing, it has a trio of giants—it was directed by Steven Spielberg and stars both Tom Hanks as Ben Bradlee and Meryl Streep as Katharine Graham. The movie does a decent job of telling the story of the Pentagon Papers, although it does fudge it a bit—the eventual Supreme Court decision to allow both “The Washington Post” and “New York Times” to publish information from a secret government history of the war in Vietnam was not a total victory for the free press because there were so many decisions issued.

True, the papers won 6-3, but those six judges who favored the papers had were too divided in their reasons to set clear precedent.

Still, the movie seems, to me, to be fairly true to the people, the times they lived in and the historic story. And if the story seems to resonate now, it’s not an accident—President Nixon made some long term political strategic decisions that set his party on the road (the highway to Hell) to where it is today.

Beyond whether the narrative is capital T true, I also laud the film for its feel and texture. Journalism is often represented badly in the movies. Romantic comedies, in particular, often present newspaper writers as leading glamorous, odd lives that correspond not all to the actual life of any correspondent.

For example, in case you wonder, neither “Sleepless in Seattle” nor “Runaway Bride” has any character who appears to actually be a newspaper journalist.

“The Post” is not a rom-com, and it gets the feel of a newspaper and news people right. I especially appreciated how it brought the media world of 1971 back to life—the clacking typewriters all over the newsroom, the copy editor using a pencil to mark up a story, and the many montages featuring a Linotype machine setting the words in hot metal for printing.

A lying Republican president attempts to use his powers to thwart and punish mainstream journalists, particularly those of “The New York Times” and “The Washington Post.” Yeah, the movie is set in 1971, but it sure does echo in 2018.

I also liked that the movie made Katharine Graham something of a feminist icon—because she was. The journalism world of 1971 was very masculine—indeed the whole power structure of society was. That hasn’t exactly changed since then, but sexism was more overt and obvious in 1971.

Anyway, I also just liked the movie as a movie. Hanks and Streep, why has it taken so long? They are America’s top actors at the top of their game in this movie—and it’s not just them. The characters that surround Bradley and Graham are written well and played by actors who make them interesting and complicated.

And the lemonade? It’s the kind with lemons in it.

Which is the best lemonade, unless you have vodka.

So, old friend, in short—“The Post” has the Joe seal of approval. Six of six QWERTY marks.

Editor Tells Students about Keeping Trust

Zack Kucharski, executive editor of The Gazette, speaks with a Mount Mercy student in a conference room at the paper May 1, 2018.

The main product that belongs to any media outlet or journalist is trust, Zack Kucharski, executive editor at The Gazette told one of my classes this morning.

We were on our annual pilgrimage to the newsroom of The Gazette, our local daily newspaper. It’s one of my favorite days of the year, partly because Zack is always such a kind host to our tours.

Today, the May 1 morning began with me dithering about transportation. To bike or not to bike: That was the question. There were storms west of here, but here there were none at the time, and the weather app on my phone indicated just a 15 percent chance of rain.

But on my KCRG app, Kaj O’Mara seemed to be more sure of rain. So, I graded some papers at home and let the time slip by until driving my Dodge rather than pedaling one of my bikes became my only option to get to The Gazette.

Score one for local media. As I drove south to downtown Cedar Rapids, the sky, which has been dry for a fortnight, opened up with a warm spring thunderstorm.

Parking was a challenge, as it seemed all of the streets near The Gazette were under construction. I arrived a few minutes after 9:30 to find just a handful of my students had arrived before me. But, as Zack joined us about 9:40 to start our one-hour visit, more showed up—eventually 16 students joined us, my whole class.

Mount Mercy students meet with editor of The Gazette.

We had a quick look at the newsroom, and then Zack ushered us into a conference room for a 15-minute Q and A before the morning editors’ news meeting. A handful of editors crowded into the room with us and quickly reviewed what’s going on in the CR corner of the world.

After the news meeting, we had a few more minutes with Zack. He spoke with students about The Gazette’s new paywall, about how the students should be comfortable telling stories in many venues and about trust.

In a fake “fake news” world, maintaining trust is the main objective for journalists.

Zack also enjoined students to remember that each of them has just one indispensable asset: The trust that others place in them. That’s true whether the others are readers, viewers, listeners or professional colleagues.

“We make mistakes every day,” Zack added. But when you make a mistake, he said, admit it, correct it and learn from it—most of all, don’t deny it. To deny is to break trust.

Zack speaks in lobby of Gazette.

I believe Zack Kucharski believes what he says. And I think that, as one of the owner-employees of The Gazette, what he said reflects a spirit that is present in what The Gazette does. These days, it’s in fashion to bash the media from the right and sometimes the left for real and perceived biases.

But, trust me, if you want to know what’s going on CR, you do need a source you can believe in. For weather, for me, that Kaj. For news, for me, it is The Gazette. They aren’t perfect, but if you tune only into their imperfections, trust me, you’ll be placing trust somewhere else where it probably doesn’t belong.

And I trust students heard that message.

A Stormy Feeling in the Air

Stormy chats with Anderson Cooper. All images on this post are screen shots from CBS News web site. I was flying back from England Sunday and missed the interview on TV, so I caught it online. Yay for the internet. I think.

How do you feel about 60 Minutes and the Anderson Cooper interview with Stephanie Clifford, a.k.a. Stormy Daniels?

I am unclear in my own mind how I feel. On the one hand, Ms. Clifford seems to have candor and credibility. The president’s lawyer, in what may be an illegal hush payment just prior to an election, didn’t pay her because she didn’t have sex with President Trump.

He paid her because she did.

On the other hand, the sordid fact that Donald Trump is a pathetic man who would have casual sex with a porn star shortly after his third wife gave birth to his fifth child seems simultaneously extremely icky—and possibly not all that relevant to public discourse.

Liberals can’t have it both ways. If what President Clinton did with an intern while in the White House wasn’t an issue, then neither is the Donald being a pig at a golf tournament. We already know Mr. Trump is a misogynist hypocrite. That it doesn’t matter to his base may be weird—what are all those Evangelical Christians thinking—but it is worth raising the relevance question: Do we expect Presidents, or public men in general, to be saints?

As for me, I always disliked President Clinton’s behavior. His sexual pursuit of a young intern in the 1990s was irresponsible and immature. But it didn’t necessarily disqualify him to be an effective politician.

To me, the worst part of the Clinton affair was the aftermath—the president using legal babble to try to wiggle out of his problems, and his associates attacking the object of his lust. And we know enough now about Bill Clinton to know that his public service record will always include an asterisk caused by his appetites.

So, I’m not a big Bill fan. But I voted for Hillary. I’m not sure why she stuck with Bill, but that’s her business, and I really don’t care all that much.

As for Donald Trump, he is already going down in history as the worst American president. Not the worst in recent history, not the worst since World War II. He’s a man of extremes.

Worst. President. Ever.

That’s partly because he changes his mind on fundamental issues of policy at a dizzying pace. He’s cancelling DACA. He’s blaming Democrats for the collapse of DACA. He’s not beholden to the NRA, but he’ll do exactly what the NRA wants. He’s for compromise legislation that he threatens to veto. He waffles like that not because he’s having second thoughts—as Stephen Colbert pointed out, he never bothers with first thoughts. He’s living proof that a show business career—while it requires some ability to banter, some on-camera force of personality—doesn’t need any depth behind it.

And now his presidency, which has always been on the edge of collapse, is teetering yet again because of a porn star who appeared on 60 Minutes. And Ms. Clifford has the advantage partly because she’s not at all unrealistic about who and what she is. She is not ashamed to be in the adult entertainment industry.

Mr. Trump, on the other hand, is his own worst enemy because he insists on constantly presenting himself as things that he is not. He’s not at heart a Republican (he’s not at heart a political animal at all), he’s not a hero, he would not rush in to a school to save students during a shooting (as his exemplary record of dodging the draft in Vietnam seems to prove). He did not have an impressive Electoral College victory--he barely got elected and lost the popular vote. He did not have an impressive crowd at his inauguration, and can't get over those facts--in fact, can't seem to grapple or bother much with facts at all. If still waters run deep, Trump is proof that the loudest babbling brooks are usually shallow.

He does have some abilities. He can command an audience of like-unminded people. He can pander to the camera.

But he’s outclassed by an intelligent exotic dancer/adult entertainer.

It’s delicious, but also unsettling. Donald Trump deserves to be removed from office for gross incompetence and for financial frauds and crimes. He’s working hard on the mid-term elections primarily because a Democratic majority may mean impeachment.

I just hope it’s not impeachment for cheating on his wife. Do I care when political men treat women as objects of lust and pleasure to the exclusion of their identities as intelligent coequal humans? Yes … but.

More than the Stormy affair, it’s the Don’s behavior during the election—the hush money—that can cause Mr. Trump problems. Whether there was collusion with the Russians isn’t the only unseemly secret that could yet trip up Teflon Don.

Trump loves to play at the edge of rules, and he’s not exactly a legal eagle. He often suggests actions that are outrageous or illegal, without any sense of where the lines are. I won’t feel any sympathy for him if, as seems likely, he loses his presidency because he didn’t care about the law. And yes, the Clintons often lived in the same shady universe of ill behavior—but both Hillary and Bill have sharper legal minds than Donald Trump. Frankly, most cats have sharper legal minds. The Clintons play hardball in ways that often make them unattractive. But, Trump plays ball without knowing what the rules are—he just wants to win, and doesn’t care if he brings a baseball bat to a tennis court.

Stormy chats with her lawyer. He's a better lawyer than Donald Trump has, because The Donald has no ability to gauge the abilities of other humans. Spank him again, much harder this time, Stormy.

And, isn’t there, or shouldn’t there be, some latitude for private lives to play out in private—even for a president? Ms. Clifford pointed out to 60 Minutes that she was not a sexual assault victim—the raunchy sex which reflected neither physical attraction nor human affection was consensual and was years ago.

Which means maybe it was nobody’s business.

Anderson Cooper, you’re a pretty potent journalist. You topped the ratings charts. Trump probably cares a lot about that because ratings are always his main scale for deal with reality.

As for me, I’m not so sure how I feel about the whole turn of events, other than I wish I wasn’t posing the question to myself in the first place. 60 Minutes is a venerable news show. One of the worst aspects of the Clinton scandal was it caused serious news outlets to carry detailed reports about semen spots on clothing. We’re there again. If I ran the shop at 60 Minutes, I wouldn’t be comfortable with that fact.

But then again, we’re in the gutter mostly because of you, Donald Trump. Your total lack of self awareness and sense of shame has put us there. Thanks a lot. Rex what right about your intelligence.

MAGA. Make American Groan Again.