And Trump Delivers … and Delivers … and Delivers

 I gave two of the best Trump family speakers two hours of my life Thursday, and it left me a little scared.

Because I’ll state something that might surprise you.

President Donald Trump did a pretty good job at his acceptance speech Thursday night. Oh sure, he was not as energetic as he is when he’s ranting at a huge crowd. It was “teleprompter” Trump, who is always less engaged than unplanned, rant Trump. But for Teleprompter Trump, he was pretty good.

As a speaker, he did OK—and like a dog singing “Happy Birthday,” OK was better than anybody could have expected of him. Of course, the content of his long, long speech was full of deceit and exaggerations and fear mongering. It was, after all, a lie fest from the liar-in-chief.

Anyway, after Ivanka Trump gave the best speech of the awful tribe named “Trump” at the convention, the president’s pretty much just OK speech left me a bit depressed. Because he might pull it off. Between voter suppression, riling up his base and all kinds of semi-legal shenanigans, this con man might pull off the scam one more time. In case you have more than a hour to kill or need a cure for insomnia, here it is:

 

So, I went to bed without writing up my summary of the RNC, sleeping on it to see how I felt in the morning. And I feel better today. His ratings were lower than Joe Biden's which must hurt. And on second look, Trump's speech does not grow on me.

Still, Trump hit the right, right-wing notes, calling to his base on crime, patriotism, abortion, socialism and, Heaven help us, even God, which really made me nauseous.

So, as a wrap-up on the freak show that was the sad reality TV scare fest from what was once an American political party, my wrap-up of the RNC, focusing mostly on the long speech by President Trump.

First the setting. What can I say? It was a horrible desecration of the people’s house. Trump called it a “home,” but it’s the nation’s home and a president merely borrows the White House for four years. Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minnesota, had a great tweet Thursday night that sums up how I felt:

Trump, the "law-and-order" candidate, can’t be bothered to understand or follow the law.

True, a president is personally exempt, but he’s used the full machinery of government—and lots of government employees—as political props and settings. What a jerk. The low moment of his speech was his smirky reference to the setting (quote is accurate, used a transcript from NPR):

“The fact is I’m here -- what’s the name of that building? (Gestures behind him to cheers from the gathered doomed gladiators)
“But I’ll say it differently. The fact is we’re here and they’re not. To me one of the most beautiful buildings anywhere in the world, it’s not a building, it’s a home, as far as I’m concerned. It’s not even a house, it’s a home. It’s a wonderful place, with an incredible history.”

A history, you jerk, that you are ignorant of. Another low point—technically after the speech, but part of the Trump awfulness: Fireworks on the National Mall (a federal public park that includes, among other things, the Vietnam National Memorial with the names of heroes who didn’t claim bone spurs to stay home) that spelled out “Trump” and “2020.”

If that didn’t turn your stomach, see a doctor to see if you have a stomach.

The other main point of the flawed optics of the evening where the odd crowd. The fact that there were Trump MAGA-A acolytes from all over, crowded together, largely not masked during a pandemic that this horrid president has infamously not managed well. It was a Sturgis-style super spreader event, and shows that this president is so cold, so indifferent to fellow humans, that some of them may die, yet it’s a price he’ll happily pay.

We’re closing in on 200,000 dead, and this president and his followers brag about making respirators and banning travel. Well, hooray, those are two things you did right, but you completely squandered any time you bought by not listening to science, pushing quack cures and claiming the virus would disappear like “magic.”

And Trump holds an in-person party with people from all over, unmasked and undistanced.

If your ego demands accolades from a crowd so badly that you’ll force federal employees to violate federal law and potentially expose over a thousand of your misled fans to a deadly virus during a pandemic, you’re not, as our former secretary of state called you, a fucking moron.

You’re a fucking monster.

So, Trump spoke well. And displayed his full evil in full view. He and Joe Biden have both stated that this will be a campaign for the soul of America.

Not that there was any doubt before Thursday, but Thursday proved, if anybody needed proof, that one of those candidates sure doesn’t give a rat’s patootie for his own or anybody else’s soul.

His speech was preceded by Ivanka Trump. She’s a good speaker, but is part of the dark tribe trying to promote the orange demon on us. And it was odd, how “co-presidential” she seemed. Ivanka, nobody elected you to anything.

She was among the best speakers during the whole RNC, I thought, but the bar was pretty low so she didn’t have to work hard to clear that low bar. The most amusing line in her speech, to me, was this (quote from ABC news transcript):

“My father has strong convictions. He knows what he believes, and says what he thinks. Whether you agree with him or not, you always know where he stands. I recognize that my dad's communication style is not to everyone's taste. And I know his tweets can feel a bit -- unfiltered. But the results speak for themselves.”

“Unfiltered?” His tweets are the all-caps yowling of a mad man who, sadly, is president of the U.S.

For now. Shame on America if we prolong this nightmare for four more years.

And I don’t care about Joe Biden’s obvious shortcomings at this point. Get me out of here!

Other observations on Trump’s speech:

It was full of ridiculous exaggerations and distortions. For example, Trump on his record on race relations: “And I say very modestly that I have done more for the African-American community than any president since Abraham Lincoln, our first Republican president. And I have done more in three years for the Black community than Joe Biden has done in 47 years.”

Donald Trump has never in his life said anything in modesty. He’s a narcissist of the first order.

Another point that Trump bragged about was cutting regulations, thus approving oil pipelines and removing the U.S. from the Paris climate agreement. He promised to cut regulations more in order to promote jobs, and made this claim about Joe Biden: “Biden has promised to abolish the production of American oil, coal, shale and natural gas, laying waste to the economies of Pennsylvania, Ohio, Texas, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Colorado, and New Mexico, destroying those states. Absolutely destroying those states, and others.”

One of the dirty little secrets of life is that any extraction economy is doomed in the long run. The wells will run dry, the vein will be played out, the drillers and miners will make money now, but not generations from now. And Biden won’t open federal lands to drilling like Trump will, but has not pledged to end production of American fossil fuels. Instead, he has called on us to transition to a sustainable green economy, which will create jobs.

Making the planet uninhabitable by just drilling and burning and devil-may-care is the road to hell.

Trump is not our ecological savior. He is the Satan of the environment.

OK, I admit I’m getting carried away. That’s the mood swings induced by the RNC. And I do have a favorite, no-shit-Sherlock chyron that I saw on MSNBC: “Fourth Night Filled with more false statements” Yes, it was. Surprise, surprise.

So now the fall campaign begins. Here is our lineup (images from Wikimedia commons, most by Gage Skidmore, except Mike Pence image which is a White House photo):

President Donald J. Trump. Check whatever he says. This man will gladly get you killed if it means he wins. Not an exaggeration. Image by Gage Skidmore.

"Sleepy" Joe Biden. I'll take sleepy over evil, any day. And why does Trump always list as flaws in others attributes that he has? Trump leaned on the lectern Thursday like a sleepy old man. Takes one to know one, I guess. Image by Gage Skidmore.

Vice President Mike Pence. In some ways, worse than Trump, because he'll spill his venom in a friendly, folksy, neighborhood preacher sort of tone. It's also not easy to find this man's image--of all four figures here, this is the oldest image, the one that is an official White House image because he doesn't get out much or draw attention when he does, and it's cropped to show Mike. Unlike the orange-skinned one, this guy has the pale skin of someone who avoids the limelight. And the sunlight. Mike Pence, mild mannered vampire? White House image (from visit by Greek officials, hence the flags).

California Sen. Kamala Harris. She's equipped to be president, probably the best of this bunch of candidates. The woman stands out as the best human for the job. Image by Gage Skidmore.

Voting for a “Joe” is going to be easy for this Joe. Well, maybe not as easy as I wanted since a judge tossed out ballot requests in my county. But I’ll crawl over hot coals to vote against the current occupant. You know that building, behind you, Don? I hope soon that it's the house where you used to live.

Final note: This is a reflection of the times we live in. Here is much of section A of The Gazette this morning. I don’t think you can read the stories, just look at the headlines. Trump is on the bottom of page 4. The county I live in setting new virus records is on page 6. And I don’t think The Gazette got it all that wrong. Many of the headlines are on the aftermath of the Aug. 10 derecho that blew this city apart, so I will concede much of the end-of-the-world tone of these pages is due to Mother Nature and not Monster Trump.

Still, the Republicans have said repeatedly this week that you should be scared to live in Biden’s America. They’ve got it wrong. The real nightmare is now, here are headlines from Trump’s America:

The RNC: A Fear-fest Devoid of Ideas

I’ve been a good boy, I have. Despite my intense distaste for all things Trump, I’ve been sampling the RNC—Republican National Convention.

It hasn’t been easy. I felt the Democrats did not do an adequate job of explaining their ideas last week—what they stand for and what their agenda is—but the Democratic National Convention did have a platform, and Joe Biden, at least, did have some substance in his speech.

The RNC? Platform, schmatform. Ideas, scmideas. Let’s point out that Joe Biden is a commie socialist atheist who, along with the evil liberal media, hates mom, apple pie and ’Merica.

There has bene an odd insurgent theme to the first three nights of the RNC. The Trump campaign hasn’t had an original idea since 2016, and it shows. It’s all “MAGA.” But, hasn’t the orange dear leader been president for more than three years? Before 2018, didn’t the GOP control both houses of Congress? Why didn't he Make America Great Again already? What, then, is the GOP insurging against?

America and the future, I suspect.

The speakers have been a motely crew. The Trump campaign (this is really just an informercial for the Trump campaign) is shameless and brazen. It has speaker after speaker spout bizarre conspiracy theory and outright lies, and them moves on.

Last week, I wrote about my favorite DNC speeches. There isn’t a lot to like at the RNC, and there is one more night, although I will be shocked if I like the orange one’s speeche. So, rather than speeches that resonated with me, this is more a rundown of what I found most weird at the DNC.

First, if you follow me on Facebook, you can skip down a bit. One example of an RNC speech that stood out to me was one I wrote about already on Facebook. It was not just the whole bucket of crazy that was in this speech, it was the odd, strident, angry tone with which it was all shouted.

Speech 1: Kimberly Guilfoyle from night 1:



My previously published (on Facebook) analysis: Kimberly! Holey smokes! All that we need is the sound of 20,000 boots hitting the ground as 10,000 storm troopers goosestep by. And there is so much BS to unpack here--neither Harris nor Biden are socialists. Pointing out that California is our richest state doesn't support your thesis. American cities are messy and messed up in both blue and red states--our deep urban problems are not a partisan issue. Kamala is a former prosecutor, too; Joe Biden does not support de-funding the police (who are mostly paid for by state and local taxes that the president does not influence). Puerto Ricans are Americans at birth by law since 1917--thus your mother was not an immigrant. Our current chaos and economic downturn aren't things that Trump will fix--they are the conditions that this incompetent president helped bring about. The riots and lawlessness you so fear are features of Trump's dysfunctional America. You're right on one point--this is a battle for the soul of America. I hope most Americans can recognize evil when they see it's tribble-headed symbol and shouting allies, and it's also is why I'll vote against that soulless orange demon who plays at being president and doesn't understand the job. I was already a reluctant Biden voter anyway--thanks for strengthening my resolve. This was a cynical speech, GOP fearmongering at its worst and fearmongering was the main feature of night one of this this week's RNC. Way to shout it proud and loud--I can hear the crazy. Golly.

I think that sums up my feelings. Next, that couple that aimed guns at Black Lives Matter protesters in Saint Louis.

Speech 2, Mark and Patricia McCloskey from night 1:



Well, this one is a bit complicated. The McCloskeys are being a bit coy about their own actions, even though they are lawyers. They live on a private street—the gate that they accuse the protestors of smashing wasn’t on their yard or lawn, it was the gate to the street itself. When they waived guns at the protestors, it’s not clear any were on their lawn. They say they were threatened—and they were, but it may be because they were pointing guns at people. The BBC provides a good report on that confusing events of that night. The McCloskeys then follow the GOP line of extrapolating to the lawless wasteland that a Biden president would bring, ignoring that the lawless wasteland they live in is during the Trump presidency. Patricia McCloskey, in particular, makes a specific false claim—that Biden would somehow end (white) suburbs, a claim debunked by PolitiFact.

Speech 3 and 4: And now a twofer: Two Iowans featured, Gov. Kim Reynolds (night 2) and Sen. Joni Ernst (night 3):





As for Governor Reynolds, as an Iowan I am disgusted with her slow and languid response to the COVID-19 crisis. She refused to issue a mask mandate early on, and Iowans are dying as a result. And she has been rather slow on the derecho response, although that’s an ongoing story and my feelings are not as strong there. However, Trump’s trip to Cedar Rapids was a sad joke, he distinguished himself mostly because he didn’t chuck paper towels at us. While here, Trump met only with loyalists—our Democratic representative in Congress lives in Cedar Rapids, but was not invited to be among the officials who met Trump during his brief stop at the airport, although he did include her empty-suit GOP opponent (a tasteful lady empty suit, both the representative and her opponent are women). Shame. And Joni Ernst, to me, suffers from the same problem—both of our main female officials represent important gender steps forward in Iowa—our first female senator and governor—and both are pathetic Trump apologists. Senator Ernst was going to “make them squeal,” but has refused to call out some of worst and harshest lies of Donald Trump. The state is a mess, thanks to Governor Reynolds. The state is ashamed. More because of Rep. Steve King then Sen. Joni Ernst, but Senator Ernst doesn’t help much. So, as an Iowan, I was not so much motivated by our dynamic duo as full of dread and shame.

Speech 6: Tiffany Trump, night 2.



Representing oppressed, rich law school graduates of America, Tiffany was an OK speaker for a Trump kid. Junior and Erich maybe should taken notes, they were much angrier and more strident in their respective ads for Donald Trump. Tiffany, however, was still a bit weird. She complained about how hard it is to find a job. Heck, child, some of your family have done just fine for years without discernible employment, and others (looking at you Jared and President Trump) are in jobs they are wildly unqualified for. Don’t worry. He’s not as rich as he claims to be, but Daddy’s loaded. I suppose that’s a bit snarky. I felt myself just feeling snarky during her speech. She didn’t shout at me like crazy Kimberly, but she did not feel warm and genuine, either.

I didn’t see all the speeches, but this is a sample of the tone and quality of what I saw. The RNC is full of rage and fear and darkness, and yet complains that the Democrats are the party to be afraid of.

But two speeches were, to me, a bit more interesting and different:

Bonus speech 1: Melania Trump, night 2:



I know, I’m sorry, it’s not the full speech. I couldn’t take it and didn’t watch the full speech—but not because she said the wrong things. I was just too tired and she put me to sleep. The interesting thing about Melania is that she was willing to say many of the right things that nobody else would say. The sample here is about the pandemic, which she didn’t call the “China flu.” She expressed sorrow and sympathy. Well, kudos, it’s the kind of thing I wish many more speakers had said. But I didn’t watch the whole thing because the whole speech was rather dull. She had little energy and displayed little passion as she stood there, stiffly reading the right words. It was an odd example of how the right notes may fall flat when delivered badly. And I was angry. Not at Melania—she was the best—but at the setting. The Trump campaign has turned the White House into a political prop—and no, during campaigns, previous president didn’t typically do that. So Melania, odd, stiff and dull as she was, still stood out in the Rose Garden--totally the wrong setting

Bonus speech 2: Nicholas Sandmann, night 2:



He’s young, very young, and I won’t critique his speaking style. (Sorry, Tiffany and Melania, you’re both adults, which makes your style fair game). This young man does have a legitimate beef with the American media. A couple of years ago, he attended a March for Life in Washington DC, and ended up in a confrontation with protesters during a visit to the Lincoln Memorial. His version of evens is a bit one-sided—see Vox analysis of the speech and its aftermath. But he’s got a valid point. Isolated videos often go viral, and we leap to conclusions without waiting for context—a bad habit we’ve seen on display over and over. But, frankly, that’s not a sin of the left. The left isn’t innocent, but misrepresenting video snippets happens all the time on the right, too. And where Nicholas Sandmann goes astray is when he ties his treatment to President Trump's. No ,Trump is not a victim as Sandmann is. Trump is a President who lies constantly, and we see his lies. President Trump doesn’t respect the constitution and doesn’t respect the free flow of information. And at least CNN and the Washington Post reported a settlement with Sandmann--has Trump ever admitted he was wrong? Nicholas Sandmann is right to feel he was unfairly canceled. But he’s completely wrong on Trump. Still, it’s good to see that a young man does express himself. Sir, you’re almost completely incorrect. But thank you for joining the discourse.

Night 4 has started. Some sports wild bald sport dude is shouting at me. Anyway, I’m a bit surprised I saw nothing worth noting on night 3—I promise I did watch the prime-time stuff. I guess Mike Pence is just a ghost who can pass by without making an impression.

On to the ultimate night. God save the Republic!

‘He Failed Miserably’: DNC Speakers on Trump

I didn’t watch all of the coverage of the Democratic National Convention last week, but I did catch many of the late-night speeches.

And I was impressed on many levels. My one complaint was that I wish the whole thing added up a bit more to a more substantive discussion of policy issues. I know, that may not make compelling prime time TV, but I think one function of these exercises every four years is for the parties to not just feature the personalities that are important, but to emphasize the ideas that they stand for in this election cycle.

“We’re not Trump” does mean something. After all, I’ve seen the “Any Functioning Adult” bumper stickers, too. And Joe Biden was not my first choice, but he’s not my last choice, either.

America suffered some sort of cognitive dysfunction in 2016: The body politic picked a buffoon for president. True, Trump was running against Hillary Clinton, who has enough baggage to fill s steamship, but history will recall that Trump was not a bad president. He (knock on wood, because who knows what’s coming) will go down as the absolutely worst president in American history—the least competent bumbling fool who ever held the office.

So, I guess I am among the choir the Democrats were preaching to, and it’s easy for me to like much of what I saw.

Anyway, I’ve picked out what I think are some of the more interesting or more effective speeches. I’m a speech teacher, among other things, and there were some less effective and some more effective speeches.

I have not included the speeches by Kamala Harris nor Joe Biden. Of the two, I thought both did well but Biden really nailed it. His relatively short acceptance speech hit on key policy themes in an effective way.

But I want to comment on some of the other presentations I saw. A caveat: All of the speeches are actually video presentations, which is something different from a live speech. Still, for various reasons, these videos especially resonated with me.

The videos are from PBS. The quotes I verified using speech transcripts available from CNN. Nothing came from Fox, which did not cover the DNC (and yet will cover the Republican show this week—fair and balanced anyone?).

Braydon Herrington: Harrington is a teen from New Hampshire who encountered Joe Biden and had a story about him to share. Like Biden, Herrington stutters, and did some during his address.

It was an effective address on several levels. For one thing, a theme that the Democrats were pounding at was that Joe Biden is very different from Donald Trump. Both are very old white men, but Biden shows empathy. One cannot imagine Biden publicly mocking a reporter's physical condition, the way Trump heartlessly did during the previous campaign. And Harrington’s speech was all about the empathy Biden showed to him in a personal way.

His presentation:

And what I think is the best quote from it:

“I'm just a regular kid, and in a short amount of time, Joe Biden made me feel more confident about something that's bothered me my whole life. Joe Biden cared. Imagine what he could do for all of us. Kids like me are counting on you to elect someone we can all look up to. Someone who cares. Someone who will make our country and the world feel better. We're counting on you to elect Joe Biden.”

Michelle Obama: The former First Lady, Mrs. Obama is a very sharp lawyer, and her giving an effective speech is not that much of a surprise. But she delivered a blistering critique of President Trump that probably won’t be plagiarized by Trump’s First Lady.

Mrs. Obama emphasized the importance of the moment, the need to vote, because of this year’s sharp contrast. She was articulate and personal, and showed why she is such a popular figure even though she noted that she hates politics.

Her presentation:

And what I think is the best quote from it:

“So let me be as honest and clear as I possibly can. Donald Trump is the wrong president for our country. He has had more than enough time to prove that he can do the job, but he is clearly in over his head. He cannot meet this moment. He simply cannot be who we need him to be for us. It is what it is.”

John Kasich: Kasich, a Republican former governor of Ohio was one of several speakers from his party, as he noted, an unusual move. Some progressive Democrats groused about this Republican getting more time than figures such as Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, for instance. It’s a grouse with some basis.

But I can see why Kasich was featured. He stood at a literal crossroads to talk of the nation at the crossroads. He is not the most passionate nor effective of speakers, but I think his message still resonated. He and the other Republican speakers were there to remind the nation that loyalty to Donald Trump is not the same thing as loyalty to what the GOP has traditionally stood for.

So Kasich may not have been the most dynamic speaker on his own, but I still think is message was effective.

His presentation:

And what I think is the best quote from it:

“I’m a lifelong Republican, but that attachment holds second place to my responsibility to my country. That’s why I’ve chosen to appear at this convention. In normal times, something like this would probably never happen, but these are not normal times.
“I’m proud of my Republican heritage. It’s the party of Lincoln, who reflected its founding principles of unity and a higher purpose. But what I have witnessed these past four years belies those principles.”

Elizabeth Warren: Sen. Warren was among the many former rivals for the nomination who spoke in support of Joe Biden, and hers was the most memorable endorsement from a rival, to me. She spoke clearly, passionately and in the perfectly chosen setting—a childcare center where blocks in the background were a clear shoutout to the Bureau of Land Management. (JK, #Blacklivesmatter).

And I thought Senator Warren told a compelling personal anecdote (used pathos) that tied into a compelling policy issue on childcare (some logos there) and then followed it up with one of the best zingers of the convention on President Trump: “COVID-19 was Trump’s biggest test. He failed miserably.”

So much for bragging about passing a cognitive test, Don.

Her presentation:

And what I think is the best quote from it:

“Donald Trump's ignorance and incompetence have always been a danger to our country. COVID-19 was Trump's biggest test. He failed miserably.”

Barack Obama. The immediate past President of the United States Barack Hussein Obama gave a slightly long-winded speech, but one was that startling and riveting.

For three and a half years, Mr. Obama has bit his tongue. Former presidents don’t normally criticize present presidents. But these are unusual times, and as Mr. Obama noted at some length, Donald Trump is not just a terrible president. Trump and Trumpism is an affront to the very democratic fabric of our republic—it’s not hyperbole to wonder if the American experiment is being withered from within by Trump and his Republican enablers.

So, in a sharp convention speech, Mr. Obama finally let his tongue go. And go it did. It was, for Mr. Obama, who is all about light and hope, a rather dark speech because it was a clarion call, a warning about dark times.

Re-electing Donald Trump would be a disaster was the subtext. And the text made it clear what Mr. Obama really things of Donald Trump. Trump, Mr. Obama says, is using the presidency as a reality TV show to gain personal gratification. Trump is not trying to lead a contry; in fact, Trump doesn’t even understand what the job of the president is.

I put Mr. Obama’s speech last because I think it had, for me, the most impact. It was a sharp reminder of what a president can do with words if he can speak them, as Donald Trump can’t. And because Mr. Obama is a writer with a way of words, I’ll feature two quotes from his speech.

His presentation:

And what I think are the best two quotes from it:

Quote one: “I did hope, for the sake of our country, that Donald Trump might show some interest in taking the job seriously; that he might come to feel the weight of the office and discover some reverence for the democracy that had been placed in his care.
“But he never did. For close to four years now, he's shown no interest in putting in the work; no interest in finding common ground; no interest in using the awesome power of his office to help anyone but himself and his friends; no interest in treating the presidency as anything but one more reality show that he can use to get the attention he craves.
“Donald Trump hasn't grown into the job because he can't.”

Quote two: “But more than anything, what I know about Joe and Kamala is that they actually care about every American. And they care deeply about this democracy.
“They believe that in a democracy, the right to vote is sacred, and we should be making it easier for people to cast their ballot, not harder.
“They believe that no one -- including the president -- is above the law, and that no public official -- including the president -- should use their office to enrich themselves or their supporters.
“They understand that in this democracy, the Commander-in-Chief doesn't use the men and women of our military, who are willing to risk everything to protect our nation, as political props to deploy against peaceful protesters on our own soil. They understand that political opponents aren't 'un-American' just because they disagree with you; that a free press isn't the 'enemy' but the way we hold officials accountable; that our ability to work together to solve big problems like a pandemic depends on a fidelity to facts and science and logic and not just making stuff up.
“None of this should be controversial. These shouldn't be Republican principles or Democratic principles. They're American principles. But at this moment, this president and those who enable him, have shown they don't believe in these things.”

I will try to pay the same attention to the Republicans this week, but it will be tough. I’m not entertained much by hatred and ignorance, and I’m afraid appeals to our worst demons will be way more common than appeals to the better angels of our nature.

But, unlike Fox, I’ll attend to both conventions. So if you want to, watch a week from now for my highlights from the next political summer funfest.

And before I am done, two little clips from the DNC that I enjoyed very much, although they don’t count as speeches. First, the Biden granddaughters speak, and steal the show. Their message to Joe Biden was, to quote one of them: “Get in that race.” What a contrast these young people are to that scary tribe named "Trump." And the final word goes to The Chicks who aren’t gas-lighting us with one of my favorite renditions of our (our, not Democrats’, not Republicans’) national anthem.

The Role of Journalists: The Story of the Storm

Image by Mark Vitosh/Iowa Department of Natural Resources, downloaded from Iowa Public Radio “Talk of Iowa” web page: Vehicle in Linn County crushed by a broken tree from the August 10 derecho.

A friend on Facebook, whose political leanings I don’t really know, posted an anti-media rant after people in Iowa complained about the national press not paying enough attention to the huge natural disaster that befell our state last week.

NPR just reported this morning, Aug. 19, that the National Weather Service now is saying winds in Linn County were sustained at over 100 mph for over half an hour on Aug. 10, a date that will live in infamy in Iowa. The initial stories in national media about the storm covered a key topic—crop losses—which in an agricultural state are not trivial.

But the derecho drenched cities and people, too. And in the days following the storm, frustration grew that American news media were not paying attention.

The friend on Facebook? “Defund the media,” she wrote in her rant. She added a hashtag: #socialmedia.

I found the post to be almost exactly backwards. Social media has a role to play—a helpful Facebook page for local people to share questions and answers post-storm quickly sprang up—but as we should know by now, social media is the uncontrolled child mind of our collective intellect—a pouty toddler that spouts, unfiltered, whatever is on top of lazy consciousness. It’s often erratic, hurtful, and lacks any scientific or historic context.

Meanwhile, we have already defunded the media, and that’s a huge part of our national problem. Our democracy is dysfunctional and seems unequal to any crisis—whether caused by weather or a virus—due partly to the noise and fury of social media and our collective contempt for “mainstream” media. The fourth estate has become the freak out estate.

Newspapers have been cutting staffs and closing. National news outlets have not been immune to the cutback trend. For a generation, the big three broadcast networks have been gutting their news operations. Congress and the state have pulled back from public broadcasting, leaving PBS and NPR to panhandle for dollars from foundations, corporations and viewers/listeners.

There are lots of reasons why the storm and its tragic aftermath were not the Big Story in the national media that it deserved to be:

• The news telling tribe is smaller and different. Cable TV news has always been more niche oriented and attempts to cater to ideological identities to build the loyal audience that will trust only Fox or MSNBC. We tend of think of the “news media” as an it, when it’s always been a they, and the nature of the they is shifting. “Media” is not a thing, it’s still a large, dynamic system, and the old-school, Joe Friday, just-the-facts reporters are not as easy to find.

• The news audience is shrinking. The internet made information and disinformation available for free. Audiences for news programs and readership levels for local newspapers have plunged. The audience for “news” is still large—the internet means many stories get many eyeballs—but we’ve been trained for 25 years to think of news as a free commodity, not, as it was in the past, a service that was paid for via subscription and/or ads. The Gazette managed to get a paper out Tuesday after the storm, but fewer of us read it than would have in the past, not just because of delivery issues (all streets blocked by felled trees—ironic that dead trees kept a newspaper from being distributed) but also because readership penetration has been eroding for years. It’s long been true in America that we are suspicious of the media for manipulating the audience, and we ignore the reality that the opposite is even more true. The audience builds the media. It’s even more so in this internet era, but always was a key fact: What gets paid attention to in the media environment flourishes; what gets ignored withers. If we pay attention to “The Epoch Times” or other such media outlets, we the audience are building a nonsense media system to replace news media.

• The derecho story doesn’t fit media paradigms. A hurricane doesn’t sneak up on anybody, and there is an information infrastructure built around tracking and reporting such a storm. This derecho was a summer thunderstorm—an everyday occurrence—but on steroids. Derechos have happened before, just not like this. This was a monster storm that formed in South Dakota and Nebraska and swept across the Midwest almost to Ohio. Nobody expected it. Good Morning America didn’t have a reporter on the beach somewhere in a yellow poncho to show that, yes, wind is blowing. It didn’t hit major, known cities on the East Coast or Gulf Coast—no New Orleans, Miami or New York City were in its path. Chicago felt it, but not like Des Moines or Cedar Rapids (or Marshalltown or Vinton). And so, it came, it went, and the suffering it left in its wake was mostly uncovered in the days that followed the devastation.

I am not here to offer simple “solutions.” Franky, I think I’ve only begun to identify the multiple roots of a complex problem. And my delusional Facebook friend at least does have a point: Social media does democratize information. That can be a bad thing when Russian trolls can derail American democracy, but our modern media environment does give voice to the formerly voiceless.

And, to play devil’s advocate, its inevitable that this won’t be the Big Story of 2020. For those of us in Cedar Rapids, we’re obsessed with the derecho and its aftermath—and it is a big story that deserves more national coverage. Yet, this is 2020. An unchecked global pandemic rages and our country is the epicenter because of a totally botched government lack of response. Our dysfunctional political system lurches into another dangerous, dark-money dominated election season, with no adult leadership attempting to rationally protect our sick body politic. The Trump administration is successfully tossing sand into the gears of government at many levels, crippling or hurting the EPA, the Postal Service, the CDC, the Justice Department—it’s a draining of the swamp that is creating a government derecho that will take years to clean up from.

2020: The Democrats nominate Joe Biden this week, the Republicans will crown King Donald I next week. The election seems a world away—a week can be an eternity in 2020—but it sucks up media attention.

The derecho? Yesterday’s news. Well, not really, the suffering is real and continues. Local journalists Beth Malichi and Lyz Lenz have both brought some attention to the storm in the national media, which is good, although on “Talk of Iowa” Aug. 19 on NPR, Lenz bemoaned that it takes an op/ed in the Washington Post to get some national media attention.

“Talk of Iowa” had a show this morning about covering the derecho storm, and it featured some key Cedar Rapids journalists. One was Andy Abeyta, a Gazette photographer, who was out on Interstate 380 when the derecho hit, and he saw multiple trucks that had been blown over. He used his cell phone to make some images of one rescue of a trucker (he had his camera in his car but did not grab it because he ran up to the truck to assist in the rescue, but thankfully others were able to come to the trucker’s aid first).

Besides Andy, it was an all X chromosome show, featuring host Charity Nebbe; Michaela Ramm, a Gazette reporter; Lyz Lenz, a Gazette columnist; and Beth Malicki, a local TV news anchor on KCRG. Here are just three quotes from those journalists that stood out to me:

• “It’s astounding, the level of devastation.” Michaela Ramm, Gazette reporter. She is based in Iowa City and was talking about driving into Cedar Rapids the day after the storm.

• “We’re still struggling here on the ground to get the reality of the devastation—that story—told.” Liz Lenz, Gazette columnist.

• “It (help) came so late that people were truly suffering,” Beth Malicki, KCRG TV anchor. Later, more from Malicki: “It is immoral how the response has not met the need.” She wasn’t pointing a finger at any agency, and was grateful for the many people who have gone out of their way to help, but rightfully bemoaning the lack of coordination.

The country needs to hear our story because aid follows narrative. Which is, in itself, also part of the problem—it should not take tears form Malicki on national TV (reference to her appearance on an ABC program, not the video from PBS I embedded) to draw coverage to Iowa.

I would rather that FEMA be able to find a disaster without having to see it on Good Morning America, a Washington Post op/ed or hearing about it as a trending Twitter hashtag.

Defund the media? I say, put the P back into PBS and NPR. Fund the media. Not because they are popular, but because telling the story is necessary.

If nothing else, the derecho is another example of how starving credible media leads to an information desert that social media does not fill.

In Pandemic, Trump Will Save Us—From TikTok

Donald Trump: What a walking, talking ad for the dangers of life in an info-bubble. The most powerful man on the planet, with a whole infrastructure of private intelligence available to him, relies instead on his own chosen poor media habits.

And how like Donald Trump I am, in a way. We all are, to some extent. The information we see on Facebook and Twitter is largely our own construct—we build our personal internets through our click choices. Which is why sources beyond the bubble are so important. I still get a morning paper delivered—a dead tree landing with a thump on an eco-friendly, tree-hugger’s doorstep—partly as an antidote to my own social media echo chamber.

White House image of Trump.

It’s not a revolutionary observation, but it bears repeating. Our smart phones of are making us stupid. In Donald’s case, it’s also that cable TV isn’t helping all that much.

This week, rich CEOs of tech companies were grilled by a Congressional committee—Democrats worried about anti-trust practices, Republicans worried that right-wing nut jobs pushing delusional conspiracy theories are sometimes limited. They both have a point. Much as I’m not fond of the alt-right universe, one of my blogs was banned from Facebook for a time for no particular good reason. On the other hand, when you retweet fringe doctors giving bad, dangerous advice during a pandemic—well, having your account suspended for a time isn’t so much censorship as it is attempting to save lives.

Looking at you, Don Jr. The dunce acorn didn’t fall far from the stupid tree.

But fussing about Facebook censorship or Facebook power kind of misses the point. Facebook is the most public of graffiti tunnels where everybody has a paint can and we all spray freely. It’s ugly sometimes, sometimes pretty—but just as a college student should never cite “google” as a source in a paper (trust me, sadly, they do), Facebook isn’t the source. We build our own Facebook neighborhoods from personal and other sources, and I’m not sure how far we should expect Facebook to protect us from ourselves.

Anyway, when I read a CNN story this morning about the president’s souring mood, one of the aspects of it that struck a chord with me was the way that the President is so isolated. He built walls of right-wing nonsense around himself. He has carefully planted disinformation weeds that have chocked the garden of his mind, and he can’t see reality from inside that clouded bubble. (Yeah, it’s not mixed metaphors so much as metaphor hash. Try it with hot sauce.)

How so very 2020. And at a time when we need leadership to tackle a global crisis, we instead have a rudderless, lost soul, whose idea of what we need right now is to ban TikTok.

Not the mechanical man from the twisted mind that brought you “The Wizard of Oz,” but it’s modern video app. There are concerns with TikTok. It’s owned by a Chinese company, and like all social media internet sites and smartphone apps, is partly design to harvest data form its users for purposes the users aren’t always aware of.

But why is it being banned? Why is Trump concerned about it now?

Well, he can’t conquer COVID-19, mostly because he refuses to ever be wrong. He put Jared and Mike in charge, and it turns out they aren’t the best people. He won’t listen to Dr. Andrew because the good doctor keeps contradicting the ignorance Trump keeps spouting on the topic. He can’t bring himself to fight the virus, so he can instead lashes out at China and a
Chinese cell phone app. If only Vladimir Putin were president of China, I think Trump would be much more at peace with it.

It is a sad, tragic fact, that while we can’t rid ourselves of this virus by willing or wishing it away (Trump has tried that), it is not that difficult to greatly limit it’s spread. But that would require actually listening to reputable sources and showing leadership, two things which seem beyond Trump.

The bubble he lives it, it’s not a clear bubble. And Trump can’t seem to see the harsh realities that lie outside it.

Well, at least he can try to shut up Sarah Cooper. Because, you know, TikTok is our biggest problem right now.

Oh, Sarah. Say it ain't so.