The Key Word: ‘Impeached’

How my local paper reported the news.

The Poynter Institute had as an interesting page that shows a few front pages from the impeachment of Donald Trump and Bill Clinton, two of the only three U.S. presidents to be impeached.

I know Donald J. Trump, despite being manifestly unfit for office and clearly guilty of all kind of impeachable shenanigans, is pretty much assured of acquittal by the Senate. Still, he is forever an impeached president.

It was kind of interesting reading Facebook comments on The Gazette’s image of their front page from Thursday, covering the news. Several comments were along the lines of “he hasn’t been impeached” and “fake news.”

Because he will win in the Senate. But, legal eagles, impeached means “charged,” and the Senate merely renders a verdict on whether to remove the President. Because the House has voted, he has been impeached.

And that word “impeached” screamed from many front pages.

Anyway, downloaded from the Newseum web site, here are 25 front pages to mark the big event for this week in history:

And So Anna Becomes Queen

Disney publicity image downloaded from Variety web site. Anna wonders: What the heck is my odd older sister up to now?

Elsa has retired and moved north to live as some sort of ice demigod, the fifth elemental spirit in this tale with an ecological subtext.

The dam is bad. We need brute force (send in the brutes) to get rid of the damn thing.

I just saw “Frozen II,” and I was impressed. I think Disney was a bit taken aback by the success of the first movie in this franchise, and as always when such a story succeeds, there’s the question of where does it go from here?

And the central unresolved question of “Frozen” was: What the heck is Elsa? And that’s exactly the MacGuffin for this plot. Unless you consider four stones with rather bland logos for elemental forces to be four MacGuffins—or is mist a MacGuffin? Are we back to the dam?

Also, is it just me, or is Olaf the character Jar Jar Binks wanted to be but never was?



Whatever. I don’t think “Frozen II” will hit with the power of the first movie. I don’t expect to see YouTube videos of enthusiastic Marines reacting to the signature music video from this film. But there is a lot to like in this second installment.

While there is an environmental theme here, it’s not the main point of the movie. Anna and her journey to womanhood is really more what’s going on. Elsa is being lured down a different life path by a siren voice who turns out to be ghost mom who also sends ghost horse—but then Elsa dies and is reanimated, so maybe “Frozen II” is a reverse zombie apocalypse there the zombie saves the town and installs the sweet younger sister as the benign despot.

But I’m getting away from my point, if I had one. I’m like Olaf explaining the plot.

I liked this movie partly because it allowed its characters to evolve. That’s even a theme that Anna ruminates on, how even a satisfactory moment in time is really only a moment in time, and things inevitably change. Someone once observed that a happy ending always depends on ending the story at the right place, because in the long run, the characters are all dead.

Which is even used as a joke in “Frozen II.” It’s a rather smart movie, with lots to unpack.

Anyway, my actual favorite theme of the movie isn’t the one about how, as Olaf says, technology can save or destroy us, as interesting as that dam theme is. Nor is it about what Elsa is and how Anna gets to be all growed up. Instead, to me the main theme is Anna facing the likelihood of her best possible choice destroying the town that she loves and is princess of.

To have peace, it’s necessary to tear down that wall. In this case, the wall is holding a reservoir full of water, and doing the right thing means flooding Arendelle. Meanwhile, Olaf has apparently expired, her sister’s fate is unknown but not good given that her magic is ending and Anna is depressed, discouraged and alone.

And she repeats a line that comes up several times in “Frozen II.” What do you do when all is lost, your dreams are shattered and Hillary Clinton was not elected?

“Do the next right thing,” Anna mutters to herself.

That line really resonated, to me, and is the most important theme from “Frozen II.” It’s a message for our times. Indeed, a transcendent message for many times. That’s a pretty deep thought from younger sister in a sequel children’s movie with magic trolls and singing reindeer.

But it works, for me. I hope to remember those words and use them myself.

Go see “Frozen II.” You may find yourself wondering, as I did, whether a giant snowflake would really save the town—sure, the wave was diverted, but wouldn’t the waters rise anyway? That’s not really the point. Elsa’s magic always was a little edgy and improbable (she can create life and nobody seems concerned about whether Olaf has a soul?).

It’s a movie about the sidekick. It's a movie about Anna. And doing the right thing even when all seems lost. And that seems enough.

What Fame is For

From https://www.abeautifulday.movie/, Tom Hanks as Fred Rogers and Matthew Rhys as Tom Junod.

In “A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood,” Esquire magazine writer Tom Junod (Matthew Rhys) asks public TV children’s show host Fred Rogers (Tom Hanks) about fame.

“Fame is a four-letter word,” Fred says. And it all depends on what you do with it. What he did with it was to help the people around him, and you can't watch this movie without wishing it were so for other famous TV figures.

The sweet story of “A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood” did draw me in. I was a bit old for the TV show, but saw it in snippets when I was growing up.

It was never my favorite. The pace was too slow for me, but then again, I was too old for the show.

Mr. Rogers had a way of talking to younger viewers at their level, and from all I’ve heard, not knowing the man, it came from a genuine desire to help children navigate this life.

Hanks is a good choice to play Rogers. He doesn’t imitate too much, but does remind one of the actual Fred Rogers.

The movie makes real life and the Land of Make Believe a bit similar, showing a toy New York. My wife and I both laughed when a toy plane touched down with realistic noises. But that fit, somehow. The idealized version of reality was the world as seen through the lens of the TV show.

And it was a cool movie, partly because it showed what a TV studio looks like and functions. You do feel a bit sorry for the whole crew who has to wait it out while Fred Rogers is being so nice to someone.

If you grew up at all with Mr. Rogers, I think you’ll love this movie. If you like writing and journalism, it’s not a bad portrayal of how life and reporting can interact.

And it will leave you feeling a bit better about this mortal existence. That’s about all a kid’s TV show or movie about it could do, I suppose.

And the Music Winner for Now is YouTube

What music site do you prefer?

I listen to Pandora on some computers, because it’s convenient to sign into on many devices. I have Spotify installed on my office computer at home.

I kind of like Spotify because it suggests interesting new music to me. I’m sure I never heard “Hole” before Spotify suggested Malibu, and although I consider it a bit of a guilty pleasure, that’s still a pleasure.

But when I’m working at some mundane task that doesn’t require much attention, I’m likely to just launch a list suggested by YouTube. Yeah, I know, I’m being controlled by the Overlords at Google, and I get exposed to the maximum number of ads that way, but still, YouTube just seems to make the best guesses about what I might like. I think Phoebe Bridgers and The Big Moon both came onto my radar through the magical algorithms of Google.

Facebook, you think you know me, and you probably do. But my robot overlords really control me through Google and YouTube.

Anyway, when I want a break from the disaster that is the Trump impeachment reality TV show, here are some recent songs that have been the background of my life:

First, Phoebe with “Motion Sicnekss.” I often find that live recordings by radio stations—often public ones—gives me the best versions of songs, and while I like her official music video, I think this version is better:


Next, Tessa Violet, because who doesn’t need some Tessa now and then? And she has a new album. Hmmm. Christmas is coming. I like all of the songs I’ve heard from the album, this one in particular:


Third, The Big Moon, because, why not? I used one of their videos on a recent post on my bike blog, and here is another of their songs accompanied by another whimsical video:


Fourth, Taylor Swift, of all people. I have to be in a mood to listen to Taylor, she’s rarely my first choice, but when I want some pop, there she is. Both the banter and the music are entertaining in this NPR concert, and if you don’t watch NPR tiny desk concerts, there’s a whole new world of time suck on YouTube waiting for you:


Last, guiltiest of guilty pleasures. No, I am not a big Courtney Love fan, but in truth several of her songs are catchy:


All of my choices are women. Hmmmm. Men are welcome to sing, too, but I guess I'm liking listening to women. Must be the antidote to Trump.

Spotlight on a Film that Gets Journalism Right

Brian d’Arcy James and Rachel McAdams in Tom McCarthy’s Spotlight. Photograph: Allstar/Open Road Films—from The Guardian.com. I like how they hold pens and use notebooks--a small thing, but that's what a reporter would look like during an interview.

 Last week, students in my media law and ethics class got to snack on pretzels and enjoy one of those rare classes where Joe didn’t spend too much time talking. We watched most of the 2015 movie “Spotlight.”

It’s a sobering film to watch at a Catholic university. But it’s a great film, in my opinion. NPR liked it, too.
 The all-star cast does a great job of creating the feel of journalism as it actually is, something that is very rarely seen in movies. These people aren’t glamorous or rich—they are inquisitive, intelligent writers who are feeling around in the dark, trying to find the story. They don’t know what the story is when they start.

And the people they are dealing with are not simple, either. There are multiple points of view, multiple levels of deception and truth telling.

As I re-watched the film with students, I was struck by the many memorable lines in the film:

Liev Schreiber, playing the new editor of “The Boston Globe” Marty Baron, introduces us to some journalism jargon, noting an opinion column about an abuse speech. “What’s the follow on that?”

That a priest would abuse so many kids “strikes me as an essential story for a local paper,” he adds. One overt key lesson of the movie, to me, is the importance of the kind of journalism that the Spotlight team at the Globe represents and that sadly is passing away as American journalism contracts.

But on to the memorable quotes from the movie. Stanley Tucci, as lawyer Mitchell Garabedian, is conversing with a Globe reporter and notes the system of secrecy that existed in the Archdiocese of Boston. “If it takes a village to raise a child, it takes a village to abuse one,” he says.

The class I was teaching lasts an hour and 50 minutes, and the movie is a bit over two hours long. I put a DVD on reserve in the library, and students are required to finish the movie, and write an essay answering some discussion questions I posted.

The class movie viewing was last week. Papers are due Thursday. I’m excited to read what students think. The movie, I hope, will pack some impact with them.

And at least they got to see one movie with actors and actress who actually look and act like the journalists I worked with during my newspaper career.

Boonville Daily News, circa 1985. JK. Michael Keaton, Liev Schreiber, Mark Ruffalo, Rachel McAdams, John Slattery and Brian D'Arcy James are members of the Boston Globe investigation team that uncovers a sex-abuse scandal involving the Catholic Church in the film, Spotlight. Kerry Hayes/Open Road Films—from NPR.org.

The Beer Can Sign That Delineates Iowa’s Divide

Carson King held up a sign at the Iowa-Iowa State Football game asking for beer money, and like seismic forces beneath the earth’s crust pushing tectonic plate against plate, a Des Moines Register story suddenly caused a major media quake.

The fault line was already there. It’s easy to blame President Trump and his nasty “fake news” rhetoric, but his message resonates for some of Iowans. And on the King story, Iowa has gone beyond crazy.

Image downloaded from KCRG.com, credited there to KCCI. Carson and his sign.

The Des Moines Register, in the wake of King’s beer sign and online fund-raising drawing oodles of money for the University of Iowa Children’s Hospital, reported on some racist tweets King wrote as a teen. To his credit, King didn’t shy away from the truth, admitted he had sent tweets he now considered shameful, and apologized.

But there is a growing anti-journalism cultural strain that has been building up energy for years. The King saga, for some reason, unleashed an unholy upheaval that threatens to level the media landscape in its wake.

Well, good, some would say. Those nasty liberal Des Moines Register libtards are getting what they deserve. Who needs a newspaper—indeed who reads a newspaper—anyway?

I don’t think it was coincidental that Republican Gov. Kim Reynolds quickly joined team King. Republicans in the state, even before the fake-news-in-chief became president, have been divorcing themselves from traditional media coverage—refusing newspaper invitations to speak with editorial boards, not returning candidate questionnaires, never acknowledging that there is any legitimate or important role for traditional news media.

Image by Rod Boshart of the Gazette, King and Reynolds.

And after the economic recession of 2008, newspapers have been in a constant state of turmoil and retrenching. One can hope that the internet will allow more growth of viable alternatives for news, but sadly, the economic model of the online world heavily favors the giant corporations running the show and not the ink-jet-printer-stained wretches producing the content.

Anyway, the King story took on a wild life of its own. In its wake, for reasons that honestly make little sense to me, the entire staff of RAGBRAI resigned and have started an alternative Iowa Ride. Yes, I know, the Register would not let the director of RAGBRAI speak freely—but that’s not an unusual action for a corporation, media or not, in the midst of a crisis.

Why was the King story the trigger for this quake? I think it has something to do with a certain disdain for modern times that defines a kind of building cultural backlash. Iowans used to be known for being literate, well-educated and tolerant. That was then—maybe the 1970s or so. Now, we’ve underfunded our public schools for decades, trashed higher education and become more suspicious of newcomers and outsiders. In too many cities and towns, among too many white Iowans, casual racism is common and expected to be excused, especially if it comes from the young.

And we, good white Iowans, don’t like them darn liberals shaking their nanny state fingers at us and telling us we have to tolerate Mexicans and blacks and homos and all those others who don’t, by God, respect the imagined glory of rural America.

I think Gazette columnist Lyz Lenz says it well in a column posted this week entitled “We are missing the point.” She writes:

 “It’s telling how many white Iowans have mumbled to themselves about their own social media history, as if it was somehow a rite of passage to be occasionally racist in your past. It’s not, actually. Nor should it be. But we tell on ourselves with what we fear: We don’t fear racism, we fear being discovered for it. We fear the reporter asking about our misdeeds more than we fear actually doing them.”

The other thread of this odd saga is that people want their heroes unstained by reality. They want Carson King cheered, and nobody to look too closely or ask too many questions. This, for instance, is verbatim a comment on the RAGBRAI web site following the latest bicycle ride blow to the Register:

“Hey Des Moines Register, don’t bother trying to have your ride this year. Anyone can see how badly you’ve handled this situation and every move you make digs your hole deeper. There is no recovering from this disaster. After 11 RAGBRAI’s, I’ll be proudly supporting Iowa’s Ride and the people who stood up to your liberal censorship. To recap, your actions so far have been to drag a young man’s name through the mud (all while he was donating $3 million to a children’s hospital), drop a bomb into what was, arguably the feel good story of 2019, ruin the reputation and career of a reporter doing your bidding and now, ruin the greatest cross state ride in history. I hope the idiotic editors who chose to run that crap are happy.”

Well. I doubt that they’re happy. Carson King got a day named after him, and frankly seems to have behaved far more rationally than the crowd of King minions. And I don’t know how editors, in deciding how to handle the King story, could have or should have anticipated the bomb that the RAGBRAI staff had in store.

And so it goes. I do not think the Register showed good judgement in how it handled the original story—and I am also not so proud that the reporter, who himself was guilty of iffy past posts, was separated so quickly from the paper. But the Register’s story, even if it was badly done, was factual. The response to one editorial misstep has been beyond overboard—it’s a nuclear response to a spitball.

The Register doesn’t need to be burned to the ground, nor do its editors or reporters need to be threatened.

Right now, our nation is lurching towards a Constitutional crisis. And the election of 2020, already well underway in Iowa, is shaping up to be more bitter and divisive than the rhetorical blood bath of 2016.

And we Iowans are most outraged that Iowa’s largest newspaper would dare to actually research the social media history of a suddenly prominent person.

It’s not the only sign, if additional ones were needed, of how anti-media this once savvy state has become. Take the recent case of The Carroll Times Herald, a once daily paper that is now published twice a week. Last year, that paper investigated a local police officer and found that he, a married man, was having inappropriate romantic relations with local teenage girls. The girls were not underage, so the law was not broken, but the officer involved resigned and admitted in court afterwards that the relationships, which led to vandalism committed by jealous young girlfriends, were not appropriate.

And yet, the officer sued the paper for libel. The paper won. The judge issued a 10-page ruling that basically said the paper’s original stories were true. See the Washington Post’s story. Their image, below, had this caption: Douglas Burns, the Carroll Times Herald's co-owner, pictured at a newsstand. (Provided by Douglas Burns)

Picture from the Washington Post.

The prize for journalistic accuracy? Crushing debt for a small local business that has had to set up online fund raising in an effort to stay afloat.

The price of truth telling is getting higher, these days. Unlike the Register, the Times Herald, as far as I can see, didn’t engage in iffy editorial judgements—it acted as a good local newspaper should, as the watchdog for its community, pointing out the ill deeds of a local official.

And for that, it joins the Register in being at risk.

Too many of us have allowed a cancerous anti-fact and anti-news attitude to take hold in this once proud state. The most obvious tumor is the giant orange one in the White House, but his ignorant rants about fake news are just the outward manifestation of a deeper, darker cultural trend.

Trash the newspaper. Hate the messenger. Defend the “good” white Iowans. Look to the pastoral past, not the uncertain future. Defund education. Forget controlling pollution. Quit telling us this perfect place is at risk due to climate change or racism or other large demographic and economic trends that we don’t clearly and easily understand as our education system slips to third rate, our lawmakers forgo public discussion of key laws and our newspapers, sometimes quietly, sometimes loudly in a beer-fueled football induced earthquake, pass away.

I hope it’s not goodbye to sane, sensible, live-and-let-live Iowa. But I fear our knee-jerk online reactions, full of fury and feelings and fear of facts, are not signs that we are on the mend yet.

Gas Lighting Becomes the Nation’s Sport

Portrait of Donald Trump from Wikimedia Commons by DonkeyHotey: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Donald_Trump_-_Portrait_(19209678533).jpg

I have seen way too many comments from Republicans claiming the transcript of President Trump’s disastrous phone call with President Volodymyr Zelensky is a “nothing burger.”

How depressing. An incompetent U.S. president unleashes a confusing word salad in which two things still manage to be abundantly clear: 1) Donald Trump is delusional about kooky right-wing conspiracies—he displays an increasingly erratic and dangerous lack of grip on reality, and 2) Brazenly and openly, he abused the powers of his office to try to get a foreign power to influence the next U.S. presidential election.

Russian collusion in 2016—not proven, but likely. That Russia interfered in 2016, proven beyond doubt. And here comes Donald Trump in 2019, calling a fellow TV star who become president in this crazy era, acting treasonous.

There, I said it: The T word. Trump the traitor. And you know how we used to treat traitors when we were smarter, right?

No, I don’t want an act of violence against the president, so don’t refer me to the Secret Service. I’m echoing his own inappropriate words, which he used on the whistle blower who blew the lid off this latest Trump scandal.

And, let’s consider this. Regardless of what you think of the whistle blower and their potential political motives, they filed a report in the system and let the U.S. government investigate. It was not the whistle blower who attempted to go outside of the law to draw in a foreign nation to further personal political gain.

The traitor in this tale is the addle-brained old man who has such a hypnotic hold on the Republican party that even now the senior senator from my state has attacked Democrats for looking into this scandal.

I read the transcript, too. Instead of a nothing burger, it’s 100 percent pure Angus bullshit. True, I’m not a lawyer and may need some help understating the legal ramifications, but besides appearing, as he usually does, incapable of normal human speech, let’s just review how much wrong burger there was from Trump and his criminal gang in the White House before and after this call:

• Trump puts a hold on military aid to Ukraine, a democracy threatened by an anti-democratic Russia. He then calls the president of said country and, when asked about the aid, immediately launches into his personal political agenda. None of the moves our president has made here make any policy sense in terms of his doing the job the minority of voters elected him to do. There is no hint in the call that Trump was trying to advance a government interest on behalf of the U.S. In this whole scheme, it was clearly Trump pushing Trump, the country be damned.

• Trump desperately seeks any dirt he can on Joe Biden through Joe Biden’s son’s connections to Ukraine. This is not a new story, and the true “nothing burger” is that there is, at this point, no apparent reason to investigate Hunter Biden. One odd attribute of Trump is that he projects his flaws onto his opponents—corrupt politician who makes shady deals on behalf of a sleazy family? His name isn’t “Biden,” it’s “Trump.” When Trump howls at the moon and invents crazy nicknames, so often it’s such a weird mirror of his own flaws.

• Trump’s minions spring into Keystone Cops action after the call. It’s hot, let’s classify with the deepest secrets! A complaint is filed that by law triggers a report to Congress, let’s ignore the law! When the heat gets too hot, an edited transcript will show what a great call it was! When the transcript lands like a javelin missile and suddenly impeachment is in the air, lets get our talking points in order—and email them to Nancy Pelosi!

And then there are Trump’s Tweets this week. President Trump has been singing like a canary, and it’s not pretty. Besides inappropriately attacking a 16-year-old girl who is a climate activist, he is suddenly ranting in all caps in a fire hose of nonsense. He’s injured, he’s hurt, he’s screaming—and he appears to be unhinged. This crazy Twitter twit is the President of the United States, who claimed in 2016 that it was so easy to act presidential. Still waiting.

Yikes. Nothing burger? More like tons of crazy burger.

Dear Chuck and Joni: I know politics is hard, but how far will you go for political advantage? Are you really willing to put all of our political norms at risk—to burn down the house rather than have new tenants move in? And how in the name of any sane universe can the problem that you see in this mess be that Democrats don’t like Trump?

Where is your duty to the republic, to law, to the Constitution?

If you want to be a true patriot now, then it is time to clearly articulate that what Trump has done this fortnight is out of bounds, so far beyond a Sharpie tumor on a weather map that it’s time for you to face the facts and to tell the truth.

You’re not just the Republican senators from Iowa. You are United States senators from Iowa, sworn to uphold the Constitution. For all our sakes, stop the nonsense and do some upholding.

This is clearly beyond a nothing burger. I did read the Mueller Report, and it wasn’t as empty as some seem to think and portray—there were impeachable offenses there, too. Be that as it may, maybe people of good heart can disagree on that report.

But the call to Ukraine? To say there’s nothing there is to gaslight us. We can read it and see it. Don’t try to say it’s OK. It’s clearly not in the neighborhood of OK. Don’t turn away from it. This is our president trying to get a foreign leader to dig up political dirt for him on a candidate for his office. You must, if you care about the country, call Trump out.

Ingrid Bergman from "Gaslight."
Public domain publicity image.

Trump is making it clearer day by scandalous day that he needs to be ousted from the oval office—either by voters or by the Senate acting as a jury.

And at this point, it’s beyond a doubt that there is a case to be made to impeach Donald Trump.

Maybe in the end, you would conclude, based on the testimony presented, that it’s not a case worth convicting Donald Trump on, but the recent events have opened a required path. An investigation here is necessary, and you must support that point if you are truly going to be a patriot. Let the committees meet and call witnesses and stop hassling about whether the House needs to consider impeachment.

It must. Not for partisan points, but because the Constitution and its norms and our continued republic requires it.

So, Sen. Grassley: Near the end of your long public service, will you be remembered as a clear thinker with a backbone who spoke the truth, or as another of the sycophants who has climbed aboard the gaslight express? Are you willing to stand up for what you know to be true?

And Sen. Ernst—where is that spunky Iowa girl who was going to make corrupt politicians squeal? You wore our nation’s uniform to defend it. More than when you were serving in that uniform, your nation needs you now. It’s time for you to stand up for the truth, which means confronting your party and an errant President. It’s your duty. No gaslighting. You know it.

God save the republic. Because Iowa Republicans don’t seem to be interested in that job.

Well, Why Didn’t Tom Just Call the Cops?

;
“Downton Abbey” probably isn’t a great movie. There are some plot holes. I can’t help but wonder why Tom ended up rescuing the king when he could have just gone to the cops earlier? The running-parade scene seemed strange and turned ridiculous.

Whatever. The dowager was in rare form, Mary was the ice queen as usual, and the servants were at war with other servants. There was pointless intrigue and plots.

And a gay dance in Yorkshire.

While it may not have been a great film, I was totally engrossed. It was lush and silly and satisfying. It started with train wheels, and moved on to gorgeous old cars. For a while, it was the late 1920s, a king had not abdicated after running off with an American, a fascist had not risen yet in Germany and the stock market has not yet crashed.

It might have been interesting to move the characters ahead say a dozen years and have them cope with the onset of another great war, but then again, the children would be teens then, and a whole new cast of characters would have to be introduced.

Well, if you were fan of the TV show, you’ve been summoned. Seeing the grand house on the big screen is totally worth it. Although you may wonder a bit about Tom, who always seems to get stuck in the oddest of the plot twists. They had to manufacture another relative out of nothing, just for him.

Still, my wife and I enjoyed two hours of total escape this Saturday and that's something. Silly British posh soap opera, I have missed you.

How to keep the republic strong in a social media era

Painting n the U.S. Capitol, by Howard Chandler Christy, in 1940, depicting signing of the Constitution.

As he was leaving a meeting of the constitutional convention in 1787, which was debating in secret over a new government blueprint for the infant United States of America, the elderly Benjamin Franklin, so the story goes, was accosted by a Mrs. Powell of Philadelphia.

“Well doctor,” she asked. “Are we to have a monarchy or a republic?”

Benjamin Franklin by Joseph-Siffred Duplessis.

The ever-quotable Franklin immediately replied:

“A republic. If you can keep it.”

At the time, the convention was riven by partisanship. Two political factions battled for power—the federalists, commercial and urban groups who thought a strong central government was the key to economic prosperity; and the anti-federalists, rural landowners who worried that a strong central government might threaten individual liberty.

To get the Constitution ratified, the federalists struck a bipartisan deal. One of the first orders of business for the new Congress of the United States would be to propose a list of constitutional amendments to spell out guarantees of individual liberty, a so-called Bill of Rights.

Today we recognize the first of those 10 amendments as having been crucial in our history to our republic’s public life. And the language of that First Amendment has never been more relevant:

“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.”

Bill of Rights original text. There were 12 amendments proposed, the first two were not ratified. What we call the First Amendment today was the Third Amendment in the proposal.

Why freedom of the speech and of the press? Well, in the 1700s, the founders were familiar with a radical British political theory that included the ideal of a “marketplace of ideas,” that an educated public with open access to information unfiltered by government authority should be able to discern truth from falsehood and make rational political choices.

And the Constitution that the founders wrote, a flawed document built on political compromises, still lurches along. It spawned a vibrant republic.

Well done, Ben and company. Except …

It’s no secret that the news media in this country is in upheaval. Fewer staff members toil in local newsrooms. At the same time, disinformation spreads quickly via the internet.

The founders who imagined a marketplace of ideas didn’t contemplate algorithms on social media sites that would measure our clicks and preferences and serve us each an echo chamber of our own prejudices. Nor did they contemplate a president governing via Twitter, calling journalists “enemies of the people.”

In Iowa, we get a front-row seat early in each presidential season. For us, the campaign of 2020 has been underway for months.

More than 200 years ago, the founders of this republic recognized that a free press was a necessary condition to have a self-governing, democratic republic. Today, with staffs of newsrooms shrinking, trolls stalking our twitter world, and crazy theories finding an equal footing with truth in the cyber universe, it’s becoming more of a challenge to have faith in the marketplace of ideas.

 What is the role of news media in the election of 2020? How are the ideals of freedom speech and of the press still relevant to our ongoing effort to maintain our republic? In an era when media are called “enemies” and “fake news,” whose information can you trust?

On Constitution Day 2019, Tuesday, Sept. 17, at 7 p.m. in Betty Cherry Heritage Hall, Mount Mercy University will host a panel discussion on how our First Amendment freedoms interact with the 2020 election campaign.

I and another MMU faculty member, Dr. Richard Barrett, assistant professor of political science, will be joined by several media figures—including Zack Kucharski, executive editor of The Gazette; and Lyle Muller, retired editor of Iowa Watch—to discuss these issues.

I hope you can join us and help us talk about these big issues as jointly we strive to keep our republic.

Note: The preceding was published by "The Gazette" in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, on Sept. 15, 2019, as a guest column on page 4D. The only editing I could find that they did to my text was to add "strong" to the headline and to insert a paragraph mark at the end--the sentence "I hope you can join us" was part of the previous paragraph in my draft. I present the text here as it was published in "The Gazette." Most images in this post are from Wikimedia Commons, except my image of the column and an image of a poster created by the Marketing and Communication office at Mount Mercy University.

Poster on campus. More information on the MMU web site.

Memoirs that Make Me Wonder on The Why of XY

Earlier this on this blog, I noted that I enjoyed reading Michelle Obama’s memoir this summer.

Well, last night I finished “Godland” by Lyz Lenz. Immediately before that, I read “Born a Crime” by Trevor Noah.

Reading them back to back was not really by design, but it seems a fortunate coincidence. I liked both books—both authors have interesting stories to tell, and are worth your time if you enjoy memoirs. And I see some parallels between these works by a African late-night comedy show host and an opinion columnist at my local newspaper.

One uniting theme is that, for an old white man (today is by 61st birthday), both books have interesting insights into the lives of women. That may be obvious in Lenz’s book and less obvious in Noah’s. But Trevor Noah’s memoir is very much a rumination on his relationship with the single woman who brought him onto this globe—his mom, who was shot in the head by his stepfather.

Noah’s book first—it's filled with poignant anecdotes and is also quite funny. That may seem strange for a book that concludes with the aforementioned violence, but (spoiler alert), his mother survived with minor injuries, the bullet passing through her head without entering her brain or destroying another life-required structure.

The book is very accessible—the fact that Trevor grew up in another culture on another continent somehow makes the stories of his misspent youth resonate more. Weren’t we all young and awkward and struggling to understand our moms? But the book left me angry at the universe, in a way, partly because the man who shot Noah’s mother suffered very little in return.

The patriarchy strikes again.

Speaking of anger, there is a fair amount of it in “Godland,” but mostly there is a yearning for completeness and a quest for it. Lenz wrote about the time when her marriage broke down and she was left adrift, seeking a new spiritual home as she rejected the male dominated churches she had been at home in.

The end of “Godland” is pretty powerful, and sneaked up on a me a bit, just because I had not looked ahead and didn’t know the number of footnote pages there would be. I was reading last night, and thought that this chapter, about her experience in a new church, not only seems pretty powerful, but is bringing the themes of this book together.

And I turned the page, and there was half a page of text facing footnotes. Well, cool? Except I wasn’t quite ready for it to be over, and I wish Lenz had written more. Well, that's a measure of a book you like, I suppose, that you yearn for the time you engrossed in it when it ends. At least with her new job at The Gazette, I'll be getting fairly frequent Lenz fixes anyway.

Although both Lenz and Noah have very different religious attitudes and different faith backgrounds, God is a potent character in both books, too. Across time and continents, Jesus can provide some pretty universal themes, which I guess is not really a surprise, but was interestingly on display in these books.

One contrast between these two books is that Lenz does a lot more reporting, while Noah is sticking with his personal experiences. Yet, Noah’s book, which roams over his childhood, high school years and early career, felt “broader” to me. It stretches over more time in his life, while Lenz wrote a tighter personal narrative on a narrower snapshot of her life.

Still, my own personal journey was, in some small measure, enriched by these two writers. And as an old man, I don’t feel that I understand women—but then again, they don’t understand me. In fact, I often don’t understand most men, either—in this life, gender is significant, but not the full story of our joint and severed humanity which makes all of us complicated individuals.

And I consider myself a feminist. I want all humans to be unfettered by biology in their personal journeys—life will throw enough barriers in our ways, we don’t need assumptions or ideas about masculinity or femininity to add to our burdens.

Yet, as demonstrated in both books, women have challenges that are weighted differently. Being heard. Being accepted as leaders. Being paid. Being acknowledged as full-fledged adults. And also, not being shot in the head by angry significant others—those are all human struggles, but they fall unfairly on the XX chromosome-bearing members of my species compared to those of us who express XY traits.

I don’t know why. The reasons are complicated.

And although answers may be elusive, the injustice is simple to see. And both of these books help with that.

Seeking Escape in An Action Movie

Are you looking for an escape from the heartbreaking news of the day?

Well, temporary escape, I hope. Tuning out is the American way of coping with bad news, and it’s a truly bad idea. A democratic republic depends on a populace that, at the very least, pays some attention to news of the day.

So, to briefly, only briefly, escape from the gratuitously violent news of the day, I followed a classic strategy. I went to a theater with my wife, bought a huge tub of popcorn (and a refill), and watched an action movie filled with acrobatic tricks, narrow escapes, and chase and fight scenes.

It even had Keanu Reeves. It was “Toy Story 4.”




When we were on the way to the theater, my wife noted that a friend had said that she cried at every Toy Story movie, and we laughed, a bit. The Toy Story franchise is indeed filled with heart-touching narratives, but hardly draws tears.

And then, near the end, your macho manly movie correspondent choked up. Tears filled my eyes. That lost little girl, that doll, that reunion with her parents—ahhhh.

Ok, Pixar, you did it.

Woody and Forky talking over the meaning of life in "Toy Story 4." Image from Disney.com.

 But wait, there’s more. A few minutes later the familiar cast members gather to say farewell and Godspeed to one of their own—and, sure, the waterworks are ready to start again.

Disney Image. Duke!

And Keanu Reeves! I’m not the biggest KR fan, but he is perfect as a Canadian clueless action doll, pining for the boy who rejected him.

“Toy Story 4” is not a perfect movie. I found the middle action scenes in the antique shop to take up a bit too much time. Toy Story excels in character development and dialogue, which the action sequences support, and the action sometimes is too central in this latest installment.

So maybe number four is not the very best Toy Story movie. But how many movie franchises manage to stay fresh and heartfelt into the fourth movie? And we were a bit skeptical of the idea of “Toy Story 4,” because the third movie felt so final. It would be like a fourth “Lord of the Rings” movie.

We were wrong.

Pixar, your writers are just so darn clever. I do wish Jessie had a more screen time, and wanted more of the interplay with the old cast—interactions between T Rex and Mr. Potato Head, for instance. Still, “Toy Story 4” is totally worth it. Who wouldn’t love the Mr.-Bill-like Forky?

You’ll laugh, you’ll cry, it will move you. And it will provide you some much needed emotional satisfaction in troubled times.

Sound and Fury, Signifying Something

Some observers don’t like political debates because we’re not electing a chief debater, we are electing a president.

Bah, humbug, I say. I found two nights with 10 candidates a bit exhausting, yet still worthwhile. The anti-debate argument is the same that was used in the 19th century when it was considered unseemly for men (back then it was always men) to campaign at all—the thinking being then that a head of state was not a campaigner, and it somehow tarnished the “royalty” of a president to have him do something gauche like ask for votes.

I do not think my vote for president should be solely, or mainly, based on debate performance—but, on the other hand, I think these spectacles are useful because they do give other voters and me a chance to do quick side-by-side comparisons and to “meet” many candidates. Before debates, campaigns were often contests of political advertising, so I appreciate that these events counterbalance that a bit.

Besides, while it’s true a president does not have to debate anyone directly, they do have to publicly articulate ideas and lead by what they say. They do have to make a case and counter ideas and persons that they oppose. And when they fail in that, well, consider the legitimate distress caused by the obvious communication incompetence of the clearly worst president in our nation’s history, Donald the Tweeter Twit Trump.

Anyway, I watched both debates this week. It was a bit easier for me Tuesday night—I found the Wednesday debate a bit harder to follow, a bit wonkier and a lot less positive.

Yet, I’m glad I watched.

The CNN moderators practically displaced their shoulders patting themselves on the back after the first night. I didn’t agree. They were not horrible, but their questions were often deliberately designed to pit candidate vs. candidate, which adds to the drama of the event but doesn’t do enough to show me the substance—that is, rather than provoke a fight between these people, prod them on how their ideas work or don’t work.

A few candidates did stand out to me as doing well in the two debates this week. Here is my list of debate winners, and why I liked their performances (images from Wikimedia commons or Wikipedia):

 Sen. Elizabeth Warren: She was calm, spoke well, and didn’t go after her chief rival for the progressive wing of the party, Sen. Bernie Sanders. She seems a force to be reckoned with, and I admit I would find it delicious to see her debate Donald Trump.

Sen. Amy Klobuchar: Increasingly, my girl. If I had to caucus today, I would be in team Amy. On Tuesday night, she kept more attention on the Don, and contrasting herself with Trump, than many other candidates did. I appreciate a relatively moderate Democrat with a bit of feistiness, and I like the way she emphasized the integrity card. Amy, you’re no Donald Trump. I am not declaring that I am on team Amy today—there are months before the caucus and I’m still shopping around—just that if I had to pick today, Senator Klobuchar’s Tuesday performance would seal the deal for me.

Sen. Cory Booker: I found the Kool-Aid line confusing—I doubt anybody ever knows the flavor because that odd, artificial drink rarely has a distinct flavor. But Cory stood out in being bright, witty and, above all, happy to be there. I like a warrior who relishes the battle—politics should have some sense of joy, and it looked like Senator Booker was having some fun in the fight. He also made positive appeals. “We know in this country our fates are united.” Nice reminder, sir, and on a lackluster second debate night, you spoke well. I like the idea of a Klobuchar-Booker ticket.

Rep. Tulsi Gabbard: I had not given her much thought before, she seemed like an obscure, second tier candidate. I am not on team Tulsi yet—as I noted before I’m a bit more of an Amy fan, but the congresswoman from Hawaii seemed like a woman of substance and passion. I wish, like Corey, that she had a bit more fun, too, but Tulsi seemed to have more depth than I expected.

Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand: Her explanation of white privilege was a little odd because the context was how to appeal to white voters, not now to put them in their place, but still—damn, girl. You were totally, and startlingly, right on target.

A good debate night is not a whole campaign. I’m fond of several other candidates who did not stand out on debate night. Julián Castro is still high on my list of maybe, for example. And Gov. Steve Bullock of Montana needs to do more than point out he won a governor’s race in a Trump state—but he spoke well Tuesday night, and I like the idea of a moderate governor as a candidate.

There were many who did poorly, too. I don’t understand that attraction of Marianne Williamson, nor why some commentators thought she had a good night Tuesday. I found her to be the crazy snake oil lady who prattles on about “causes” and love—not exactly spouting nonsense, but in that neighborhood. And that voice. Who would voluntarily want to be spoken to by the stern hippie nun of the candidates? Marianne, if we need a revolution, I want Pete to lead it, please.

And then there is Pete Buttigieg. I had heard him use his zinger—the Republicans will call us socialists anyway—line before. For me, he had an off night, although he also still seems quite intelligent. I continue to list him among my maybes.

The same week we had the Democrats debate, we had continuing rants form our dumpster fire of a president. Somehow, it surprised no one that the debate moderator he singled out for criticism was the one African-American on the panel. No, Donald Trump, Don Lemon is not the dumbest person on TV. You’re still there.

Anyway, who did you like in the debates, and why?

“Rocketman”: Testing my Musical Tolerance

Have you seen the Elton John biopic “Rocketman”?

I have. And for the first half of the film, I was a bit disappointed. For a biopic, it uses fantasy—it’s like a life told in a dreamscape, and when dancers suddenly start prancing at a fair and singing “Saturday Night’s Alright for Fighting,” the movie didn’t quite work that well for me. I wasn’t into its universe. And I don’t like a title that uses “Alright” rather than “All Right.” It’s two words, Sir Elton.

I didn’t hate the movie. I don’t hate Elton John music. But neither is central to my universe. John’s music, for me, was an artifact of the late 1970s, not a great musical era, in my opinion.

Still, the movie grew on me and slowly drew me in. The Alcoholics Anonymous scenes that had been odd at the start become a bit more real, the segue between them and memory more powerful. By the time of the pool scene, the fantastical, dreamy nature of the story telling was going down more smoothly
.

And, in the end, I did enjoy the film. I am not even sure why I resisted at first. After all, I grew up on musicals, so I’m not one of those people who are irritated when dancers show up and interrupt the narrative. I recall a co-worker at a previous job 20 years complaining that she had watched a Clint Eastwood movie, and all of a sudden there was all this singing.

She was complaining about “Paint Your Wagon,” to me the best and most entertaining Clint Eastwood movie of all time.

The early albums my parents bought, besides Homer and Jethro, were Rodgers and Hammerstein.

Maybe it was that the music in this movie didn’t always fit or serve the narrative all that well. Maybe I didn’t relate to the fantasy early 1960s theme. Maybe the indifferent parents seemed too two-dimensional for real people in a real life.

But by the end, the rumination on the nature of rock and roll fame and its price was interesting.

And, in the end, I couldn’t help but wonder about a few things. I would have liked to see “Candle in the Wind,” for example—either or both versions. Or a bit more about his financial crash and recovery, as well as his personal one.

It seemed a more straight telling of a narrative, despite its dreamlike feel, than “Bohemian Rhapsody,” for example, and yet the Queen film was more powerful. Maybe I’m just a sucker for cheap movie emotional tricks.

Maybe I need to return more to my Rodgers and Hammerstein roots.

The Saga of Sarah Comes to a Close

From Wikipedia, official government portrait used for press secretary twitter account.

I don’t appreciate some liberals who have mocked Sarah Huckabee Sanders—sure, she graduated form a Baptist university in Arkansas, but she was never empty. I teach at a private, religious university, too--and it's a place where future American leaders can be educated. Presidents don't all have to come from Harvard. And comments about her appearance were just as misogynist as comments conservatives made about Hillary Clinton’s wardrobe choices and face.

As this New Yorker story covers, Sanders is a pretty savvy political creature. She is a smart lady.

It’s not a joke that she might get to be governor of Arkansas. She might even someday be our first female president—after all, as Donald Trump showed, truth telling is not a requirement for the highest office in the land these days.

But Sanders was a terrible press secretary. Despite private rapport with reporters, she very publicly was perfectly willing to echo to worst lies of the worst president in U.S. history, and showed his public contempt for the press. A press secretary, even one for a lying president, has no business lying to reporters, as Sanders did repeatedly.

Still, there is another side of the story. The Washington press core is elitist and liberal. That doesn’t mean they don’t have an important role that most of them take seriously and professionally try to fulfill, but I don’t see any point in denying that a particular side of the political spectrum is over-represented in the Washington press.

And yet—it’s not the White House’s place to choose who covers the White House. The press, flawed and biased as it is, is there to get answers for the American people. Journalists have an important function in our democracy, one that Huckabee Sanders, representing her authoritarian boss, publicly attacked.

The president will no doubt name a new press secretary. Who it is may make some difference, but probably not much. This deeply flawed, anti-American president has declared the media the “enemy” of the American people, and his press secretaries have merely been the front line troops in his ongoing war with truth and facts and the American way.

And the sad truth is that much of the Republican base agrees with Trump, partly out of frustration at the sense of being looked down on by media elites. And, like Trump, Sanders is not what’s wrong with the modern Republican party—her flawed press secretary tenure represented a very real, and very dangerous anti-media bias that today is common up and down the Republican party. In Iowa, too many Republican candidates have refused, for instance, to participate in media voter guide questionnaires or meetings with newspaper editorial boards. That’s a dangerous and too common precedent.

The mainstream media is an endangered species these days. The staffs of newsrooms have been severely cut back since the 2008 recession. Republicans seem to relish the extinction of the species. That’s a mistake. Liberal bias or not, journalism is the lifeblood of a democracy. The Republican party seems full of vampires who are willing to drain that blood.

And Sarah is an intelligent, determined and dangerous blood sucker who sadly is very much at home in that party.