Archive for Year: 2016

She wasn’t the wrong candidate. Rather, she was turned into one — by journalists and her political adversaries.

Amidst the controversy about James Comey’s most recent breach of FBI protocol, we’ve lost sight of the fact that James Comey’s conduct has been disturbingly irregular from his first excursion into the political minefield of the 2016 election. His sins, however, have been those of omission as well as commission. In fact, what he failed to do is actually far more disturbing than what he did do.

I am a baby-boomer. In fact, I am part of the very first cohort of baby-boomers, as is Hillary Clinton. I was born in 1947, almost exactly nine months after my father returned from naval service in WWII. And, like many others born roughly the same time, my life was profoundly affected by both the gender restrictions of the fifties and early sixties and the social revolutions that took place in the late 60’s and early 70’s — especially feminism (which we used to call “women’s liberation.”)

Lacey Baldwin Smith has written that “Tudor portraits bear about as much resemblance to their subjects as elephants to prunes.” A slight exaggeration, maybe. But it is true that the historical accuracy of the depictions in Tudor portraits, particularly of royalty, was often at war with “symbolic iconizing”—the use of imagery to represent the person’s character, position or role.

When Walter Cronkite was on for 20 minutes a night, focusing on unsubstantiated rumor was a luxury news television couldn’t afford. Now, the need to fill up space and keep audiences tuned in and ratings high has elevated speculation and spicy headlines to the status of “news” and television creates as much of it as it reports.

I should really get out of the habit of watching “Morning Joe.”

Just when we thought we were finally moving on to issues of substance, those damned emails (as Bernie Sanders, in one of the most spontaneous moments of the primaries, called them) are back in the news. Like Freddy Kruger, they just won’t die – because the media won’t let them.

“Remember, I was viciously attacked,” he told Bill O’Reilly, attempting to justify what was surely the cruelest, coldest, most offensive counter-punch of this—or perhaps any—election season.

What was the “vicious attack” that provoked Trump so? Simply this: Gold-star father Khizr Khan had offered to lend Trump a copy of the U.S. Constitution (to remind him that religious freedom was a basic tenet of the Founding Fathers.) He had also charged that compared to the loss of a son, Trump had sacrificed “nothing.”

“She lied. She’s a liar”
“Put her in Prison!”
“She deserves to be in stripes!”
“Lock her up!”

The trembling woman on the stage was grief-stricken, but the crowd was hungry for blood.

“Hey Cassie, I want to ask you a question. Do you think ‘honest’ and ‘straightforward’ mean the same thing?”

My 17-year-old daughter, whose favorite subject is not English, didn’t hesitate. “Totally different. Honest means telling the truth. Straightforward means you are blunt. You can lie in a blunt way.” Thank you, Cassie. Sure wish you had written the questions for the NBC/Wall Street Journal Presidential Survey. item about? What makes it interesting? Write a catchy description to grab your audience’s attention…