SIRC"s President's Day Dinner is going to be a huge success......150 people have already paid and many, many more to come. If you want to meet and hear Amb. Bolton, I urge you act promptly.
Skidaway Island Republican Club
Presidents’ Day Dinner
Monday, February 19, 2018
Special Guest
Ambassador John Bolton
U.S. Ambassador to U.N. during G.W. Bush Administration
Ambassador Bolton is currently a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, a Fox News Channel contributor and of counsel to D C law firm Kirkland & Ellis.
This event is selling out. Don’t miss out! Reserve now!
Plantation Club – The Landings
Member Bar: 5:30 PM – Dinner with wine 7:00 PM
Cost is $150 per person
Coat and tie requested
Advance reservations and payment required. Mail check to
Mary Ann Senkowski, 8 Mainsail Crossing or contact at masenkowski@gmail.com 598-0493
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Justice Thomas speaks out:
http://dailysignal.com/2018/
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
I find it difficult to accept the argument that immigration based on merit is unjustified and that eliminating chain immigration is wrong.
If you cherish what America is all about and want to protect the freedoms we enjoy it seems reasonable, realistic and even moral that we decide/conclude, based on our own needs and sense of the kind of nation we want to continue to be, we have the right to allow legal immigration among those who will benefit our nation and ultimately themselves.
The current immigration policy no longer serves these goals and needs to be updated and if Democrats continue to thwart a reasonable solution they should be made to pay at the polls.
The same for Republicans.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
This from a wise family member. I received this after I wrote and sent out last night's memo but we are on the same track. (See 1 below.)
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
A vintage op ed by Charles Krauthammer, sent to me by a dear friend and fellow memo reader. (See 2 below.)
And
This also sent by a dear friend and fellow memo reader. (See 2a below.)
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
The Hawaiian false alarm has now led to Trump being attacked for not taking stronger actions against Fat Boy. Donald just cannot win nor ever will Do like your predecessor, just go back to your golf game.
But then, how lucky can you get?
Rep. Maxine Waters says she will boycott Trump's State of the Union, calls him a 'liar'.
And then the coup de gras:
Landing on the Sun, Kim Jong-Un announced at a news conference that N Korea would be sending a man to the sun within 10 yrs! A reporter said, “But the sun is too hot, how can a man land on the sun?” There was a stunned silence, nobody knew how to react. Kim Jong-Un quietly answered, “We would land at night.” The gathering and everyone in N Korea watching on TV broke into thunderous applause.
Back in Washington, DC, Nancy Pelosi and her entourage were watching the news conference. When Pelosi heard what Kim said, she sneered, “What an idiot. Everybody knows there’s no sun at night.” Her office and everyone working in the DNC broke into thunderous applause.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Justice Thomas speaks out:
http://dailysignal.com/2018/
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
I find it difficult to accept the argument that immigration based on merit is unjustified and that eliminating chain immigration is wrong.
If you cherish what America is all about and want to protect the freedoms we enjoy it seems reasonable, realistic and even moral that we decide/conclude, based on our own needs and sense of the kind of nation we want to continue to be, we have the right to allow legal immigration among those who will benefit our nation and ultimately themselves.
The current immigration policy no longer serves these goals and needs to be updated and if Democrats continue to thwart a reasonable solution they should be made to pay at the polls.
The same for Republicans.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
This from a wise family member. I received this after I wrote and sent out last night's memo but we are on the same track. (See 1 below.)
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
A vintage op ed by Charles Krauthammer, sent to me by a dear friend and fellow memo reader. (See 2 below.)
And
This also sent by a dear friend and fellow memo reader. (See 2a below.)
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
The Hawaiian false alarm has now led to Trump being attacked for not taking stronger actions against Fat Boy. Donald just cannot win nor ever will Do like your predecessor, just go back to your golf game.
But then, how lucky can you get?
Rep. Maxine Waters says she will boycott Trump's State of the Union, calls him a 'liar'.
And then the coup de gras:
Landing on the Sun, Kim Jong-Un announced at a news conference that N Korea would be sending a man to the sun within 10 yrs! A reporter said, “But the sun is too hot, how can a man land on the sun?” There was a stunned silence, nobody knew how to react. Kim Jong-Un quietly answered, “We would land at night.” The gathering and everyone in N Korea watching on TV broke into thunderous applause.
Back in Washington, DC, Nancy Pelosi and her entourage were watching the news conference. When Pelosi heard what Kim said, she sneered, “What an idiot. Everybody knows there’s no sun at night.” Her office and everyone working in the DNC broke into thunderous applause.
.... The Trump family (all, not one) have been able to convince him that it is not a crime too change. Life itself is subject to change as constantly as change itself.
Winning is good, Losing also happens to all humans. Trump has not found the right incentive to change. It is right under his nose. He seems not to want to stop for a moment to think about the consequences. The result is unintentionally losing the effect of good decisions converting to losing ones. Like with a Balance Sheet, breaking even is losing. He needs a MENTOR if he want's eight years.
Otherwise, he will be remembered as a loser who refused to change. OBAMA preached HOPE and CHANGE. He gave the PEOPLE CHANGE producing total division no positive change ,only the opposite. He was totally a winner regarding "his" agenda. Americans, future and present were nowhere to be seen.
Democrats will be Shouting during the 2018 elections: " Obama gave us this economy." Republicans will spend time, money and energy denying.The message is already being picked up.
Tax cuts were not for all the People. Trump is a Racist etc. etc. One Democratic Congressman on Fox said Obama is responsible for the two million new workers last year (2017).
Trump can't expand his base without changing his style and content of his rhetoric . He will need new Independents, more women, more Republicans, more Spanish speaking and more black voters.
Change is always coming. Winning and Losing is in Trumps hands. It's a Toss Up.
A.....
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
2) In Defense of the F-Word
By Charles Krauthammer
Friday, July 2, 2004; Page A15
Friday, July 2, 2004; Page A15
I am sure there is a special place in heaven reserved for those who have never used the F-word. I will never get near that place. Nor, apparently, will Dick Cheney.
Washington is abuzz with the latest political contretemps. Cheney, taking offense at Sen. Pat Leahy's
imputation of improper vice presidential conduct regarding Halliburton contracts in Iraq, let the senator know as much during a picture-taking ceremony on the floor of the Senate. The F-word was used. Washington is scandalized.
The newspapers were full of it. Lamentations were heard about the decline of civility. The Post gave special gravitas to the occasion, spelling out the full four letters (something that it had done only three times previously). Democrats, feeling darned outraged, demanded apologies. The vice president remained defiant, offering but the coyest concession -- that he "probably" cursed -- coupled with satisfaction: "I expressed myself rather forcefully, felt better after I had done it."
The Federal Communications Commission just last year decreed that the F-word could be used as an adjective, but not as a verb. Alas, this Solomonic verdict, fodder for a dozen PhD dissertations, was recently overturned. It would not get Cheney off the hook anyway. By all accounts, he deployed the pungent verb form, in effect a suggestion as to how the good senator from Vermont might amuse himself.
Flood-the-zone coverage by investigative reporters has not, however, quite resolved the issue of which of the two preferred forms passed Cheney's lips: the priceless two-worder -- "[verb] you" -- or the more expansive three-worder, a directive that begins with "go."
Though I myself am partial to the longer version, I admit that each formulation has its virtues. The deuce is the preferred usage when time is short and concision is of the essence. Enjoying the benefits of economy, it is especially useful in emergencies. This is why it is a favorite of major league managers going nose to nose with umpires. They know that they have only a few seconds before getting tossed out of the game, and as a result television viewers have for years delighted in the moment the two-worder is hurled, right on camera. No need for sound. The deuce was made for lip reading.
Which makes it excellent for drive-by information conveyance. When some jerk tailgater rides my bumper in heavy traffic, honking his horn before passing and cutting me off, I do a turn-to-the-left, eyeball-to-eyeball, through-the-driver's-window two-worder -- mouthed slowly and with exaggerated lip movements. No interlocutor has yet missed my meaning.
Nonetheless, while the two-worder has the directness of the dagger, the three-worder has the elegance of the wide-arced saber slice. It is more musical and, being more clearly spelled out, more comprehensible to the non-English speaker (a boon in major urban areas). It consists of a straightforward directive containing both a subject and an object -- charmingly, the same person.
According to The Post, the local authority on such matters, Cheney went for a variant of the short form, employing the more formal "yourself." And given the location, the floor of the Senate, it seems a reasonable choice: Time was short, and he undoubtedly reserves the right to revise and extend his remarks.
Ah, but the earnest chin-pullers are not amused. Cheney's demonstration of earthy authenticity in a chamber in which authenticity of any kind is to be valued has occasioned anguished meditations on the loss of civility in American politics. Liberals in particular have expressed deep concern about this breach of decorum.
Odd. The day before first reports of Cheney's alleged indiscretion, his Democratic predecessor, Al Gore, delivered a public speech in which he spoke of the administration's establishing a "Bush gulag" around the world and using "digital brown shirts" to intimidate the media. The former vice president of the United States compared the current president to both Hitler and Stalin in the same speech -- a first not just in hyperbole but in calumny -- and nary a complaint is heard about a breach of civility.
If you suspect that this selective indignation may be partisan, you guessed right. But here's an even more important question. In the face of Gore's real breach of civil political discourse, which of the following is the right corrective: (a) offer a reasoned refutation of the charge that George Bush is both Stalinist and Hitlerian; (b) suggest an increase in Gore's medication; or (c) do a Cheney.
The correct answer is "C." And given the circumstances, go for the deuce.
2a) The Crime Stats on Illegal Aliens Liberals Don’t Want You to See
Another promise that President Trump has kept to the American voters was the pledge to finally reveal true statistics on illegal alien crime rates in the US. If you have ever attempted to research the issue of illegal alien crime, you’ll understand why this is a big deal. Perception shapes policy, and for years the American people have been lied to about illegal alien crime stats.
The globalists have wanted us to believe that illegal aliens are all quiet, safe and potential Rhodes’ scholars-in-waiting. Both the media and the government have lied to us about illegal alien crime statistics repeatedly and very loudly for years.
The Department of Homeland Security and the Department of Justice released the 2017 numbers, as Trump promised, and those numbers tell the exact opposite story the globalists have told us for the past eight years under Obama’s rule. Out of 37,557 confirmed aliens in federal custody, 94 percent of them are illegal aliens.
Those illegal aliens account for 22 percent of all murder convictions, 29 percent of drug dealing busts and 72 percent of federal drug possession convictions. Another 21,000 suspected aliens are in federal custody for crimes, but the DOJ and DHS are still trying to confirm their identities. This means that all of the numbers the Trump administration has released so far will increase as we get better information.
If you want to see the illegal alien crime statistics for 2016, 2015, 2014 and so on, good luck! Those numbers don’t exist — or if they did exist, Obama put them through a paper shredder along with the Operation Fast &Furious files and Lois Lerner’s IRS emails.
If you want to find any federal statistics on previous years, you must go back to 2008, George W. Bush’s last year in office. For example, in 2008 the State Department reported that there were an estimated 17,500 women and children trafficked across our southern border as human slaves. How many came in between 2009 and 2016, when Hillary Clinton and John Kerry were our Secretaries of State? It must have been zero!
The media is no help in researching this matter, either. Every mainstream media journalist’s curiosity is simply switched off when it comes to illegal alien crimes and they are likely to stick their fingers in the ears and scream, “La la la la la, can’t hear you!” if you try to share the information with them.
This is why we frequently see headlines like, “Area Man Arrested for Inappropriate Relationship with Child” or “Police Say Arizona Man Robbed, Killed Convenience Store Clerk.” They’ve told you half of the story but missed the headline, which is that a crime happened because our politicians are cowards who will not secure the border.
For many years, if you wanted to find any meaningful statistics at all about illegal alien crime, you had to look for diligent citizens’ groups that were tracking the numbers locally. The group North Carolinians For Immigration Reform and Enforcement (NCFIRE) runs a website that tracks illegal alien sex crimes against children. They only track the number of arrests in North Carolina, but that at least gives us something that we can use to come up with some statistics.
Through 2016, for example, NCFIRE reported an average of about 20 illegal aliens arrested every month for child sex crimes. That is horrific in itself. But statistically, what if that is happening in every state? In that case, we’re averaging 12,000 annual child molestations by people who should not even be in this country. Are we to believe that North Carolina’s illegal aliens are more prone to child rape than the illegals in Idaho or Louisiana?
Every crime that an illegal alien commits is a crime that was 100-percent preventable. But explaining this to a liberal is next to impossible because they are emotional children.
Normal Person: That pregnant mother and her baby would still be alive if that drunk-driving illegal alien had been kept out by a wall.
Liberal: No, if there was a wall then a white man would have run them over.
Normal Person: What? No, the universe doesn’t work that way. You see, with a wall, the illegal alien wouldn’t have been here, wouldn’t have gotten drunk, wouldn’t have gotten behind the wheel of the car and…
Liberal: You RACIST! Shut up! Shut up! Shut up!
President Trump has done America a favor by starting to release the true illegal alien crime statistics. We won’t get the liberals to change their minds, but at least it will be fun watching them try to defend the numbers.
~ American Liberty Report
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
3)
Trump Lawyer Arranged $130,000 Payment for Adult-Film Star’s Silence
Agreement just before election required woman to keep quiet about an alleged sexual encounter with Trump in 2006, people familiar with the matter say
By Michael Rothfeld and Joe Palazzolo
A lawyer for President Donald Trump arranged a $130,000 payment to a former adult-film star a month before the 2016 election as part of an agreement that precluded her from publicly discussing an alleged sexual encounter with Mr. Trump, according to people familiar with the matter.
Michael Cohen, who spent nearly a decade as a top attorney at the Trump Organization, arranged payment to the woman, Stephanie Clifford, in October 2016 after her lawyer negotiated the nondisclosure agreement with Mr. Cohen, these people said.
Ms. Clifford, whose stage name is Stormy Daniels, has privately alleged the encounter with Mr. Trump took place after they met at a July 2006 celebrity golf tournament on the shore of Lake Tahoe, these people said. Mr. Trump married Melania Trump in 2005.
Mr. Trump faced other allegations during his campaign of inappropriate behavior with women, and vehemently denied them. In this matter, there is no allegation of a nonconsensual interaction.
“These are old, recycled reports, which were published and strongly denied prior to the election,” a White House official said, responding to the allegation of a sexual encounter involving Mr. Trump and Ms. Clifford. The official declined to respond to questions about an agreement with Ms. Clifford. It isn’t known whether Mr. Trump was aware of any agreement or payment involving her.
In a statement, Mr. Cohen didn’t address the $130,000 payment but said of the alleged sexual encounter that “President Trump once again vehemently denies any such occurrence as has Ms. Daniels.”
Mr. Cohen added in the statement, addressed to The Wall Street Journal: “This is now the second time that you are raising outlandish allegations against my client. You have attempted to perpetuate this false narrative for over a year; a narrative that has been consistently denied by all parties since at least 2011.”
The Journal previously reported that Ms. Clifford, 38 years old, had been in talks with ABC’s “Good Morning America” in the fall of 2016 about an appearance to discuss Mr. Trump, according to people familiar with the matter. In that article, the Journal reported the company that owns the National Enquirer agreed to pay $150,000 to a former Playboy centerfold model three months before the election for her story of an affair a decade earlier with the Republican presidential nominee, which the tabloid newspaper didn’t publish. The company said she was paid to write fitness columns and appear on magazine covers.
Mr. Cohen also sent a two-paragraph statement by email addressed “TO WHOM IT MAY CONCERN” and signed by “Stormy Daniels” denying that she had a “sexual and/or romantic affair” with Mr. Trump.
“Rumors that I have received hush money from Donald Trump are completely false,” the statement said.
Ms. Clifford didn’t respond to multiple emails seeking comment.
After the agreement, Ms. Clifford’s camp complained the payment wasn’t being made quickly enough and threatened to cancel the deal, some of the people familiar with the matter said.
The payment was made to Ms. Clifford through her lawyer in the matter, Keith Davidson, with funds sent to Mr. Davidson’s client-trust account at City National Bank in Los Angeles, according to the people.
“I previously represented Ms. Daniels,” Mr. Davidson said, referring to Ms. Clifford’s stage name. “Attorney-client privilege prohibits me from commenting on my clients’ legal matters.”
A spokeswoman for City National Bank declined to comment.
The agreement with Ms. Clifford came as the Trump campaign confronted allegations from numerous women who described unwanted sexual advances and alleged assaults by Mr. Trump.
In October 2016, the Washington Post published a videotape made, but never aired, by NBC’s “Access Hollywood” in which Mr. Trump spoke of groping women.
Mr. Trump denied all allegations of inappropriate sexual conduct and apologized at the time for his remarks on the tape, calling them locker-room banter.
Mr. Cohen worked at the Trump Organization from 2007 until after the election. As Mr. Trump took office, Mr. Cohen said he would work in private practice and act as Mr. Trump’s personal attorney. “I am the fix-it guy,” he said in an interview in January 2017 before Mr. Trump’s inauguration.
By Shelby Steele
There was a forced and unconvincing solemnity on the faces of these players as they refused to stand for the national anthem. They seemed more dutiful than passionate, as if they were mimicking the courage of earlier black athletes who had protested: Tommie Smith and John Carlos, fists in the air at the 1968 Olympics; Muhammad Ali, fearlessly raging against the Vietnam War; Jackie Robinson, defiantly running the bases in the face of racist taunts. The NFL protesters seemed to hope for a little ennoblement by association.
And protest has long been an ennobling tradition in black American life. From the Montgomery bus boycott to the march on Selma, from lunch-counter sit-ins and Freedom Rides to the 1963 March on Washington, only protest could open the way to freedom and the acknowledgment of full humanity. So it was a high calling in black life. It required great sacrifice and entailed great risk. Martin Luther King Jr. , the archetypal black protester, made his sacrifices, ennobled all of America, and was then shot dead.
For the NFL players there was no real sacrifice, no risk and no achievement. Still, in black America there remains a great reverence for protest. Through protest—especially in the 1950s and ’60s—we, as a people, touched greatness. Protest, not immigration, was our way into the American Dream. Freedom in this country had always been relative to race, and it was black protest that made freedom an absolute.
It is not surprising, then, that these black football players would don the mantle of protest. The surprise was that it didn’t work. They had misread the historic moment. They were not speaking truth to power. Rather, they were figures of pathos, mindlessly loyal to a black identity that had run its course.
What they missed is a simple truth that is both obvious and unutterable: The oppression of black people is over with. This is politically incorrect news, but it is true nonetheless. We blacks are, today, a free people. It is as if freedom sneaked up and caught us by surprise.
Of course this does not mean there is no racism left in American life. Racism is endemic to the human condition, just as stupidity is. We will always have to be on guard against it. But now it is recognized as a scourge, as the crowning immorality of our age and our history.
Protest always tries to make a point. But what happens when that point already has been made—when, in this case, racism has become anathema and freedom has expanded?
What happened was that black America was confronted with a new problem: the shock of freedom. This is what replaced racism as our primary difficulty. Blacks had survived every form of human debasement with ingenuity, self-reliance, a deep and ironic humor, a capacity for self-reinvention and a heroic fortitude. But we had no experience of wide-open freedom.
Watch out that you get what you ask for, the saying goes. Freedom came to blacks with an overlay of cruelty because it meant we had to look at ourselves without the excuse of oppression. Four centuries of dehumanization had left us underdeveloped in many ways, and within the world’s most highly developed society. When freedom expanded, we became more accountable for that underdevelopment. So freedom put blacks at risk of being judged inferior, the very libel that had always been used against us.
To hear, for example, that more than 4,000 people were shot in Chicago in 2016 embarrasses us because this level of largely black-on-black crime cannot be blamed simply on white racism.
We can say that past oppression left us unprepared for freedom. This is certainly true. But it is no consolation. Freedom is just freedom. It is a condition, not an agent of change. It does not develop or uplift those who win it. Freedom holds us accountable no matter the disadvantages we inherit from the past. The tragedy in Chicago—rightly or wrongly—reflects on black America.
That’s why, in the face of freedom’s unsparing judgmentalism, we reflexively claim that freedom is a lie. We conjure elaborate narratives that give white racism new life in the present: “systemic” and “structural” racism, racist “microaggressions,” “white privilege,” and so on. All these narratives insist that blacks are still victims of racism, and that freedom’s accountability is an injustice.
We end up giving victimization the charisma of black authenticity. Suffering, poverty and underdevelopment are the things that make you “truly black.” Success and achievement throw your authenticity into question.
The NFL protests were not really about injustice. Instead such protests are usually genuflections to today’s victim-focused black identity. Protest is the action arm of this identity. It is not seeking a new and better world; it merely wants documentation that the old racist world still exists. It wants an excuse.
For any formerly oppressed group, there will be an expectation that the past will somehow be an excuse for difficulties in the present. This is the expectation behind the NFL protests and the many protests of groups like Black Lives Matter. The near-hysteria around the deaths of Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown, Freddie Gray and others is also a hunger for the excuse of racial victimization, a determination to keep it alive. To a degree, black America’s self-esteem is invested in the illusion that we live under a cloud of continuing injustice.
When you don’t know how to go forward, you never just sit there; you go backward into what you know, into what is familiar and comfortable and, most of all, exonerating. You rebuild in your own mind the oppression that is fading from the world. And you feel this abstract, fabricated oppression as if it were your personal truth, the truth around which your character is formed. Watching the antics of Black Lives Matter is like watching people literally aspiring to black victimization, longing for it as for a consummation.
But the NFL protests may be a harbinger of change. They elicited considerable resentment. There have been counterprotests. TV viewership has gone down. Ticket sales have dropped. What is remarkable about this response is that it may foretell a new fearlessness in white America—a new willingness in whites (and blacks outside the victim-focused identity) to say to blacks what they really think and feel, to judge blacks fairly by standards that are universal.
We blacks have lived in a bubble since the 1960s because whites have been deferential for fear of being seen as racist. The NFL protests reveal the fundamental obsolescence—for both blacks and whites—of a victim-focused approach to racial inequality. It causes whites to retreat into deference and blacks to become nothing more than victims. It makes engaging as human beings and as citizens impermissible, a betrayal of the sacred group identity. Black victimization is not much with us any more as a reality, but it remains all too powerful as a hegemony.
Mr. Steele, a senior fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution, is author of “Shame: How America’s Past Sins Have Polarized Our Country” (Basic Books, 2015).
3b) Trump, Oprah and the Art of Deflection
Will American politics return to normalcy in 2021 or 2025? I’m not betting on it.
Deflection as a media strategy has become an art form. Its purpose is to avoid answering a charge by misdirecting it and confusing the issue. It’s often used during crisis.
There are classics of the genre. After Princess Diana died in August 1997, the British press came under severe pressure, accused of literally driving the poor half-mad woman to her death. The paparazzi had chased her like jackals, raced after her car in the tunnel, surrounded it, and taken pictures after the crash. Fleet Street hunkered down in confusion, perhaps even some guilt. Then some genius noticed Buckingham Palace wasn’t flying a flag at half-staff. The tabloids rushed to front-page it: The cold Windsors, disrespecting Diana in death as they had in life. They shifted the focus of public ire. Suddenly there was no more talk of grubby hacks. Everyone was mad at the queen.
Another: In the run-up to the 2016 presidential election, Monica Lewinsky had a problem. Hillary Clinton was running, which meant the Monica story would be regularly resurrected. If she took a step wrong she’d be targeted by ferocious Clinton staffers. In any case she’d be hounded by the press: Monica, how do you feel now about being slimed as a stalker? Have you forgiven Hillary for calling you a “narcissistic Looney Tune”?
Ms. Lewinsky had gone into virtual hiding in 2008, when Hillary last ran, and didn’t want to do it again. So in 2014, just before the cycle got serious, she rather brilliantly wrote a piece for Vanity Fair in which she announced yes, she’d been a victim in a national scandal and the true culprit was . . . the press, the internet and the “feedback loop of defame and shame.”
In fact she was the Clintons’ victim, but she successfully deflected your gaze. Once Mrs. Clinton’s people understood Monica would be taking shots not at Hillary but at Matt Drudge, Ms. Lewinsky’s problem went away.
The best deflection has some truth in it. The Windsors were a chilly lot, and the internet does amplify a personal humiliation.
I thought of all this last weekend as I watched the Golden Globes. Hollywood has known forever about abuse, harassment and rape within its ranks. All the true powers in the industry—the agencies, the studios—have one way or another been complicit. And so, in the first awards show after the watershed revelations of 2017, they understood they would not be able to dodge the subject. They seized it and redirected it. They boldly declared themselves the heroes of the saga. They were the real leaders in the fight against sexual abuse. They dressed in black to show solidarity, they spoke truth to power.
They went so far, a viewer would be forgiven for thinking that they were not upset because they found out about Harvey Weinstein and Kevin Spacey, et al. They were upset, as Glenn Reynolds noted on Twitter , that you found out, and thought less of them. Anyway, they painted themselves as heroes of the struggle.
Deflection is brilliant, wicked, and tends to work.
When something works you’ll be seeing more of it, in entertainment and politics. Keep your eyes sharp.
When Oprah Winfrey spoke, she brought the crowd to their feet, which gave rise to a new wave of speculation about whether she will run for president. I would be surprised if she did. She has what looks like a richly enjoyable life. She’s never been brutalized in the way that national contenders are. If in the past few decades she’s been insulted to her face, or even rudely interrupted, it has gone unrecorded. But to run for president is to be insulted every day. I think sometimes of what Gov. Chris Christie said to debate moderator John Harwood in 2015: “Even in New Jersey, what you’re doing is called rude.”
But could she win? Absolutely.
Oprah is stable. Oprah is smart. Oprah is truly self-made. She has a moving personal story. She has dignity and, more important, sees the dignity in others. She is fully wired into modern media; she helped invent modern media. Reporters and editors are awed by her. People experience her not as radical but moderate. She has been a living-room presence for two generations and is enormously popular. The first poll, published Wednesday, had her leading President Trump 48% to 38%.
It would all depend on what she wants and, if she decides she wants it, whether she could accept what goes with it.
But it freaks you out, doesn’t it? Not that American presidents now don’t have to have the traditional credentials and governmental experience, but that maybe they can’t be fully accomplished and appropriate because that’s boring. History has been turned on its head. In falling in love with celebrity and personality, we are acting not like a tough and grounded country but a frivolous, shallow one.
And yes, of course Donald Trump changed it all. When he walked through the door he blew out the jambs. He left a jagged opening big enough that anyone could walk through after him. He was like a cartoon character that bursts through a wall leaving a him-shaped hole. Last April I had a disagreement with a friend, a brilliant journalist who said when the Trump era is over, we will turn for safety to the old ways. We will return to normalcy. Suddenly we’ll see the mystique of the solid two-term governor in the gray suit, the veteran senator with the bad haircut. After all the drama of Mr. Trump, normality will have a new charisma.
No I said, I see just the opposite. We will not go back for a long time, maybe ever. We are in the age of celebrity and the next one will and can be anything—Nobel laureate, movie star, professional wrestler, talk-show host, charismatic corporate executive.
The political class can bemoan this—the veteran journalists, the senators and governors, the administrators of the federal government. But this is a good time to remind ourselves that it was the failures of the political class that brought our circumstances about.
When at least half the country no longer trusts its political leaders, when people see the detached, cynical and uncaring refusal to handle such problems as illegal immigration, when those leaders commit a great nation to wars they blithely assume will be quickly won because we’re good and they’re bad and we’re the Jetsons and they’re the Flintstones, and while they were doing that they neglected to notice there was something hinky going on with the financial sector, something to do with mortgages, and then the courts decide to direct the culture, and the IRS abuses its power, and a bunch of nuns have to file a lawsuit because the government orders them to violate their conscience . . .
Why wouldn’t people look elsewhere for leadership? Maybe the TV star’s policies won’t always please you, but at least he’ll distract and entertain you every day. The other ones didn’t manage that!
The idea that a lot had to go wrong before we had a President Trump, and the celebrity who follows him, has gotten lost in time, as if someone wanted to bury it.
Sometimes I see a congressman or senator shrug and say, in explanation of something outlandish, “It’s Trump.” And I think: Buddy, you’ve been on the Hill 20 years, and we didn’t get to this pass only because of him. That’s a deflection.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
