By Raul Hernandez
[email protected]
“I went to work early one morning, I mean really early. The sun wasn’t up yet. I stared at the rows of (newsroom) computer screens, the empty desks. It looked surreal in a way, and right then and there, I realized that almost overnight management had turned the place I loved into this digital Disneyland, catering to kids with bouncy houses inside their heads, smart phones in their hands and with the attention span of Rhesus monkeys.” — Stepping on the Devil’s Tail, novel
Huffington Post Columnist Takes on Trump
Finally, a columnist with the balls to challenge Trump and the other GOP candidates for spewing or not denouncing racism and fear.
Huffington Post’s Howard Fineman wrote in his column titled: “Will America Succumb To Trumpism? The World Is Watching,” the following:
“The depth of accumulated unreality and even insanity represented by these stands have propelled Trump into the lead in the race for the Republican presidential nomination.”
Adding, “Two other GOP candidates are rising to challenge him, primarily by parroting Trump and Trumpism to the extent that they can. Indeed, Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas and Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida appear to be, at least at this moment, the only two challengers capable of stopping Trump — and they are, in many ways, as hair-raising as he is.”
This American home-grown and Trump-fueled bigotry is now being endorsed by White Supremacist groups says TV host Chris Hayes. The campaign also parallels arguments and some of the words of then racist Gov. George Wallace’s political campaign, according to MSNBC.
The problem is also CNN and MSNBC and most of the media that are so desperate for ratings and readers. So they allow Trump and the GOP Circus to go unabated and Trump’s full-blown bigotry to go unchallenged.
It’s all about the TV ratings’ wars that translate into profits, and it’s obvious.
The most recent example of this irresponsible reporting for profits is the incident involving the capture of Americans on Iranian waters. CNN and MSNBC Drama Queens have milked this incident for viewers by generously sprinkling on this story words like “urgent,” “Breaking News” and “this tenuous situation” “dangerous.” etc..
While the incident was still unresolved, the networks’ Merchants of Fear prop up the GOP candidates and other War Hawks at the stations to comment about how the Iranian Nuke deal (signed off by other countries like Britain, France, Germany) emboldened Iran.
CNN and MSNBC then allow John McCain and company to go on the air live and read from the Republican talking points and take turns bashing Obama’s “weak foreign” policy without being asked tough questions: Like, what would your party do in this situation? Do you believe that flexing American muscle right now will endanger U.S. servicemen who are still on Iranian soil? Why would Germany, Britain and France also sign off on this Iranian nuke deal if it is so bad for the free world?
But the networks continued to slowly and methodically bang the drums of war, of fear and aid and abett Trump’s bigotry that is now at a grand scale.
Wolf Blitzer and Chuck Todd are among the worst examples of this kind of journalism. Journalists who want to be loved by people they cover and so they never ask any tough questions, never challenge many of the people that they interview.
Doing so would inevitably result in these politicians not making repeat appearances on Wolf’s or Chuck’s programs resulting in cancellations of these “news shows.”
Also there is fear that the rest of the GOP candidates will ignore CNN and MSNBC because they will be asked tough questions and decided to permanently park the GOP Circus tent at Trump Central, a.k.a. FOX.
Tavis Smiley and Donald Trump
On CNN, Tavis Smiley this week called out Trump’s racism, media’s complicity
Smiley argued the media must do a better job of connecting the dots between Trump’s popularity and support from the “night side” of America:
“What troubles me, quite frankly, is that we keep talking about … Trump rising in the polls as if somehow this is happening miraculously,” Smiley said. “It’s happening in part because — as your lead-in shows with these now white supremacists supporting him — it’s happening because he’s appealing to a certain base voter in this country.”
“He’s appealing to the dark side, the night side of America and that’s why he’s rising in the polls,” Smiley continued. “And we ought not cover him without condemning him for doing that.”
President Johnson’s 1964 Ad and Trump
Want to see Donald Trump’s polls go down almost overnight?
No question, the ignorant, gullible, paranoid and racists who follow and support Trump forego reality to do so along with ignoring the facts, skewing and twisting the truth to blindly buy into Trump’s verbal cesspool.
I am surprised that the other political candidates or Super PACs will not get down to brass tacks about what is really at stake if Trump or candidates with similar mindsets move into the White House.
There are very serious consequences of giving a 70-year-old Neanderthal with tons of money and an ego the size of the Empire State Building the nuclear launch codes if someone like Trump is made commander-in-chief.
Ads like the 1964 ad will underscore what is at stake. Then President Lyndon Johnson’s political campaign aired against GOP opponent Barry Goldwater will work.
It will make America think twice.
I am very surprised that Trump’s opponents haven’t dusted a message like Johnson’s ad to stop or slow down the buffoon billionaire.
A montage of Trump’s crazy quotes could run in the ad. An announcer would say: “Do you really want to give Donald Trump the nuclear launch codes. Really? Well, think about it.”
This would be followed by a child counting off and a nuclear blast.
That would bring the message home to most of Trump’s supporters and those in America who normally sit on their cans with cells phones and TV remotes in their hands. They’d quickly realize that there will be nowhere to plug-in their electronic gadgets.
Or, places to sip their lattes.
The 1964 ad is powerful. Check it out. It was posted on Youtube: