This may be one of my favorite TV ads. I don't mean "of recent years," I mean...ever. (I don’t expect others to feel the same, but it hit me right. I love what it says, and I love how they say it. And what they selected as the center point.) It’s from GE, which has another ad I love, equally understated and offbeat about a sad "idea" that wanders around the streets, treated like an outcast, avoided by everyone because it's different. I don’t want to give away the “twist,” but I’ll just say – actually, no, I won’t. Why give anything away. I’ll only say instead that I put "twist" in quotes because it’s not really an actual twist, but a tiny moment and where we discover something.) There's one thing I'll add. It's probably clear, but just to make certain -- Millie Dresselhaus is real. That's the "twist" I was referring to, the discovery that she is not a fictitious character as some ads might do, but a renowned, legendary scientist.
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Outfielder Dexter Fowler played for the beloved Chicago Cubs last year and helped them win their first World Series in 108 years, though he left them to join the rival St. Louis Cardinals. He recently made a statement critical of the Trump-proposed travel ban (helped, in part, because his wife is from Iran, one of the countries banned). As you might expect, he came to some harsh, ugly criticism from a small, harsh and ugly segment. Yet he defended his statement with thoughtfulness and graciousness -- even offering free baseball tickets to some fans who disagreed with him. He was a good guy with the Cubs and remains so. Just, alas, for the wrong team... How good a guy is Dexter Fowler? Even though he left the Cubs and even though (worse) he went to the hated St. Louis Cardinals, several fans put together thank you "appreciation videos" to him. Here's one of the nicest. If you don't want to watch all the baseball highlights, just jump to the 4:20 mark to see him talk with Bill Murray and then address the mass of fans at the Cubs victory rally. So, even if you supported the travel ban for your own personal reasons, if you can't disagree someone as good as Dexter Fowler (who, again, has a wife from Iran) without being ugly about, that speaks solely about you and not the issue at hand. And most definitely not about Dexter Fowler. Even if he's on the wrong team. Donald Trump finally said something about the growing wave of anti-Semitic attacks around the country. The good news is that he's apparently against them.
What he said is that “Anti-Semitism is horrible, and it’s going to stop." He added that anti-Semitism was "age-old, and there's something going on that doesn't fully allow it to heal. Sometimes it gets better and then it busts apart." Certainly this is hardly the soaring, eloquent level of response one hopes for from a president, but given his silence, at least it's something. On the other hand, his comment that "there's something going on that doesn't fully allow it to heal" is tone-deaf. What's going on is that we had a presidential candidate who took a leading anti-Semite on to run his campaign (and then making him chief adviser) and stirred up up intolerance and racism in his run for the presidency and kept quoting from white supremacist website and in his refusal to denounce these groups throughout the race gave them winking approval that their actions could enter the mainstream. That's what busts the healing about. Bomb threats against Jewish community centers have greatly increased in recent weeks. In fact, anti-Semitic hate crimes against Jews in New York City have already doubled this year...and we're only in February. And thus far -- silence from the White House.
At his event with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu last week, Trump was asked about charges that his administration "is playing with xenophobia and maybe racist tones.” Rather than take the opportunity to at least try to explain (whether accurately or not) why that was not true, he used the question to talk about how he won the election with 306 electoral votes. No, really. (Note for those keeping scoring: 306 electoral votes is not that many -- especially when you lost the popular vote by almost three million.) The next day, at his now-infamous out-of-control press conference, Trump was asked a similar question, what he planned to do about the 48 bomb threats in recent weeks against Jewish community centers and do to combat growing anti-Semitism. Rather than answer, or talk about his electoral votes, he actually cut the reporter off, told him to sit down, and instead replied, “See, he said he was going to ask a very simple, easy question, and it’s not.” First of all -- yes, it IS a simple, easy question. "What are you going to do about growing racism of any sort?" is an incredibly easy question. You start by saying, "I'm against it. " And then, if you want to go on, you then add that there's a reason it's called a "hate crime" because it's hateful. And you denounce it and call on all Americans to denounce it. You can even stop right there if you want, if you're stumped and can't think of anything else to say. It wouldn't be a great answer, but it would not only be an passing-grade C- answer, but a simple, easy answer. Instead, Trump continued to avoid the simple, easy question by going on to say, "I am the least anti-Semitic person that you’ve ever seen in your entire life." Adding that,. "I hate the charge. I find it repulsive.” Okay, never mind that the reporter didn't make "the charge," as true as arguably it might be. And okay, never mind that we have zero evidence that Trump is even remotely not anti-Semitic, let alone "the most anti-Semitic." Actually, given that he's now the most powerful man in the world and yet he is avoiding not only doing anything about growing anti-Semitic hate crimes, but avoiding even answering any questions about them -- which gives aid and comfort and tacit approval to those committing them -- it could be argued that Donald Trump therefore could be the most anti-Semitic person we've ever seen in our entire life. (For the record, just because he brought it up, I know a whole lot of people who are less anti-Semitic than Trump. I'm guessing everyone reading these words, whatever their politic positions, do, as well. Indeed, I think most people I know are less anti-Semitic than Trump. I've bumped into angry strangers on the street off their meds who I'm sure in their isolated world are less anti-Semitic than the powerful Trump. My childhood friend Jack Moline -- one of our fine board members here at Elisberg Industries -- is a rabbi and president of the Interfaith Alliance. He is monumentally less anti-Semitic than Trump. Every day, he writes and speak about bringing peace and unity among religions. It's his job. And his personal core. So, there, we have at least one person by name to prove Trump wrong. I'm going to guess that Benjamin Netanyahu, the Prime Minister of Israel who Trump shared the stage with only the day before, is much less anti-Semitic than Trump, as well, so there we have another. I'd keep the list going, but we'd be here for a very long time and never get to "second of all." Actually, we'll have to still wait and get to "second of all" in a moment. That's because later in the same press conference, Trump was again asked about the same issue of growing anti-Semitism, and he shunted it aside as fake news created by his political opponents. Note: in real news, only days later, on Monday, there were five more bomb threats against Jewish Community Centers. And that same day, nearly 200 headstones at a Jewish cemetery in St. Louis were discovered vandalized.) Which finally brings us to second of all. In what alternative fact universe does Trump think that the president of the United States is only supposed to get "simple, easy questions"???????!!! President of the United States may be the most difficult job in the world. And the whole point of "most difficult job in the world" is that it's...well, difficult, and so every day there will be a roaring stream of difficult, challenging, pounding questions that require being answered. And Trump is going to tell reporters to sit down because their questions aren't simple and easy?? Well...that sure isn't going to fly very far. You stop answering challenging questions and leave them open, and not only will they come pouring at you from all directions, but soon the public starts seeing the problems aren't being addressed. And they get really pissed off. Besides, how hard is it for a high-level politician (or any politician) to dance around a question and obfuscate without actually answering? It's part of the job requirements, it happens regularly throughout every day. Only yesterday, in fact, vice president Mike Pence was asked at a European press conference if people are supposed to believe what he says when it contradicts the president, or believe what the president tweets when it's different from Pence's subsequent correction? Pence waltzed for a few moments without answering and then moved on. (Though believe it or not, he did begin by saying "That's a good question" -- which it is.) When Trump was asked his simple, easy question that he didn't want to answer, he told the reporter to sit down. It was a simple, easy question. "What are you going to do about growing anti-Semitic hate crimes?" It's a softball question that most politicians should be happy to get. "I'm against hate." How hard is that??! But Trump said absolutely nothing. In the end, I guess we really did get his answer. Last week, I wrote about a series of videos that are springing up around the world, made by comedy TV shows to compete with one made by The Netherlands. The premise is since Donald Trump has declared "America First," all these countries around the rest of the world are trying to position themselves to be "second." They go by various names, one of which is Comedy Against Trumpism. Another, which I quite like, given the cleverness of its pun, is "Every Second Counts." I've watched a lot of them, and The Netherlands remains my favorite. (You know how wacky and funny those cut-up Dutch are...) But many of the others are still almost as good, what with personal taste and all. As I wrote at the time, I'd be posting a bunch of these. And here's one more. This is from Belgium, making their case why they should be second... I had a big dilemma. There were so many pathetic news stories over the weekend about our so-called president that I didn't know which one to write about. If I selected one, then all the others would go unmentioned. And there were so many that if I spread them out through the week, they not only would be old news by the time I got to Thursday, but that would be not writing about all the news pathetic news stories that cropped up in the meantime. Instead, I've decided to write about them all here, but as shorter pieces, rather than in depth. Then again, they're each so egregious that none of them really need much insight to grasp how dismal each is. I mean, after all, if you saw a story that read, "Home Repairman Charges 90-year-old Grandmother on Welfare $3,000 to Change Her Lightbulb," you really wouldn't need much in-depth explanation for what was so gut-wrenchingly wrong about this... Let's dive in. Make sure you have your protective gear on -- On Friday, Donald Trump actually tweeted -- "The FAKE NEWS media (failing @nytimes, @NBCNews, @ABC, @CBS, @CNN) is not my enemy, it is the enemy of the American People!" Two things: 1) He clearly needs at least ONE honest person near by to explain how delusional this sounds. And that he comes across like a would-be despot. And like a so-called president. More would be better, a whole staff would be ideal. But just ONE honest person to explain reality to him would be a starting point. 2) "Were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter." -- Thomas Jefferson It was a big weekend for head-crushing quote from Trump. On Saturday night, at his "campaign rally" (he does know he's president, right??), he was speaking about terrorist threats around the world and told the crowd -- "You look at what’s happening last night in Sweden. Sweden. Who would believe this?" The answer to his question is easy: It's The 20% of ignorant American suckers who believe anything Trump says and thinks he doesn't make all this tripe up. For the record, there was NO terrorist attack "last night" in Sweden. The worst that happened in Sweden that night was that someone over-ate at a smorgasbord, that and a radio station spent all evening playing ABBA records. So, let's see, that makes Bowling Green, Atlanta, and now Sweden as places that have suffered the tragedy of non-existent terrorist massacres. Our thought and prayers go out to them all. The next day, Trump tried to obfuscate and sent out another tweet (sigh...), supposedly explaining that he had been referring to a "Fox News" report about immigrant crime in Sweden. The problem with that fake explanation (which some in the news media bought) is that his quote very clearly and specifically refers to some unnamed event that happened in Sweden "LAST NIGHT." He wasn't talking about crime statistics, he was making up terrorism to scare people. Oh, and Carl Bidt, the former Prime Minister of Sweden, upon hearing of Trump's comments, sent out his own tweet. It read, "Sweden? Terror attack? What has he been smoking? Questions abound." And the former Prime Minister isn't alone in Sweden. According to a Pew poll, 92% of actual Swedes who really live in Sweden and, in fact, know their country say that they have little to no confidence in Trump to “do right thing regarding world affairs.” 92%!! I don't think you can get 92% of people to agree on anything, including a love of pizza, a good night's sleep, and puppies. No wonder Trump lies about them. Nor is Sweden alone among European nations who have a bizarrely low-opinion of Trump. A petition has been circulating in England, our closest world-power ally, with whom we famously have a "Special Relationship" which has been signed by 1.8 million citizens to keep the American president out of the U.K., As a result of that, this matter is now being debated in Parliament. (For the record, to be debated in Parliament, the issue only needed 100,000 signatures.) It's not bad enough that Trump has done this -- gotten to the point that England (England!!!!) is debating whether to block the President of the United States from entering the country -- but utterly stunning that he accomplished such concern and hatred in ONE MONTH. And what's almost worse is that almost zero Republicans in Congress seem to care. For weeks, whenever anyone in the Trump administration has been asked about ties to Russia, they have been angry and blistering in their denials. Now that reports have surfaced about the former and now-fired National Security Director Michael Flynn negotiating with Russia before the Trump administration took office, that hard line has changed. On Meet the Press this past Sunday, what Chief of State Reince Priebus said (now) was, “We don’t know of any contacts with Russian agents.” Hardly the blustered denials from before. But Priebus did himself even more proud when he tried to regain the bullying upper-hand by slamming the press for not always naming its sources (something most reasonable people understand as a cornerstone for investigative journalism) . What made this stand out, though, is that Preibus himself in the same interview quoted people he said were in the intelligence community and supported a point he was making...but didn't name his own sources. Just the anonymous "intelligence community." To be clear, if naming his sources would have compromised them (though it well-may not have), I understand him not naming them. Just exactly the same as he should understand journalists not naming their sources. But he probably does understand it. He just wanted to try to tear down the press. Finally, the Gallup Poll says that Trump's "approval" rating during his one-month Honeymoon Period is now at a paltry 38%.
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AuthorRobert J. Elisberg is a political commentator, screenwriter, novelist, tech writer and also some other things that I just tend to keep forgetting. Feedspot Badge of Honor
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