JOE BIDEN'S GREAT. IT |
In case you’re in the same pickle as me and don’t have a clue as to who should run for president in 2024, here’s the Washington Post’s complete Top 10 list of leading Democratic contenders, along with their major credentials. 10. J.B. Pritzker, Illinois governor. 9. Josh Shapiro, Pennsylvania governor. 8. Bernie Sanders, senator from Vermont, who was a contender for the Democratic nomination for president in the last election. Bernie’s 81. 7. Amy Klobuchar, U.S. senator from Minnesota. 6. Gretchen Whitmer, Michigan governor and target of a failed kidnapping plot by right-wing nut jobs. 5. Gavin Newsom, California governor. 4. Jared Polis, Colorado governor. 3. Kamala D. Harris, vice president of the United States and former California senator. 2. Pete Buttigieg, Biden’s secretary of transportation, formerly the 32nd mayor of South Bend, Indiana. 1. Joe Biden, president of the United States, former vice president and U.S. senator. His birthday is Nov. 20, 1942. |
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A PAGE ONE VALENTINE
Marching, speaking for democracy
I HAPPENED ON SOME REALLY GOOD NEWS where I least expected to find it – on the front page of the New York Times, the Valentine's Day edition.
Page One usually isn't where to look if you're trying to cheer up.
Real news is mostly awful news. Anything to do with death; engineering mistakes that blow up the space shuttle; big wars; little wars; church-treasurer embezzlements; lockouts; sewage overflows; people chained in cellars; sinkholes; factory closings; head-on collisions on prom night; and on election night, Donald "The Donald." The kind of stomach-churning stories that make you wish you hadn't gotten out of bed and which punish you the rest of the day so you can't sleep at night.
So, it was a pleasure to have retrieved the Times on Feb. 14 from its hiding place under the front hedge, and to drag it inside for a quick scan at the breakfast table.
There was a piece about the Turkey earthquake, “Collapsed Buildings … sold as safe.” An article about the suspected mastermind behind the Chinese spy balloons. And yet another story scrutinizing the finances of U.S. Rep. George Santos, the nation’s second biggest liar.
None of which are the kind of brighten-your-day stories I’m talking about. There actually were just two:
100,00 PROTEST
IN ISRAEL TO HALT
COURTS OVERHAUL
College Board
Is Under Fire
For A.P. Class
Why were these uplifting?
Because they were about inspired people pushing back against authoritarian and anti-democratic forces that are threatening America as well as countries across the globe.
It seems to me that the forces of good, which generally are the ones on the Left, aren't as vigorous as their mean-spirited counterparts on the Right. The Right seems so determined, so unrelenting and so unwilling to take a nap, much less a vacation, as it schemes to make the rest of us miserable.
Which is why it’s inspiring when the Left does something more than say “gosh” and “heck.”
LET’S TAKE THE ISRAELI PIECE FIRST:
AS A NON-JEW, I find it uncomfortable to write about Israel. I want to “like” the country, not only as a just antidote to the Holocaust, but as a democracy. It's so much like the U.S., especially because the countries share similar and deep flaws. But for a long while, Israel has been been acting badly in regard to the Palestinians, and it's hardly a fair fight. (Not that the Palestinians would act better were the shoe on the other foot).
One thing that troubles me is Israel’s disappearing Left, as the Right gets stronger and stronger, culminating most recently in the election of what news reports say is most Right Wing and extremist government in Israel’s short history.
Especially distressing is Benjamin Netanyahu’s return to power. Like many casual observers, I thought “Bibi” was done for when he was ousted in the next to last election, and that possibly the country’s longest serving prime minister might end his public service in the public slammer. But suddenly, like a trick ending to a horror movie, Bibi is back, and working on a get-out-of-jail plan. Which mirrors my home-country nightmare, in which Donald “The Donald” reenters the White House and escapes state and federal prisons.
One of Bibi’s and his fellow extremists’ major goals is to monkey-wrench Israel’s judicial system, making it easier for the government to override Supreme Court decisions, as well as to control selection of judges – upsetting the balance of power that’s so essential to all democracies.
So, I was cheered to read about the huge demonstration the Times reported taking place in Jerusalem. One-hundred-thousand protesters pushing back.
Students skipped classes, workers left their jobs. A caravan of protesters stretched two-and-a-half miles. Transportation systems added trains and busses.
The Times said:
Protesters came by bus from Haifa, train from Tel Aviv and car from the occupied Golan Heights. They carried Israeli flags, megaphones and homemade banners. And they were chanting for democracy, freedom and judicial independence.
“You voted Bibi. You got Mussolini,” one protester's sign said.
“We aren’t so far from a situation were we wont be allowed to protest,” worried one mother, who attended with her son and a partner.
The Times said that polls show 41 percent of Israelis oppose the judicial mischief plan. But 44 percent support it.
Sound familiar? A nation divided; democracy at the cliff.
But the forces of good are disturbed and on the move.
THE OTHER STORY IS ABOUT FLORIDA AND “EDUCATION.”
One thing that troubles me is Israel’s disappearing Left, as the Right gets stronger and stronger, culminating most recently in the election of what news reports say is most Right Wing and extremist government in Israel’s short history.
Especially distressing is Benjamin Netanyahu’s return to power. Like many casual observers, I thought “Bibi” was done for when he was ousted in the next to last election, and that possibly the country’s longest serving prime minister might end his public service in the public slammer. But suddenly, like a trick ending to a horror movie, Bibi is back, and working on a get-out-of-jail plan. Which mirrors my home-country nightmare, in which Donald “The Donald” reenters the White House and escapes state and federal prisons.
One of Bibi’s and his fellow extremists’ major goals is to monkey-wrench Israel’s judicial system, making it easier for the government to override Supreme Court decisions, as well as to control selection of judges – upsetting the balance of power that’s so essential to all democracies.
So, I was cheered to read about the huge demonstration the Times reported taking place in Jerusalem. One-hundred-thousand protesters pushing back.
Students skipped classes, workers left their jobs. A caravan of protesters stretched two-and-a-half miles. Transportation systems added trains and busses.
The Times said:
Protesters came by bus from Haifa, train from Tel Aviv and car from the occupied Golan Heights. They carried Israeli flags, megaphones and homemade banners. And they were chanting for democracy, freedom and judicial independence.
“You voted Bibi. You got Mussolini,” one protester's sign said.
“We aren’t so far from a situation were we wont be allowed to protest,” worried one mother, who attended with her son and a partner.
The Times said that polls show 41 percent of Israelis oppose the judicial mischief plan. But 44 percent support it.
Sound familiar? A nation divided; democracy at the cliff.
But the forces of good are disturbed and on the move.
THE OTHER STORY IS ABOUT FLORIDA AND “EDUCATION.”
THIS ONE was involved the controversy over College Board’s new Advanced Placement course for high schoolers about black history, which the state of Florida so far has disallowed, because of Gov. Ron DeSantis’ “war on woke.”
“As presented, the content of this course is inexplicably contrary to Florida law and significantly lacks educational value,” education officials said. Among their objections were sections on black homosexuality, black feminism and Black Lives Matter. Imagine: A contemporary black history review without major discussion of Black Lives Matter.
The Times’ story on Valentine’s Day dealt with anger among experts in black history to changes that the College Board made in the course, which seemed to be an attempt to appease DeSantis and his acolytes.
The College Board has vigorously denied it was swayed by politics. Indeed, the Times story said that some academic experts said they were assured by the College Board that its officials had had “absolutely no communication” with the Florida authorities.
Which turned out to be pants-on-fire wrong.
The story made clear that the College Board from the outset expected push-back from Florida, because of the state's new and obnoxious anti-woke law that forbids teaching anything in a way that might cause students to feel uncomfortable about learning what their misbehaving ancestors did.
So the College Board contacted Florida officials to chat about an early draft of the new course. And, much to the surprise of the College Board folks, the Florida folks turned out to have little interest in a substantive discussion. A College Board official told the Times that Florida's department of education: “acts as a political apparatus.” Duh.
Nonetheless, the College Board’s final version of the course seemed to respond to Florida’s public objections. And worse, the College Board added a preface to the course, which seemed to try to reassure DeSantis' worries about "woke's" bad influence on the young, saying that “A.P, opposes indoctrination … A.P. students are not required to feel certain ways about themselves or the course content.”
If that’s not appeasement, then Britain’s Neville Chamberlain never tried to make nice with Adolph Hitler at the opening of World War II.
What inspired me about this round of the controversy is that the advocates for a full and honest course about black history were pushing back against both DeSantis and the College Board, and willing to have a full-throated, public discussion about it.
“There is no way you can properly teach this material under the rubric of what DeSantis et al are demanding. This is a train wreck,” UCLA’s Cheryl Harris told the Times.
DeSantis, having tasted blood, decided to drink more deeply. He wondered aloud whether Florida should be allowing any College Board A.P. courses, regardless of the subject, according to the Washington Post. As Chamberlain discovered, appeasement not only doesn't work, it makes things worse.
SO, GOOD FOR THE SCHOLARS for putting the screws to the College Board, and not letting Florida off the hook.
Good for Israeli citizens on the march for democracy.
No guarantees, of course, as to how things will turn out.
But it's the effort that counts.
Two Valentines right there on the front page, from those who dare to hope and more: to do something besides wishing things will be okay, by taking to the streets and by speaking up.
“As presented, the content of this course is inexplicably contrary to Florida law and significantly lacks educational value,” education officials said. Among their objections were sections on black homosexuality, black feminism and Black Lives Matter. Imagine: A contemporary black history review without major discussion of Black Lives Matter.
The Times’ story on Valentine’s Day dealt with anger among experts in black history to changes that the College Board made in the course, which seemed to be an attempt to appease DeSantis and his acolytes.
The College Board has vigorously denied it was swayed by politics. Indeed, the Times story said that some academic experts said they were assured by the College Board that its officials had had “absolutely no communication” with the Florida authorities.
Which turned out to be pants-on-fire wrong.
The story made clear that the College Board from the outset expected push-back from Florida, because of the state's new and obnoxious anti-woke law that forbids teaching anything in a way that might cause students to feel uncomfortable about learning what their misbehaving ancestors did.
So the College Board contacted Florida officials to chat about an early draft of the new course. And, much to the surprise of the College Board folks, the Florida folks turned out to have little interest in a substantive discussion. A College Board official told the Times that Florida's department of education: “acts as a political apparatus.” Duh.
Nonetheless, the College Board’s final version of the course seemed to respond to Florida’s public objections. And worse, the College Board added a preface to the course, which seemed to try to reassure DeSantis' worries about "woke's" bad influence on the young, saying that “A.P, opposes indoctrination … A.P. students are not required to feel certain ways about themselves or the course content.”
If that’s not appeasement, then Britain’s Neville Chamberlain never tried to make nice with Adolph Hitler at the opening of World War II.
What inspired me about this round of the controversy is that the advocates for a full and honest course about black history were pushing back against both DeSantis and the College Board, and willing to have a full-throated, public discussion about it.
“There is no way you can properly teach this material under the rubric of what DeSantis et al are demanding. This is a train wreck,” UCLA’s Cheryl Harris told the Times.
DeSantis, having tasted blood, decided to drink more deeply. He wondered aloud whether Florida should be allowing any College Board A.P. courses, regardless of the subject, according to the Washington Post. As Chamberlain discovered, appeasement not only doesn't work, it makes things worse.
SO, GOOD FOR THE SCHOLARS for putting the screws to the College Board, and not letting Florida off the hook.
Good for Israeli citizens on the march for democracy.
No guarantees, of course, as to how things will turn out.
But it's the effort that counts.
Two Valentines right there on the front page, from those who dare to hope and more: to do something besides wishing things will be okay, by taking to the streets and by speaking up.
Ron DeSantis
THE ENEMY OF MY ENEMY
IS ... NOT MY FRIEND
RON DESANTIS is a vile, dangerous leader.
He is not preferable to Donald Trump.
Ron DeSantis will not rescue America from Donald Trump.
They are equally terrible.
As a president, DeSantis would be just as destructive as Donald Trump, just as mean, cruel, racist and divisive.
If DeSantis were to win the White House, the particulars would be different from those of the terrible four years of Trump's presidency.
But the effect would be the same. DeSantis, in his first term, like Trump in his second, would destroy democracy in America – at least he’d give it a really hard try.
There is one major difference between these two worst-case scenarios: there would be no surprise about how a President DeSantis would govern.
When Trump took office in 2017, there was an element of mystery as to what he’d really do.
Since Trump had never held political office, we – I should stop using the “we” word, since I can speak only about what is/was in my brain – I had no idea what Trump would be like once he actually was president..
We – I – knew little about him, other than that he’d been a grotesque candidate.
Up to then, Trump mainly was just a name. A name on buildings, airplanes and other of his “businesses,” some of which weren’t his. A name in the tabloid newspapers, meaning he was a largely fictitious character. He’d been a name in a scripted TV “reality” show; a name as author of ghost-written books; and name without much ideological shape on forums like the Don Imus in the Morning radio show.
But I hoped that, deep down, there might be something of substance. Maybe he’d be better than his various disguises; maybe the awesome responsibilities and traditions of the presidency would weigh on him - in a good way. Possibly, he’d listen to wise women and men in his orbit and turn out to be a pragmatist when the dreadful, unexpected challenges confronted and bedeviledhim, just as they always have, no matter whom the presidents are.
Stupid me.
BUT THERE’LL BE NO GUESSING about a would-be President Ronald Dion DeSantis.
DeSantis is just another in a long, long, long line of leader/monsters. History tells us that God – if She exists and does this sort of thing - never creates just one awful head of state.
How do we know– how do I know – if DeSantis is just one more of those?
The proof is the noxious output of Ron DeSantis’ Florida “Laboratory.”
Which he bragged about in his second inaugural address on Jan. 3 following his huge re-election win as governor. He remarked:
He is not preferable to Donald Trump.
Ron DeSantis will not rescue America from Donald Trump.
They are equally terrible.
As a president, DeSantis would be just as destructive as Donald Trump, just as mean, cruel, racist and divisive.
If DeSantis were to win the White House, the particulars would be different from those of the terrible four years of Trump's presidency.
But the effect would be the same. DeSantis, in his first term, like Trump in his second, would destroy democracy in America – at least he’d give it a really hard try.
There is one major difference between these two worst-case scenarios: there would be no surprise about how a President DeSantis would govern.
When Trump took office in 2017, there was an element of mystery as to what he’d really do.
Since Trump had never held political office, we – I should stop using the “we” word, since I can speak only about what is/was in my brain – I had no idea what Trump would be like once he actually was president..
We – I – knew little about him, other than that he’d been a grotesque candidate.
Up to then, Trump mainly was just a name. A name on buildings, airplanes and other of his “businesses,” some of which weren’t his. A name in the tabloid newspapers, meaning he was a largely fictitious character. He’d been a name in a scripted TV “reality” show; a name as author of ghost-written books; and name without much ideological shape on forums like the Don Imus in the Morning radio show.
But I hoped that, deep down, there might be something of substance. Maybe he’d be better than his various disguises; maybe the awesome responsibilities and traditions of the presidency would weigh on him - in a good way. Possibly, he’d listen to wise women and men in his orbit and turn out to be a pragmatist when the dreadful, unexpected challenges confronted and bedeviledhim, just as they always have, no matter whom the presidents are.
Stupid me.
BUT THERE’LL BE NO GUESSING about a would-be President Ronald Dion DeSantis.
DeSantis is just another in a long, long, long line of leader/monsters. History tells us that God – if She exists and does this sort of thing - never creates just one awful head of state.
How do we know– how do I know – if DeSantis is just one more of those?
The proof is the noxious output of Ron DeSantis’ Florida “Laboratory.”
Which he bragged about in his second inaugural address on Jan. 3 following his huge re-election win as governor. He remarked:
It is often said that our federalist constitutional system – with fifty states able to pursue their own unique policies – represents a laboratory of democracy. Well, these last few years have witnessed a great test of governing philosophies as many jurisdictions pursued a much different path than we have pursued here in the state of Florida. |
The Florida Laboratory might resonate with fans of horror movies, in which a mad scientist – a mad political scientist – operates a dungeon, well-equipped with the tools of torture, wherein he conducts various demented experiments, utilizing as handy test subjects vulnerable inhabitants of his personal island – or peninsula.
The DeSantis lab in the last four years has been developing various strains of cultural hatred, such as Florida's attack on transgender kids – outlawing transgender girls from completing on girls’ and women’s sports teams, and Florida's “Don’t Say Gay” law, which bars teaching of gender issues in lower grades.
For his work on “Don’t Say Gay,” DeSantis used an actual lab rodent, namely Mickey Mouse, punishing the Disney corporation for its opposition to the bill by revoking the Mouse empire’s privileged control of its vast Disney World theme park.
Sometimes DeSantis has conducted teachable moments outside the lab, to give “sanctuary” communities a taste of Florida's immigration troubles, as he did last September by sending two airplanes to Texas – that’s right, Texas – to pick up about 50 mostly Venezuelan immigrants and fly them to Martha’s Vineyard, an island off the deep blue Massachusetts mainland.
IF THERE'S A UNIFYING THEME to the Florida Lab’s work, it's to stamp out the contagious liberal virus known to laypersons as “woke.”
Indeed, in his Second Inaugural, DeSantis explained how non-Floridian jurisdictions, besotted with wokism, have coddled criminals, corrupted public education, burdened taxpayers and practiced “medical authoritarianism.”
Which, thankfully, has not been the case in the Sunshine State:
The DeSantis lab in the last four years has been developing various strains of cultural hatred, such as Florida's attack on transgender kids – outlawing transgender girls from completing on girls’ and women’s sports teams, and Florida's “Don’t Say Gay” law, which bars teaching of gender issues in lower grades.
For his work on “Don’t Say Gay,” DeSantis used an actual lab rodent, namely Mickey Mouse, punishing the Disney corporation for its opposition to the bill by revoking the Mouse empire’s privileged control of its vast Disney World theme park.
Sometimes DeSantis has conducted teachable moments outside the lab, to give “sanctuary” communities a taste of Florida's immigration troubles, as he did last September by sending two airplanes to Texas – that’s right, Texas – to pick up about 50 mostly Venezuelan immigrants and fly them to Martha’s Vineyard, an island off the deep blue Massachusetts mainland.
IF THERE'S A UNIFYING THEME to the Florida Lab’s work, it's to stamp out the contagious liberal virus known to laypersons as “woke.”
Indeed, in his Second Inaugural, DeSantis explained how non-Floridian jurisdictions, besotted with wokism, have coddled criminals, corrupted public education, burdened taxpayers and practiced “medical authoritarianism.”
Which, thankfully, has not been the case in the Sunshine State:
We reject this woke ideology. We seek normalcy, not philosophical lunacy! We will not allow reality, facts, and truth to become optional. We will never surrender to the woke mob. Florida is where woke goes to die! |
I CAN'T THINK of a modern instance since George Wallace declared “segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever" at his 1963 inauguration as Alabama governor, in which a Southern governor has sounded so intentional about perpetuating oppression of its black citizens.
“Woke” started out as a positive word, conveying racial awareness, consensus and healing. But it's also been repurposed by right-wing alchemists like DeSantis as a racial slur.
Woke entered my brain late in the game – it’s an old brain, and a slow one – during the George Floyd incident, in which a policeman murdered a man in plain view, in plain daylight – and the nation came to an understanding of what it means to be black in 21st Century America.
Woke made it into Florida law as the ‘Stop WOKE Act” - Stop Wrongs to Our Kids and Employees Act, later renamed the Individual Freedom Act – outlawing teaching of racial topics in a way that would make students feel guilt or “distress” about the sins of our forebears. The legislation, partially blocked for now by a federal judge, aims to protect purported victims of classroom brutality in instances of this kind of classroom scenario:
“Woke” started out as a positive word, conveying racial awareness, consensus and healing. But it's also been repurposed by right-wing alchemists like DeSantis as a racial slur.
Woke entered my brain late in the game – it’s an old brain, and a slow one – during the George Floyd incident, in which a policeman murdered a man in plain view, in plain daylight – and the nation came to an understanding of what it means to be black in 21st Century America.
Woke made it into Florida law as the ‘Stop WOKE Act” - Stop Wrongs to Our Kids and Employees Act, later renamed the Individual Freedom Act – outlawing teaching of racial topics in a way that would make students feel guilt or “distress” about the sins of our forebears. The legislation, partially blocked for now by a federal judge, aims to protect purported victims of classroom brutality in instances of this kind of classroom scenario:
A person, by virtue of his or her race, color, sex, or national origin, bears personal responsibility for and must feel guilt, anguish, or other forms of psychological distress because of actions, in which the person played no part, committed in the past by other members of the same race, color, national origin, or sex. |
THE FLORIDA LAB'S WORK also includes thought control. A recent legislative proposal would forbid colleges and universities from spending money on programs that promote “diversity, equity and inclusion programs,” often labeled by the acronym,“DEI.” Among other provisions would be an attempt to weaken tenure for professors, which protects academic freedom.
Then there's the recent move by Florida education officials to throw out a new national College Board Advanced Placement course for high school students on African American history, saying that “as presented, the content of this course is inexplicably contrary to Florida law and significantly lacks educational value.” The officials later explained they were offended by discussions of Black Lives Matter, black homosexuality and black feminism.
Last week, the College Board issued a revised version of the course, which included removal of a section on Black Lives Matter from the main “framework” of the course, suggesting only that the Black Lives Matter movement might be a subject of an individual student's research project. College Board officials said the changes predated the Florida assault on the course; but DeSantis’ fellow right-wingers had their knives out much earlier, too, so the College Board’s defenses sounded hollow.
However, the course remained a powerful powerful review of black history – and Florida’s move to cancel the course seemed another example of “where woke goes to die.” You can see the scope of the course at this link to understand what Florida students will be missing if state officials stick to their decision.
Then there's the recent move by Florida education officials to throw out a new national College Board Advanced Placement course for high school students on African American history, saying that “as presented, the content of this course is inexplicably contrary to Florida law and significantly lacks educational value.” The officials later explained they were offended by discussions of Black Lives Matter, black homosexuality and black feminism.
Last week, the College Board issued a revised version of the course, which included removal of a section on Black Lives Matter from the main “framework” of the course, suggesting only that the Black Lives Matter movement might be a subject of an individual student's research project. College Board officials said the changes predated the Florida assault on the course; but DeSantis’ fellow right-wingers had their knives out much earlier, too, so the College Board’s defenses sounded hollow.
However, the course remained a powerful powerful review of black history – and Florida’s move to cancel the course seemed another example of “where woke goes to die.” You can see the scope of the course at this link to understand what Florida students will be missing if state officials stick to their decision.
DESANTIS PRETENDS that his woke attacks are not anti-black, but a call to common sense. Indeed, he disguises his racist experiments in various ways – promoting a state art and essay contest for Black History Month, and populating his website with photos of the governor standing side-by-side with black National Guard soldiers and other persons of color.
But you don't have be woke to realize that’s just camouflage for what’s underway in the Florida laboratory.
On paper, DeSantis has a formidable resume for a practicing political scientist: graduate of Harvard and Yale; legal advisor to the Navy's legendary Seal Team One; federal prosecutor; Congressman, and at 44, not objectionably too young or too old.
Donald Trump's alarming presidency - the only one to try to overturn an election - tempted some people to welcome DeSantis as one Republican who might break the GOP's fever for Trump.
But DeSantis' record says otherwise: it's a warning as to what to expect if Ron outflanks Don in the next race for the White House, and replaces him at the Resolute Desk.
So, there's no reason for wishful thinking, no chance for pleasant surprises if DeSantis becomes The One.
There will be nothing to cheer, and plenty to fear.
But you don't have be woke to realize that’s just camouflage for what’s underway in the Florida laboratory.
On paper, DeSantis has a formidable resume for a practicing political scientist: graduate of Harvard and Yale; legal advisor to the Navy's legendary Seal Team One; federal prosecutor; Congressman, and at 44, not objectionably too young or too old.
Donald Trump's alarming presidency - the only one to try to overturn an election - tempted some people to welcome DeSantis as one Republican who might break the GOP's fever for Trump.
But DeSantis' record says otherwise: it's a warning as to what to expect if Ron outflanks Don in the next race for the White House, and replaces him at the Resolute Desk.
So, there's no reason for wishful thinking, no chance for pleasant surprises if DeSantis becomes The One.
There will be nothing to cheer, and plenty to fear.
LET'S BE HONEST: KEEPING GOVT. PAPERS IS MOSTLY WRONG WHEN TRUMP DOES IT
WHAT’S THE REAL DIFFERENCE between Donald Trump hanging on to classified government documents after he left office and Joe Biden doing the same thing?
It’s simple: Joe Biden’s a good guy. And Donald Trump isn’t.
Case closed.
The only real reason that liberals like me reveled in the discovery of secret papers at Trump’s grotesque lair at Mar-a-Lago is that it might be the one and only instance that would get him locked up.
Sort of the way that Al Capone was finally brought to “justice” - for tax evasion, not for the murders and violence that were part of the bootlegger’s vicious business plan.
Other than the satisfying spectacle of FBI agents “raiding” Trump’s Florida home, the underlying potential crime is pretty minor stuff when you consider Donald Trump’s most serious sins.
We’re talking about a man who tried to overturn the election that he lost, working all the angles that he and his slithy-tove crew of advisors could dream up, including the attack on the Capitol in which his own vice president could have been murdered, and the United States plunged into autocracy.
As for Joe Biden’s papers, misplaced after he was Barack Obama’s vice president, that case seems like small potatoes, and doesn’t make a dime’s difference in how we view his mostly superb presidency.
It’s simple: Joe Biden’s a good guy. And Donald Trump isn’t.
Case closed.
The only real reason that liberals like me reveled in the discovery of secret papers at Trump’s grotesque lair at Mar-a-Lago is that it might be the one and only instance that would get him locked up.
Sort of the way that Al Capone was finally brought to “justice” - for tax evasion, not for the murders and violence that were part of the bootlegger’s vicious business plan.
Other than the satisfying spectacle of FBI agents “raiding” Trump’s Florida home, the underlying potential crime is pretty minor stuff when you consider Donald Trump’s most serious sins.
We’re talking about a man who tried to overturn the election that he lost, working all the angles that he and his slithy-tove crew of advisors could dream up, including the attack on the Capitol in which his own vice president could have been murdered, and the United States plunged into autocracy.
As for Joe Biden’s papers, misplaced after he was Barack Obama’s vice president, that case seems like small potatoes, and doesn’t make a dime’s difference in how we view his mostly superb presidency.
THERE ARE TWO important points to make in Biden’s case:
"By the way,” Biden told reporters, “my Corvette's in a locked garage, so it's not like they're sitting out on the street.”
- Point One: It doesn’t matter - probably. It would indeed be surprising if Biden had a suspect motive in hanging onto the relatively small amount of papers that have surfaced, assuming he knew about them in the first place. Whereas with Trump, there were lots more papers and he and his gofers tried really hard to cover them up. And because Trump is always up to no good, it’s always possible that he held on to some key papers because he planned to use them for some Donald Trump evil purpose.
- Point Two: The Biden matter is best appreciated for the fact that it provided yet another chance for us to hear from the “real” Joe Biden. As often is the case with the current commander-in-chief, controversies prompt refreshing “blunders," in which he candidly blurts out exactly what’s on his mind.
"By the way,” Biden told reporters, “my Corvette's in a locked garage, so it's not like they're sitting out on the street.”
IN JOE BIDEN'S WORLD, there can be no more special place than where he parks his beloved 1967 Corvette Stingray.
A gift from his often-mentioned late father/hero, Joe, Sr., the convertible can do zero to 60 in 5.8 seconds, according to a 2020 piece in the Detroit Free Press. It has a four-speed, stick shift transmission and a 350-horsepower engine, which allowed him, he once told Jay Leno, the comedian and fellow car enthusiast, to push it to speeds of 160 miles an hour.
“I love this car,” Biden said in a 2020 campaign commercial, in which he used the car as a prop to demonstrate his bona fides as a regular car guy, while also promoting the U.S. auto industry, along with Corvette-maker General Motors’ plans to produce electric-powered vehicles.
So, sleep tight America, if classified documents were in a garage with the Stringray, they might as well have been in the White House Situation Room, or the vaults of the National Archives, or wherever they are supposed to be.
A gift from his often-mentioned late father/hero, Joe, Sr., the convertible can do zero to 60 in 5.8 seconds, according to a 2020 piece in the Detroit Free Press. It has a four-speed, stick shift transmission and a 350-horsepower engine, which allowed him, he once told Jay Leno, the comedian and fellow car enthusiast, to push it to speeds of 160 miles an hour.
“I love this car,” Biden said in a 2020 campaign commercial, in which he used the car as a prop to demonstrate his bona fides as a regular car guy, while also promoting the U.S. auto industry, along with Corvette-maker General Motors’ plans to produce electric-powered vehicles.
So, sleep tight America, if classified documents were in a garage with the Stringray, they might as well have been in the White House Situation Room, or the vaults of the National Archives, or wherever they are supposed to be.
WAIT JUST A FRIGGING MINUTE," you’re saying, trying not to use swears.
"Isn’t that liberal hypocrisy, saying mishandling classified documents is a crime when it involves Donald Trump, but mere carelessness when Boy Joey does it?"
Yes. And no.
Yes, if you are Attorney General Merrick Garland, and you decided not to investigate. Instead, Garland, having appointed a special counsel to look into Trump’s paper crimes, now had to do the same thing with Biden, to demonstrate the Department of Justice's impartiality in dealing with politically charged matters.
The same goes with the media. Reporters are professional skeptics. It’s their job to ferret out any less-than-favorable possibilities within the Biden Papers' Scandal or the Trump Papers' Scandal. What's good for the goose... type of thing. Less nobly, it’s the media's chance to show that they’ll write negative stories about Biden, just like they do with Trump, although neither press critics nor Trumpsters will ever take that seriously.
Taking a less jaundiced view of the Biden papers is, in fact, hypocritical for the president's supporters, but the opposite is especially the case for two-faced Republicans, as they play pin the tail on the donkey, while ignoring the elephant in the room.
After all, Republicans are the princes of hypocrisy in everything that they do and say, and in everything that they don’t do and don’t say. They don’t care about the substance of the two cases, just as long as they can attack Democrats.
If there is a lesson for Democrats in the Biden disclosures it’s that presidents are absolutely flawed, and their supporters are always at risk of being disappointed and embarrassed by their leader’s stupid mistakes.
Of course, Biden and his staff should not have put any classified papers in the wrong places, even closeted with a beloved sports car, thus “imperiling" his political future, although not necessarily national security.
And when it comes to public relations, Team Biden should not have violated the first law of crisis management, allowing “bad news” to dribble out day after day, instead of quickly getting the whole story out, so the media people would lose interest and move on to the next crisis in the news cycle.
In the end, we should admit that the secret papers' controversy is small stuff for Biden, and probably for Trump, too, and that bias drives our views in both instances.
A FRIEND recently told me he’ll be disappointed if the Mar-a-Lago paper chase turns out to be the only offense that Garland and his crime fighters come up with. I agree, except that if that’s all that will send Trump to the slammer, I’ll settle for that.
Mainly, we need to relax and smile once in a while.
Let's keep some perspective, hoping that we don’t have to wait too long before Joe Biden, a genuine American good guy and a confessed dangerous driver, gets another chance to tell us what he’s really thinking.
Varoom.
"Isn’t that liberal hypocrisy, saying mishandling classified documents is a crime when it involves Donald Trump, but mere carelessness when Boy Joey does it?"
Yes. And no.
Yes, if you are Attorney General Merrick Garland, and you decided not to investigate. Instead, Garland, having appointed a special counsel to look into Trump’s paper crimes, now had to do the same thing with Biden, to demonstrate the Department of Justice's impartiality in dealing with politically charged matters.
The same goes with the media. Reporters are professional skeptics. It’s their job to ferret out any less-than-favorable possibilities within the Biden Papers' Scandal or the Trump Papers' Scandal. What's good for the goose... type of thing. Less nobly, it’s the media's chance to show that they’ll write negative stories about Biden, just like they do with Trump, although neither press critics nor Trumpsters will ever take that seriously.
Taking a less jaundiced view of the Biden papers is, in fact, hypocritical for the president's supporters, but the opposite is especially the case for two-faced Republicans, as they play pin the tail on the donkey, while ignoring the elephant in the room.
After all, Republicans are the princes of hypocrisy in everything that they do and say, and in everything that they don’t do and don’t say. They don’t care about the substance of the two cases, just as long as they can attack Democrats.
If there is a lesson for Democrats in the Biden disclosures it’s that presidents are absolutely flawed, and their supporters are always at risk of being disappointed and embarrassed by their leader’s stupid mistakes.
Of course, Biden and his staff should not have put any classified papers in the wrong places, even closeted with a beloved sports car, thus “imperiling" his political future, although not necessarily national security.
And when it comes to public relations, Team Biden should not have violated the first law of crisis management, allowing “bad news” to dribble out day after day, instead of quickly getting the whole story out, so the media people would lose interest and move on to the next crisis in the news cycle.
In the end, we should admit that the secret papers' controversy is small stuff for Biden, and probably for Trump, too, and that bias drives our views in both instances.
A FRIEND recently told me he’ll be disappointed if the Mar-a-Lago paper chase turns out to be the only offense that Garland and his crime fighters come up with. I agree, except that if that’s all that will send Trump to the slammer, I’ll settle for that.
Mainly, we need to relax and smile once in a while.
Let's keep some perspective, hoping that we don’t have to wait too long before Joe Biden, a genuine American good guy and a confessed dangerous driver, gets another chance to tell us what he’s really thinking.
Varoom.
REMEMBERING LINCOLN C. ALMOND
One of R.I.'s great governors.
And the kind of Republican
We wish was still around

LINCOLN ALMOND was a methodical, earnest administrator, a terrible public speaker, a successful crime fighter in one of the country's most corrupt states and a principled, accomplished Rhode Island governor.
He was also the kind of Republican that Democrats could - and did - vote for. Most liberals wish men and women like him were still around to keep the GOP honest and relevant.
In 2002, I wrote a long piece about the under-appreciated politician, for the Providence Phoenix, an alternative weekly. After Almond died, Jan. 2 at age 86, a couple of people remembered that article, so I dug up a copy from from my files. I'm reprinting it here on my personal blog, which has been dedicated to criticism of Donald Trump for the past six years.
It's unfair, in a way, to include Almond with the likes of Trump, but this blog is my only outlet.
So, Linc, If you're reading this wherever you are, please don't take it personally.
-- Brian Jones
He was also the kind of Republican that Democrats could - and did - vote for. Most liberals wish men and women like him were still around to keep the GOP honest and relevant.
In 2002, I wrote a long piece about the under-appreciated politician, for the Providence Phoenix, an alternative weekly. After Almond died, Jan. 2 at age 86, a couple of people remembered that article, so I dug up a copy from from my files. I'm reprinting it here on my personal blog, which has been dedicated to criticism of Donald Trump for the past six years.
It's unfair, in a way, to include Almond with the likes of Trump, but this blog is my only outlet.
So, Linc, If you're reading this wherever you are, please don't take it personally.
-- Brian Jones
THE PROVIDENCE PHOENIX
May 31 - June 6, 2002
Linc: Better than you think
Lincoln Almond has been a pretty effective governor, but his popularity pales in comparison to Buddy Cianci, since he's not entertaining and doesn't get the politics of symbolism
BY BRIAN C. JONES
THE LONG-AWAITED PLUNDER DOME TRIAL, another in the endless sagas of government corruption that have plagued Rhode Island throughout its history, is underway, and there's public fury with a politician. Headlines trumpet the officeholder's blunders: secret lists, hidden contracts, budget overruns.
"I'm getting treated like I'm Richard Nixon," complains one of the politician's top aides.
And a caller to the WHJJ-AM talk show hosted by John DePetro is on the horn, ranting about the politician's shameful ways. This guy, the caller scolds, had a chance to go Ground Zero after hijacked airliners demolished the World Trade Center in New York, and he didn't have the decency to represent Rhode Island at an American shrine.
Who is this rascal?
Certainly not Providence Mayor Vincent A. "Buddy" Cianci Jr., who, with three Plunder Dome co-defendants, faces 29 counts of running City Hall in Rhode Island's capital as a criminal racket.
Nope, Cianci's ratings never have been better. Several months ago, a Brown University poll showed that 63 percent of respondents believe he's doing a good or excellent job, and political scientist Darrell M. West, who oversaw the poll, believes these numbers remain accurate.
No, the scoundrel of the moment is the governor of Rhode Island, the not-so-excellently-perceived Lincoln C. Almond. Almond's approval ratings are awful, half those of the indicted mayor. Only 34 percent give the governor high marks, while nearly one out of four Rhode Islanders surveyed in the poll say Almond's performance is "poor."
Why? Almond has given voters much of what they've asked for, starting with seven years of scandal-free government, delivered by a man who puts on no airs as he works to adjust the mundane but vital nuts-and-bolts of public service -- such unexciting "asset protection" projects as road maintenance and college dormitory repairs.
By contrast, Cianci spends his days in federal court, where witnesses spin tales of envelopes packed with bribe money, spiteful abuses of public power, and the sale of government jobs. After court, without missing a beat, Cianci crosses to the other end of Kennedy Plaza, where he interviews candidates vying to be the city's next chief of police.
With little more than seven months left in Almond's tenure, a powerful case can be made that he'll be leaving office with a respectable record that contrasts with the widespread scorn he's receiving.
Here's a partial list:
- By one count, there are 41,000 more jobs in Rhode Island than when he took office in 1995. The unemployment rate, which was then more than seven percent, is now about four percent. Big-name companies like Fidelity Investments and Dow Chemical actually have squabbled with each other for the right to build new facilities and boost their workforces (Almond helped mediate their dispute).
- There's a half-billion dollars worth of construction going on at the state's colleges, reversing decades of decay.
- The state is recognized nationally for having one of highest levels of health insurance, thanks to a state program that Almond brought into its own.
- Rhode Island's much-scarred and scorned highways and bridges are under repair and getting smoother and sounder every year.
- The state bond ratings are improved, so less taxpayer money is squandered on interest.
- Taxes are down. Really. The state income tax rate has been lowered nearly 10 percent, just as Almond vowed it would be when he took office. And some other "anti-business" taxes are being phased out, too.
- And most of all, as the squalid details of Plunder Dome are recounted daily in US District Court, the Almond administration's corruption record is as spotless as the gleaming marble of the State House.
In fact, the hurricane of corruption that devastated Rhode Island in the past few decades brought in an era of reform and clean government at the state level, led first by former governor Bruce Sundlun, then by Almond.
"Keep in mind how he was elected in 1994," West says. "After a major recession and the banking crisis, voters wanted a non-politician, and that's what they got."
In largely incorruptible states such as Vermont or Maine, eight years without scandal might be taken for granted. But in Rhode Island, it's worth remarking on, and even Almond's critics praise him on this point.
It was only a few years ago that former governor Edward D. DiPrete completed 11 months in the ACI after pleading guilty to charges of bribery and extortion. Two of the last four state Supreme Court chief justices resigned rather than risk impeachment. Brian Sarault, the ex-mayor of Pawtucket, took to selling cars after completing his prison term for corruption. And a good part of the state's citizens have vivid memories of their life savings being locked away for years after the corruption-caused crisis that forced closing of 45 credit unions on New Year's Day in 1991.
But Lincoln Almond's status as the un-politician of Rhode Island politics certainly hasn't helped his public standing. Although intelligent and genial in one-on-one conversation, the 65-year-old governor is one of the worst orators in Rhode Island history, speaking in a molasses-like monotone that has his listeners glued to their watches.
Almond moves his 6-foot-6-inch frame in such a shuffling way that just his exit from the State House in time for supper stokes rumors that the governor is not only dull, but lazy.
The governor often seems to have a tin ear when it comes to the symbols, and sometimes the substance, of politics - as evidenced by his unstinting and unpopular support for a container port at Quonset Point. When things aren't moving fast enough for his critics, the charge is that Almond is off at his weekend second home, an offense made all the worse because the house is in Wellfleet on Cape Cod, instead of Bonnet Shores.
For his part, Almond expresses satisfaction that he's been able to maintain his private life.
To not do so, he says, "becomes very dangerous. I think we do have some politicians who, because of circumstances, and unfortunately, that's the way they are, they have no life other than politics, and Buddy Cianci is one of them. I mean, Buddy can go out every night because, you know, that's where he is. I just do not want to be a full-time politician. I'm not cut out for it. And I'm not saying I'm not a politician, because all governors are politicians. I'm a politician. I'm not backing away from that. But I don't want to be a full-time politician."
THE UN-POLITICIAN hasn't strayed from his modest beginnings. After he was elected, he still was mowing his own grass at his house in Lincoln, just over the border from where he grew up in impoverished Central Falls. His idea of a night out remains dinner with his wife, Marilyn, at Chelo's. He traded in the state's gubernatorial limousine for an SUV (albeit an enormous Lincoln Navigator) because it was more practical in winter and, he says, better suited to getting work done and accommodating his large frame.
And Almond always makes the neighborly gesture. During a huge April Fools Day snowstorm in 1997, Almond took to the highways to spot check snow plowing, and when he came upon car mired in a drift, got out and started pushing it himself.
Thus, in an era of public distrust of politicians, Almond seemed the perfect cure: homegrown and honest, a graduate of Central Falls High School and the University of Rhode Island, and for more than 20 years, US Attorney for Rhode Island, hounding drug dealers, gangsters, and corrupt public officials.
In federal investigations of Cianci's first administration, Almond racked up 30 indictments, 22 convictions, and 16 prison sentences.
Almond was the first governor to be elected for a four-year term, one of several structural reforms of state government meant to give the chief executive a better shot at deliberative, long-range decision-making, and supporters say he took full advantage of the changes.
He began with two key interests, which he saw as parts of the same goal: improving education, and spurring the state's economy. Get a good education, Almond believed, and you could get a good job. He went to public high school, then to public college. And anyone else could do that if they had the same opportunity.
"Education was a huge part of his life," says a source close to the Almond administration. "For John Chafee, it was Yale and the Marines. For Lincoln Almond, it's URI. It really, really is an enormous part of his life."
So immediately, Almond began pouring money into the state's colleges, and in the past seven years, higher education spending has increased nearly 50 percent, and elementary and secondary education, more than 60 percent.
One of Almond's first acts was to convert the state agency in charge of business expansion into a more business-like Economic Development Corporation (although the EDC was hardly free of questionable practices under former director John Swen, who resigned after Almond criticized the agency's misuse of credit cards), and he started the Economy Policy Council, to brainstorm the state's business needs and economic future.
Almond also dusted off a scheme to invent new Rhode Island-based businesses that was originally proposed in the administration of governor J. Joseph Garrahy: a series of business "greenhouses" that would turn local university research into new industries.
The Samuel Slater Technology Fund, with only $15 million in state money, has created 55 "seedling" companies. In biotechnology alone, five of 23 biotechnology startup firms have raised $60 million in venture capital.
The governor, who had opposed the proposed Providence Place Mall as a candidate, was pragmatic enough to realize the economic and psychological potential of bringing retail business back to Providence. He eventually worked out what he termed a less risky venture for the state to help support the mall, which got built for an overall private and public investment of more than $400 million, with more than 150 stores opening.
Almond worked on very mundane, but critical elements of state government.
One, according to his former budget director, Stephen P. McAllister, is "asset protection," fixing up state buildings, ranging from the State House to worn-out college dormitories and laboratories, but using current funds, rather than borrowing. This, along with early repayment of banking crisis bonds, has helped decrease overall borrowing, and resulted in improved ratings from two of three national bond-rating agencies. This means that the state, when it does borrow, pays lower interest rates.
Similarly, Almond steered the state's gasoline taxes into transportation, bolstering both highway projects and the state's mass transit bus system. He launched a "fix-it-first" approach to highway work, repairing roads rather than building new ones, meaning a quicker, less-costly upgrade of the state's low-rated highways.
At the same time, George H. Nee, secretary-treasurer of the Rhode Island AFL-CIO , argues that Almond has taken a progressive approach to controversial social issues, not acting, as Nee puts it, "like a Republican." Nee credits the governor for funneling millions of dollars into inner-city schools, much to the chagrin of schools in the suburbs, which are perceived to be Almond's home turf (since he's a former Lincoln town administrator).
Another un-Republican development during Almond's administration, Nee says, has been the growth of the RIte Care program, a plan to use federal and state Medicaid dollars to improve the health of pregnant women and children.
Under Almond's former welfare director (and now congressional candidate) Christine C. Ferguson, RIte Care has grown to cover 116,000 low-income adults and children -- more than one out of every 10 Rhode Islanders. It's one reason why more people here are covered by health insurance than in most other states.
Ferguson, who herself was being pushed by welfare advocates and liberal Democrats in the General Assembly, persuaded Almond to back what is regarded as a kinder and more effective version of welfare reform, in which Rhode Island gives mothers more time, education and resources, such as childcare, to help them leave welfare than other states.
Almond also gets high marks for his judicial and cabinet appointments. Some department heads were held over from Sundlun, and some were brought in from the outside, such William D. Ankner, who heads the Department of Transportation.
IT'S HARD TO FAULT ALMOND for his motives in one of his major controversies -- and failures -- a botched attempt to convert the huge former Navy facilities at Quonset Point in North Kingstown into a container port.
His goal was to increase jobs. In the four decades since the Navy abandoned the 3000-acre plot, the state has labored to turn it into a giant industrial base, and, in fact, more than 136 business, employing 6400 workers, operate out of there.
But what generated rebellion not only within North Kingstown, but throughout the state, was the industrial-strength scope of the project: the fact that it called for filling in up to 204 acres of Narragansett Bay.
Almond maintains he never supported the bay-filling idea. But he's clung to the idea of some sort of container port. The issue is so polarizing that none of the current candidates for governor back the port, and most won't even support his plea for an environmental study.
Almond's steadfastness -- call it stubbornness -- on issues like the port helps stoke his critics' anger.
Leonard Lardaro, a URI professor who gives Almond generally decent marks on improving education and fighting a costly repeal of auto taxes, faults the governor for pushing the container port so relentlessly. Lardaro says Almond has generated such opposition that it will be hard for others to quickly develop Quonset Point to its full potential.
Similarly, Almond's persistent opposition to gambling has created many enemies, from supporters of increased slot machines at facilities in Lincoln and Newport, as well as backers of the Narragansett Indian tribe, which wants to build the state's first full-scale casino, as tribes have done so successfully in Connecticut.
Criticism from supporters of an Indian-backed casino has been so personal that one of the state's black leaders, Keith W. Stokes, executive director of the Newport County Chamber of Commerce, says he has had to defend Almond against charges of "racism."
"To use that term is disingenuous" in regard to Almond, says Stokes, who Almond appointed to the Economic Development Corporation. The EDC itself is headed by Tom Schumpert, an African-American who rose to prominence because of his adept handling of the collapse of the Harvard Pilgrim HMO in Rhode Island when he was Almond's director of the Department of Business Regulation.
ALMOND'S CENTRAL WEAK POINT is the same attribute that made him so appealing to voters eight years ago: his political clumsiness.
Often, the un-politician simply seems clueless when it comes to the sensual, symbolic side of politics.
"He doesn't really do a lot of things that a good governor needs to do in terms of the symbolic dimension of his office," says Brown's West.
Thus, Almond missed the real point of the Quonset Point debate - that filling in even a tiny portion of Narragansett Bay would upset Rhode Islanders from Woonsocket to Westerly. The Bay is untouchable territory in Rhode Island.
When Almond late last year faced big budget shortfalls because of the recession, he proposed slicing off $5 million the General Assembly had allocated to create affordable housing.
Again, he missed the point: that housing advocates had worked for a decade to get the state to allocate a token amount of money for housing. It took weeks of demonstrations -- including the spectacle of police hauling four ministers from the State House -- for Almond to get the message and propose a compromise that eventually doubled the money for housing.
Even on petty symbols, Almond blunders. When there were recent questions about spending for a National Governor's Convention, Almond withheld the names of people who had stayed at a hotel at state expense, forgetting that ever since Watergate even the suggestion of a "cover-up" touches a nerve.
And certainly Almond has trouble missing big symbols. When the airliners struck the World Trade Center and the Pentagon on September 11, Almond failed to understand the importance of symbolic gestures in responding to terrorism. After President Bush proposed increased National Guard patrols at airports, Almond passed on the idea, saying he was satisfied with security at T.F. Green State Airport.
He was right, but missed the point that jittery travelers felt better seeing soldiers at the terminal. (Almond did relent, but Guardsmen still showed up without M-16 rifles.) A month after the attacks, Almond had a chance to join 10 other governors in touring Ground Zero.
Almond, who had been at education "summit" in New Jersey, said he thought it was more important for him to get back to Rhode Island, as the state continued to struggle with the crisis.
Mayor Cianci, of course, did not make that kind of mistake. In a separate trip, Cianci directed a caravan of police cruisers and trucks to Ground Zero, and with his personal photographer in tow, the mayor shook hands with rescue workers and oversaw delivery of supplies to Ground Zero.
It's Cianci, ironically, who may be most responsible for Almond's bad image. The mayor is an entertaining, imaginative speaker. A radio talk show host when he was forced from office in 1984 after admitting he had assaulted his wife's lover, Cianci is the self-appointed spokesman for Providence's -- and Rhode Island's -- renewal in the past decade.
Almond, engaging in private, is inarticulate in public.
"You won't find him on Imus In the Morning," says Kenneth M. Bianchi, one of Almond's closest allies, currently director of the state authority that oversees the Newport and Mount Hope Bridges.
Cianci, of course, can be found on Don Imus's enormously popular radio and many other places.
The ubiquitous mayor can better than hold his own with the show's acerbic host, as was the case when Imus recently brought his program to Cianci's adopted home at the Biltmore Hotel in Providence.
He devoted virtually the entire program to the Plunder Dome trial, with a series of parody songs, and an appearance by the mayor, who is under a judge's gag order not to talk about trial. Imus decreed that a happy ending to the Plunder Dome affair would be an innocent finding for Cianci.
All of which must infuriate ex-prosecutor Almond, who, after Cianci was indicted, demanded that the mayor step down. Not that the mayor was inclined to follow any advice from Almond. Cianci once described Almond on an earlier Imus program as "a tall guy [with] big, big shoes . . . you could put outboard motors on the back of those shoes and head up the river."
Even with his legal troubles, the mayor rarely misses the chance to enthrall out-of-town reporters and expound on the "Renaissance" of Providence.
(Asked about the mayor, Almond says, "If you've got a record like that, you better be out every night, and you better be out Saturdays, and you better be out Sundays, and you better be telling jokes, because you have to deflect as much as you can from the substance of what occurs in your own community. Now, could he ever survive as governor, with that kind of record? No. Of course, he couldn't. He's been able to survive in Providence because of the old model of patronage and political machine and controlling both parties, and you are able to do that. But he was never successful running for statewide office.")
The level of fascination placed in Cianci distresses and mystifies good government types like H. Philip West Jr., director of Common Cause of Rhode Island, whose reform drive helped create the four-year terms for governor and other general offices.
"I think it's a sign of danger in politics that the enchanting mayor comes out with higher ratings," West says.
West, who blames Almond for a change of membership on the state Ethics Commission that he believes has undermined that panel, nonetheless thinks Almond has done a good job, including standing up to the General Assembly over the so-called separation-of-powers issue, in which some people claim that the Rhode Island legislature has too much power compared to the executive branch.
"What Almond has done that no governor has done before is that he has dared to take on the General Assembly on separation-of-powers," West says.
But other observers assert that Almond's lack of political instinct is, in fact, a fatal weak point in the art of running government.
Bill Lynch, state Democratic Party chairman, praises the Republican Almond for being honest, and says that he does not want to be hard on him, since the governor is in his final months of office.
But Lynch says Almond has done little more than put the state on "automatic pilot," and squandered the opportunities of a mostly boom economy to make permanent improvements. Quonset Point, the port debate aside, should be much farther along as an economic resource, Lynch says.
"He became a lame duck much earlier than other governors, and I'm not sure that's a good thing for the state," Lynch says.
John DePetro, the hyperactive host of the radio talk show where Almond received such a pasting from a listener about his Ground Zero absence, believes part of Almond's problem is his failure to master the demands of modern news media.
Not that the media itself is blameless, DePetro says. The media and its audience look to politicians to keep them amused, he says, which is why DePetro thinks Cianci gets so much attention, and Almond so little.
"Cianci remains far and away the beloved one," DePetro says. "I've heard very little anger about him. If anything there is disappointment that the party may be coming to an end."
On the other hand, DePetro says that his show's listeners never call to praise or even defend Almond.
"He's broken the cardinal rule," DePetro says. "He's not entertaining."
ON NEW YEAR'S DAY, HARD QUESTIONS
MAY PROVIDE SOME CLUES ABOUT 2023
If you’re the president, how old is too old?
If you're a liar, should you be in Congress?
FEELING BETTER?
I am. I’m sleeping more soundly and longer. I’m reading crime fiction, not scouring news sites for the latest true political crime alarms. In the morning, radio reports that suggest it's safe to get out of bed.
Things turned out so much better than many of us feared. I'm talking mostly politics here. The midterm elections weren’t the disaster that they could have been.
The Democrats control the Senate; the Republican majority in the House is slender; and many election deniers failed in state elections.
What’s more, Donald Trump really seems to be on this way out of our public lives.
His reelection announcement showed him to be dispirited and glum. The January 6th investigation by the House convincingly documented his seditious, traitorous sins committed in service of his desperate, destructive schemes to stay in office. It’s possible – but never certain – that he’ll be indicted. His just-released tax returns debunked the central claim to his fame: that he was a master business guy; the forms suggested that he’s business failure and maybe a tax cheat, too.
So we end the year on this celebratory note:
Democracy fought back, and democracy won.
It’s important to note for a couple of reasons.
The first, obviously, we aren’t as close to the brink we could have been, when the integrity of our elections seemed at risk and swarms of truly bonkers right-wing politicians hoped to to take control of public offices throughout the governmental ecosystem.
Secondly, the election taught us an important lesson: Mean people don’t always win, and nice ones don’t always lose.
That’s critical. We’ll need to remember our victories, large and small, in the months and years to come, because in a democracy, the fight is never finished. Lots of things get fixed in progressive, reform-minded democracies like the U.S.; but lots of things don’t stay fixed.
Millions of people voted for Donald Trump, and they still believe his lies and take heart in his racist, cruel view of America.
Trump’s singular achievement – ensuring a majority right-wing Supreme Count – has upended abortion rights, and now the justices will barrel ahead full throttle to further misinterpret the Constitution. Maybe, for example, they'll soon rule in favor of a wacky legal theory that supposes that state legislatures have exclusive control of elections, with none of the usual checks and balances, namely, review by the courts.
The Republican Party has become a dangerous force, opposed to everything, from Social Security to economic equality, access to healthcare, racial healing, legal immigration, free speech, social and economic justice and, of course, freedom to go to school, go to work, go shopping without being shot to death.
So, we no longer have a functioning two-party system, which is as unhealthy for Democrats as it is for democracy itself.
I am. I’m sleeping more soundly and longer. I’m reading crime fiction, not scouring news sites for the latest true political crime alarms. In the morning, radio reports that suggest it's safe to get out of bed.
Things turned out so much better than many of us feared. I'm talking mostly politics here. The midterm elections weren’t the disaster that they could have been.
The Democrats control the Senate; the Republican majority in the House is slender; and many election deniers failed in state elections.
What’s more, Donald Trump really seems to be on this way out of our public lives.
His reelection announcement showed him to be dispirited and glum. The January 6th investigation by the House convincingly documented his seditious, traitorous sins committed in service of his desperate, destructive schemes to stay in office. It’s possible – but never certain – that he’ll be indicted. His just-released tax returns debunked the central claim to his fame: that he was a master business guy; the forms suggested that he’s business failure and maybe a tax cheat, too.
So we end the year on this celebratory note:
Democracy fought back, and democracy won.
It’s important to note for a couple of reasons.
The first, obviously, we aren’t as close to the brink we could have been, when the integrity of our elections seemed at risk and swarms of truly bonkers right-wing politicians hoped to to take control of public offices throughout the governmental ecosystem.
Secondly, the election taught us an important lesson: Mean people don’t always win, and nice ones don’t always lose.
That’s critical. We’ll need to remember our victories, large and small, in the months and years to come, because in a democracy, the fight is never finished. Lots of things get fixed in progressive, reform-minded democracies like the U.S.; but lots of things don’t stay fixed.
Millions of people voted for Donald Trump, and they still believe his lies and take heart in his racist, cruel view of America.
Trump’s singular achievement – ensuring a majority right-wing Supreme Count – has upended abortion rights, and now the justices will barrel ahead full throttle to further misinterpret the Constitution. Maybe, for example, they'll soon rule in favor of a wacky legal theory that supposes that state legislatures have exclusive control of elections, with none of the usual checks and balances, namely, review by the courts.
The Republican Party has become a dangerous force, opposed to everything, from Social Security to economic equality, access to healthcare, racial healing, legal immigration, free speech, social and economic justice and, of course, freedom to go to school, go to work, go shopping without being shot to death.
So, we no longer have a functioning two-party system, which is as unhealthy for Democrats as it is for democracy itself.
THERE ARE LOTS lots of other things to be scared about.
The environment is increasingly toxic, and it’s our fault. We aren’t trying hard enough to fix the injuries for which we’re responsible. We have the knowledge and tools to reverse the damage. But so far, we are destroying a planet to which we owe our lives and have no right to ruin.
The human world is dangerous and full of bullies, and, one of them is at work trying destroy a neighbor. Ukraine is standing up to Vladimir Putin; but Putin has a nuclear arsenal, some of which is probably operational. China’s itching to take over Taiwan, just as it has done with Hong Kong. The list of malevolent dictators is long.
I could go on. But as 2022 was ending, it demonstrated the practicality of hope. Lots of people up and down the political ladder worked hard and worked smart to keep the country headed in a positive direction.
A good example was in my home state of Rhode Island, where one of the state’s two congressional seats, long held by Democrats, opened up, and the savvy people were predicting that a popular, relatively moderate Republican would take over. The Democratic candidate, Seth Magaziner, said his own polls showed him running behind.
But Magaziner won. And not by accident. The prospect of sending a Republican to Washington startled the state’s Democratic organization, which powered up its considerable resources, while hundreds of volunteers stepped up to make phone calls, ring doorbells, write letters and lobby their friends and relatives to vote.
The environment is increasingly toxic, and it’s our fault. We aren’t trying hard enough to fix the injuries for which we’re responsible. We have the knowledge and tools to reverse the damage. But so far, we are destroying a planet to which we owe our lives and have no right to ruin.
The human world is dangerous and full of bullies, and, one of them is at work trying destroy a neighbor. Ukraine is standing up to Vladimir Putin; but Putin has a nuclear arsenal, some of which is probably operational. China’s itching to take over Taiwan, just as it has done with Hong Kong. The list of malevolent dictators is long.
I could go on. But as 2022 was ending, it demonstrated the practicality of hope. Lots of people up and down the political ladder worked hard and worked smart to keep the country headed in a positive direction.
A good example was in my home state of Rhode Island, where one of the state’s two congressional seats, long held by Democrats, opened up, and the savvy people were predicting that a popular, relatively moderate Republican would take over. The Democratic candidate, Seth Magaziner, said his own polls showed him running behind.
But Magaziner won. And not by accident. The prospect of sending a Republican to Washington startled the state’s Democratic organization, which powered up its considerable resources, while hundreds of volunteers stepped up to make phone calls, ring doorbells, write letters and lobby their friends and relatives to vote.
SO THAT’S THE LEGACY OF 2022. What does it mean on the first day of 2023?
Certainly it does not mean the country will be okay. Often, just when things are looking up, defeat lurks around the corner.
The same forces that threatened to upend 2022 are still active and ready to do better in 2023. What happens the rest of the year depends on whether progressive forces remain in the game and don’t take last year’s victory as anything more than an object lesson that democracy needs constant attention.
Here are two immediate questions:
The first is whether Joe Biden should run for reelection.
He should not. He’s too old.
Joe’s been a masterful chief executive at home and abroad. I’m astonished by what he’s accomplished, and I’m personally chagrined that I misjudged his potential as a candidate and president. Biden championed and rescued “the soul of America.” He brought reason, competence and common sense to government after the chaos engineered by Trump and his thugs. Biden stood up to Vladimir Putin in his atrocious attack on Ukraine.
But Joe and I happen to be the same age – 80 – so this is one subject which I know about. Every day, I have more and more insight into what it’s like to be very old; it’s not pretty and not something that should be inflicted on a nation.
When you’re 80, death is an everyday possibility, and every time I realize I’ve made it to another day, I wonder if Joe will do the same, to say nothing of whether he’ll get through the next two years, while keeping his brain functioning as well as it should.
If Joe, as seems likely, decides to run again, other Democrats should challenge him. Joe Biden should be proud of his single term; and the Democrats should realize their future depends on not being a one-man, a one-old-man, political party.
Certainly it does not mean the country will be okay. Often, just when things are looking up, defeat lurks around the corner.
The same forces that threatened to upend 2022 are still active and ready to do better in 2023. What happens the rest of the year depends on whether progressive forces remain in the game and don’t take last year’s victory as anything more than an object lesson that democracy needs constant attention.
Here are two immediate questions:
The first is whether Joe Biden should run for reelection.
He should not. He’s too old.
Joe’s been a masterful chief executive at home and abroad. I’m astonished by what he’s accomplished, and I’m personally chagrined that I misjudged his potential as a candidate and president. Biden championed and rescued “the soul of America.” He brought reason, competence and common sense to government after the chaos engineered by Trump and his thugs. Biden stood up to Vladimir Putin in his atrocious attack on Ukraine.
But Joe and I happen to be the same age – 80 – so this is one subject which I know about. Every day, I have more and more insight into what it’s like to be very old; it’s not pretty and not something that should be inflicted on a nation.
When you’re 80, death is an everyday possibility, and every time I realize I’ve made it to another day, I wonder if Joe will do the same, to say nothing of whether he’ll get through the next two years, while keeping his brain functioning as well as it should.
If Joe, as seems likely, decides to run again, other Democrats should challenge him. Joe Biden should be proud of his single term; and the Democrats should realize their future depends on not being a one-man, a one-old-man, political party.
THE SECOND CHALLENGE on this first day of the new year is that the nation needs to rededicate itself to an ancient principle, the truth.
We should start by insisting that a man supposedly named George Santos does not take office as a congressman from New York state, or, that if he does, he should quickly be driven from from the House.
One of Donald Trump’s legacies is that he got the country used to his lies, and especially his Big One: that he “won” the 2020 election.
Regardless, the truth matters. Santos seems to have lied about practically everything. He lied about attending a school in New York; lied about graduating from two colleges; lied about working for two high-power Wall Street firms; lied about his grandparents being Holocaust survivors; lied about owning real estate; lied about his mother dying in 9/11 when she actually died away 15 years later. And, according to today’s Washington Post, George Santos has had trouble getting his name straight: he used to call himself “Anthony Devolder.”
Santos/Devolder is an embarrassment, and not just to Republicans. The Big Apple’s vaunted media monolith failed to uncover George/Anthony’s lies until the New York Times finally spilled the beans AFTER the election, with the Times and other news organization’s ignoring early warnings from tiny Long Island newspaper, The North Shore Leader, that exposed some of the fibs.
Robert Zimmerman, who ran against George/Anthony, failed to recognize and exploit a Mount Everest of lies. And, as of this writing early on New Year’s Day, House leaders aren’t trying to block his swearing in, scheduled for Tuesday. Nor are the voters of New York’s Third District taking to the streets, either out of shame or anger, at having been conned.
SO, THERE’S PLENTY TO DO as America begins a new year. It starts with a lesson in first principles: ust because last year turned out okay, it doesn’t mean this year will do the same.
And it’s important to hope for the best of outcomes.
The truth is the truth.
The facts are the facts.
Old age is no joke, and Joe Biden’s old enough to know better than to run again.
A serial liar needs to be shown the door.
Hope is hard work.
We should start by insisting that a man supposedly named George Santos does not take office as a congressman from New York state, or, that if he does, he should quickly be driven from from the House.
One of Donald Trump’s legacies is that he got the country used to his lies, and especially his Big One: that he “won” the 2020 election.
Regardless, the truth matters. Santos seems to have lied about practically everything. He lied about attending a school in New York; lied about graduating from two colleges; lied about working for two high-power Wall Street firms; lied about his grandparents being Holocaust survivors; lied about owning real estate; lied about his mother dying in 9/11 when she actually died away 15 years later. And, according to today’s Washington Post, George Santos has had trouble getting his name straight: he used to call himself “Anthony Devolder.”
Santos/Devolder is an embarrassment, and not just to Republicans. The Big Apple’s vaunted media monolith failed to uncover George/Anthony’s lies until the New York Times finally spilled the beans AFTER the election, with the Times and other news organization’s ignoring early warnings from tiny Long Island newspaper, The North Shore Leader, that exposed some of the fibs.
Robert Zimmerman, who ran against George/Anthony, failed to recognize and exploit a Mount Everest of lies. And, as of this writing early on New Year’s Day, House leaders aren’t trying to block his swearing in, scheduled for Tuesday. Nor are the voters of New York’s Third District taking to the streets, either out of shame or anger, at having been conned.
SO, THERE’S PLENTY TO DO as America begins a new year. It starts with a lesson in first principles: ust because last year turned out okay, it doesn’t mean this year will do the same.
And it’s important to hope for the best of outcomes.
The truth is the truth.
The facts are the facts.
Old age is no joke, and Joe Biden’s old enough to know better than to run again.
A serial liar needs to be shown the door.
Hope is hard work.
Thanksgiving edition
HERE'S TO THE BRAVE PEOPLE WHO
NEVER STOPPED HOPING AND CARING
MOST OF US, as citizens, feel powerless.
This is understandable, but wrong.
In truth we are almost powerless, with “almost” being the key word.
It’s a fact that there are enormous things that no one of us can do almost nothing about.
We can’t stop Vladimir Putin from invading Ukraine. New Englanders can’t stop Floridians from reelecting Ron DeSantis as governor, having proved himself Donald Trump’s worthy alternative by playing the cruel bully to immigrants, gays, transgender kids and Mickey Mouse.
There seems to be no stopping the mass-murdering gunmen, who claim a Constitutional right to kill people who shop and work at Walmart, dance at Club Q and play football in Virginia or who attend school anywhere or who worship in this church or that synagogue.
There’s not much you can do to stop Congressional people who villainize a wise, gentle healer like Anthony Fauci. We can’t stop someone in Warwick, Rhode Island from plastering a “Let’s Go, Brandon” sticker on his street-facing windows.
We couldn’t stop Trump’s multi-pronged assault on democracy. Couldn’t shame him for being a sore loser. Couldn’t stop him from rallying his supporters to attack the most sacred space in American culture, hoping that maybe they'd get a chance to assassinate a Vice President (R) and a House Speaker (D).
Can’t seem to slow, much less stop, the man-made destruction of our own planet despite Biblical-scale warnings of floods, fires, droughts, famine or the worry of scientists who miss the mark only because they keep underestimating the pace and scope of the coming disaster.
This is understandable, but wrong.
In truth we are almost powerless, with “almost” being the key word.
It’s a fact that there are enormous things that no one of us can do almost nothing about.
We can’t stop Vladimir Putin from invading Ukraine. New Englanders can’t stop Floridians from reelecting Ron DeSantis as governor, having proved himself Donald Trump’s worthy alternative by playing the cruel bully to immigrants, gays, transgender kids and Mickey Mouse.
There seems to be no stopping the mass-murdering gunmen, who claim a Constitutional right to kill people who shop and work at Walmart, dance at Club Q and play football in Virginia or who attend school anywhere or who worship in this church or that synagogue.
There’s not much you can do to stop Congressional people who villainize a wise, gentle healer like Anthony Fauci. We can’t stop someone in Warwick, Rhode Island from plastering a “Let’s Go, Brandon” sticker on his street-facing windows.
We couldn’t stop Trump’s multi-pronged assault on democracy. Couldn’t shame him for being a sore loser. Couldn’t stop him from rallying his supporters to attack the most sacred space in American culture, hoping that maybe they'd get a chance to assassinate a Vice President (R) and a House Speaker (D).
Can’t seem to slow, much less stop, the man-made destruction of our own planet despite Biblical-scale warnings of floods, fires, droughts, famine or the worry of scientists who miss the mark only because they keep underestimating the pace and scope of the coming disaster.
BUT HOLD ON
Many of us are sleeping better these days; we’re a tad more cheerful; we have other things besides politics to talk about.
It’s because some terrific things happened in the midterm elections. Although Nov. 8 seems fading fast in the rearview, it’s still encouraging that the Republican takeover of local, state and federal governments flopped. Democrats held the Senate. Republicans took the House, but by a small margin.
And Donald Trump declared for president, which is excellent news for Democrats, since he's the one unifying figure that can inspire an always squabbling party, increasing the chances that someone normal will go to the White House.
Although the recent planetary environmental conference ended in disgrace, with no new limits on greenhouse gasses and empty sounding promises by big polluting countries to help tiny, non-polluting countries, there is growing recognition of the danger, and plenty of practical steps underway to do something about it. For example, it seems unlikely the auto companies will reverse their drive to build electric cars.
Many of us are sleeping better these days; we’re a tad more cheerful; we have other things besides politics to talk about.
It’s because some terrific things happened in the midterm elections. Although Nov. 8 seems fading fast in the rearview, it’s still encouraging that the Republican takeover of local, state and federal governments flopped. Democrats held the Senate. Republicans took the House, but by a small margin.
And Donald Trump declared for president, which is excellent news for Democrats, since he's the one unifying figure that can inspire an always squabbling party, increasing the chances that someone normal will go to the White House.
Although the recent planetary environmental conference ended in disgrace, with no new limits on greenhouse gasses and empty sounding promises by big polluting countries to help tiny, non-polluting countries, there is growing recognition of the danger, and plenty of practical steps underway to do something about it. For example, it seems unlikely the auto companies will reverse their drive to build electric cars.
MEANING there's lots to reflect on this Thanksgiving.
I think the most important is that millions of people of goodwill have never stopped hoping and caring about making the world a better place.
They do this despite the frustrations of being almost powerless. And despite the pain and strain that are the byproducts of hope and caring; they know and accept that’s the price they pay to stay in the game.
I’m not talking about people who have more power than most of us: the candidates, government officials, corporate chieftains, political organizers, volunteers, media barons, pundits, reporters, broadcasters, podcasters, forecasters.
The people I’m thinking about are everyone else, with just their puny one vote each and their disgust with Donald Trump as he savaged our democracy, having watched almost helpless;y as he got away, and keeps on getting away, with Constitutional crimes, among other, more ordinary, offenses.
I WILL REMEMBER 2022 as the year in which millions of people did not abandon their embrace of kindness, commitment to lawfulness and respect for decency; they kept faith with fundamental, human values of progress.
That faith was a real, if nearly invisible force, one that was impossible for pollsters to measure or for the pundits to recognize.
But, multiplied millions times, almost powerless, but always caring, hopeful individuals formed the essential consensus that held the country together and defined its character.
They are the custodian's of what Joe Biden calls "the soul of America."
I’m not arguing that it’s enough to sit in our kitchens and living rooms and just wish that things will turn out okay. A democracy depends on its citizens doing real things every year, in every election, like voting, following the news, donating to candidates, attending school board meeting and even running for office.
But goodwill – made up of hope and caring – is the core that makes a nation move forward.
I’m in awe of the people who have kept the faith.
Thank you.
I think the most important is that millions of people of goodwill have never stopped hoping and caring about making the world a better place.
They do this despite the frustrations of being almost powerless. And despite the pain and strain that are the byproducts of hope and caring; they know and accept that’s the price they pay to stay in the game.
I’m not talking about people who have more power than most of us: the candidates, government officials, corporate chieftains, political organizers, volunteers, media barons, pundits, reporters, broadcasters, podcasters, forecasters.
The people I’m thinking about are everyone else, with just their puny one vote each and their disgust with Donald Trump as he savaged our democracy, having watched almost helpless;y as he got away, and keeps on getting away, with Constitutional crimes, among other, more ordinary, offenses.
I WILL REMEMBER 2022 as the year in which millions of people did not abandon their embrace of kindness, commitment to lawfulness and respect for decency; they kept faith with fundamental, human values of progress.
That faith was a real, if nearly invisible force, one that was impossible for pollsters to measure or for the pundits to recognize.
But, multiplied millions times, almost powerless, but always caring, hopeful individuals formed the essential consensus that held the country together and defined its character.
They are the custodian's of what Joe Biden calls "the soul of America."
I’m not arguing that it’s enough to sit in our kitchens and living rooms and just wish that things will turn out okay. A democracy depends on its citizens doing real things every year, in every election, like voting, following the news, donating to candidates, attending school board meeting and even running for office.
But goodwill – made up of hope and caring – is the core that makes a nation move forward.
I’m in awe of the people who have kept the faith.
Thank you.
AGAIN, THE 'HIVE' MEDIA
FLUNKS ITS TRUMP TEST
SO, YOU WANT TO KNOW how the Trump announcement went on Tuesday?
Good luck.
None of the old fashioned TV networks carried the event live. The cable “news” outlets didn’t do much: Fox carried a lot of the speech, but not all of it; CNN some of it; and MSNBC none of it.
When I looked at the New York Times website the day after, I couldn’t find a straight away account. And the Washington Post seemed to spend more space on background and context than on what happened at Florida’s most famous crime scene, Mar-a-Lago.
Actually, the fact-checkers seemed to publish more of the speech's content than did their hard-news counterparts; if you're going to document a lie, you need first to say what it is.
GOOD, YOU ARE SAYING.
The media finally has learned its lesson, correcting its hang-on-Trump’s-every-word debacle approach in 2016, when the Donald first emerged as one of history’s rudest, outrageous, surely, blasphemous, watch-the-train-wreck political monsters, to say nothing his role as the media’s Good Fairy guarantor of big ratings and improved circulation.
This time, the media would not be be blamed for sending Trump into the White House, because of excessive, cost-free coverage. Besides, in 2022, what surprises could the twice-impeached, relentlessly investigated, election loser possibly bring? Most experts expected him to run for president in 2024; so, if he did so on Nov. 15, 2022, or Jan. 6, 2023, so what?
What’s more, if you did give it big play on Page One or carry the speech live, you’d be laughed right out of the old timey tavern, the sleaze bar or the snooty country club, wherever it is that the Media Hive-Brain gathers to decide what story line its news clones should follow.
Good luck.
None of the old fashioned TV networks carried the event live. The cable “news” outlets didn’t do much: Fox carried a lot of the speech, but not all of it; CNN some of it; and MSNBC none of it.
When I looked at the New York Times website the day after, I couldn’t find a straight away account. And the Washington Post seemed to spend more space on background and context than on what happened at Florida’s most famous crime scene, Mar-a-Lago.
Actually, the fact-checkers seemed to publish more of the speech's content than did their hard-news counterparts; if you're going to document a lie, you need first to say what it is.
GOOD, YOU ARE SAYING.
The media finally has learned its lesson, correcting its hang-on-Trump’s-every-word debacle approach in 2016, when the Donald first emerged as one of history’s rudest, outrageous, surely, blasphemous, watch-the-train-wreck political monsters, to say nothing his role as the media’s Good Fairy guarantor of big ratings and improved circulation.
This time, the media would not be be blamed for sending Trump into the White House, because of excessive, cost-free coverage. Besides, in 2022, what surprises could the twice-impeached, relentlessly investigated, election loser possibly bring? Most experts expected him to run for president in 2024; so, if he did so on Nov. 15, 2022, or Jan. 6, 2023, so what?
What’s more, if you did give it big play on Page One or carry the speech live, you’d be laughed right out of the old timey tavern, the sleaze bar or the snooty country club, wherever it is that the Media Hive-Brain gathers to decide what story line its news clones should follow.
BUT HOW ABOUT YOU AND ME?
You’re kidding, of course. The consumers of news, the readers, listeners, viewers, Twitter followers and the subscribers are but a parenthetical afterthought in the algorithm that determines what the champions of the First Amendment decide to cover, or not.
I, as one customer, had questions I wanted answered from accounts of the Mar-a-Lago event.
Would Trump actually run for a second try at a second term? I’m nearly always wrong when I make predictions, and I was certain that Trump would NOT seek a second term. So, I was curious to see just how far off the mark I was.
Moreover, for those of us who don’t follow the day-to-day antics of Trump’s presidential afterlife, the announcement would be a good time to catch up:
Would he say anything about the shellacking the Republicans received in the midterms? And whose fault would it be? Certainly not his. Would he have new insulting names for Florida Gov. Ron De-Sanctimonious, plus more ominous hints about Ron’s supposed unsavory background?
Granted, I could have missed them, but I wasn’t able to find a satisfactory next-day newspaper account, one of those traditional comprehensive first drafts of history stories crammed with lavish quotes, expert paraphrases, full transcript on Page 8, top-to-bottom description of what he was wearing, the kind of wardrobe review that even accused serial killers get on the first day of their trials.
I did find a recording on C-Span, which you’re welcome to watch, if you have 1 hour, 17 minutes and 47 seconds of your life that you don’t care about. CLICK HERE for the link.
Or you can settle for my half-baked, partisan and incomplete “report.”
You’re kidding, of course. The consumers of news, the readers, listeners, viewers, Twitter followers and the subscribers are but a parenthetical afterthought in the algorithm that determines what the champions of the First Amendment decide to cover, or not.
I, as one customer, had questions I wanted answered from accounts of the Mar-a-Lago event.
Would Trump actually run for a second try at a second term? I’m nearly always wrong when I make predictions, and I was certain that Trump would NOT seek a second term. So, I was curious to see just how far off the mark I was.
Moreover, for those of us who don’t follow the day-to-day antics of Trump’s presidential afterlife, the announcement would be a good time to catch up:
- What is the guy like these days?
- Is he physically fit?
- Mentally in the game?
- Does he still need both hands to hold a water bottle?
- Has he put on weight?
- Is the comb-over still an engineering masterpiece?
- Is he still liquid-tan orange? If so, how bright the hue?
Would he say anything about the shellacking the Republicans received in the midterms? And whose fault would it be? Certainly not his. Would he have new insulting names for Florida Gov. Ron De-Sanctimonious, plus more ominous hints about Ron’s supposed unsavory background?
Granted, I could have missed them, but I wasn’t able to find a satisfactory next-day newspaper account, one of those traditional comprehensive first drafts of history stories crammed with lavish quotes, expert paraphrases, full transcript on Page 8, top-to-bottom description of what he was wearing, the kind of wardrobe review that even accused serial killers get on the first day of their trials.
I did find a recording on C-Span, which you’re welcome to watch, if you have 1 hour, 17 minutes and 47 seconds of your life that you don’t care about. CLICK HERE for the link.
Or you can settle for my half-baked, partisan and incomplete “report.”
THE SUMMARY: He’s the same old Donald, just not as much.
THE LONG VERSION: What I saw was a low-volume version of Trump. He seemed weary and drawn, and he spoke calmly, almost dispiritedly, reminding me of an over-the-hill college professor delivering, with the help of his yellowed notes, the same worn out lecture that’s been putting freshmen to sleep for generations.
He seemed wistful at having to explain the basics of Trump World, sort of like having to review World War II with the freshmen - who were the combatants, and who won.
First, outlined The Glory:
When I left office, the United States stood ready for its Golden Age, our nation was at the pinnacle of power, prosperity and towering above all rivals, vanquishing all enemies and striving into the future, confident and so strong.
Then the Betrayal:
The blood-soaked streets of our cities are cesspools of violent crime… Our southern boarder has been erased and our country is being invaded by millions and millions of unknown people, many of whom are entering for very bad and sinister reasons.
He glowed a mild shade of orange. The comb-over was expertly executed. His suit looked expensively tailored, ensuring that its wearer would appear unfat to the unforgiving eye of a high-def TV camera. His tie was red. Every once in a while, he’d increase his volume, as if a hidden prompter gave him the loud whisper to Raise Your Voice.
As to substance, there were some surprises:
Unless I missed it, he did not mention, at least directly, the Big Lie: his claim that he actually won the 2020 election. He did say that going forward, elections surely need reforming – he was in favor of voter ID, same-day voting, counting all votes on election day. And make no mistake, elections are a mess:
It’s horrible what is happening with our election process. I will get that job done It’s a personal job for me. I take that personally.
Subdued as he seemed to me, Professor Trump was still cruel and mean. Here's an example, his plan for "justice" reform, which I don't know if it was new, or just that I hadn't heard it before, how Trump would to ask Congress for legislation to deal firmly with drug dealers:
We’re going to be asking everyone who sells drugs, gets caught, to receive the death penalty for their heinous acts.
(I found it interesting that Trump still figured he had to work with another branch of government).
And, while not explicitly adopting it, he spoke admiringly of an approach to controlling drug selling to one that he claimed China’s President Xi Jinping had personally shared with him:
You have an immediate and quick trial. By the end of the day, you’re executed.
Not that Trump was recommending such a “terrible thing” in the U.S. But on the other hand, “they have no drug problem.”
As for the midterm elections, Trump chose to look on the sunny side: he bragged that lots of his endorsed candidates had fared well in primaries and later, and that most of all, Republicans should rejoice in taking back the House from the Democrats, instead of grousing about its slim margin.
Nancy Pelosi has been fired. They (Republicans) said: "Let’s win by 40 seats." I said: “If you win by two seats, be happy.”
Trump emerged as a generous and considerate host to his Mar-a-Lago guests:
Sit down. I feel guilty having you stand. You have been standing for this whole event. I feel very guilty. I don’t want that to happen.
There were familiar contradictions:
One one hand,
It is not enough to complain or oppose… I never wanted to be a critic.
On the other,
I am a victim. I am a victim.
And he promised that in The Restoration, Job One would be to get rid of his tormentors at the FBI and the Department of Justice, to root out “the festering rot and corruption of Washington D.C.”
The actual declaration of his candidacy, about 18 minutes into the speech, was a classic mashup of bombast and modesty, plus another of his remembered conversations that never took place:
In order to make America great and glorious again, I am announcing my candidacy for president of the United States.
Thank you, all of you. So many incredible friends and family here tonight. It’s a beautiful thing.
People say: "How do you speak before so many people?" When there is love in the room, it is really easy. You ought to try it sometime.
THE LONG VERSION: What I saw was a low-volume version of Trump. He seemed weary and drawn, and he spoke calmly, almost dispiritedly, reminding me of an over-the-hill college professor delivering, with the help of his yellowed notes, the same worn out lecture that’s been putting freshmen to sleep for generations.
He seemed wistful at having to explain the basics of Trump World, sort of like having to review World War II with the freshmen - who were the combatants, and who won.
First, outlined The Glory:
When I left office, the United States stood ready for its Golden Age, our nation was at the pinnacle of power, prosperity and towering above all rivals, vanquishing all enemies and striving into the future, confident and so strong.
Then the Betrayal:
The blood-soaked streets of our cities are cesspools of violent crime… Our southern boarder has been erased and our country is being invaded by millions and millions of unknown people, many of whom are entering for very bad and sinister reasons.
He glowed a mild shade of orange. The comb-over was expertly executed. His suit looked expensively tailored, ensuring that its wearer would appear unfat to the unforgiving eye of a high-def TV camera. His tie was red. Every once in a while, he’d increase his volume, as if a hidden prompter gave him the loud whisper to Raise Your Voice.
As to substance, there were some surprises:
Unless I missed it, he did not mention, at least directly, the Big Lie: his claim that he actually won the 2020 election. He did say that going forward, elections surely need reforming – he was in favor of voter ID, same-day voting, counting all votes on election day. And make no mistake, elections are a mess:
It’s horrible what is happening with our election process. I will get that job done It’s a personal job for me. I take that personally.
Subdued as he seemed to me, Professor Trump was still cruel and mean. Here's an example, his plan for "justice" reform, which I don't know if it was new, or just that I hadn't heard it before, how Trump would to ask Congress for legislation to deal firmly with drug dealers:
We’re going to be asking everyone who sells drugs, gets caught, to receive the death penalty for their heinous acts.
(I found it interesting that Trump still figured he had to work with another branch of government).
And, while not explicitly adopting it, he spoke admiringly of an approach to controlling drug selling to one that he claimed China’s President Xi Jinping had personally shared with him:
You have an immediate and quick trial. By the end of the day, you’re executed.
Not that Trump was recommending such a “terrible thing” in the U.S. But on the other hand, “they have no drug problem.”
As for the midterm elections, Trump chose to look on the sunny side: he bragged that lots of his endorsed candidates had fared well in primaries and later, and that most of all, Republicans should rejoice in taking back the House from the Democrats, instead of grousing about its slim margin.
Nancy Pelosi has been fired. They (Republicans) said: "Let’s win by 40 seats." I said: “If you win by two seats, be happy.”
Trump emerged as a generous and considerate host to his Mar-a-Lago guests:
Sit down. I feel guilty having you stand. You have been standing for this whole event. I feel very guilty. I don’t want that to happen.
There were familiar contradictions:
One one hand,
It is not enough to complain or oppose… I never wanted to be a critic.
On the other,
I am a victim. I am a victim.
And he promised that in The Restoration, Job One would be to get rid of his tormentors at the FBI and the Department of Justice, to root out “the festering rot and corruption of Washington D.C.”
The actual declaration of his candidacy, about 18 minutes into the speech, was a classic mashup of bombast and modesty, plus another of his remembered conversations that never took place:
In order to make America great and glorious again, I am announcing my candidacy for president of the United States.
Thank you, all of you. So many incredible friends and family here tonight. It’s a beautiful thing.
People say: "How do you speak before so many people?" When there is love in the room, it is really easy. You ought to try it sometime.
IT HURTS WHEN THE MEDIA screws up, because so much of the time, it does terrific work and democracy fails without it.
And I acknowledge that the Hive's under-coverage was not without its humorous moments. Both the Times and the Post practically hid their minimal stories on Page One, and I can’t help but think that the editors understood Trump’s rage the next morning when seeing that he wasn't the day's most important story.
The tabloid New York Post carried off that job off best, not mentioning Trump by name on its front page, but running this headline:
FLORIDA MAN MAKES ANNOUNCEMENT. Page 26
Still, it’s sad that the Hive has not learned its lesson: never underestimate (downplay) Donald Trump.
He wins primaries; he wins general elections (well, one, at least); he corrupts everything and everyone that gets near him. He led an insurrection and so far is getting away with it, just like he always gets away with whatever it is. He wrecked our foreign policy. Murdered thousands of Americans by his bungled approach to Covid. He gave permission for racial bias and hatred to spread viciously and casually throughout the land.
He is too dangerous, too awful, too sinister, too destructive to be ignored or downplayed
America deserves better. Not just a better president. But a better, more humble, more independent, less lockstep, less arrogant media.
And I acknowledge that the Hive's under-coverage was not without its humorous moments. Both the Times and the Post practically hid their minimal stories on Page One, and I can’t help but think that the editors understood Trump’s rage the next morning when seeing that he wasn't the day's most important story.
The tabloid New York Post carried off that job off best, not mentioning Trump by name on its front page, but running this headline:
FLORIDA MAN MAKES ANNOUNCEMENT. Page 26
Still, it’s sad that the Hive has not learned its lesson: never underestimate (downplay) Donald Trump.
He wins primaries; he wins general elections (well, one, at least); he corrupts everything and everyone that gets near him. He led an insurrection and so far is getting away with it, just like he always gets away with whatever it is. He wrecked our foreign policy. Murdered thousands of Americans by his bungled approach to Covid. He gave permission for racial bias and hatred to spread viciously and casually throughout the land.
He is too dangerous, too awful, too sinister, too destructive to be ignored or downplayed
America deserves better. Not just a better president. But a better, more humble, more independent, less lockstep, less arrogant media.
MILLER TIME
G. Wayne Miller, master of the “inside story," leaves the Providence Journal after 41 years. Now, he's onto his next, possibly big, new thing.
(Note: I wrote this without reading a recent tribute by Providence Journal columnist Mark Patinkin to Wayne Miller and another reporter, Linda Borg. The Journal last week cut off its alumni, including me, from free papers, once a retirement perk. I mention this in case Patinkin and I have - inadvertently - touched on similar themes. - Brian Jones)
G. WAYNE MILLER, reflecting on a seven-part series for the Providence Journal in 1995 about the toy-making giant, Hasbro, Inc., mentioned that the project had taken him two years to report and write.
Later, Miller upped his estimate, saying that “when all was said and done,” he actually spent nearly five years on “Toy Soldiers,” including the series itself, plus two books that sprang from the newspaper version, "Toy Wars," published in 1998 and the other, "Kid Number One," a ‘prequel/sequel,’ that appeared in 2019.
This says something about Miller’s tenacity, that once he gets his teeth into a “good” story, he is stubbornly unwilling to let go of it. But it also highlights two characteristics that make him an unusual journalist, his mastery of the “inside story" – he calls it “immersive reporting” – plus his entrepreneurial talent for exploiting any technology, old or new, that allows him to tell and sell his stories to the widest audiences.
Earlier this month, Miller announced that he was leaving the Journal after an astonishing run of 41 years and 9 days, and that he is looking forward to something new – he put it this way in an email to me: “As for the potential ahead, I will have news on that soon enough!”
One has to be careful about singling out just one of the scores, perhaps hundreds, of reporters, editors, photographers, artists who have worked at the Journal, especially during its authentically Golden Years in the last century.
It was a time when the newspaper was a media colossus, serving as Rhode Island’s indispensable encyclopedia of statewide news, as well as the hometown paper to each of state’s 39 cities and towns, via a dozen strategically located news “bureaus” whose reporters churned out so much news about town council, school committee, zoning board meetings, parade and church supper agendas and speeding ticket citations, that it needed multiple editions in the morning, and multiple editions in the afternoon, to publish their output.
Moreover, the Journal Company operated a mini-empire of related businesses, including printing plants that printed major news magazines among other publications, a stable of TV stations, a cable TV system, a cellular telephone company and probably more I don’t know about.
The Journal’s presses seemed to print not just a newspaper, but money, a lot of it lavished on a outsized staff of 350 reporters reporters, artists, photographers and editors, many of whom went on to starring roles at the nation’s most influential papers, such as the New York Times, whose Journal alumni association includes Dan Barry, Sheryl Gay Stolberg, C. J. Chivers, Helene Cooper, Cory Dean and Terry Schwadron – plus the Times’ top dog, publisher A. G. Sulzberger.
So, its a little problematic to mention just one byline – “G. Wayne Miller” – because there have been lots of equally, perhaps even more eloquent wordsmiths, hungrier investigative “sharks” and just as dogged boots-on-the-ground reporters, whose everyday output was, and deserved to be, received as Gospel by many of its readers, some of whom despised the paper’s monopoly clout, but trusted its professionalism.
But it's worthwhile to review some of what Miller accomplished.
(For a fuller and more authoritative account, if you have lots of time, go to Miller’s own website, proof that people don’t do what Miller does because they lack an ego or are shy about their achievements. Here’s the link: http://www.gwaynemiller.com
G. WAYNE MILLER, reflecting on a seven-part series for the Providence Journal in 1995 about the toy-making giant, Hasbro, Inc., mentioned that the project had taken him two years to report and write.
Later, Miller upped his estimate, saying that “when all was said and done,” he actually spent nearly five years on “Toy Soldiers,” including the series itself, plus two books that sprang from the newspaper version, "Toy Wars," published in 1998 and the other, "Kid Number One," a ‘prequel/sequel,’ that appeared in 2019.
This says something about Miller’s tenacity, that once he gets his teeth into a “good” story, he is stubbornly unwilling to let go of it. But it also highlights two characteristics that make him an unusual journalist, his mastery of the “inside story" – he calls it “immersive reporting” – plus his entrepreneurial talent for exploiting any technology, old or new, that allows him to tell and sell his stories to the widest audiences.
Earlier this month, Miller announced that he was leaving the Journal after an astonishing run of 41 years and 9 days, and that he is looking forward to something new – he put it this way in an email to me: “As for the potential ahead, I will have news on that soon enough!”
One has to be careful about singling out just one of the scores, perhaps hundreds, of reporters, editors, photographers, artists who have worked at the Journal, especially during its authentically Golden Years in the last century.
It was a time when the newspaper was a media colossus, serving as Rhode Island’s indispensable encyclopedia of statewide news, as well as the hometown paper to each of state’s 39 cities and towns, via a dozen strategically located news “bureaus” whose reporters churned out so much news about town council, school committee, zoning board meetings, parade and church supper agendas and speeding ticket citations, that it needed multiple editions in the morning, and multiple editions in the afternoon, to publish their output.
Moreover, the Journal Company operated a mini-empire of related businesses, including printing plants that printed major news magazines among other publications, a stable of TV stations, a cable TV system, a cellular telephone company and probably more I don’t know about.
The Journal’s presses seemed to print not just a newspaper, but money, a lot of it lavished on a outsized staff of 350 reporters reporters, artists, photographers and editors, many of whom went on to starring roles at the nation’s most influential papers, such as the New York Times, whose Journal alumni association includes Dan Barry, Sheryl Gay Stolberg, C. J. Chivers, Helene Cooper, Cory Dean and Terry Schwadron – plus the Times’ top dog, publisher A. G. Sulzberger.
So, its a little problematic to mention just one byline – “G. Wayne Miller” – because there have been lots of equally, perhaps even more eloquent wordsmiths, hungrier investigative “sharks” and just as dogged boots-on-the-ground reporters, whose everyday output was, and deserved to be, received as Gospel by many of its readers, some of whom despised the paper’s monopoly clout, but trusted its professionalism.
But it's worthwhile to review some of what Miller accomplished.
(For a fuller and more authoritative account, if you have lots of time, go to Miller’s own website, proof that people don’t do what Miller does because they lack an ego or are shy about their achievements. Here’s the link: http://www.gwaynemiller.com
AN EASY WAY to get a sense of Miller’s work is the “Toy Soldiers” series I referred to at the beginning of this piece, mainly because Part 5 – “Black Tuesday” – is readily available in one of the Journal’s self-published “How I Wrote the Story” handbooks that reprinted outstanding Journal stories, along with their writers’ accounts of what they did to produce them.
You might expect Miller’s Hasbro story to focus on a carefree bunch of elves bouncing around the corporation’s Pawtucket, R.I. headquarters, whistling while turning out new versions of G.I. Joe, Play-Doh, Mr. Potato Head and Monopoly. Instead, Part 5 begins with a distressing round of firings, in which the company tossed some of its top executives and creative talent under one of its Playskool busses in a desperate plan for corporate survival, bigger profits and love from Wall Street investors.
The piece begins with a hired consultant’s video instructions about the proper way to fire your workforce: do it with “security” out of sight, but handy in case things get out of hand during individual sessions that should last no more than 7 to 10 minutes, since “more time is usually not productive.”
Miller wrote how things played out:
In restrooms, women were sobbing. The terminated were emptying drawers and clearing off desks; their phones were dead, their card keys useless for locks. A senior executive who’d been let go had trashed his office. But nearly everyone else signed their releases, took their severance packages and went numbly into the perfect blue day.
Nice summary. But the real power of the account is what the reader hears from The Fired, from the people who fired them and from the chairman of the board, Alan Hassenfeld, who green-lighted his top lieutenant plan to arrange and carry out the firing campaign; the chairman compared corporations to heart patients in need of radical surgery:
“… the blood flow and the oxygen can’t get to the heart properly. And after a while it strangles and people have a complete blockage. Sometimes you have to do bypass surgery in order to get the freshness and blood flowing again.”
How did Miller know all of this? “Immersive reporting,” which he did not invent, but perfected.
In the Habsro case, he persuaded Hassenfeld and other brass to let him inside their Fortune 500 lair, to roam its offices, restrooms, boardrooms and cafeterias to witness day-to-day operations, to talk to and hear from many of its players – winners and losers – and finally to chronicle, objectively and in detail, what really happened in the place where G.I. Joe was born and where he was loved - for as long as he stayed true to his mission, returning positive net income.
It sounds crazy, I know. What fool would ever let Wayne Miller or any other reporter anywhere near them? But Miller did that, making other people’s lives his own, living with and staying with his people for as long as it took, and it always took lots of time.
During my own Journal career, a mere 35 years that overlapped some of Miller’s 41, I could barely tolerate an interview that lasted more than one hour, and I grew antsy at the prospect of having to spend two hours, much less a full day with somebody I was writing about. Part of that is a personal touch of attention deficit disorder. But for me, much of journalism’s narcotic appeal is not just the adventure of the story you’re working on today, but the prospect of the next one, and the one after that, always something new, different, amazing and fresh.
But Miller did this immersive thing over and over and over. He did it with a big league surgeon (he was given his own locker in the physicians’ changing room so he could easily access the guy’s operating suite), a NASCAR racing team, a high school senior class, a politician, welfare recipients and persons with developmental disabilities. Hours, months, years of reporting. Then the series. Then the book.
You might expect Miller’s Hasbro story to focus on a carefree bunch of elves bouncing around the corporation’s Pawtucket, R.I. headquarters, whistling while turning out new versions of G.I. Joe, Play-Doh, Mr. Potato Head and Monopoly. Instead, Part 5 begins with a distressing round of firings, in which the company tossed some of its top executives and creative talent under one of its Playskool busses in a desperate plan for corporate survival, bigger profits and love from Wall Street investors.
The piece begins with a hired consultant’s video instructions about the proper way to fire your workforce: do it with “security” out of sight, but handy in case things get out of hand during individual sessions that should last no more than 7 to 10 minutes, since “more time is usually not productive.”
Miller wrote how things played out:
In restrooms, women were sobbing. The terminated were emptying drawers and clearing off desks; their phones were dead, their card keys useless for locks. A senior executive who’d been let go had trashed his office. But nearly everyone else signed their releases, took their severance packages and went numbly into the perfect blue day.
Nice summary. But the real power of the account is what the reader hears from The Fired, from the people who fired them and from the chairman of the board, Alan Hassenfeld, who green-lighted his top lieutenant plan to arrange and carry out the firing campaign; the chairman compared corporations to heart patients in need of radical surgery:
“… the blood flow and the oxygen can’t get to the heart properly. And after a while it strangles and people have a complete blockage. Sometimes you have to do bypass surgery in order to get the freshness and blood flowing again.”
How did Miller know all of this? “Immersive reporting,” which he did not invent, but perfected.
In the Habsro case, he persuaded Hassenfeld and other brass to let him inside their Fortune 500 lair, to roam its offices, restrooms, boardrooms and cafeterias to witness day-to-day operations, to talk to and hear from many of its players – winners and losers – and finally to chronicle, objectively and in detail, what really happened in the place where G.I. Joe was born and where he was loved - for as long as he stayed true to his mission, returning positive net income.
It sounds crazy, I know. What fool would ever let Wayne Miller or any other reporter anywhere near them? But Miller did that, making other people’s lives his own, living with and staying with his people for as long as it took, and it always took lots of time.
During my own Journal career, a mere 35 years that overlapped some of Miller’s 41, I could barely tolerate an interview that lasted more than one hour, and I grew antsy at the prospect of having to spend two hours, much less a full day with somebody I was writing about. Part of that is a personal touch of attention deficit disorder. But for me, much of journalism’s narcotic appeal is not just the adventure of the story you’re working on today, but the prospect of the next one, and the one after that, always something new, different, amazing and fresh.
But Miller did this immersive thing over and over and over. He did it with a big league surgeon (he was given his own locker in the physicians’ changing room so he could easily access the guy’s operating suite), a NASCAR racing team, a high school senior class, a politician, welfare recipients and persons with developmental disabilities. Hours, months, years of reporting. Then the series. Then the book.

WHY DID THEY TRUST HIM? Was it the fact – which Miller readily shares – that he’d graduated from Harvard? But Ron DeSantis and Ted Cruz also went to Harvard. So, It’s a mystery.
What’s not a mystery is that Miller did not abuse that trust. His access to and relationships with his sources brings to mind the toxic hypothesis by the late writer Janet Malcolm. Malcolm famously wrote about another writer, Joe McGinniss, who wormed his way into the trust of Jeffrey MacDonald, a doctor accused of slaughtering his family, then wrote that he thought MacDonald was guilty.
Malcolm declared all writers to be scoundrels, first pretending to be their subjects' pals, only to leave them for dead when they started writing, “preying on people's vanity, ignorance or loneliness, gaining their trust and betraying them without remorse.''
Miller put the lie to Malcolm’s jaundiced theory. I never heard about anyone charging Miller with betrayal, deceit or even of a false note. I don’t remember anyone suing the Providence Journal – a company with lucrative pockets – for libel or deceit due to one of Miller’s stories.
Miller not only had the trust of his news subjects, but also his editors and ultimately the paper’s top brass. One reason was that if Miller’s series were expensive, they also were exclusive. The inside story was the only kind of story that no competitor – print, radio, TV, Internet site, podcast – could match. Hasbro, or at least its products, may have been household names to families and their children, and its headquarters a fixture on the Rhode Island landscape, but no one except Wayne Miller could tell you the real, inside story of how Hasbro toyed with its rivals and played the zero sum game of Wall Street.
Thus, Miller was able to harness what were the Journal’s vast resources, paycheck after paycheck, roll after giant roll of newsprint. And then book after book. I mean real books, from respectable publishers, books with hard covers, dust jackets and Library of Congress identification codes.
This did not make Miller popular with everyone in the Journal newsroom. Some of his colleagues felt Miller’s leash was too long. Yes, he put in time on routine chores required by a daily local paper, working the weekend rotation, rushing to breaking news locations. But his desk was often vacant for days at a time, and there was grumbling about how he spent his exclusive Miller Time.
But Miller Time was not “free” time. He used to tell me that he got up 5:30 a.m. morning so he could put in a couple of hours on his various projects – including novels he wrote just for fun, being a huge Stephen King fan. He doted on his two daughters and son. He was the chairman of the public library in the small town of Burrillville, where he lived for years, and where he hand-built an extension on the family’s house, which became his office and library. Simply put, Wayne Miller was and is the antithesis of a time-waster and malingerer.
Another factor is that Miller is fast. I know that newspeople are supposed to be speed demons with “Hey, Sweetheart, get me rewrite” posters on their walls, who can turn out stories just as they are happening. But Miller is really quick. We once teamed up on some project about the Journal’s writing program (that’s correct, the paper had its own writing improvement project, one aspect of which was the aforementioned “How I Wrote the Story” books). Miller and I divided the work evenly; he finished in half the time it took me.
What’s not a mystery is that Miller did not abuse that trust. His access to and relationships with his sources brings to mind the toxic hypothesis by the late writer Janet Malcolm. Malcolm famously wrote about another writer, Joe McGinniss, who wormed his way into the trust of Jeffrey MacDonald, a doctor accused of slaughtering his family, then wrote that he thought MacDonald was guilty.
Malcolm declared all writers to be scoundrels, first pretending to be their subjects' pals, only to leave them for dead when they started writing, “preying on people's vanity, ignorance or loneliness, gaining their trust and betraying them without remorse.''
Miller put the lie to Malcolm’s jaundiced theory. I never heard about anyone charging Miller with betrayal, deceit or even of a false note. I don’t remember anyone suing the Providence Journal – a company with lucrative pockets – for libel or deceit due to one of Miller’s stories.
Miller not only had the trust of his news subjects, but also his editors and ultimately the paper’s top brass. One reason was that if Miller’s series were expensive, they also were exclusive. The inside story was the only kind of story that no competitor – print, radio, TV, Internet site, podcast – could match. Hasbro, or at least its products, may have been household names to families and their children, and its headquarters a fixture on the Rhode Island landscape, but no one except Wayne Miller could tell you the real, inside story of how Hasbro toyed with its rivals and played the zero sum game of Wall Street.
Thus, Miller was able to harness what were the Journal’s vast resources, paycheck after paycheck, roll after giant roll of newsprint. And then book after book. I mean real books, from respectable publishers, books with hard covers, dust jackets and Library of Congress identification codes.
This did not make Miller popular with everyone in the Journal newsroom. Some of his colleagues felt Miller’s leash was too long. Yes, he put in time on routine chores required by a daily local paper, working the weekend rotation, rushing to breaking news locations. But his desk was often vacant for days at a time, and there was grumbling about how he spent his exclusive Miller Time.
But Miller Time was not “free” time. He used to tell me that he got up 5:30 a.m. morning so he could put in a couple of hours on his various projects – including novels he wrote just for fun, being a huge Stephen King fan. He doted on his two daughters and son. He was the chairman of the public library in the small town of Burrillville, where he lived for years, and where he hand-built an extension on the family’s house, which became his office and library. Simply put, Wayne Miller was and is the antithesis of a time-waster and malingerer.
Another factor is that Miller is fast. I know that newspeople are supposed to be speed demons with “Hey, Sweetheart, get me rewrite” posters on their walls, who can turn out stories just as they are happening. But Miller is really quick. We once teamed up on some project about the Journal’s writing program (that’s correct, the paper had its own writing improvement project, one aspect of which was the aforementioned “How I Wrote the Story” books). Miller and I divided the work evenly; he finished in half the time it took me.
FINALLY, MILLER HAS MORE than a little of the entrepreneur in him. He sees possibilities for new or expanded ventures, especially in places where you don’t expect to find them. One example I’ve mentioned: newspaper series that lead to books.
Another example: “Story in the Public Square.” It’s a weekly TV program, mainly interviews with writers, filmmakers and other “story-tellers.” Miller helped the Journal team up with Rhode Island PBS, the state’s public TV station and Salve Regina University, whose Jim Ludes, PhD, executive director of Salve’s Pell Center for International Relations and Public Policy, is the program’s co-host. Miller’s website says the broadcast airs in “22 markets,” has a podcast and is carried on satellite radio.
I’ve just touched the surface.
And I repeat that you could write something like this, and a lot longer, about many of the other women and men who have worked at the Journal, people who are my personal heroes, and who are, or should be, international journalism's super heroes.
And it’s true Miller could not have done what he as without the Providence Journal and its resources. And that the Journal is just one of thousands of newspapers across America that now have disappeared or are about to. As I mentioned, the Journal once had a staff of 350; it’s website today lists a staff of 32, which includes Wayne Miller and another reporter who left when he did, and of course, who aren't there.
Yesterday, just as I was finishing this piece, Miller, now 68, announced his promised next big thing, another collaboration with Salve Regina University and Ludes, which they call Ocean State Stories, "a new media outlet serving Rhode Island residents that will be devoted to long-form journalism about issues of importance."
Will this project live up to its promise? It's vision? Its hype?
G. Wayne Miller was there for the Providence Journal’s best years, and he did his part to make them extraordinary.
EVEN IN VICTORY, YOU
CAN NEVER HANG UP
YOUR CAMPAIGN T-SHIRT
THE SILKY VOICE, which translates text message into spoken words in our new car’s “information system,” purred with this exciting announcement on Election Night:
Seth won!
Seth won!
Seth won!
It was a purported message from my friend, Carol Young, who had accompanied me on canvassing expeditions into Rhode Island’s Second Congressional District, where the Democrat, Seth Magaziner, had been behind in the opinion polls during the entire campaign.
Since I don’t understand much about our plug-in hybrid (I can’t even tune the radio), I thought that maybe the sound system had gone haywire. Or that it was a tease – and a cruel one – from Magaziner’s Republican opponent, Allan Fung, whom pundits, nationally and locally, were betting would win.
Or maybe Young had gone off the rails. She is the most enthusiastic person I know, and I worried that she’d fallen for some social media “malarkey,” as Joe Biden might have put it,
But that couldn’t be. Behind her cheerleader optimism was a tough, demanding, always challenging editor – Young was the first woman to run the newsroom at the Providence Journal, where we worked years ago. She wasn’t one to pass along secondhand blather.
Still, I stubbornly kept my mind open. Twenty minutes earlier, I had gone out on an errand as a TV station was reporting a close race, with Fung in the lead; I thought it was possible that's how the night would play out, Fung hanging onto a slim but unrelenting lead.
When I got home, my wife, Judy, who had written scores of get-out-the-vote letters, was on the phone with a friend, who said his son, then in California, had just heard the news: “Seth won.”
Now, this shouldn’t have been a surprise. Our family had taken an Election Day poll, and Judy had “a feeling” Seth Magaziner would win; our eldest son, who is almost mystically connected to the ether's foreign and national news, predicted Fung; his brother, a carpenter, whose work radio is often tuned to NPR, flippantly texted “Dems or bust.” I said that Magaziner would win – and Democrats would have a slender hold on the House and assume an outright majority in the Senate.
That's honestly how I felt, even though I acknowledged that weeks of door-to-door canvassing for Magaziner may have addled my aging brain – it doesn’t take much these days – and that as a long-ago and unrelated Jones might have suggested, I had swallowed the campaign Kool-Aid.
But it was true. True last night. Still true today as I’m writing this: the latest tally at the state Board of Election’s website: 99,438 votes, or 50.3 percent, for Magaziner; and 92,870, or 46.9 percent. What’s more Fung had conceded on TV, looking devastated.
It didn’t seem possible.
Seth won!
Seth won!
Seth won!
It was a purported message from my friend, Carol Young, who had accompanied me on canvassing expeditions into Rhode Island’s Second Congressional District, where the Democrat, Seth Magaziner, had been behind in the opinion polls during the entire campaign.
Since I don’t understand much about our plug-in hybrid (I can’t even tune the radio), I thought that maybe the sound system had gone haywire. Or that it was a tease – and a cruel one – from Magaziner’s Republican opponent, Allan Fung, whom pundits, nationally and locally, were betting would win.
Or maybe Young had gone off the rails. She is the most enthusiastic person I know, and I worried that she’d fallen for some social media “malarkey,” as Joe Biden might have put it,
But that couldn’t be. Behind her cheerleader optimism was a tough, demanding, always challenging editor – Young was the first woman to run the newsroom at the Providence Journal, where we worked years ago. She wasn’t one to pass along secondhand blather.
Still, I stubbornly kept my mind open. Twenty minutes earlier, I had gone out on an errand as a TV station was reporting a close race, with Fung in the lead; I thought it was possible that's how the night would play out, Fung hanging onto a slim but unrelenting lead.
When I got home, my wife, Judy, who had written scores of get-out-the-vote letters, was on the phone with a friend, who said his son, then in California, had just heard the news: “Seth won.”
Now, this shouldn’t have been a surprise. Our family had taken an Election Day poll, and Judy had “a feeling” Seth Magaziner would win; our eldest son, who is almost mystically connected to the ether's foreign and national news, predicted Fung; his brother, a carpenter, whose work radio is often tuned to NPR, flippantly texted “Dems or bust.” I said that Magaziner would win – and Democrats would have a slender hold on the House and assume an outright majority in the Senate.
That's honestly how I felt, even though I acknowledged that weeks of door-to-door canvassing for Magaziner may have addled my aging brain – it doesn’t take much these days – and that as a long-ago and unrelated Jones might have suggested, I had swallowed the campaign Kool-Aid.
But it was true. True last night. Still true today as I’m writing this: the latest tally at the state Board of Election’s website: 99,438 votes, or 50.3 percent, for Magaziner; and 92,870, or 46.9 percent. What’s more Fung had conceded on TV, looking devastated.
It didn’t seem possible.
GOOD NEWS CAN produce the same disabling shock as tragic news. I stomped around the living room, babbling: “I can’t believe it. I can’t believe it.” Ben, the cat, looked at me as if that proved what he'd always suspected: I was a fool. It was a mix of wonder, disbelief and joy; a destabilizing cocktail of adrenaline and endorphins, stirred, then shaken, and stirred again. Rhode Island had not let down America. Our strange, tiny, sometimes brave, always environmentally stunning, our former Mafia |

headquarters-by-the-sea, had not allowed one of its two Congressional seats turn from Blue to Red.
Indeed, that was our message when Young and I - plus our pal, Jody McPhillips, a star writer when we were reporting to Young – had gone from door to door to door:
“Your ONE vote can Keep Two Blue.”
Because the race might be that close – polls be damned - sending Seth south to Washington might make the difference in the sharply divided Congress, keeping the entire House of Representatives Blue.
“Just ONE vote.” We believed it, deeply.
The stakes were impossibly high. Not just some Red Shirts vs. Blue Shirts intramural political pickup game: this was democracy itself on the line. Donald Trump had trashed the whole concept of self-government. His barbarians had overrun the Capitol, hoping to cancel the election and, if they got the chance along the way, hoping to murder a vice president and speaker of the House. Trump's forces, and those of his successors, were still at it.
The future of the United States was at stake.
And just ONE vote – “your vote” – could make the difference.
THAT WAS WHAT DROVE us to keep asking for assignments from the campaign. We were not a pretty sight, aging journalists, no longer connected to their media megaphone, limping along sidewalks and streets, candidates not for election, but for replacement of hips, knees and joints that we’d never heard of, seeking votes, one vote at a time – just ONE.
Most people didn’t answer their doorbells – in some cases, that was because they didn’t have doorbells, just holes in doorjambs with wires dangling out of them. Some people were home and pretended they weren’t. Or that they didn’t hear the bells, although their dogs sure did, barking at the windows and pounding frantically on the glass with their claws and paws.
Some people actually answered our knocks and rings. Bless them. In the early days, some weren’t aware there was an election; or they assured us they were voting for “Jim” – as in Jim Langevin, the courageous, wheelchair-bound, Democrat,who’d held the post for 22 years but now was retiring.
Some people vowed they'd never vote. “All politicians are alike,” and not in a good way, they told us.
“They’re a bunch of cheats. Everyone is a liar. The 'system' was/is unfair." And they meant it, too, as if they had personally been betrayed, one-on-one, by an actual office-holder. A few had voted for Biden and now regretted it. "Look at what he's done to the schools," one man said.
The campaign’s strategy was to send us to voters who might have registered or voted in the past as Democrats, but were now “iffy” as to whether they would vote this time, or, if they did, for the wrong reason or person. Everywhere there were lawn signs of the Republican candidate for governor, as well as for Magaziner’s opponent.
Rhode Island is not just a small state, it’s almost a small town, and we sometimes canvassed in Fung’s home-base, Cranston, the city where he’d been a popular mayor for a dozen years; or we'd go door-to-door in Cranston's big neighbor, known to air travelers as PVD – the Providence airport that’s actually called Warwick.
Many in both of those voter-rich cities liked Fung, and one guy claimed to know him personally. “Oh yeah?” I challenged him, as if I were still a reporter, “How do you know him?” The guy answered kindly, as if he understood he was about to make a sad announcement: “I cut his grass.”
The final weeks seemed like the best of summer, not chilly, rainy late-October/ early November. There were warm, sun-soaked leafs on the ground or still on the trees, painting Rhode Island in gentle orange-yellow-brown pastels. People were out and about and some were talkative.
One woman told me she was 99, as she determinedly swept a blanket of leaves with a rake as big as she was. She proudly pointed to a robust spruce tree that she had planted years as a twig, and now had grown into one of her life’s accomplishments.
“I already voted,” she said. I asked for whom. “Well, at my age, I don’t remember.” She asked me about a candidate’s sign on a neighbor's lawn: “Who’s that for?” “The Republican candidate for mayor,” I said. “Oh, a Republican? I don’t like that.”
I wore a “Seth” T-shirt on the theory that was maybe my real contribution: as a walking Magaziner billboard. Sometimes that brought a horn honk and a thumbs-up from a motorist. One bike rider, as he whizzed by, muttered: “Scumbag.”
Indeed, that was our message when Young and I - plus our pal, Jody McPhillips, a star writer when we were reporting to Young – had gone from door to door to door:
“Your ONE vote can Keep Two Blue.”
Because the race might be that close – polls be damned - sending Seth south to Washington might make the difference in the sharply divided Congress, keeping the entire House of Representatives Blue.
“Just ONE vote.” We believed it, deeply.
The stakes were impossibly high. Not just some Red Shirts vs. Blue Shirts intramural political pickup game: this was democracy itself on the line. Donald Trump had trashed the whole concept of self-government. His barbarians had overrun the Capitol, hoping to cancel the election and, if they got the chance along the way, hoping to murder a vice president and speaker of the House. Trump's forces, and those of his successors, were still at it.
The future of the United States was at stake.
And just ONE vote – “your vote” – could make the difference.
THAT WAS WHAT DROVE us to keep asking for assignments from the campaign. We were not a pretty sight, aging journalists, no longer connected to their media megaphone, limping along sidewalks and streets, candidates not for election, but for replacement of hips, knees and joints that we’d never heard of, seeking votes, one vote at a time – just ONE.
Most people didn’t answer their doorbells – in some cases, that was because they didn’t have doorbells, just holes in doorjambs with wires dangling out of them. Some people were home and pretended they weren’t. Or that they didn’t hear the bells, although their dogs sure did, barking at the windows and pounding frantically on the glass with their claws and paws.
Some people actually answered our knocks and rings. Bless them. In the early days, some weren’t aware there was an election; or they assured us they were voting for “Jim” – as in Jim Langevin, the courageous, wheelchair-bound, Democrat,who’d held the post for 22 years but now was retiring.
Some people vowed they'd never vote. “All politicians are alike,” and not in a good way, they told us.
“They’re a bunch of cheats. Everyone is a liar. The 'system' was/is unfair." And they meant it, too, as if they had personally been betrayed, one-on-one, by an actual office-holder. A few had voted for Biden and now regretted it. "Look at what he's done to the schools," one man said.
The campaign’s strategy was to send us to voters who might have registered or voted in the past as Democrats, but were now “iffy” as to whether they would vote this time, or, if they did, for the wrong reason or person. Everywhere there were lawn signs of the Republican candidate for governor, as well as for Magaziner’s opponent.
Rhode Island is not just a small state, it’s almost a small town, and we sometimes canvassed in Fung’s home-base, Cranston, the city where he’d been a popular mayor for a dozen years; or we'd go door-to-door in Cranston's big neighbor, known to air travelers as PVD – the Providence airport that’s actually called Warwick.
Many in both of those voter-rich cities liked Fung, and one guy claimed to know him personally. “Oh yeah?” I challenged him, as if I were still a reporter, “How do you know him?” The guy answered kindly, as if he understood he was about to make a sad announcement: “I cut his grass.”
The final weeks seemed like the best of summer, not chilly, rainy late-October/ early November. There were warm, sun-soaked leafs on the ground or still on the trees, painting Rhode Island in gentle orange-yellow-brown pastels. People were out and about and some were talkative.
One woman told me she was 99, as she determinedly swept a blanket of leaves with a rake as big as she was. She proudly pointed to a robust spruce tree that she had planted years as a twig, and now had grown into one of her life’s accomplishments.
“I already voted,” she said. I asked for whom. “Well, at my age, I don’t remember.” She asked me about a candidate’s sign on a neighbor's lawn: “Who’s that for?” “The Republican candidate for mayor,” I said. “Oh, a Republican? I don’t like that.”
I wore a “Seth” T-shirt on the theory that was maybe my real contribution: as a walking Magaziner billboard. Sometimes that brought a horn honk and a thumbs-up from a motorist. One bike rider, as he whizzed by, muttered: “Scumbag.”

BECAUSE RHODE ISLAND IS SO SMALL – you can drive end-to-end in about an hour, even on the state’s notoriously chewed up roads, you’d think that the door-to-door stuff was simple, and you could meet at least half of the state's one-million residents on any afternoon.
Nope. Even a small state is a lot of territory to cover. It’s possible we visited 300 “doors,” as the campaign’s jargon called its curated addresses on its “turf” lists, possibly a few more than that.Whatever the total, we talked to just a fraction, and at best convinced maybe 15 to vote, and just a few to do so for “our” guy.
I actually thought our impact was minuscule and actually pathetic. But, we all agreed it was better than sitting home, listening to the pundits and prognosticators, doomsayers, sneering at the Democrats, whipping up images of the Red Wave rolling over the Ocean State.
We kept each other’s spirits up, even after the campaign was over. McPhillips, who put in a long Election Night as an official Providence city poll worker, emailed me the day after:
“My personal belief is that Fung would have triumphed had you not knocked on every (word used in newsrooms, but never printed) door in the 2nd district. Well done!”
Absolutely untrue. The campaign’s software indicated that McPhillips went to more “doors” than I did. And if you add in those that Young visited, and the extra ones she insisted we try, as if she were still handing out reporting assignments, I was always outmatched.
But we weren’t alone.
I don’t know how big a staff and volunteer force Magaziner jsf fielded. In the end, he ran a combined campaign with Gov. Dan McKee (who won big), and Magaziner had huge labor union support – his campaign chief was the daughter of a top AFL-CIO official, and one of his field offices was in a Carpenters Union hall.
I met a friend who was a veteran of progressive causes, and who lived in the same section of Cranston where I was assigned one day. She told me how she personally was organizing that neighborhood, canvassing day after day and planning a big push the day before, and the day of, the election.
And there were telltale clues that some of our assigned territories had already been visited : Seth campaign cards stuffed into door jams, faded and lying on welcome mats.
It’s possible that scores, maybe hundreds of individual and team efforts built up; and as the polls were showing Fung ahead, more and more people became as driven as we were to do their part, so that all of these combined into a critical mass that virtually willed Rhode Island not let America down.
Maybe the TV debates helped. Magaziner, state treasurer for seven years, got stronger and stronger with each one. Maybe Rhode Island Democrats tolerated Fung as a small city Republican mayor, but would not like to have a Republican in Congress. Maybe Rhode Island was just too Blue, even for a well-liked Republican.
Nobody really, actually could explain it.
But this I know, for sure.
Election Night was magical. But it was just one night, just one election.
The U.S. has become a country where every election is a desperate, do-or-die event, with democracy always on a cliff's edge. It never ends.
As much, or as little, that we can all do, we cannot rest, because it will never be over. That is what Donald Trump and his thugs have done to our democracy, one that we can never take for granted.
Victories don’t last.
There will never be a time, not in our lifetimes, when we can hang up our Magaziner T-shirts.
Nope. Even a small state is a lot of territory to cover. It’s possible we visited 300 “doors,” as the campaign’s jargon called its curated addresses on its “turf” lists, possibly a few more than that.Whatever the total, we talked to just a fraction, and at best convinced maybe 15 to vote, and just a few to do so for “our” guy.
I actually thought our impact was minuscule and actually pathetic. But, we all agreed it was better than sitting home, listening to the pundits and prognosticators, doomsayers, sneering at the Democrats, whipping up images of the Red Wave rolling over the Ocean State.
We kept each other’s spirits up, even after the campaign was over. McPhillips, who put in a long Election Night as an official Providence city poll worker, emailed me the day after:
“My personal belief is that Fung would have triumphed had you not knocked on every (word used in newsrooms, but never printed) door in the 2nd district. Well done!”
Absolutely untrue. The campaign’s software indicated that McPhillips went to more “doors” than I did. And if you add in those that Young visited, and the extra ones she insisted we try, as if she were still handing out reporting assignments, I was always outmatched.
But we weren’t alone.
I don’t know how big a staff and volunteer force Magaziner jsf fielded. In the end, he ran a combined campaign with Gov. Dan McKee (who won big), and Magaziner had huge labor union support – his campaign chief was the daughter of a top AFL-CIO official, and one of his field offices was in a Carpenters Union hall.
I met a friend who was a veteran of progressive causes, and who lived in the same section of Cranston where I was assigned one day. She told me how she personally was organizing that neighborhood, canvassing day after day and planning a big push the day before, and the day of, the election.
And there were telltale clues that some of our assigned territories had already been visited : Seth campaign cards stuffed into door jams, faded and lying on welcome mats.
It’s possible that scores, maybe hundreds of individual and team efforts built up; and as the polls were showing Fung ahead, more and more people became as driven as we were to do their part, so that all of these combined into a critical mass that virtually willed Rhode Island not let America down.
Maybe the TV debates helped. Magaziner, state treasurer for seven years, got stronger and stronger with each one. Maybe Rhode Island Democrats tolerated Fung as a small city Republican mayor, but would not like to have a Republican in Congress. Maybe Rhode Island was just too Blue, even for a well-liked Republican.
Nobody really, actually could explain it.
But this I know, for sure.
Election Night was magical. But it was just one night, just one election.
The U.S. has become a country where every election is a desperate, do-or-die event, with democracy always on a cliff's edge. It never ends.
As much, or as little, that we can all do, we cannot rest, because it will never be over. That is what Donald Trump and his thugs have done to our democracy, one that we can never take for granted.
Victories don’t last.
There will never be a time, not in our lifetimes, when we can hang up our Magaziner T-shirts.
BRIAN C. JONES
I'VE BEEN a reporter and writer for 58 years, long enough to have learned that journalists don't know very much, although I've met some smart ones.
Mainly, what reporters know comes from asking other people questions and fretting about the answers. This blog is a successor to one inspired by our dog, Phoebe, who was smart, sweet and the antithesis of Donald Trump. She died Feb. 3, and I don't see getting over that very soon. Occasionally, I may try to reach her via cell phone. |
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