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11/24/22

11/23/2022

1 Comment

 

Thanksgiving edition
HERE'S TO THE BRAVE PEOPLE WHO
NEVER STOPPED HOPING AND CARING

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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.

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 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.

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 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.

1 Comment

11/17/22

11/17/2022

2 Comments

 

AGAIN, THE 'HIVE' MEDIA
FLUNKS ITS TRUMP TEST

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DONAL TRUMP as he announces his run for a second term: CREDIT: Screenshot from C-Span
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.

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 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:
  • 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?
   Can Trump still wow a crowd? Stand still at a podium? Does he need help on the stairs? Does he still have the “it,” that mysterious ability that allowed him to turn primary opponents into lapdogs, and crush Hillary Clinton (I know, she won the popular vote), and could he still give Sleepy Joe a run for the dark money?
   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.” 

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   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.

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 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.

2 Comments

11/14/2022

11/14/2022

0 Comments

 

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.

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G. WAYNE MILLER, on the set the TV program, "Story in the Public Square" CREDIT: Brian Jones
(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
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 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.

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 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.


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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.
0 Comments

11/9/2022

11/9/2022

1 Comment

 

EVEN IN VICTORY, YOU
CAN NEVER HANG UP
YOUR CAMPAIGN T-SHIRT

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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.

  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

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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.”


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 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.


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1 Comment

11/4/22

11/4/2022

1 Comment

 

AS ELECTION DAY NEARS, A KEY CONTEST IS FEAR VERSUS HOPE

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I’M REALLY AFRAID.
   Actually, afraid doesn’t really describe it. I’m terrified, frightened, heart-stoppingly, stomach-churning scared stupid at the prospect of the nightmare that will occur if Republicans win next week.
   If the they take over one branch of Congress or both, if they win election-controlling posts in the states, then our fragile democracy may be on its way to ruin.
    Which is not to say the GOP will win on Nov. 8.
    I’d like to believe that enough Americans care about their country, and understand the horror that malevolent governments bring about in other places of the world, voters won’t let that happen to the United States of America.
    Most people I’ve met in my 80-plus years are, at their core, nice.
   They help out in homeless shelters; contribute to fund-raising campaigns for sick children. They care about their children. They coach their kids’ teams, go into hawk for their college educations, buy them cars. Some jump onto subway tracks to rescue people who have fallen off. Others volunteer to fight in Ukraine. Lots of people adopt dogs facing death in over-filled kennels.
   There are just millions upon millions of people who want to make their country better, and a lot of them are voting right now and will turn out next Tuesday.
   As to the other half of America, I’m at a loss to understand why they are devoted to Donald Trump and his attempt to overthrow the last election; why they demonize children struggling with gender identity; why they don’t want other people to have medical care, homes, good educations; why they want to ban books in school libraries; why they make fun of an 82-year-old man who’s had his skull hammered just because he’s Mr. Pelosi.
   So, with the 2022 election only days, really just hours, away, I’m an emotional wreck.

I WONDER HOW PEOPLE who already are in desperate situations cope – the people who are in Ukraine, fighting off the Russian invaders; people who don’t have food; people already facing the devastation of climate change, their homes destroyed by fire and floods; people who already are seeing their reservoirs go dry; people who’ve already lost their children to bullets on city streets and in small town classrooms.
   One way that I’m trying to cope with election anxiety is not to predict the election or listen to other people’s predictions, until the votes are counted.
   I’m doing a few small things that I’m not sure will make a difference, but that at least might, theoretically, possibly. My wife and I wrote 355 letters for the Vote Forward campaign, which asked volunteers write brief, non-partisan messages simply asking folks to vote, without suggesting whom or what party to vote for.
   I’ve been canvassing for the Democratic candidate, Seth Magaziner, who’s the Democratic candidate for the Rhode Island’s open Congressional seat.  Most people I visit aren’t home or not answering the door; some have lost faith in the “system” and aren’t voting; a few have voted already; some won’t say who for, which probably means they’re voting for Seth’s Republican opponent.
   These are very, very limited things, these steps. My Vote Forward letters were hand-written, which means in my case, they were hand-scrawled-printed in a barely readable script you’d expect to find in a ransom note. It’ll be a surprise if many recipients open them and a miracle if even one goes to the polls as a result.
   I have friends who are doing the very same things.
  
ONE THING I'M NOT DOING in these final seconds leading up to Nov. 8 – and I am a journalist by trade –  I am not following the news, listening to NPR, watching TV news, hardly glancing at the two newspapers that land on our bushes or those that show up online; I'm not tuning into the liberal cable network,MSNBC or downloading political podcasts
   Our house is in a news blackout.
   Because I don’t want to hear that the polls aren’t looking good or that they are; don't want to hear that the Democrats have botched messaging; that the trends are terrible or terrific; that history of midterms disfavors the “party in power,” that Joe Biden’s favorability numbers are a drag on the rest of the Democrats or what the shocking results of the latest focus group of barely interested voters are telling us - or not.
   I know the reporters and the analysts and the pundits have to write and talk about something, and that many of them are doing their best to provide a running account of where things stand. But right now, they don’t really know – not absolutely – what’s going to happen.
   I’m not letting anyone take away my hope.
   I know that underdogs win in politics as well as in sports. I know if I get discouraged, depressed, and down in the dumps, I’ll give up on carrying out the little, but actual,  things I can do before election day, things that may influence the outcome in a close race.
   I need to keep focused on working, on winning, because I’ll despise myself, looking back, if I don’t do the little I can because I gave up too early, and I got talked out of hope. I happen to live in a tiny, terrific state whose motto is “Hope;” it’s right there on on the Rhode Island state flag.
   I know that if “we” lose on election day, that the fight for democracy will not be over, because the evil forces that are at work today will be still at it tomorrow. I know that if “we” lose the election, that the fight for democracy must continue; it will be just that much harder.
   So, until the long-anticipated Nov. 8 that’s now just seconds away, I’m listening to music, watching mysteries on TV and ringing door bells -- hoping at least one person will answer and agree that their vote counts.








1 Comment

11/1/22

11/1/2022

2 Comments

 

IN R.I., A 'NICE GUY' ADOPTS
THE GOP’S ‘BAD-NANCY’ CARD

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ALLAN FUNG, the Republican candidate in Rhode Island's 2nd Congressional District. CREDIT: Fung for Congress website
A COUPLE OF WEEKS AGO, I was watching a TV debate in a crucial Congressional race that could determine control of the House of Representatives – and I was getting increasingly upset the way that the Republican candidate kept bringing up Nancy Pelosi’s name.
   Allan Fung, the Republican and a former mayor of Cranston, Rhode Island, repeatedly attacked his Democratic opponent, Seth Magaziner, who’s the state's treasurer, for supporting President Joe Biden and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and their “policies” which Fung blamed for high inflation.
   “...  (Magaziner is) doubling down and supporting these same economic policies that our failed President, as well as Speaker Nancy Pelosi, had been forcing onto this economy that’s costing us at the gas pumps, at the grocery stores,”   Fung said early in the debate.
   He made the same kind of references five more times in the 57-minute forum on Oct. 18, pairing Biden and Pelosi as twin ghoulish forces,  altering his wording only slightly, as if he were riffing off a talking-points sheet.
   I ended up yelling at the TV, imploring Magaziner to face Fung and berate him for his demeaning tone, commanding Fung  to show some respect for Pelosi, for her historic role as a political  pioneer as the first woman Speaker of the House, and perhaps the chamber’s all-time most effective leader. And remind him that Pelosi has put all women (and men) in her debt  by fighting successfully for equal rights.
   “Seth,” I bellowed at the wide-screen, “tell him to show some respect.”
   “Tell Fung that Nancy Pelosi is American icon. And to stop his sneering and his vilifying innuendo that she’s some sort of blot on the country. She’s principled, accomplished and courageous, and it’s time that you and your Republican cronies stopped your robotic attacks against this astonishing, heroic woman.”
   Then, last Friday, Oct. 28, Pelosi’s longtime role as a Republican villain came into sharper focus, with the hammer attack on her 82-year-old husband, Paul, by an intruder into their San Francisco home, carrying kidnapping paraphernalia, such as zip ties and a roll of tape, demanding to know where “Nancy” was.
   It was the second time that a demand for “Nancy” had been used in a violent, criminal political assault, the first being when Donald Trump’s barbarian-rioters stormed the Capitol, with insurrection – and murder – on their minds.
   The Halloween-day edition of New York Times made that point, but more, eloquently than I can, in a detailed piece that said one research group has estimated that since 2018, Republicans have featured Pelosi in nearly 530,000 attack ads costing $227 million.
   “For the better part of two decades, Republicans have targeted Ms. Pelosi, the most powerful woman in American politics, as the most sinister Democratic villain of all, making her the evil star of their advertisements and fund-raising appeals in hopes of animating their core supporters,” the Times story said. It added that: “Ms. Pelosi is now one of the most threatened members of Congress in the country.”
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THE TV DEBATE - Allan Fung, on the left, and Seth Magaziner, the Democratic candidate for Rhode Island's open Congressional seat. CREDIT: Screenshot via WPRI-TV, Channel 12
 LET’S RETURN to the Rhode Island TV debate.
   Allan Fung did NOT directly demonize Nancy Pelosi, at least in so many words.
   He did not suggest, as has the notorious Georgia Republican Congresswoman,  Marjorie Taylor Greene, that Pelosi is “guilty of treason,” a crime that  Greene said is “punishable by death.” Fung did not say Pelosi is the head of a Democratic pedophilia ring, or that she actually choreographed the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol.
   Instead,  he simply paired Biden and Pelosi as Democrat misfits. He did not mention other “notorious” Democrats, like Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, former President Barack Obama or even the other favorite GOP punching bag, Hillary Clinton.
   He didn’t have to say more. The national Republicans had done his dirty work for him. Just say those two hateful words, “Nancy Pelosi,” and we all know who and what they are talking about.
   Someone can argue – but I won’t  – that it was fair for Fung to bring up Pelosi’s name in the debate since he is running for Congress and, if elected, he will have a vote in picking the leader of the House of Representatives.
   And someone also can argue – but I won’t – that during the same debate, Fung’s opponent, Seth Magaziner, repeatedly attacked policies supported by Rep. Kevin McCarthy, the California Republican who is the House minority leader and the Speaker-in-waiting, should Republicans take over the closely divided House.
   Because we’re not talking about disagreements between honorable opponents. Even the hammer that bashed in Paul Pelosi’s skull ought to know that.  Allan Fung was borrowing from a Republican script developed by the party’s notorious message machine.
   Which brings me to a question that many Rhode Islanders are asking with the midterm elections just a week away: why not turn over a House seat, long held by a retiring Democratic Rep. Jim Langevin, to Allan Fung, who happens to be a Republican?
   Because Fung is indisputably a “nice guy.” He’s indisputably a moderate Republican. He says Joe Biden won the election. He’s for immigration reform. Against use of nuclear weapons. Couldn’t we use more of those kind of “nice” Republicans in Washington?
   The Answer:  no.
   Absolutely, no.
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SETH MAGAZINER, with his wife, Julia, and their son, Max. CREDIT: Seth Magaziner for Congress website
 FOR ONE THING,  turning one Congressional seat from Blue to Red, even one belonging to tiny, usually insignificant Rhode Island, could transform the House into a Republican chamber of horrors, which is why I’ve been volunteering in the Magaziner campaign, canvassing door-to-door.
   The other issue is character: character versus likability: Don’t we want someone likable to represent us in public life, especially in these fraught times?
    Let’s get this straight, as noted already:  Allan Fung is absolutely likable. He lights up a room. He’s the son of Chinese immigrants and the first Asian-American mayor of a Rhode Island city.
   Actually, Seth Magaziner is likable, too. He’s also from a family of immigrants. He taught kids in a poor public school after college. He’s articulate and quick in a debate and in person. Fun to be around.
   But none of that matters. Most politicians, even those you don’t agree with, are likely to be likable.
   In person, most political people are fun to be around, fun to listen to, to take selfies with, have a beer with. Nice is what they do. It’s impractical to be a politician and not be likable.
   But that doesn’t tell us who they really are.
    Allan Fung belongs to a party whose repeated attacks on Nancy Pelosi have put her life and her husband’s life in danger – and that also threaten the political life of our country.
   Tearing apart the reputations of people they don’t like is among the many despicable things that Republicans do. And during the TV debate Oct. 18 Allen Fung did not seem to mind playing a dangerous card –  the Republican-crafted “Bad-Nancy” card.
   If elected, Fung possibly will vote against some Republican proposals. But I’m betting that he’ll fall into line with his party’s agenda most of the time, just as he did during the debate with his repeated use of his Pelosi call-outs:
  • “... he’s doubling down and supporting these same economic policies that our failed President, as well as Speaker Nancy Pelosi, had been forcing onto this economy, that’s costing us at the gas pumps, at the grocery stores.
 
  • “… but most importantly, he’s doubled down right now – and talking about out of touch – he is supporting the failed policies of Joe Biden and Nancy Pelosi that is crippling this economy."
 
  • “…   the policies of the people he wants to (see)  continue serving as President,  and as Speaker, Nancy Pelosi."
 
  • “I will be an independent voice standing up for Rhode Island values and standing up for those that are on Social Security, because the ones that are taking away Social Security isn’t going to be myself, it’s Seth Magaziner, because he’s doubling down on the same economic policies of President Biden, as well as Speaker Pelosi, that’s taking money out of your pockets."
 
  • “My first vote in Congress will be to be to replace Nancy Pelosi as Speaker and her failed policies.”
 
  • “You know, Seth Magaziner wants to double down on the policies that’s driving this cost of living crisis for all Rhode Islanders by supporting President Biden and Speaker Pelosi that have left spending out of control.”
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 MAYBE FUNG DIDN'T fully realize it himself at the time, but his constant mentions of Pelosi were not just annoying to Democrats like me, who are huge Nancy Pelosi fans.  
   Instead, they were a tip off as to Allan Fung’s character – and to those of most Republicans.
   I’m not sure that I fully understood that, even as I was fuming about Fung’s repeated use of the Pelosi name, what that ploy really signified. But after the attack on Nancy Pelosi’s husband, it was clear to me that the debate had been a kind of test for Allan Fung – one that he failed.
   It was a test in which a politician first appears to be a genuinely nice guy, but that in the end, he fails, because he turns out to be anything but nice.
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NANCY PELOSI in 2019 CREDIT: House of Representatives
2 Comments
    BRIAN C. JONES
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      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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