September 5, 2018--Boooooring

Mika got it right yesterday morning.

I dosed off Morning Joe for a couple of weeks, needing respite from all-Trump-all-the-time, but with the onset of the new season (the "year" starts up again the day after Labor Day) I felt the atavistic compulsion to reconnect to what is going on. Including trolling for subjects to write about that do not have anything to do with Trump.

Lots of luck with that I realized on Tuesday as early as five-after-six, with the first five minutes of MJ devoted to Joe and Willie exchanging barbs about the crumbling fate of the Yankees and the Red Sox's historic run.

Just two minutes into their joshing you could see Mika cringing. Up to their old schtick. If looks could wound her look would draw blood.

"Can we get on with things?" exasperated, she said. They ignored her. "There's lots going on and we need to talk about that."

"Yes, John McCain. His funeral," Joe said without enthusiasm, still more interested in baseball gossip.

"It's over," Mika said, cryptically.

"Not until it's over," Joe said, he thought slyly, quoting Yogi Berra, winking at Wille, with baseball still more on his mind than McCain.

"Not the funeral, but the presidency."

"Over?" Joe said, paying attention to his cohost and fiancée for a rare moment. 

"This show is so boring," she said. 

I grew excited, expecting a family spat. Mika pops off a few times a year and videos of her meltdowns usually go viral. I thought--what an inventive way for her to launch the year. Trashing her own show.

Having the floor she pressed on. "Nothing is new. In fact, nothing can be new. Everything is predictable. We know exactly what he is going to say. Or tweet. His whole presidency depends on a steady stream of surprises. In there own way, excitements. Engaging outrages. He's the producer of his own reality TV presidency and it's about to be cancelled."

"You know, Mika's half right," one of their panelists, off camera, said. You could sense he was worried that the "half right" could be misinterpreted, come off as patronizing. Which it did. Though smacking of enough truth that she and the others let it go. She was happy just being paid attention to.

As a result there was no more sports talk. They were off and running, making being boring interesting. 

"If his people start to get bored with him," Sam Stein of the Daily Beast said, "he's cooked. Don't mishear me, they believe him, more important they believe in him. They are also there for the show. If you live in some, forgive me, godforsaken place like Fargo, North Dakota, where the most exciting thing is the Charley Pride concert, it doesn't get any better than going to one of his rallies after standing in line for hours to get a seat for his political standup spritz. But before we get giddy about this, at the Fargo rally Trump people claimed 6,000 turned out, though the local press had the number much less than that."

"Like the ongoing numbers game about the size of the crowd at his inauguration," MSNBC's Kasie Hunt chimed in.

"One thing Trump knows for certain," this from WAPO columnist and editor Eugene Robinson, "Is how to pay attention to ratings. The Apprentice didn't go off the air because Trump was running for president but because the ratings were heading south. If the ratings and demographics had continued to be strong NBC would probably still have it on the air. I don't believe the Emoluments Clause in the Constitution forbids that. Making money from a TV show. Look, he's still getting away with making a killing from his hotels and resorts. I'm not hearing about anyone giving up their Mar-a-Lago membership or the Trump hotel in Washington offering weekend discounts."

Willie said, "There are reports that attendance at his rallies is declining. It's not such a hot ticket anymore. And more than a few who show up appear to filter out before his act is over."

"You're right," Joe jumped in,"politics is all about numbers. And enthusiasm. He could be slipping in both realms. If he is, as Mika said, it's all over."

"Well," Mika said, now all smiles, "at the beginning of being over."

Glancing at the clock, also smiling, Joe said, "We made it to six-thirty without being boring. I think we're off to a good start for the year."

January 1, 2018--Liberal Fallacy: The "Woke"

One of my favorite Morning Joe guests is political and cultural columnist Anand Giridharadas (AG).

Friday, on the last show of the year, he was the final guest. It fell to him to sum things up.

He was asked about the status of the Resistance, the movement to resist the worst of the Trump presidency. Appropriately, for our tragically divided nation, he offered an expansive call for national reconciliation. 

Nothing to argue about with that, but there is much to be concerned about in the specific ways in which he hopes to see that reconciliation occur. 

To me it is representative of the Liberal Fallacy.

What he calls for embodies engagement in some of the very-same virulent behaviors Trump supporters participate in to support him.

After the show, AG summed this up on his Twitter feed. He wrote--

"In 2017, the Resistance was, and had to be a fortress, protecting America from a grave threat to the republic. 

"In 2018, it must be a church seeking converts. It must persuade. 

"Is there space among the woke for the still-waking?"

If one is serious about seeking ways to come together to seek reengagement, isn't it necessary for that dialogue not to be so one-sided? It is clear that he sees virtue only in his dug-in position along the cultural divide and calls for those of us who are of that persuasion to look for ways to be persuasive. Not to listen, not to be open to the heretical possibility that we too might be influenced.

Isn't this a version of the very thing so many Americans hate about the cultural elites? That we claim to embrace the truth, reject or not even listen to other views, and are eager to lead those our candidate called deplorables, irredeemable deplorables, and who AG, literally with pink patches on his jacket sleeves, also seeks to enlighten? About the truth. Our truth. To convert those who are "still-waking."?

To in effect say, "Better than you, we know what's good for you." 

And then what condescension, what self-assigned superiority is revealed by the "woke"-still-waking" paradigm.

This call is not going to get the job done. Actually, it will have the opposite effect. If we seek understanding and perhaps the beginning of reconciliation this is not the vision we need to guide us in 2018.

I was saddened that Willie Geist and the other Morning Joe guests hearing this, uncritically, without evidence of self-insight, came close to clutching hands and breaking into Kumbaya. 

It was a depressing moment at the end of a tumultuous year that summed up entirely too much.

November 30, 2016--You Be the Judge

They broke into Morning Joe yesterday to announce that their parent network, NBC, had just summarily fired longtime Today Show host Matt Lauer for "inappropriate sexual behavior in the workplace."

Joe Scarborough, Mike Barnicle, and frequent Today host Willie Geist were visibly shaken. I suspect in Joe's case in part because he feared he could easily be the next to fall. There's a lot of sexual static in his past.

We watched for awhile and then switched to NBC where co-host Savannah Guthrie and last-minute substitute host Hoda Kotb were sharing their feelings of upset.

After ten minutes we surfed around to see how the other networks were was dealing with the news. 

First to CNN, where morning co-host Alisyn Camerota had been sexually harassed by her past employer, Fox News head Roger Ailes who had been summarily fired six months ago; then to Fox itself where the hosts, conveniently forgetting their own network's history with sexual harassment, were a version of gleeful; next to CBS where senior-host Charlie Rose had been summarily fired a week and a half ago for sexual malfeasance. Then finally to Today's main rival, ABC's Good Morning America.

We lingered there because mega-businessman Daymond John of Shark Tank fame was being interviewed about his latest book, The Power of Broke. We stopped to watch as Shark Tank is one of the two or three shows we enjoy watching. OK, one of two. 

At the end of the interview, the person interviewing him thanked him profusely (Shark Tank is also an ABC show) and reached over to touch him. On the upper thigh!

In the context of all the inappropriate touching this was shocking and the only thing of interest in this otherwise innocuous program.

"Can they get away with that?" Rona asked.

"I guess we'll find out later today or tomorrow when ABC human resources and/or executives of the network may have to deal with it."

"Did it make any difference that Daymond, the touchee," Rona wondered, "is a man?"

"Good question."

"Or that the interviewer, Robin Roberts is a woman?"

"And," I said, "an openly gay woman at that."

"This is all so complicated," Rona said. "In addition, I wonder if NBC rushed to fire Lauer, one of the networks Trump claims deals mainly in fake news, before he could get his hands on the story and gleefully scoop and excoriate them."

"He's on quite a roll with that," I said, "Shortly after the Matt Lauer story broke he was tweeting about 'low-ratings' Joe Scarborough and alluding to the scandal that befell him back when he was a congressman--when a female intern died of unclear causes in his Florida office."

"No wonder I don't want to watch TV," Rona sighed.

"But don't forget Shark Tank."