By Bob Gaydos

Donald Trump speaks behind bulletproof glass during a campaign rally at Arnold Palmer Regional Airport in Latrobe, Pennsylvania. (AFP via Getty Images)

  (Deep sigh.)

     My fellow Americans, the Trump era in politics began with Stormy Daniels, a porn star, talking about the size of then-presidential candidate Donald Trump’s putter. (He’s an avid golfer, as you know.). Eight years later, the candidate himself, Trump, is talking about the size of the golfing legend Arnold Palmer’s driver.

     No, you’re right, this has nothing to do with golf. 

     And before I go any further, I want to extend my sincere apologies to David Bernstein, my first editor (and publisher) at the Binghamton (N.Y.) Sun-Bulletin, and Donald Koster, my journalism professor at Adelphi College in Garden City (N.Y.), for resorting to such snarky symbolism to refer to male genitalia. You taught me better. But unfortunately, that’s where we are today in journalism and in life in general. There are no apparent rules. F bombs abound. Besides, the topic never came up about what to do when a political candidate started talking about someone’s penis at a public political rally.

     Yes, that’s where we are, people, courtesy of the aforementioned Donald Trump, convicted of 34 felonies in trying to stop Ms. Daniels from telling the world about his extramarital golf game and awaiting sentencing on the convictions. Trump was also found liable, in a civil trial, for sexually assaulting a woman in a dressing room at a Manhattan department store. He was ordered to pay her $85 million for the assault and defaming her when she accused him. Plus there’s the matter of attempting a coup when he lost his bid for reelection in 2020.

       Back to golf. Trump was talking about Palmer because the rally was in Latrobe, Pa., the late golfer’s hometown. What better reason to muse about the size of Palmer’s penis. What better way to make your supporters feel good about themselves, laugh and pat you on the back when you come in from recess? Yes, they laughed and for good measure also tossed the word s—t out at Trump’s opponent, Kamala Harris. At his urging of course.

      This coarse intersection of the presidential campaign highlights again the absolute depths to which the Republican Party has sunk, with no leader willing or able to step forward and point out that, not only does their leader and presidential candidate have no morals, he is also losing his mind. What Trump did in Latrobe and continues to do everywhere he appears, wandering off into a verbal mishmash fantasyland, accentuated by lies and threats, is not the behavior of a competent adult, never mind someone who is capable of leading the most powerful country in the world.

        What will it take for someone, some family member or party leader to step up to say Trump must step aside for the good of the party and the country? So far, only Liz Cheney has shown those kind of, yes, cajones.

         A day after Trump (apparently no longer interested in talking about tariffs, immigration or abortion) reminisced about Arnold Palmer’s manly presence in the clubhouse shower, the Republican speaker of the House of Representatives was interviewed on CNN by Jake Tapper.

        The speaker dismissed questions about Trump’s violent rhetoric about “the enemy within” and threats to use the military against his political opponents, specifically naming Nancy Pelosi and Adam Schaffer. Then Tapper asked, “Is this really the closing message you want voters to hear from Donald Trump, stories about Arnold Palmer’s penis?”

        Avoidance.

        Tapper persisted. “I’m sure that you think that a policy debate would be better than a personality debate. But if President Biden had gone on stage and spoke about the size of a pro golfer’s penis, I think you would be on this show right now saying you were shocked and appalled and you would suggest it was evidence of his cognitive decline.”

        The speaker, agitated: “Don’t say it again!”

        “We don’t have to say it. I get it.” Flustered: “There’s lines in a rally – when president Trump is at a rally, sometimes you’ll speak for two straight hours. You’re questioning his stamina, his mental acuity. Joe Biden couldn’t do that for five minutes. That’s how you started this segment. You said, what if Biden was in a rally like that? He couldn’t fill the room, Donald Trump does.”

         That’s how the Speaker of the House, second in line to the presidency and supposedly a leader of the Republican Party, responded to questions about his party’s presidential candidate riffing at a campaign rally about the size of Arnold Palmer’s … you know … don’t say it.

          I hesitate to point out, but, what the heck, the embarrassed speaker is a conservative Evangelical Christian from Louisiana with the unfortunate last name “Johnson.”

          (Sigh.) Sorry, David. Sorry, Professor Koster.

          God bless America. Vote for Kamala Harris.

                                        ***

(David Bernstein, before owning The Sun-Bulletin in Binghamton, established the Middletown Daily Record, the first offset daily in the country, in 1956. It later became the Times Herald-Record in Middletown, N.Y. I worked there for 29 years, including 23 as editorial page editor. Donald Koster was a member of the Adelphi College English Department in the 1960s. I squeaked through as an English major. Adelphi became a university in 1964, the year after I graduated.)

By Bob Gaydos

“The truth shall make us free.”

   That was the motto of Adelphi College, my alma mater. Still is. Been around since 1896. It’s a good one, I think, as mottos go.

    Of course, it’s also a bit selective in that, today, it would preclude any loyal Republican from attending or teaching or in any other way participating in activities at such a socialist opponent of  free-speech.

    I know. That makes no sense. But neither do today’s Republicans.

    The problem arises today mostly in the minds of Republicans who confuse “free speech” with the right to say anything they feel like, without regard to the truth and certainly without regard to the repercussions of the lack of truth in their statements.

    But that’s not the end of it. They also don’t want people pointing out the fact that they might be spreading misinformation, or, heaven forbid, even lying. People like social media fact checkers or independent fact checkers or even government employees such as FBI agents or health care officials.

      Republicans have even found a Trump-appointed judge in Louisiana to say that officially for them.

       Last week, Judge Terry A. Doughty granted a preliminary injunction saying the Department of Health and Human Services and the Federal Bureau of Investigation and other government departments must stop communicating with social media companies for “the purpose of urging, encouraging, pressuring or inducing in any manner the removal, deletion, suppression or reduction of content containing protected free speech.”    

      “Protected free speech.” Like misinformation on Covid-19 or vaccines or election fraud. The judge, whose ruling will be appealed, said the government, which might well have factual information on the matter, should not inform social media platforms about the possibility of dangerous misinformation being spread on their platform.

     Now, much of this fear-mongering, conspiracy spreading and outright lying is caught by independent fact-checkers, be it simply other users or researchers or non-profit agencies. But they say the government agencies have never pressured social media companies to remove content, simply alerted them to possibly dangerous, non-factual content.

     Of course, non-factual content has become the entire Republican Party playbook since it swore allegiance to Donald Trump: Obama’s birth certificate, Hillary’s emails, Hunter Biden’s laptop, Mexico will pay for a wall, COVID’s not serious, stolen elections, January 6 didn’t happen, the mainstream media lies.

      I’m not aware of any Republican court challenge to the right of the free press to print the truth about Trump et al. It may be a bridge too far right now. Of course, newspapers printed long lists of Trump’s lies in office. Not that most Republicans, especially hard core MAGA Republicans, were concerned. They believed the lies. There’s the rub.

     A classmate of mine at my high school alma mater, Bayonne High School, has a theory on how even those who recognize the lies can unwittingly help them gain credence.

      If memory serves me correctly, Dr. George Lakoff was valedictorian of the BHS Class of ‘58, my class. He went on to become a highly regarded cognitive linguist and philosopher at University of California, Berkeley. A smart guy.

     Lakoff says, “Without knowing it, many Democrats, progressives and members of the news media help Donald Trump every day. The way they help him is simple: they spread his message.”

    He likens it to telling people not to think about an elephant. They can’t get rid of the image.

        “When arguing against the other side,” Lakoff says, “don’t use their language because it evokes their frame and not the frame you seek to establish. Never repeat their charges! Instead, use your own words and values to reframe the conversation. When you repeat Trump, you help Trump.”

       Trump’s barrage of outrageous claims has grown with each new report on his criminality and incompetence. It is being buttressed by a coordinated Republican assault on the truth, aimed at schools, think tanks, the news media, as well as the Biden White House.

     Republicans frame it as a fight for the First Amendment. Don’t buy it. This is a fight for the truth.

     And the truth shall make us free.

rjgaydos@gmail.com

(Adelphi College was founded in 1896. It became a university in 1963, the year I graduated with a degree in English, but not before I graduated, meaning I am part of the last class to receive a diploma that says Adelphi College.)

(Dr. George Lakoff’s views on politics, language and your brain can be found at https://substack.com › @framelab).

By Bob Gaydos   

Dr. Jill Biden, a working teacher and soon to be First Lady.

  Where to begin?

     With the sophomoric hit job by someone who obviously considers himself to be a man of letters?

     With the preening joy in gratuitously insulting the future First Lady of the United States by calling her “kiddo”?

     With the utterly unconvincing “argument” offered in defense of his “point”?

     With the clear anti-elitist snobbery of the author?

     With the decision by the Wall Street Journal’s editorial page editor to print the column?

     With the subsequent decision by that editor, Paul Gigot, to defend his decision by insulting those who objected to it?

     With Gigot’s belittling of the criticism — of which there was plenty — by dismissing it as political and “playing the race or gender card”?

     With the obvious problem many conservatives in this country have with intelligent, accomplished women?

     With the problem many conservatives have with higher education in general?

     With The Wall Street Journal perhaps confusing itself with its neighbor and sister Murdoch paper, The New York Post?

     With the egotistical “old fart” attitude of the author who obviously feels he can say whatever he pleases as.long as he drops a name and mentions a fact or two about himself that he thinks will establish him as a modest, if brilliant, regular guy?

       Yes, I’m talking about the opinion piece in The Wall Street Journal encouraging soon-to-be First Lady Jill Biden to drop the “Dr.” in front of her name. The author, Joseph Epstein, wrote: “Madame First Lady—Mrs. Biden—Jill—kiddo: a bit of advice on what may seem like a small but I think is a not unimportant matter. Any chance you might drop the ‘Dr.’ before your name? ‘Dr. Jill Biden’ sounds and feels fraudulent, not to say a touch comic.” He also called the title of Biden’s dissertation that led to a doctor of education degree from the University of Delaware “unpromising.”

        A real charmer, this Epstein. So let’s start with the old fart, who has apparently made a career of insulting women, gays and anyone who doesn’t subscribe to his narrow, exclusionary, view of the world. I feel qualified to toss the “old fart” label around since, at 79, I am a mere four years younger than Epstein and have been called the same. Takes one to know one.

      His basic argument about the use of the Doctor title by Biden is that today it doesn’t mean anything, unless you’re a medical doctor. He says. He says the honorific has been cheapened by relaxed requirements. He just says these things with only anecdotal comments to support them while also noting “modestly” that he didn’t have what it took to attain a doctorate back in the day. Since Epstein is 83, the day was, well, way back.  

     There’s a lot of “just one of the guys” shtick in the column as he tries to justify the rudeness and crudeness of his approach. (Kind of reminds one of a certain orange-haired president.) For example, Epstein writes: “I taught at Northwestern University for 30 years without a doctorate or any advanced degree. I have only a B.A. in absentia from the University of Chicago—in absentia because I took my final examination on a pool table at Headquarters Company, Fort Hood, Texas, while serving in the peacetime Army in the late 1950s.”

      Swell. Well, I was a reporter and editor on daily newspapers for more than 40 years, including 23 years of writing daily editorials and I have only a B.A. in English, from Adelphi University, which I received six months before reporting in December of 1963 for basic training to Fort Dix, N.J., where I drank 3.2 beer. It was a stint that was delayed by the assassination of John F. Kennedy during the Vietnam War era. So what?

      Epstein again: “I do have an honorary doctorate, though I have to report that the president of the school that awarded it was fired the year after I received it, not, I hope, for allowing my honorary doctorate.” (That doctorate was from, I believe,  none other than my Adelphi University, which fired Peter Diamandopoulos in 1997 for conflicts of interest and lavish. lifestyle.) Epstein then goes on at length to ridicule the excesses of schools awarding honorary doctorates, which is a valid point, but has nothing to do with Dr. Biden’s doctorate, which was more than honorable. 

       Epstein also “casually” drops the name of his “friend,” the late Sol Linowitz, as an example of someone who had a huge collection of honorary doctorates, dismissing the possibility that perhaps Linowitz, a man of many accomplishments, deserved all the honors. I can’t match that super friend connection, but, like Epstein, apropos of nothing, I once shook hands with Jackie Robinson and Jesse Jackson (different times and places) and they had major impacts on society, too. Maybe even honorary doctorates.

       Just a brief research on Epstein (Wikipedia) revealed that he was eventually fired from his job as editor of The American Scholar, the magazine for Phi Beta Kappas, for his unrelenting anti-feminist views and refusal to allow any counter arguments to the arch-conservative writers he welcomed to his editorial page. He once called feminist scholars “dykes on bikes.” He was editor of the magazine for 21 years and, if anything, one might wonder how such smart people put up with him for so long. 

        Epstein also wrote a piece in 1970 for Harpers Magazine in which he called homosexuality “a curse, in a literal sense.” If he could, he said, “I would wish homosexuality off the face of the earth.”

        So this is the expert Gigot chose to attack Jill Biden in The Wall Street Journal, maybe feeling the Fox News loudmouths we’re getting too much love from the uber-conservative audience. But then Gigot, criticized mercilessly on social media, inexplicably feels he must defend his decision to publish Epstein’s hit job and to use Epstein’s favorite weapon — claiming “identity politics” — in dismissing comments from the Biden campaign critical of the piece. Gigot: “My guess is that the Biden team concluded it was a chance to use the big gun of identity politics to send a message to critics as it prepares to take power. There’s nothing like playing the race or gender card to stifle criticism.”

        Nonsense. First of all, if Gigot thought Epstein made a legitimate point and decided to run the column, then he should simply have stood by his decision. Period. That’s why he’s the editor. The column may have been insulting, but it wasn’t libelous. (I have a little experience in this regard. Once upon a time, Rupert Murdoch also owned the paper for which I worked. He left us pretty much alone because we made money. As editor of the editorial page, I was called a left-wing, pinko more times than I can remember, but people still managed to find their way to the opinion section.)

        Of course, Gigot also had the option to simply say, “I don’t know what I was thinking. I had a brain freeze. The guy is a jerk. I’ll try not to do that again.“

        But he didn’t. Instead, he chose to go along with the currently popular Republican position that higher education is something to be mocked and accomplished people, including a future First Lady, are to be subjects of ridicule. How he feels this plays to the resumes and prejudices of readers of The Wall Street Journal is beyond me. 

       In the fallout from the article, Northwestern University and its English Department have apparently condemned Mr. non-PhD Epstein and the university removed him from its page of emeritus professors. Gigot called called it an example of “cancel culture,” another phrase conservatives like to throw around these days. But since Epstein doesn’t think much of titles, he shouldn’t mind.

        Of Biden, Epstein wrote, “A wise man once said that no one should call himself “Dr.” unless he has delivered a child. Think about it, Dr. Jill, and forthwith drop the doc.”

        Well, Joe, another wise man (an uncharacteristically unhumble me) once said, “There’s nothing so unappealing and unconvincing as a whiny, old, misogynistic homophobe full of regret that he didn’t achieve a distinction that he might have and envious of a classy woman who did.” Think about it, kiddo, and drop the act.

rjgaydos@gmail.com

Bob Gaydos is writer-in-residence at zestoforange.com.