Melania Trump

By Bob Gaydos

Melania figured she had nothing to lose

Since Donny was stuck

in the Straight of Hormuz.

Commandeer his podium.

Summon the press.

Make sure her maid finds just the right, modest dress.

***

“Good afternoon, media people,

I have something to say.

Something vich troubles me every day.

“I vill talk about Epstein, who I never knew.

Never slept with him either. Who vould? Vould you?

Those pictures you see are phony.

The stories, too.

The old ones, the new ones.

The ones in the files, too.

“I met Donald purely by chance,

at a New York singles mixer.

No one named Jeffrey or Ghislaine

was the fixer.

“So don’t bother, Congress,

to call me to testify.

I know nothing. Never saw any island.

That, too, is a lie.

Better you should call all those girls,

the victims, to speak.

Let them tell their awvful stories.

Make those powerful men shudder.

Make them look veak.

“Thank you for listening.

And now I must go.”

                      ***

No questions. No answers.

Just good bye and hello.

                       ***

Much later that night and weary from war,

a president spoke to his country.

‘Twas raw.

Forgoing news media, as is his wont,

He chose to be social. The better to taunt.

But there was naught

 ‘bout his wife’s earlier talk

about Epstein and victims

and that chance meet in New York.

Nor words of anger or frustration.

No unnecessary drama.

Merely a seemingly random video

of a man

beating a woman

to death

with a hammer.

By Bob Gaydos

Trump flipping the bird at a factory worker.

  As an old tabloid journalist, I’m a fan of short headlines that tell the story without beating around the bush. One of the most famous was a Daily News front page from 50 years ago that screamed: “Ford to New York: Drop Dead!”

  President Gerald Ford had refused to help the city out of some financial difficulties and the city’s leading morning daily had made the message clear. 

  A few days back, another story involving a president spurred a headline in my tabloid-programmed brain: Ford to factory worker: Shut up!

   No, you never saw it.

   The president was Trump and the Ford in this case was the automaker that was one of the proud founders of the American industrial empire, Ford Motor Company.

  As you’ve undoubtedly learned via social media by now, as Trump was touring a Ford plant in Dearborn, Michigan, posing for pictures and making smiling men in suits happy, a worker called out “Pedophile protector!” at the man who is protecting pedophiles by still refusing to release the full Epstein files as Congress specifically voted. 

   Trump, with the emotional maturity of a not very bright 12-year-old boy, responded by saying “F*#k You!” twice and giving the man the middle finger. Crude. The kind of stuff that makes an impression on the schoolyard, but is not especially presidential and certainly not dignified. Like accepting a Nobel Peace Prize that doesn’t belong to you, as I wrote about the other day. At least he’s consistent.

    Well, the press managed to cover the story, carefully, and Ford, which sponsored the visit by Trump without coordinating with the United Autoworkers Union, responded by suspending the worker, TJ Sabula.

    Social media covered the story much more directly, noting the American citizen expressing his free speech, the American president reacting boorishly, the union saying free speech is supposed to be protected and, eventually, lawyers saying that protection unfortunately doesn’t apply to private employers, but rather to the government.

    A Go Fund Me site started for Sabula, who has not regretted his remark, has reportedly raised more than half a million dollars for him already, which tells you where America stands on speaking truth to power. The Ford Company, which obviously invited Trump to flatter him and work out some deal, is still mum on further action on Sabula. The unredacted Epstein files have still not been released, although the congressionally set deadline was last December 19. The White House defended Trump’s reactions as “appropriate.”

    And, Trump has never denied the charge hurled at him on the factory floor: Pedophile protector! He just hurled an F-bomb — twice — and hoisted an arthritic middle finger, demonstrating once again to the world the embarrassment that he and his cowardly enablers in the Republican Party have inflicted on this once-proud nation.

     Trump to America: Drop Dead!

By Bob Gaydos

A typical after-school scene in many cities in the United States.

I took a mental health break from writing about the news for a week because, well, just because. But it does go on, so …

The good news this week is that we’re not yet at war with Venezuela. The bad news is that a lot of Americans aren’t even aware that this could happen because they don’t read or don’t understand what they read and the whole thing is giving me and a lot of people a pain in the neck. Literally.

Let’s try to connect the dots.

As far as we know (because the Trump administration  routinely lies about everything), 19 or more people have been killed in the Caribbean Sea by missiles fired from American military vessels. The Trump “War” Department claims the victims of these attacks were Venezuelan drug smugglers, part of a gang Trump has declared “terrorists.”

Typically, no evidence of anything claimed has been produced, either in advance, to justify arrest and proper legal proceedings, or after the fact, to at least verify there were drugs and get an accurate body count. We do know that some of the victims were fishermen. Also, that such unprovoked, unverifiable attacks on the high seas are generally considered to be war crimes and that Trump likes to play make-believe warlord even though declaring war on a country is a power the Constitution gives to Congress. Republicans, who control Congress, don’t seem to care about this indiscriminate killing on the high seas because they are too scared of Trump to do their job.

Now, the only reason this is even a story is because Trump was elected president for a second term. He was chosen by an electorate that has been systematically dumbed-down by Trump/Republican assaults on the legitimate news media, schools, libraries, universities and any source of reliable written information. (I feel pretty confident saying Kamala Harris as president wouldn’t be attacking Venezuelan fishing boats in the Caribbean just to prove to supporters that she was being tough on drug smugglers.)

This assault on intelligence started in Trump’s first term. “Fake News!” he declared repeatedly about legitimate journalism. Combined with the growth of rightwing media outlets spreading actual fake news and the spread of social media on the Internet, Americans have been bombarded with “information” but no clues on how to sort it out, real from fake, important from trivial. Local newspapers have disappeared. Many people, especially younger people, now get their “news” exclusively from tidbits they see while scrolling on their phones. TikTok is not yet The New York Times.

According to recent studies from the National Literacy Institute and the National Center for Education Statistics, the average reading age of adults in the United States is at a 7th- to 8th-grade level. More than half of adults read below a sixth-grade level. As of 2024, 54 percent of American adults ages 16–74 have literacy skills below the equivalent of a sixth-grade level. This is about 130 million Americans. Of those with low literacy skills, an estimated 45 million adults are functionally illiterate, meaning they read below a fifth-grade level.

Data from the Program for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies shows that the average U.S. adult literacy score declined between 2017, Trump’s first year in office, and 2023, the last year tested. The percentage of adults at the lowest literacy levels increased from 19 percent to 28 percent in that span of Republican assault on literacy and increasing reliance on social media for information.

The connection? Higher literacy levels go hand in hand with greater civic engagement, including voter turnout. Boosting literacy can strengthen democratic participation. And vice versa. Trump once famously boasted: “I love the poorly educated.” And, through lies and fear-mongering language, persuading just enough of them to vote in targeted states with just the right number of electoral votes can steal an election from the majority.

All is not lost. New York State, behind Gov. Kathy Hochul and a Democrat-led state legislature, is trying to, among other things, reverse this illiteracy trend by banning the use of cell phones during school hours. It can only help. Kids might have to look at something other than games. Teens might have to tear themselves away from TikTok and Instagram and who knows what else and maybe even learn how to tell what’s true and what’s BS. And maybe they won’t feel the need to constantly stare at their phones as they walk home from school.

That’s where the pain in the neck comes in. I asked a chiropractor about the effect of constantly walking and viewing cell phones among young people. He said that the neck/shoulder stoop that typically occurs in adults past age 50 is probably going to arrive with this group of teens in their 30s. Well, you read it here first so pass it on to your kids. Maybe give them a book, too.

The other good news during my hiatus was that the chiro did a really good job on the right side of my neck. No more pain. The insanity will continue, but at least I’m trying to cut down on the games and look up more often from my writing tablet.

Oh, and I’m still waiting to see those Epstein files.

By Bob Gaydos

Trump drops an F bomb on Israel and Iran on the White House lawn for making him look bad.

Ok, let’s start with what we know.

— We know that the U.S.  dropped several “bunker-busting” bombs and also launched a bunch of missiles from submarines, targeting three nuclear weapons facilities in Iran.

— Trump did not consult with Congress,as required by law, before he ordered the attack.

That’s it.

We know this not only because Donald Trump said so, but because Iran and Congress confirmed it.

What we don’t know could fill thousands of inches of newspaper copy, untold hours of TV and podcast time and millions of hours on social media. In fact, it has. In fact, that’s why I stopped making a list of what we don’t know as I started writing this column, realizing that, with Donald Trump, you just never know.

That’s because with Trump, he never knows. It’s always about the show. Looking strong. Looking decisive. Looking important. Looking like he knows what he’s doing. Kind of the exact opposite of that sorry military parade he threw for his birthday.

Trump has always wanted to drop some bombs. After all, why be president if you can’t do that? His aides likely stopped him from doing it the first time around. This time, he’s loaded with incompetent sycophants. Bombs away!

But Israel had already softened up Iran when Trump sent B2 bombers in for the kill. Except that we don’t know that they actually killed Iran’s nuclear weapons program. It’s likely they wounded it badly, but no one really knows where that weapons grade uranium is except the Iranians.

Then we had all that nonsense with both countries continuing to attack each other after Trump announced a ceasefire on his social media account, which is apparently where all important presidential decisions will be announced in the near future. In all caps.

Apparently, Israel and Iran had started some military activity against each other and couldn’t just stop because Trump said so. I mean, they have some pride, too. And why waste the ammo?

Who knows? Not us. We do know this embarrassed Trump so, since he was apparently still in attack mode, he dropped an F-bomb on both countries in public, not his social media account. Used the presidential “F” word. They didn’t know what they were ##**+! doing, he said of two adversaries who have been doing it for a long time.

But the optics were bad for Trump. He had bombed Iran into peace, at least temporarily, but missiles were still flying. Don’t they read his posts?

At any rate, at this moment, which is all we have with Trump’s actions, there is apparently a ceasefire and no new war in the Middle East. That, of course, is always open to change. Trump may have blundered into a qualified success by dropping bombs on a universally hated country, since Iran is the leading supporter of terrorism on the planet.

Yes, there is that little matter of Congress not authorizing the attack and his Intelligence Director saying Iran posed no immediate threat to the U.S. because it wasn’t developing nuclear weapons. A couple of more things we know.

OK, a couple of things we don’t know: (1) How long Republicans in Congress will continue to abide this reckless, unlawful behavior and (2) how long MAGA will excuse their proclaimed “peace president” for putting their sons and daughters and maybe the world in peril just for the headlines.

Meanwhile, as he heads to a NATO meeting just full of new opportunity for grandstanding and bluster and also embarrassment, who knows where ICE will be kidnapping dark-skinned people off the streets and what program to help the elderly, the infirm, the addicted, the cash-poor will be eliminated? Where will he call out the National Guard to create chaos and fear?

You never know with Trump because he doesn’t know, or care. He’s got a flagpole to put up on the White House lawn.

It’s always about the show.

By Bob Gaydos 

Senator Alex Padilla is grabbed by federal security agents and removed from a public meeting.

Trying to monitor how the No Kings protests are going but a thought prompted by social media posts the past couple of days keeps bugging me: The utter hypocrisy of the MAGA crowd.

No, it’s not a new thought. I’ve been thinking and saying it for years, but it just struck me again in seeing MAGA reaction to two separate events.

The first was the outrageous and unlawful treatment of Senator Alex Padilla at a public event in Los Angeles. Padilla, a Democrat and the son of Mexican immigrants, represents California. He went, escorted by Trump-ordered National Guardsmen, to hear a public statement by Homeland Security Director Kristi Noem about the handling of immigration protests in Los Angeles.

When he identified himself as a senator (he was actually wearing a shirt with the US Senate logo on it) and said he had a question for Noem, he was immediately grabbed by her security detail, manhandled, dragged into a hallway, forced down to his knees and handcuffed behind his back. A United States Senator. Representing his constituents.

When video of the incident appeared on social media, there was immediate outrage among non-MAGA cultists. How dare they!? Noem could’ve stopped the manhandling at any time since Padilla is the ranking Democrat on the Senate committee which oversees issues regarding the border. She has to know who he is. Instead, her office first tried to claim Padilla was lunging at her. The video shows otherwise.

The point here, though, is that when that video showed up on social media, many MAGAnuts were quick to throw likes on it, indicating approval of the rough treatment of Padilla, regardless of the facts. Hey, it wasn’t their senator. It was California’s Senator. Shut him up. Rough him up.

For his part, their leader, Trump, when told of the incident, said, “He looks like an illegal.” Case closed.

The second “event” was a statement from Trump signaling a change in immigration policy: “Our great Farmers and people in the Hotel and Leisure business have been stating that our very aggressive policy on immigration is taking very good, long time workers away from them, with those jobs being almost impossible to replace. …

“Our farmers are being hurt badly by, you know, they have very good workers, they have worked for them for 20 years. They’re not citizens, but they’ve turned out to be, you know, great. And we’re going to have to do something about that. We can’t take farmers and take all their people and send them back because they don’t have maybe what they’re supposed to have, maybe.

“We can’t do that to our farmers and leisure, too, hotels. We’re going to have to use a lot of common sense on that.”

Sensible Americans simply saw this as a reasonable and inevitable change in policy, whenever it actually comes about.

It’s also a very un-Trump-like comment demonstrating common sense, compassion and a grasp of reality. Since he’s big in the hospitality business, however, there’s also some self-serving. Still, it’s a significant change from the current process. Go after actual criminals. Yet his staff hates it and so do many non-farmer MAGAnuts who like the unwarranted roundups of “illegal” looking people. They said so on social media.

But my point here is that  farmers, hotel and hospitality business people, many of whom are Trump supporters, were also fine with grabbing “illegals” off the street and sending them away somewhere. But when it came to their own bread and butter, it was a different story. They didn’t vote for that, they said. They didn’t like it and, coincidentally, the polls showed it and Trump needs their support. So much for common sense and compassion.

Apparently it does matter whose ox is being gored.

By Bob Gaydos

  “Put up or shut up.”

  That rather rude admonition occurred to me the other day as an apt metaphor for our times. Actually, it was delivered to me inadvertently and directly thanks to the United States Postal Service and social media.

    The message in the mail was not a new one, but it took on new significance as I tried to gather my wits, stamina, confidence and faith in an unknowable universe to deal with four more years of Trumpian chaos. What can one guy with an iPhone, a bunch of opinions and some supportive readers do to fight a wave of ignorance, intolerance and incompetence washing across our country?

    The mail held a couple of answers.

    One virtually shouted at me: “We’ve Seen 105 Years and 19 Presidents. Trump’s Gotta Get Past All of Us.”

     Right! I don’t have to do this alone. Step aside, ego. I knew this, of course, but at that moment I seriously needed a reminder.

     There are people who’ve been doing this a long time and know very well what they’re doing. Plus, they’re successful and they don’t ever give up. The ACLU.

      Yes, for the record, I’m already a card-carrying member of the American Civil Liberties Union and, yes, I’ll gladly renew. During Trump’s first term, the advocacy group filed 434 legal challenges against his administration. It won many important battles.

     Before Election Day 2024, it already had a plan in place, should Trump win, to fight his threatened mass deportation plan, provide legal aid to whistleblowers and those who oppose Trump’s policies, protect the rights of LGBTQ+ people and protect the right to reproductive freedom. All Trump targets.

    And they’ll do it all in court at all levels of government and all with experienced lawyers. So yeah, I’ll gladly put up a few bucks to help.

     There was also mail from the SPLC, another group of initials dedicated to fighting for people’s rights. The Southern Poverty Law Center was born in the civil rights movement and continues to fight for the rights of blacks (especially voting rights) across the South and, now, across the country. It has expanded its mission to fighting poverty, improving education and, notably, compiling a list of hate groups, state by state. 

    These groups, fed a steady diet of disinformation from far-right media that support Trump, represent a growing threat of violence against people of color, Jewish Americans, immigrants, LGBTQ+ and women. Again, all the people Trump targets when it suits his purpose.

   The SPLC has had some growing pains and internal issues recently in shifting its focus from helping individuals victimized by injustice to fighting injustice on a national scale, but it shows no less dedication in its mission and, again, it has been doing this for some time.

   Besides, the only other organization I can think of that might have compiled a list of hate groups state by state is the FBI and they don’t send me their list in the mail. So, yes, I will trust the SPLC and gladly renew my membership and, again, put my money where my mouth is.

    That’s the “put up” part. The “shut up” part came via social media. I’ve been sharing my opinions on various issues in newspapers and on social media for more than four decades now. I’m used to criticism. I also know that I speak for a lot of people who haven’t been given the privilege of opinionating publicly, as I have, or don’t feel comfortable doing so.

    So when I got a comment on one of my social media columns to the effect of: “It’s over. You lost. Stop” I had an immediate reaction. Not gonna happen. No way, no how and certainly not for any “sore winner.”

   No, I didn’t post this online. Never do. I’m not there to debate. But clearly, I got to this person. That’s good. Sometimes, the truth is hard to take. But I intend to keep spreading it as long as I can and it certainly helps to remember that, when it comes to fighting MAGA, you and I have our own bunch of smart initials — with lawyers who get paid — backing us up.

rjgaydos@gmail.com      

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

 “America, where I start my day with prayer, meditation and an active-shooter drill.”

    I’m not generally a meme guy on Facebook, but I posted that brief observation the other morning. The thing is, it wasn’t just some unsolicited comment on life in general. It was actually true for that day.

    Being a creature of habit, prayer and meditation have been part of my routine for some time. On this day, instead of offering the news as a follow-up, YouTube presented a video on the “Three things to do if confronted with an active-shooter situation.”

     Talk about a cold splash of reality first thing in the morning. The thing is, the advice was pretty good. The other thing is, I had to admit it was actually stuff to remember the next time I went to the supermarket:

1. How to hide (behind something solid enough to stop bullets; 2. How to run (not in a straight line and not with the crowd); 3. How to fight (aggressively, like your life depends on it,  because it does.)

    How did we get here?

    Growing up in the early ‘50s in Bayonne, N.J., we didn’t worry about active-shooter drills. We had nuclear war drills. Go down to the gymnasium, gather around the walls, get down on the ground facing the wall all rolled up in a ball on the gym floor. Just in case the Russians decide to drop an atom bomb on us. Other kids in other schools did the same under their desks.

      But we didn’t really think we’d need this lesson anytime soon, like maybe the next day. After all, it had only happened twice and both times someplace else called Japan. We had no real sense of what we were hiding from, nor did anyone at the time realize that what we were “learning” was a waste of time.

      Today’s kids don’t have that gift of naïveté. TV news routinely reports on active shooting incidents in schools and elsewhere in the United States. Social media is full of it. Kids today take notes during active-shooter lessons. They know, like some of the kids in Uvalde, Texas, how to quietly call 911 on their cell phones when they’re hiding in the back of the room trying not to talk too loudly, lest the shooter hear them.

      The thing is, this is not what school is supposed to be about. Come to think of it, there are a lot of things school should be about, but, in much of the country, isn’t.

      School should be about honest history and geography and how the two are related. It should be about learning to read as much as possible and to think for yourself and how to separate fact from fiction. It should be about how to manage your own finances and do simple household repairs. It should be about basic health and nutrition and learning to live in and contribute to a multicultural society.

       Yes, it should be about math and language and science and art and music, too. Cooking even. Not fighting for your life.

       The source of greatest anxiety for me in eighth grade was worrying about stepping on my partner’s toes during Mrs. Spiegel’s class in ballroom dancing. I survived. 

         The thing is, we’re laying a world of trauma on our kids today. I fear it’s going to take a lot more than prayer and meditation to fix that.

rjgaydos@gmail.com

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

By Bob Gaydos

The newest Yankee pitcher, Gerritt Cole, pitches batting practice at Yankee Stadium. Spring training has been delayed.

  The boys of summer are going to finally start playing baseball … in July. Better late than never. Basketball and hockey players will be busy, too. For them, it’s unfinished business.

    This falls in the category of good news, for the players and fans, not to mention team owners and all the ancillary employees. Sports may be considered a diversion by some, a trifle to others. But to millions, sports are a welcome, even healthful, escape. As citizens of an agitated world, we can all use something to, if only temporarily, take our minds off, you know, things. Something to at least start the day without anxiety and angst.

     I began following the late Earl Warren’s formula for starting the day in my late teens: Begin reading in the back of the paper with the sports pages. Warren said: “I always turn to the sports pages first, which records people’s accomplishments. The front page has nothing but man’s failures.“

     For me, it was the New York Daily News. Look at the other stuff later; it’ll still be there. I figured if it was good enough for a Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, it was good enough me. Who won? Who pitched? How many, how fast, how about that?

     Later, when I was a sports editor for a couple of years, I tried to make my pages entertaining enough for other followers of Warren‘s philosophy. Here’s your morning jolt, sports fans! I don’t know if I succeeded, but it was certainly fun for me.

      So when they stopped sports along with everything else four months ago, it was bad news. There was nowhere to go for diversion. Netflix has served a purpose, but it’s tough to start the real day with fantasy heroes. Who hit the buzzer beater? Did the Knicks actually win? Who’s playing shortstop for the Yankees this year?

       I know it won’t be the same for a while. Maybe ever. So it’ll be different. But it’s likely that there will be pro sports later this month and, more likely, pro football in the fall. Go Giants! That’s good news.

      If you’re wondering why I’m focusing on good news here, it’s because of a comment Emma Gonzalez-Laders, a faithful reader, made on my most recent column: “You’re not normally the bringer of good news. I like this twist.”

      The “twist” she was referring to was taking a week’s worth of events that didn’t go the way Donald Trump would have liked — Supreme Court rulings, botched firings, campaign rallies in empty stadiums, stuff like that — and reporting it as good news. It’s what one has had to do to find “good news” in an age of all-Trump, all-chaos, all the time. It can get exhausting.

       But, nothing is forever. Witness the results of a recent poll conducted by The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research. The poll, taken shortly after the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis, reported that about half of American adults believe police violence against the public is a “very” or “extremely” serious problem. Last September, that same poll showed only about one-third of American adults felt that way.

       That is a significant change in a short period of time on a controversial social issue. The poll also revealed that 61 percent of Americans say police in most communities are more likely to use deadly force against a black person than a white person. That compares with 49 percent in 2015. And only about a third of Americans say the race of a person does not make a difference in the police use of deadly force. In 2015, half of Americans felt that way. Significantly, 65 percent said that police officers who cause injury or death in the course of their job are treated too leniently by the justice system, a 24-point increase over 2015.

        The poll results, along with the nationwide demonstrations protesting the way police took Floyd into custody — an officer knelt on his neck for eight minutes while three officers stood by and watched — suggest that Americans are finally ready to  rethink the role of police in their communities. Indeed, there has been a flurry of legislative action at city, state and federal levels to redefine the police mission, reduce police budgets, rethink training and recruiting, strip forces of military hardware, even eliminate police forces since Floyd’s much-viewed death.

         The fact that Floyd’s death was recorded and played millions of times on social media and that, subsequently, other examples of police violence against peaceful protesters were similarly recorded and played on social media for the world to see certainly had to play a role in this dramatic sea change in public opinion, as compared to the slow change in societal attitudes on other issues such as same sex marriage. It was finally hard to deny what people were seeing with their own eyes, over and over again. 

        The polltakers say the sudden, dramatic change suggests that this may be a permanent shifting in attitude, rather than the transitory flurry of outrage that has followed school shootings, for example.

        This is, to me, good news. Long-overdue, perhaps, but still good news. Like the long-overdue beginning of the baseball season.

rjgaydos@gmail.com

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

By Bob Gaydos

Kylie Jenner … queen of selfies

It’s been awhile since I put my name on something I wrote, mostly because there’s really been only one one thing to write about. But other life goes on, so …

Last time out, I wrote about how I had recently come to the realization that, much as I chafed at the designation, given the 21st century dilution of the term and the relaxed admission standards that allow anyone with an attitude and an audience into the club, I was — am — for better or worse, a pundit.

 In my defense, just being able to write that sentence should qualify me.

But punditry, I have even more recently learned, is small potatoes (chicken feed, chump change, yesterday’s news) compared to the title to which anyone with any interest in the power of persuasion today should aspire.

I want to be an influencer.

Really. It’s a job. I just found out. Some pundit.

Influencer is such a legitimate thing that Forbes Magazine has initiated a list of the Top 10 Influencers for 2018 in a variety of  categories. It’s starting with Beauty, Fitness and Home, capitalized I assume for influence.

Apparently one qualifies for this list by telling tens of thousands — even millions — of people who follow you on social media what beauty products you prefer, the type of fitness regimens, supplements, food, clothes you prefer or let them in on the type of furniture or decor you like to surround yourself with when relaxing at “home.” Then a lot of those people go out and buy the stuff. Companies pay you for your creative messaging.

It’s kinda like being a shill. In fact, it’s exactly like being a shill. It just pays a lot better, if you’re, you know, influential.

If you sense me being a bit flippant and sarcastic about this discovery it may at least in part be because I am not just a little bit envious of these people who have discovered a way to earn a good living by sitting home, posting photos and writing blurbs on Instagram, Facebook, YouTube and other social media sites and being paid by companies whose product they promote. You don’t even have to use it. All you really need is a ton of followers who believe you and apparently await your every posting to find out what they should really like, then buy it.

For one thing, this says a lot about buying habits today, when so much shopping is done on the internet, with no opportunity to check out the merchandise firsthand. Well, heck, if Randi Jo Cutie Pie says those are cool candles or neat boots or dynamite hair products, they must be. Look, she’s got a million and a half followers.

The Forbes list was heavily female and mostly millennials, which would suggest that a male in his seventh decade might look for another line of work. It’s also prominently featured on Instagram, which I thought was mostly for sharing cellphone photos. So, on second thought, I’m going to stick to punditry, where I don’t have to worry about competing with Kylie Jenner or Cardi B.

Yet.

— Maybe it’s just me, but …if I’m going to get the news that I’m about to shake off the coils of my current mortal construct and rejoin the Greater Consciousness in some other form real soon, I want a living, breathing doctor standing next to my bed delivering the diagnosis as compassionately as possible, not a streaming image of someone, presumably a doctor, on a screen on a machine wheeled into my hospital room.

Ernest Quintana didn’t get that personal treatment at Kaiser Permanente Hospital in Fremont, Calif. Instead, with his 33-year-old granddaughter standing by his bedside, the 78-year-old, who had been admitted to the hospital for the third time in 15 days because of difficulty breathing, heard the headset-wearing image on the screen say there was serious lung damage. “Unfortunately, there’s nothing we can treat very effectively,” the image said. He also said giving his “patient” morphine might help with pain, but would make breathing more difficult. He topped off his “On Demand” consultation by responding to a question about hospice care thusly: “I don’t know if he’s going to get home.”
     

The grand daughter was mortified, as were Quintana’s wife and daughter, who had briefly left the hospital to go home and shower. They complained to the hospital, which was semi-apologetic. Quintana died two days later.

They call it telemedicine and it presumably has its place, but a spokesperson for the AMA said delivering a death sentence electronically should be a doctor’s “last choice.”

Don’t they teach this stuff in med school?

—  Speaking of insensitivity, maybe it’s just me, but the State of Virginia would appear to have a serious race issue. The governor, Ralph Northam, is desperately trying to repair his image after a racist yearbook photo of him was published and he subsequently admitted to wearing blackface in his youth. The state’s attorney general admitted likewise. Both men are white. But get this, mere days after her husband pledged to devote the rest of his term to racial equity, his wife, Pam, leading a tour of the governor’s mansion, handed raw, prickly cotton to 13-and-14-year-old black pages and asked them, “Can you imagine being an enslaved person and having to pick this all day?”

No, they couldn’t and no, they weren’t happy with the hands-on history lesson. Neither were their parents. A former middle school teacher, Northam said she does the same with all the history tours she leads.

Maybe they need to re-evaluate that lesson in First Lady school.

rjgaydos@gmail.com