Tagged: Steve Bannon

Mindy Newell: The Fox Is In The White House

“Use of the term ‘alt-left’ gained ground quickly online (according to Google Trends charts) when conservative Fox News host Sean Hannity used the term in a debate with BuzzFeed writer Rosie Gray over media coverage of the so-called ‘alt-right’. Searches for the term spiked again directly after Trump used it in his 14 August 2017 press conference. It is unclear if Hannity himself coined the term, but we could not find widespread use of the term on Reddit or 4chan, a web form popular with the

‘alt-right,’ prior to his 22 November 2016 use of it.” – Alex Kasprak & Kim LaCapria,

Snopes.com, August 17, 2017

Alt-left?

Is that a keyboard command?

What it is, is a load of horse manure. Crap. Same as anything else that comes out of the mouthpiece of Il Tweetci The Mad known as Sean Hannity. He is the modern-day version of Joseph Goebbels, head of the Reich Ministry of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda, the modern-day version of which is Fox News.

I sometimes wonder how many of those who work at the “fair and balanced” network – the bile rises in my throat as I type that – really believe what they spew, or are they just in it for the paycheck? I mean, why did it take so long for Megyn Kelly, Gretchen Carlson, Greta Van Susteren, Julie Roginsky, Michelle Fields, Andrea Tantaros and others to come forward about Fox being the personal harems of Roger Ailes and Bill O’Reilly?

Even Chris Wallace – of whom Jennifer Rubin of the Washington Post said, after the third and final Presidential debate in October 2016, which Wallace moderated: “No one could watch the final debate and deny that Chris Wallace is among the best in the business.” – said, “it’s not my job” to fact-check candidates, but that it was the job of the opposing candidate. Really, Mr. Wallace? Given up journalism, have you? For a nice, fat paycheck and a steady gig on Fox on Sunday mornings?

Is there anyone at Fox with even an iota of integrity and self-respect?

After Charlottesville and on Saturday after Boston, I was switching between MSNBC, CNN, and Fox – because I was curious as to how the last was reporting it – which left me to wonder if those who work at Fox are given a manual of essays and quotes by Goebbels as part of their orientation packet:

  • If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the State.
  • Arguments must, therefore, be crude, clear and forcible, and appeal to emotions and instincts, not the intellect. Truth was [sic] unimportant and entirely subordinate to tactics and psychology.
  • Propaganda must facilitate the displacement of aggression by specifying the targets for hatred.
  • This is the secret of propaganda: Those who are to be persuaded by it should be completely immersed in the ideas of the propaganda, without ever noticing that they are being immersed in it.
  • The rank and file are usually much more primitive than we imagine. Propaganda must therefore always be essentially simple and repetitive. In the long run, basic results in influencing public opinion will be achieved only by the man who is able to reduce problems to the simplest terms and who has the courage to keep forever repeating them in this simplified form, despite the objections of the intellectuals.
  • What you want in a media system is ostensible diversity that conceals an actual uniformity.
  • Not every item of news should be published. Rather must those who control news policies endeavor to make every item of news serve a certain purpose.

It’s not just Russia or Steve Bannon and his crew, folks.

The Fox is in the henhouse White House.

 

Mindy Newell: Migraines and Mel

This may turn out to be a short one, guys.

A lot of us here at ComicMix have written about the agonies of writer’s block, but I don’t think anyone has ever talked about the torture of trying to write when your head is trying to separate itself from the rest of your body.

That’s ‘cause I have the worst tension migraine right now. I’ve been having them all week, on and off. It’s probably because I’m starting to go nuts from being – mostly – stuck in the house. My vision is okay, but there’s a little man with a pick-ax standing on the right side of the crown of my head, and he’s swinging away and my right ear is ringing in response – I feel like Wile E. Coyote after a run-in with the Roadrunner. I’ve taken my Advil, but the only thing that really helps is standing in the shower and letting the hot water run over me – and I can’t stand in the shower all day.

Anyway, I finished the story for the ComicMix project – see my column from two weeks ago, Patience, Perfection, and Procrastination – and what I called “connecting the towers” worked. It’s now in the hands of artist Andrea Shockling. Check out her work at andreashockling.com, and you’ll understand why I’m thankful to ComicMixer Joe Corallo for telling me about Andrea. She and I spoke on the phone last week, and we discovered that we are kindred spirits; bottom line, I am super excited and happy to be working with her.

Still plugging away at my graphic novel proposal. Did I ever mention that I am the worst, absolutely the worst, proposal writer in the world? I have the hook, I have the concept, I have the story – my big problem is I start writing the outline, and all of a sudden I am deep into it; but when I stop to take a bathroom break or make a “cuppa tea” I come back and realize that it’s already eight or nine pages long. Which means I have to go back, and cut and paste and cut and paste and edit and keep editing, all in order to get to the place where the heart of it resides, while at the same time whittling it down to three or four pages, double-spaced. Oy.

As to what happened yesterday (Saturday, August 12) in Charlottesville, Virginia…

Il Tweetci The Mad can make inane remarks and have the White House staff rush in to “stem the fallout” – as the New York Times reported today – all he wants. He ain’t fooling anybody.

Here’s a conspiracy theory for you from a migrained mind: what happened was encouraged, nay, organized, by the “deconstructionists (read: destroyers) of the world order” and Nazis currently sitting at the right hand of Il Tweetci: Steve Bannon, Steve Minchin, and Sebastian Gorka. (Okay, I’m not sure if Minchin is a “deconstructionist of the world order” or a Nazi, but he, im-not-so-ho, sure is a self-hating Jew.) Not that anyone could prove it.

Today, this morning, I went on YouTube and watched Spike Jones’ “Der Fuehrer’s Face” and “Springtime for Hitler,” from Mel Brooks’ The Producers.

Then I read an interview that Mr. Brooks did with the late Mike Wallace on CBS’s 60 Minutes in 2001. The subject was Mr. Brooks’ obsession with his ethnicity and with Hitler:

“Hitler was part of this incredible idea that you could put Jews in concentration camps and kill them…How do you get even with the man? How do you get even with him?”

“You have to bring him down with ridicule because if you stand on a soapbox and you match him with rhetoric, you’re just as bad as he is, but if you can make people laugh at him, then you’re one up on him…It’s been one of my lifelong jobs – to make the world laugh at Adolf Hitler.”

And I thought, what if people had just stood and laughed at them?

Would that have worked?

I don’t know.

But what happened is enough to give anyone a permanent migraine.

 

Mindy Newell: Homeland, 24: Legacy and Yiannopoulos, Oh My!

Before I get into the meat of today’s column…

Do you watch comedian and political satirist Real Time with Bill Maher (HBO, Friday, 10 PM ET)? What I especially love about Mr. Maher’s show is that he invites people on who are from all shades of the political spectrum and that he’s unafraid of calling out bullshit when he sees it, whether it’s coming from the left, the right, or anywhere in the middle. Yes, he can be crass, profane, and occasionally downright rude, but he’s not sitting on the sidelines.

One of Friday night’s guests was Milo Yiannopoulos, a public speaker and a senior editor for Breitbart News, the alt-right news site that brought us such lovely individuals as Steve Bannon. This was my first experience with this guy, and it was incredibly unpleasant and I cannot be-lieve that anyone takes this very sad, very mixed-up little boy seriously. Er iz a meyvn vi a bok af a klezmer, which translates to He’s an expert like a goat’s an expert on musicians.

Homeland has been back for a month, and though perhaps the first three chapters were a bit slow and tedious in the set-up, last week’s episode kicked the series into high gear. To bring you up to date, Carrie Mathison (Claire Danes) is back in the States, living in Brooklyn with her daughter by the now-dead Nicholas Brody (Damien Lewis) and working for a foundation whose goal is to help Muslims living in America, while secretly advising the new President-Elect on foreign policy and the intelligence agencies motives and games. The foundation’s latest client is Sekou Bah, a teenage convert to Islam who had been arrested by the FBI for terrorist-related activities – he had been posting videos critical of American policy towards Islam and the Middle East.

Meanwhile, the incoming President’s policy agenda – she wants to cut down on what she terms “America’s interference with foreign countries” – is antithetical to Carrie’s old co-workers at the CIA, Saul Berenson (Mandy Pantikin) and Dar Adal (F. Murray Abraham); they believe that Iran is clandestinely working with North Korea on a “parallel nuclear” project – in other words, Iran is helping North Korea build a nuclear bomb and the means to deliver it – and breaking the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, a.k.a. the “Iran deal.”

And Peter Quinn (Rupert Friend) is one fucked-up ex-spy; no, he didn’t die in that hospital bed last season – as I and just about everyone believed – but he is suffering not only from the lingering physical effects of the Sarin gas, but also one helluva case of PTSD. When we first saw him, he was living in a V.A. rehab center; now he is living in the basement of Carrie’s brownstone. And he has discovered that someone is spying on Carrie from an apartment across the street – only Carrie doesn’t believe him.

Last week’s episode, “A Flash of Light,” saw Saul visiting his sister, who lives in the disputed West Bank of Israel, using her as an excuse to hide his real reason for being there – to meet an Iranian general and ask him to investigate Iran’s [possible] “parallel nuclear program” with North Korea. The general agrees, but as Saul is about to leave for the airport to return to the States, the Israelis pick him. They know that a senior Iranian official was in Palestinian area of the West Bank, and they know that Saul had crossed over the previous night. They detain him.

Meanwhile, Carrie has used her espionage skills to get the FBI to release Sekou and to clear him. There is one warning – that Sekou not post any more videos. But when Sekou arrives home, his friends are suspicious of how he got off, and think he has become an informant. To prove them wrong, Sekou posts a new vid, in which he outs the real FBI informant, a former gang member named Saad Masoud. Carrie is able to eventually convince Sekou to take it down; although she does not tell him she is ex-CIA, she does let him know that not only will the Feds lock up Sekou and throw away the key, she could go to jail if it is discovered that she took what she calls “highly risky measures” to clear him.

That night, Quinn, who is now convinced that the man across the street is spying on Carrie – he broke into the apartment and found a stool placed next to the window; its indentations in the carpet indicate to him that he has been there a long time – takes her car and tracks the man, who has been picked up by a car. He follows him to Medina Medley, a warehouse and distribution center where Sekou works; Quinn takes pictures, until a cop hurries him along for illegal parking.

The next day newspapers feature a story on the President-Elect having information on Iran’s nuclear program and not acting on it. She believes Dar Adal leaked the story. She wants Carrie to give her information on Dar – and by inference, Saul – that the new administration can use against him, but Carrie is reluctant to betray her former colleagues. She leaves to pick up her daughter on the street, where Dar is waiting for her – he makes a nasty crack about the color of her daughter’s hair, a reference to Carrie’s affair with Nicholas Brody – and tells her he knows that Carrie is giving the President-Elect advice. When Carrie denies it, he says, “I’m not Saul.” (Great line!)

He tells her that she has been out of the CIA for three years, and that none of her information is pertinent.

The next morning, Sekou is back at work. He drives his delivery van into midtown Manhattan.  He hears a beeping. The van explodes.

And in Israel, Saul is told he’s being released. “You’re needed back home. There’s been an attack in New York.”

A great cliffhanger. And which today, as you’re reading this, will have been only sorta resolved, because the thing with Homeland is that you still don’t know what’s coming next…even if you think you do.

Which brings me to…

I’ve also been watching 24: Legacy. I don’t know if I’m going to stay with it. For one thing, I’ve been missing Supergirl, which is on the CW the same time Legacy is on Fox, Monday at 8 P.M. ET, and CBS video-on-demand is lagging behind the Girl of Steel’s episodes, and I don’t want to pay for CBS All-Access. But the other thing is that 24: Legacy kinda sucks.

I don’t know whether it’s because I’m missing Jack and Chloe and Tony and everyone else at the “old” CTU, or whether it’s because the plotting on 24: Legacy is “eh.” I’m not going to go into an extensive rundown of it, because I’ve already immersed you into my recap of Homeland; but one thing that really bothers me is the “jealous girlfriend,” a trope so old that its gray hair is showing. The other thing that’s really bothersome is that I can see the “twists-and-turns” coming from a mile away. For instance, last week, when the new Jack Bauer – see, I can’t even remember his name – was stuck in a police precinct with every cop and SWAT team member about to blow him away, I knew that CTU was going to ring up in the nick of time and call off the dogs. (And that was the cliffhanger the previous week. That’s a long time to see what’s coming.) I only rarely guessed what was about to happen on Jack’s 24. More important, I didn’t want to. I just wanted to lose myself in the story – and I was.

That ain’t happening with what one of our readers, ReneeCat, calls 24: Light. Nope. I’ll give it one more episode, which is being more than fair. But I’ll watch it later, either on VOD or via streaming.

Because tonight I’m watching Supergirl.

 

Martha Thomases: Lampooning The Lumpen

Like many old farts, I think it’s been a long time since Saturday Night Live was reliably funny. A lot of this is nostalgia for my youth, when I was cool and cutting-edge. More, alas, is that I think Lorne Michaels tends to stick to what he thinks works and not to take chances and rock the boat. Too many sketches rely on catch-phrases or stock characters, or the surprise visit of a guest star.

For me, the last straw was letting Trump host the show when he was running for president. I thought it was antithetical to humor to suck up to power that way, and Trump’s racism, sexism, xenophobia and general lack of class are pretty much what good comedy is supposed to attack. It’s much funnier to point out that the Emperor has no clothes than to laugh at the naked peasants.

So you can imagine my surprise when I find myself, in general, liking at least the first half-hour or so of SNL lately. I mean, I’ve liked Alec Baldwin since at least Beetlejuice, and Kate McKinnon might be my spirit animal, so I liked a lot of the campaign. Since the election, the humor seems sharper, going after Trump’s ego and narcissism and ignorance rather than just his appearance, or the size of his hands.

And then, this.

Melissa McCarthy does angry better than anyone. My favorite parts of Spy are her manic rants against Rose Byrne. Even in a mediocre film like The Boss, her angry outbursts make me laugh. Therefore, I was going to laugh at her impression of Sean Spicer even if she didn’t actually copy his mannerisms.

In his response to the skit, Spicer showed that he has as little understanding of how comedy works as his boss. From the link, “Extra asked Spicer for his thoughts on the sketch, and his reaction was that McCarthy “could dial back” with her impression and she “needs to slow down on the gum chewing; way too many pieces in there.”

Because it’s only funny if it is factually accurate? I mean, I know this administration has trouble understanding the difference between fake news and satire, but this is something a kindergartner would get.

I confess I didn’t spend a lot of time thinking about the fact that McCarthy is a woman and Spicer is a man. She nailed the confrontational tone of the administration’s attitudes towards the press because that is her jam, not her gender. However, SNL might have accomplished more than that, for a change. According to this, Spicer’s job might be threatened. To quote, “More than being lampooned as a press secretary who makes up facts, it was Spicer’s portrayal by a woman that was most problematic in the president’s eyes, according to sources close to him.”

Politico was not the only media source suggesting that Spicer’s days might be numbered. CNN also had the story.

If all it takes is some cross-dressing on television to rein in Hell Presidente (thanks to Steve Grant for the nickname!), then I’m all in. Rosie O’Donnell has already agreed to play Steve Bannon, an easier way to get rid of him than calling all my elected representatives every week. Let’s use Trump’s misogyny to our advantage.

NBC has noticed that SNL is getting buzzier, and they’re looking for ways to monetize this trend. I get that. Given that SNL has such a spotty record, and that “Weekend Update” is among the spottiest, I’m not sure how this would work. Could a network show be as opinionated as The Daily Show or The Colbert Report?

I don’t know if they can pull it off, but I’d love to see them try.

Martha Thomases: alt-truth

hate-speech

The end of the year is a time to contemplate our lives, to count our blessings and enjoy the company of family and friends. It is a time to celebrate peace and goodwill.

It’s also a hell of a time to raise a ruckus.

Most of us here at ComicMix are passionate in our adoration of free speech and the First Amendment. At the same time, we revel in diversity and equal opportunity and think minority groups are worthy of respect.

Some people think these two impulses are mutually exclusive. These people are wrong. And it is more important than ever to say this.

Let’s take a rather frivolous example. There is currently some controversy about the use of the term “alt-right” to describe an assortment of racist and misogynist American nationalist groups. Some people find the label confusing, since it sounds remarkably like “alt-country,” a musical genre that emerged in the 1990s. Some people find it a whitewash (you should pardon the expression) of opinions that had previously been labeled “Neo-Nazi” or “white supremacist.”

In general, I believe it is polite to call people what they wish to be called. Just as one example, over the decades, I’ve called people of color “colored,” “Negro,” “Afro-American,” “black” and “African American,” depending on which term I thought was preferred at the time.

However, in this case, I think “alt-right” is deliberately misleading. Just as I can’t call people who favor the death penalty “pro-life” no matter what their views on reproductive rights, I can’t describe Steve Bannon with a term that shares its syllables with a kind of music made by Steve Earle. I also think “alt-right” is insulting to principled conservatives (and, yes, those people exist).

Clarity, in this case, is more important than good manners, especially when those who are using the term are journalists. In a perfect world, the media would only publish facts, along with opinions that are based on those facts. Since we live in an imperfect world, we use this ideal as something to which we aspire.

Which brings me to a more important and more complicated issue. In Germany, where there is no United States Constitution as law of the land, and therefore no First Amendment, they have laws that prohibit hate speech. We can have a discussion about whether or not this is a good thing, and I can take either side of that discussion, depending on what day it is.

In the link above you can read how Germany’s laws are difficult to enforce in this digital age. Neo-Nazis frequently use social media (in this case, Facebook) to spread their bigotry. In some cases they publish names, addresses and phone numbers of those people they consider too foreign for their tastes. Those people, in turn, get harassed and threatened.

The German government wants to hold Facebook liable for the content of this speech. Facebook doesn’t want to do that.

Personally, I don’t want Facebook to determine what is and isn’t hateful. We probably won’t agree. I also don’t want Facebook to act as some kind of police force, enforcing German laws in Germany. Just as we don’t prosecute cable companies if someone streams child pornography on a computer, Facebook, in this instance, is more the conduit than the content.

At the same time, Facebook is a private company and not a public utility. As a private company, it is entitled to enforce whatever code of conduct it chooses, as long as that code doesn’t break the law. It can also draft these rules according to the kind of business deals it wishes to make. People who want a social network that allows them to spew hate speech are welcome to find one, or create one.

My pal Mike Gold (who occupies this space each Wednesday) likes to say that he prefers it when people say racist, sexist, hateful things, because then he knows with whom he’s dealing. I get that. I also know that those on the receiving end of such bigotry can suffer from the cumulative effects of such speech, a death of a thousand cuts that ultimately inhibits their own ability to speak freely.

If you, like me, often use the end of the year as an opportunity to donate to worthwhile organizations as a way to celebrate, please consider the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund for its commitment to free speech for everyone, and to Feminist Frequency for its commitment to encouraging diverse voices.

Because this holiday season, the truth is the gift that will be most needed in 2017.

Marc Alan Fishman: Where’s Superman When We Need Him?

superman-hitler

This morning (I prep my stuff on Tuesday) I flicked on my Facebook feed to see a pair of news stories — real ones — that caused me to sincerely take pause. The first was vapid enough: Internet D-Lister Tila Tequila sieg heils at an Italian eatery. The second one, a bit less oh who cares, denoted that a room full of white nationalists (a.k.a. “The Alt-Right,” a.k.a. fucking Nazi Klansmen) had a conference ending with their leading ideologue declaring that Jews may be “soulless golem” amongst a litany of other unabashed hate-speech. For the first time in the wake of the presidential election, I actually took a breath to be floored — save only for Tuesday the 8th when Donald Trump was declared the winner of the highest office in our nation.

hitler-reads-supermanAnd my only thought that came into focus was… Where’s Superman?

You see, Superman was created by a pair of Jewish children from Cleveland, born of immigrant families. Their greatest creation was (and still remains) a bit of a nod to the Jewish struggle. Kal-El, an alien born to an alien land was rocketed to safety as an infant by his parents who were unable to leave their land. He was a hero denied his homeland, granted amazing abilities that would separate him forever from those he would live and love on his adopted planet.

To be clear: Jews don’t have superpowers, save only for their amazing ability to control Hollywood, the media, and all global economies. But I digress.

The truth of the matter is I’m not oblivious to the world around me. But I’m certainly privileged, self-absorbed, and mostly invisible to the real hate that exists. In my own life, I’ve personally never been anything but celebrated for being Jewish. I grew up in a nice community where Jews were plentiful… all things considered. When I moved to Indianapolis for college, I saw bits and pieces of a different swatch of America, but, again, never once did I feel like my religious identity was truly ever under attack.

Please denote again that this was all from my sheltered, suburbanite, self-absorbed viewpoint.

Here and now, with swastikas swathed across my feed, my eyes squinted at the seething idiocy of it all. By all accounts, Tila Tequila is a waste of atoms. My only knowledge of her comes from the blurred memories of promos for some off-kilter reality show or two. That she has recently turned heads by being a Hitler apologist, pro-Trump, sieg heiling what-have-you? Only screams for a need for attention. When one’s relevance dies out, I suppose this is one road you could take to stop your declining fame.

The National Policy Institute, as run by the aforementioned Hitler youth, causes me no small amount of undesired stress. While Richard B. Spencer was only amongst 200 or so supporters in Washington D.C. when he decided to quote Nazi propaganda in the original German and liken my kin to animated clay statues, the fact that it has risen up the viral flagpole and ignited both pro and anti-movements is what leaves me clutching pulp and ink for solace. Mr. Spencer and his ilk are emboldened by our President-Elect and his appointment of Steve Bannon as a chief advisor. The King of the Alt-Right Internet sounding board (Breitbart.com) is now a stone’s throw away from the man with the nuclear codes. How could that not put a bit of pep in the step of the white-power movement? Even if Trump denounces them… actions speak louder than words. And Bannon is in. Christy is out.

It helps when one builds his election on locking up one’s opponent, erecting walls and disenfranchising immigrants, banning others from entering our country based on their religious beliefs, and generally winking and nodding at being a randy rascal who grabs attractive women by the kitty cats. But. I. Digress.

I never imagined that over the next four years— as my two sons begin to understand more about the world in which they live — that I would need to explain hate the way I’ll have to. When I was in Hebrew school and learned about the Holocaust, I was told of the devastation it caused within my family. My grandmother’s entire hometown was massacred. Much of her family did not survive. That personal connection was numbing. But, again: I lived in a nice suburb where The Holocaust was saved for special movies and solemn history lessons.

Modern-day civics had nothing to do with that kind of hate. That kind of hate had been pushed to the fringes of society, and me and my Jewish brethren were thriving. And now? Internet celebrities and fascist sycophants are being given headlines on CNN and round-the-clock coverage. Hate is now covered for ratings. Hate is now part of the zeitgeist.

And once again… I ask where is Superman now?

 

Mindy Newell: Post-Election Blues Redux

humberto-ramos-wolverine

First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out –
Because I was not a Socialist.

Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out –
Because I was not a Trade Unionist.

Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out –
Because I was not a Jew.

Then they came for me – and there was no one left to speak for me.

• Pastor Martin Niemoller, 1892 – 1984

“All that is necessary for evil to triumph is that good men do nothing.”

• Attributed to Edmund Burke, 1729 – 1797

I am sorry if I am boring you, but simply talking about what series I am binging on now (Luke Cage) and how much I am digging it has been expunged by John Ostrander’s column yesterday.

I didn’t know that Humberto Ramos and George Pérez have decided not to attend any conventions held in any state that went “red” and voted for Trump until I read John’s piece, and I immediately clinked on the links to both men’s statements.

I am immensely impressed by their willingness to speak out and not to be one of those good men who do nothing.

I am immensely pissed off about the horrible vitriol flung against Mr. Ramos, whom I don’t know, and George, whom of course I certainly do. It’s really disgusting, especially the barbs slung at George – go ahead, read them, just scroll down to the comments section on the Newsarama page – and I can’t help wondering just what the comments would be if either man’s last name was “Smith” or “Jones” instead of Hispanic origin. Of course, as John said, it is the Internet, after all…

…But I also must point out that we now have a President-Elect who uses Twitter to insult and rant and threaten litigation against anyone he conceives to be against him; an about-to-be White House Chief Strategist (Steve Bannon) whose Breitbart News website is a haven for white supremacists and whose divorce filing included this statement from his wife about their kids’ education: “…the biggest problem he had…is the number of Jews that attend. He said that he doesn’t like Jews and that he doesn’t like the way they raise their kids to be ‘whiny brats’ and that he didn’t want the girls going to school with Jews;” an about-to-be National Security Advisor (retired Lt. General Michael Flynn) who joined the crowds at Trump campaigns in shouting “Lock her up” about Mrs. Clinton and who tweeted “Fear of Muslims is rational;” and a nominated Attorney General (Senator Jeff Sessions of Alabama) who has called the Voting Rights Act of 1965 “an intrusive piece of legislature,” who endorses a ban on Muslim immigration, and, oh, by the way, was rejected by a Republican-controlled Senate for a federal judge seat after being nominated by President Reagan in 1986 because of his racism.

Bottom line: I am proud of Mr. Ramos and of George. They not only speak truth to power, but they have acted upon it.

As for me, I will do what I have always done – speak up when and where it is necessary, post on Facebook, and write this column. I will try not to bore you by turning this into a weekly anti-Trump diatribe, but please don’t expect me to apologize, either, if my thoughts about the pop culture world are interrupted by a frightening shadow that is about to become a reality on Friday, January 20, 2017.

 

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