Author: cheriebell69@hotmail.com

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From the death of a job comes a resurrected purpose

Having crossed the mid-century mark a few years ago, I’ve been surprising myself lately.  I quit a job, a career, slamming the door after fifteen years, saying never again.  I am sans insurance for health and life and without consistent income.  It’s very freeing yet a mix of optimism and hopelessness.  Not realizing at the time, I abruptly resigned to pursue another direction in life, perhaps a new career.  They say we go through several in a lifetime.  A new career would be my third.

After a month of wondering in the wilderness, I did find that third career.  The job was everything I could have wanted: programs coordinator for a start-up nonprofit advocating for journalism and journalists.  The mission fueled my soul.  I had been a newspaper reporter and dealt with the skeptical masses who don’t believe what they read in the papers.  Nowadays the powerful refuse to answer reporter questions—tossing aside serious matters of national interest as ‘fake news’—to the detriment of our country, our democracy, and our future.  Part of the new job was to follow top news events and find unbiased and biased reports of the same story.  Given the internet, that would not be hard to do.  We can practically separate straight shooters like The New York Times and The Washington Post from the intentionally right-leaning cable line-up of Fox News.

Ultimately the goal of the pro-journalism nonprofit was to educate the public, starting with school students, on the importance of distinguishing legitimate news from fake accounts and the social harm that comes from biased and slanted reporting.  The issue is relevant today as the Russians continue to infiltrate elections not only in the U.S. but in every democracy.  Chaos is the name of the game, and it’s created by making up stories or telling half truths posted online with some emotionally stirring imagery.  Today people don’t know what to think, what’s the truth, who to believe.  The old Soviets used to say about living in their communist country: “You see one thing, hear a second, and think a third.”  Misinformation and controlling language and news will tear a democratic nation apart.  So my new career path was like a national duty, my small part in saving our country from further decline when it comes to news.

The glass menagerie

The small staff included individuals with marketing, education and nonprofit backgrounds, mine in journalism.  We worked out of a posh office building in downtown Dallas.  Employee amenities were alluring: on-site health club, yoga and meditation classes, daily breakfast, fresh fruit and afternoon snacks, free sparkling water and soft drinks, weekly happy hour.  Each office suite was surrounded in glass, used to write on like a whiteboard.  We got busy planning our new nonprofit.  We built out the website, already online but needing additional pages and relevant images instead of stock photos.  The web designers worked out of New York.

A small group of us would monitor national and world news reports to place on the website’s news digest each week, distinguishing between nonpartisan accounts along with biased reports.  Each of us also would contribute a weekly article researching the mass media.  I wrote one about the very few online sources that monitor news coverage, such as PolitiFact, All Sides, ProCon.org, and Debate.org.  I titled my article “The Great Divide: How to Find the Other Side.”  Here’s the opening:

American democracy is all about opinions—allowing citizens to hear issues of the day and then decide if they are for or against, pro or con.  But in the internet age, finding political websites that are nonpartisan—neither liberal nor conservative—and present more than one side of the issues requires quite a bit of research and time.  Below is a list of non-biased websites that present more than one point of view.  They are nonprofits, though some accept advertising along with donations, and promote themselves as the go-to sites when researching all sides of controversial subjects.  Most have a blog for readers to post their agreements and disagreements.  Some sites seek readers’ suggestions on new and timely topics to explore as well as poll.  As our journalism nonprofit researches ways to educate and encourage the public to use multimedia in order to fully understand issues and viewpoints, these internet sites are a great place to start, as we also believe in reformatting media, in this case political news websites, so controversial issues are viewed side by side—creating equality and respect for a nation of many voices.

I loved the opportunity to work supporting journalism and journalists.  Another part of our job was to ‘harvest’ journalists nationwide by collecting their emails and work phone numbers.  In time we would e-mail everyone to promote our nonprofit and invite them to join for $50 annually.  In addition to these work duties, we also were to attend journalism camps and conferences, sponsored by other longstanding journalism nonprofits, to talk about our mission and build membership.  It seemed logical and harmless.  I was learning a lot about the inner working of nonprofits.

Our boss was like others, somewhat friendly yet aloof, poised above the workers as is the normal work relationship.  He stayed busy contacting national and international journalists and media professors to serve on the board of directors, writing their names on the glass wall.  We had written many aspects of our burgeoning nonprofit goals on the glass.  With a few more workers joining us soon, we moved into another set of suites without the ninth floor city view from our original office space.  All was going smoothly for two whole weeks.  I never expected the nonprofit to survive more than six months or a year but enjoyed being a part of the mission and goal: Making Americans news savvy again.  My motto contribution was “Separating news from views.”

Phlth, he was gone

We loved our jobs so much, and of course the wonderful work space, that when we didn’t receive our first paycheck, we kept right on working.  So dedicated were we to the cause of journalism and eradicating fake news, we believed our red-faced boss when he explained he did not realize he had to release funds from the nonprofit account to a human resource organization that provided us with health insurance, 401k, and direct deposit.  We would be paid the next day, he assured.  Smiling politely, understanding this was his first nonprofit venture, we kept doing the work—my last assignment being to email everyone in Congress to serve on the nonprofit’s political committee, this to ensure our website would remain nonpartisan.  The goal was to have an equal number of democrats and republicans on the committee, if they would grace us with their service.  I must have emailed a few dozen elected officials starting with the Texas House and Senate representing the Dallas area.

Each of us had been set up with a Cloud phone service and gmail accounts.  We were assured we’d be reimbursed for using our own cell phones for work.  The next morning I checked to see about pay and saw no deposit.  I pursued to email the boss, but all my work accounts had been dismantled.  So were those of my co-workers.  I arrived to work extra early only to be met by the solemn faces of my colleagues.  The night before, our boss had taken our work laptops, cleared his office, and left the key on his desk.  We were victims of an elaborate and professional scam.

Dutifully, we waited at the office a couple of hours, hoping we might have misunderstood something.  We were a team, and he was our leader.  We were bonded emotionally.  He had hand-picked each one of us after very intense interviews.  He knew us better than we knew ourselves.

I reported the incident to the police, remarking stupidly: “He played on our idealism.”  There are people who sincerely and truly believe that media in the digital age has become politically dangerous.  And we believed all that was needed was to build trust between the public and the media again—if it ever existed in the first place.

Instead, we very nice and kind employees were duped, missing the real fake news in which we were working: This guy had us believing we could help save media and democracy, such a high and mighty goal coming from a player.  A good con man is a philosopher, and he needs people who believe in his latest scheme.  Oh he made sure to surround himself in smoke and mirrors: swanky offices, overwhelming perks, his ever-present ‘therapy’ dog that we felt obligated to adore, posing for pictures by holding his chin in a scholarly manner.  New employees know better than to ask nosy questions of a boss.  Given my age and occasional sarcastic tone, perhaps I might have come across as catching on to his true motives.  Along with my laptop, he removed all my notes taken on the job—covering his tracks.  After he split, I searched the internet for quite awhile but found who he really was: an identify thief.

New nonprofits are created out of hot issues, like eradicating fake news, and therefore obtain grants and other funding, as he claimed to have acquired.  All along, I thought I could run this journalism nonprofit.  The timing is not exactly right for me, but I’m looking into it, doing whatever I can to turn bitter lemons into sparkling sweet lemonade.  Having survived the death of a job, I hold in my mind and heart the keys to resurrect this noble endeavor … in the name of journalism, for the sake of truth, to keep us a free people.

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Taking a reality tour of our nation’s public schools

Dear U.S. Education Secretary Betsy DeVos:

Given your job title, unawareness of American public education with its tumultuous and racist history, and that you and your entire family including your grandchildren have never had to attend a public school, I strongly suggest you take one year to travel the nation and each day randomly choose a public school to visit starting in our cities.  If you’re afraid to step into our public schools, let me be your guide.

First, students sniff fear, so keep a game face.  No smiling, waving, embracing, hugging, engaging in pleasantries or sorrowful expression at the sight of impoverished neighborhoods.  A polished businesswoman impresses adults not kids.  You might consider wearing a baseball cap, sneakers and slacks and tone down the bling.  A tattoo, nose piercing or strip of pink hair would be a good way to bond with kids, especially teen girls.  They’ll think you’re cool.

Let me guide you through this middle school entrance where everyone forms a single line before passing through metal detectors.  Like I said, ditch the jewelry; it’ll just set off the alarm and rile the adolescent crowd.  Then once inside the building, you should assume the position with hands up and legs spread as another teacher gently pats you down.  They’re checking for permanent markers used for graffiti and any sharp object that can and will be used as a weapon to harm others or themselves.  Yeah, some teens really do cut themselves just to feel something.  It’s so sad but not uncommon.  Don’t stare at the pregnant student either.  It’s nothing shocking.

Try to ignore the throbbing rap music blaring from parked cars with parents and students.  They both like the same music.  And if a parent does stomp through demanding an unscheduled conference or confrontation with the principal or a teacher, just step aside and keep quiet.  Mind your business.  Look straight ahead, and ignore rude cussing and shoving even between students.  Let administrators handle the rough stuff, my dear.

We can wait in the cafeteria where most students are provided a breakfast as well as lunch every school day in our public schools.  You’ll see many kids waste food.  Few really want the breakfast, yet they have to take dietary proportions given by cafeteria staff.  This is because of a federal government partnership with the U.S Department of Agriculture.  See, America produces tons more food than we can consume.  So the schools are a great place to at least get the food delivered, whether or not kids like it, eat it or toss it in the trash.  At least they have the option to eat at school.  But looking across the room, you’ll agree some kids are likely eating breakfast at home and then an extra something at school—which may contribute to our epidemic obesity rate.  Let me commend you, by the way, for keeping your figure slim and trim.  Very admirable.  You go, girl!

No school like an old school

That first bell is mind splitting, isn’t it?  All the kids are herding to their classes while a good ten percent of the student body will arrive tardy 10 to 20 minutes or later every day, the same kids from the same families all year long.  Now morning announcements will start, spoken through the office PA system.  In some schools, announcements will be in English and then repeated in Spanish, so this morning ritual may take quite awhile.  You might notice some classes remain talkative and do not pay attention while others are quiet.  You will undoubtedly notice very few kids actually saying the Pledge of Allegiance or bowing their heads for the traditional moment of silence.  It depends on the teacher, what’s important to him or her.  Maybe the class is behind in assignments, and completion is the priority.  Just letting you know it’s not totally about disrespect but could be.

OK, I’d like you to inspect student restrooms.  We’ll just stand inside the girls since the boys always smells of urine.  Look at this: little or no toilet paper, no soap, no paper towels.  You wanna know why?  Mischievous kids ruin it for everyone else.  Some exasperated custodians will not stock paper towels, leaving kids to air dry their hands or wipe them on their clothes.  Toilet paper can be a play thing to stuff the toilets, stopping them up to overrun—a big mess and common in schools.  The soap, well that was another thing some kids played around with, using way too much and making a mess, never cleaning it up off the floor or wall.  Many schools will not provide soap, bar or liquid, in student restrooms even in the newest buildings.  Too many students playing around in the restrooms, sneaking in for fights and other misadventures, is why restroom doors are removed or remain open at many schools.

Now let’s walk the halls.  Most classroom doors have to remain wide open to avoid potential lawsuits involving inappropriate teacher behavior.  But every kind of sound plus all the teachers’ voices echo down the corridor.  I don’t know how any kid can concentrate.  I wouldn’t have been able to.  What about you?

Oh, sorry you had to see that!  My goodness, look at that graffiti: stick figures in sex positions and words like ‘b—’ and ‘m—-f—-’ and gang tags.  Adolescents think they’re the first to shock us with sex stuff and bad language.  Just expect to see more of it on occasion: inside books; on walls; in restroom stalls; scratched into painted lockers, windows, steel doors, even video monitors.

I wanted to mention to you an outdated feature of our nation’s schools in the 21st century: Some classrooms still use VCRs and video monitors instead of DVD projectors or Smart Boards with internet connection.  You would think every single classroom in America would at least have a Smart Board by now and every student supplied or required to have a laptop for school.  Maybe by 2050, huh?  Of course, who knows how technology will change by then?

So classrooms here along the first floor seem to be running smoothly.  Most classes are very organized, some in apparent disarray.  It depends on the teacher and style.  Some administrators will demand a streamlined approach, however, and those schools will have to follow suit.  A school’s tone, its order or chaos, starts at the top with the principal.

Up the down staircase

Ready to go upstairs?  No, we can’t take the elevator, dear.  They rarely work in some schools.  I’m not sure how this inconvenience and hazard continues after the Americans with Disabilities Act, but it does.  Accommodations are made if a student needs to go upstairs.  For example, a kid in a wheelchair may have an assigned crew—and other kids will volunteer for this—to lift and carry the kid in chair up a flight of stairs.  Other arrangements may be to keep a kid in a wheelchair on the first floor, maybe arranging for a tutor if the math lab is upstairs, for example.

Let’s step into this classroom.  Ooops!  Gosh, were you hit by that tiny bit of eraser?  Feels like shrapnel, doesn’t it?  Dog-gone kids.  Just quietly walk around the room.  Notice how students suddenly are paying attention to the teacher, acting studious, reading.  They want to impress you because they don’t know who you are and why you’re here.  They think you’re monitoring their behavior.  At this moment, they’re truly learning and concentrating.  This is a beautiful sight, what school’s all about.  Sigh.

But look around the room.  See?  No cameras anywhere.  That’s a problem in this day and age.  If a kid is so inclined to misbehave or act out, it’s the teacher’s word against the student or students.  But with you here, there will be no outburst, not until you are gone and things get back to normal.  Unfortunately, school classrooms should have cameras by now, don’t you agree?

Oh no!  That sudden loud order from the vice principal means we’re in lock down.  We have to stay in this classroom for now.  We’ll know it’s over when we hear a special code over the PA.  See how the teacher places a red or green card outside the door then locks it, if it can be locked, while students remain in their seats or in worse scenarios crouch together in a back corner?  I think this lock down is to let drug dogs roam free, an unannounced routine.  Usually the dogs sniff out something in student lockers or backpacks.  Later we’ll probably see police officers escorting arrested adolescents, hands cuffed behind their backs, as they leave school.

Yes, this school is one of many with armed police officers, about one per high school and middle school.  This school district has its own police force.  Years ago schools used security officers without guns.  But in recent years, they’ve been replaced by real law officers who wear handguns.  I guess everyone feels safer.

Now that lock down is over, let’s go into the staff parking lot.  Students are not allowed access, but there’s no fencing or any way to prevent stragglers from passing through.  Today I see four cars have been keyed, all of them red.  That means it’s a gang thing, a retaliation of sorts.  Adolescents who are entrenched in gang culture assume their teachers are gang members, too.  There are cameras monitoring activity around the school’s exterior.  Maybe those who scratched the cars will be caught but not if they wore hoodies and aren’t from this school.

Let’s go back inside to watch lunch time.  Some cafeterias are tightly monitored with students not allowed to talk above a whisper while some schools allow low conversation.  The thing is: kids are known to get out of control quickly, group laugh, ruff house, yell, break into fights or throw food.  So don’t be alarmed if you hear a coach or loud teacher instruct everyone: “QUIET!!  NO TALKING.”  I’m sorry teachers have to come across as mean.  You know they really aren’t.  It’s just hundreds of youngsters and five teachers monitoring lunch, like keeping a lid on a boiling pot sometimes.

Skip to my Lou

Would you like to pop in to another public school for afternoon touring?  Let’s go!  This is an elementary school where most students are from Spanish-speaking homes.  Many of their teachers also speak Spanish as their native language.  This school has a bilingual program whereby every other day, lessons are taught in one language or the other.  For example, Monday may be English, Tuesday Spanish, and back and forth through the week.  The effectiveness of this type of bilingual education is skewed because a confused kid will often have to break into Spanish on those English-only days to figure out what’s going on.  It’s hard on them, and if the teacher only speaks English, the kid must figure out what’s being said and taught sink or swim.  Their mandatory state tests will be in Spanish until they reach middle school.  Some bilingual teachers support full English immersion at school.

Before leaving, let’s go outside to the rows of small metal buildings surrounding the school.  They’re called portables, one-room buildings placed here decades ago as a temporary measure until the school was expanded.  But by now, many portables are fifty years old, and few schools actually were expanded through the centuries.  Heating and air conditioning are problems in some portables but also throughout many school buildings.  There are all kinds of reasons, but mostly the air ventilation systems are not monitored and maintained by an on-site crew.  It can take years for air in one freezing wing to be repaired while another area across the school building remains unbearably hot.  It’s the way it is.  Students learn to bring jackets or wear layers every single school day: summer, autumn, winter and spring.

And that brings me to my final concern about our nation’s school system.  Why aren’t American schools year-round by now?  It’s practically the middle of the 21st century, and the long summer breaks have been unnecessary for decades.  Expanding the school year would be a good place to start in improving our students’ education and retention.  Teachers, families and states may kick and scream about it.  But you know a lot of knowledge has gone to the wayside in order to maintain a nine-month school year decade after decade.

I understand your reluctance to take American public schools seriously.  You support privatizing all services, providing school choice to everyone, and doing away with the U.S. Department of Education altogether.  In countering these proposals or grand plan, in actuality our nation’s schools should be under one command.  The Department of Education should enforce the same curriculum for every school, rural and urban, so communities aren’t set back by poverty and school board politics.  Communities and citizens have failed our schools.  The oversight for correction, modernization or privatization must be at the federal level.  States would disagree on student courses that are important and essential.  But that is a national decision.  And you, Madam DeVos, are the Decider.

It’s been my pleasure showing you just a couple of our urban public schools.  B’bye!  Feel free to call me any time.

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Remembering President Clinton’s Lonely Hearts Club Band

It’s been 20 years … or should I say it’s only been 20 years since President Bill Clinton faced impeachment for lying about an affair with Monica Lewinsky, a young White House intern.  Monica was quite a hit a few years ago with her TED Talk, proclaiming herself as Patient Zero in the internet world of constant shaming, ridicule, public scorn and privacy invasion.  The whole sordid ordeal seems so very long ago that Clinton’s wife, Hillary, had the nerve to run for president twice.  All is forgiven in the Clinton household, we are to assume.

Since the Clinton-Lewinsky scandal, the age-old sex and power story has never stopped in the political realm, now centering on our current president.  Nevertheless, an affair, lying about it to the nation and the feds, and abusing power as U.S. president almost brought down the Comeback Kid.  Yet Clinton survived it all, thus his nickname, one he earned as governor of Arkansas.

When Clinton became the Democrat nominee for president in 1992, I didn’t think he’d win.  The Republicans had been in power so long, I was jaded.  But the economy was awful.  Millions were unemployed including me for awhile, and President George H. Bush did not have the charm or charisma that many saw in Clinton.  I for one never saw that je ne sais quoi that made women swoon.  He was no Paul McCartney.  So certain was I Bush would win a second term, I went to bed early instead of watching election returns that November evening.  When I awoke the next morning, I was surprised and pleased to learn history had changed, this time in my favor.  “I guess a lot of people have been down on their luck the past few years,” was my response.

Coincidentally as the Clinton years began so did my newspaper career as a government reporter.  Because I was reporting from a small-town perspective, I saw firsthand how Clinton’s pro-business policies were helping boost the economy.  On his watch included welfare reform which locked in a lifetime limit for accepting federal assistance for people without children, meaning they had to find a job or go to school but get off the public dole.  They had about a year to turn their lives around.  Even the destitute with children had to get their act together job-wise, the deadline set by the age of their youngest child, usually 1 to 3 years old.  But Clinton intended for there to be no more lifetime and generational welfare.

To build economies, Clinton released a lot of government money in loans to help small businesses and individuals.  The chambers of commerce and banker types were kicking and screaming in protest.  But I witnessed for eight years in various communities how loosening federal funds directly helped people.  They could afford mortgage loans to own a home.  They could return to college or trade or tech school to learn new skills in a fast-changing era.  They were also learning to invest a portion of their income for a better retirement.

Clinton had many crowning achievements, one of which had to do with economic development.  Using a lot of complex formulas (Bill is supposedly an honest-to-goodness genius), the Clinton Administration named about 20 small towns across the U.S. to give a sizable block grant specifically to build small businesses, education and training, and tourism.  That’s right: Tourism should be a third of any healthy vibrant community’s income, the others being business and industry.  One community in Oklahoma was awarded the grant, and the town happened to be within my beat.  After writing about the community’s surprise and gratitude for the new innovative federal funding program, a year later I revisited folks to see how they were using the money.  One individual created a small toy company in his home, using the area’s abundance of trees to produce unique all-wood products.  He had an internet site to sell worldwide.  Another family used their pond to harvest large soft-shell turtles, Japan their biggest client. Other individuals qualifying for the new federal fund simply completed their high school or college educations, many going to trade schools.

A soul whose intentions are good

But the Clintons—and Bill always told us Hillary was his partner as the nation had its first co-presidents—were peculiar to many American conservatives.  The Clintons appeared to mix New Age philosophy with government action.  In other words, they believed in prosperity teachings that promote letting money flow, giving it away, instead of sitting on a pile of taxpayer dough.  Perhaps they got this idea from Deepak Chopra, who wrote a book about spiritual finance management, advising a change in personal perspective: One should be open to the universe to supply all needs including money.  In other words, giving and sharing are better for the human spirit, which actually sounds Christian.

When Clinton created a federal loan program to help people, he realized about ten to twenty percent of recipients would run off with the money and never repay the government—despite the big trouble with which they would eventually have to deal.  But he weighed the odds and followed his instincts.  He believed most people are honest and repay their debts.  Motivational speakers like Tony Robbins influenced the Clintons, too, and Bill and Hillary were regulars at the annual Renaissance Weekend—a gathering of leaders and innovators in science, medicine, politics, philosophy, religion, and technology.  Then one day while sitting alone in her White House home, Hillary was overheard talking aloud to a dead American hero for advice—another New Age concept.  She was crucified for believing or trying such nonsense.

I took up for the Clintons, even Hillary talking to real dead people to seek help and guidance.  But the Bill Factor was always there: sex scandals covered by the media, mostly the sleazy tabloids.  But the issue kept coming up.  Hollywood produced two major movies loosely based on the Clintons.  Any time I met someone from Arkansas, from a hair dresser to a fellow reporter, I’d ask: “Did Clinton really have affairs as governor?”  “Oh, God, yes!” was the consistent reply.  I could not believe the national media did not report this seriously.  It was as if the media wanted Clinton to win.  An Arkie friend, who did not want Clinton to be re-elected, warned me: “He will embarrass us.”

It took a couple more years during Clinton’s second term, but my friend was right.  Clinton embarrassed us all.  The truth about Monica Lewinsky and the president came crashing into all our TV sets: Oprah’s dedicated show “Our President has lied to us,” the Monica girls dancing to Addicted to Love on a late-night talk show, “Saturday Night Live” skits with the Monica character wearing her signature black beret.  I had to get rid of mine because at the time people jokingly called me ‘Monica,’ though I looked nothing like her.  George Stephanopoulos, who worked for Clinton in the White House and knew him well, wrote a book about him called All Too Human whereby he shares the Clinton method of lying: looking someone directly in the face, touching the person’s arm, and saying with great sincerity and a bit of tears “You gotta believe me.”  In response, during a promotional TV book tour, George, exasperated, could make no comment other than hold out both hands, palms up, like “What’s wrong with this guy?”

Even with Clinton’s sexual inclination, maybe because of it—he seemed like someone who was a sex addict—as president, he was concerned with the nation’s epidemic levels of teen sexually transmitted diseases and pregnancies.  He told us the number one cause of poverty and generational poverty is teen pregnancy.  He wanted sex education taught in the schools, but conservatives fought him.  Together they agreed to an abstinence-based sex education curriculum.  Again, in the small communities of Texas where I was a reporter, the federal program was implemented due to shockingly high numbers of teen STDs and pregnancies based on per capita statistics.

The Scarlet Letter

But Clinton’s Achilles heel was his way with women, his forbidden lustful desire, even if illegal.  And he paid the ultimate price with impeachment.  The  nation had to deal with the long tedious ordeal with every single nightly newscast for a year and a half.  In the end, he happened to get off relatively unharmed and did not have to resign.  He was a pretty tough dude.

As for Monica, she left the country to polish her education in England.  All along, Europeans loved Bill Clinton and saw nothing wrong with an affair or many affairs and felt Americans rather hypocritical—making a mountain out of a mole hill as it were.  And it was.  The economy was great, super-duper great.  The Clinton years were one of America’s most prosperous and perhaps will be the most positive and progressive era of my lifetime.  Even the conservatives, grinning and bearing, benefited immensely by Clinton financial policies, more than the little people.  There were the occasional Middle Eastern military strikes—bombings with death and destruction—usually when Clinton was caught in an alleged scandal, sexual or otherwise.  That was the only thing that bothered me, though previous presidents bombed the Middle East, too.  I figured someday we’d have to pay for all of that.

And I was bothered by the constant rumors of sexual harassment by Clinton, our U.S. president.

Monica may have been 22 years old, but she didn’t come across as an innocent.  She seemed older than her years, able to handle the dirt, play with the big boys.  She was no victim, knew what she was doing, even encouraged the president into a little sexual dalliance.  And that’s why she was treated the way she was: like she didn’t matter.

The public had no right to know every single detail from their sex life—and everything in great detail was made known to us.  Why?  Wasn’t it enough to say they had an affair?  Wasn’t it enough to say they had a sexual relationship?  The president, looking like a scolded school boy, admitted to the nation in an interruptive TV message from the Oval Office that he had lied and did have an inappropriate relationship with Ms. Lewinsky and that it was wrong.  Nevertheless, he fought impeachment, wordsmith that he was, semantics twisting that he can play—because he’s so damn smart.

The lesson Americans learned from the Clinton-Lewinsky affair is that sex is none of our business, even if it involves the U.S. President—especially the President if the economy is doing great and the people have a sense of well being.  So that is why, liberal or conservative, we put up with Trump and all the sex scandals that come to light.  Who cares?  We don’t have the stomach for a long drawn out impeachment.  We’ve grown more European in accepting a leader’s extramarital sex life.  Trump will have to do a lot more than sleep with and harass a bunch of women to embarrass 21st century Americans.  Take that, American history.

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Mixing news & views creates an unhealthy democracy

As a former newspaper reporter, it seems peculiar to me that there are several ‘watchdog’ groups with the mission of keeping journalists honest.  A real deal reporter does not write lies or innuendos in news stories or in columns for that matter.  However, the less honorable reporter and print tabloid would not only pay sources but accept money to not write the truth or print a story.  This fact known to everyone is part of the reason why journalists and the journalism profession are under severe public scrutiny.  Most Americans do not believe what they read in newspapers, even as staunch as The New York Times and Washington Post.  Because the public perceives journalists as inclined to lie, they believe their articles need to be monitored for truth.  But it’s the public not the reporters who are mistaken when it comes to fake news.  Many Americans do not know the difference between news and views.  Thank you Fox News.

When asked, journalists always rate their profession as most admirable and certainly worth the public’s respect and trust.  Yet the American public, more now than ever, distrusts the media, the press, what some country’s honorably call the Fourth Estate.  Did you know the Fourth Estate was considered to be a fourth branch of our federal government, with the responsibility and power of ‘watchdog’ to ensure equality among the executive, legislative and judicial branches?

Our nation was created by 18th century hell raisers, brave men willing to put their money where their mouth was.  They paid to own and operate and distribute newspapers.  Why?  To voice their opinions against tyranny and for liberty.  In other words, the United States of America never would have organized to rebel against British rule and authority if not for numerous publications read by residents of colonies, towns and communities.  The self-styled editors and reporters used their words, their printed words, to spark the American Revolution.  And they put their names on their self-published articles.

Contrast our journalist forefathers to modern Americans.  Thousands of internet bloggers often do not reveal their real identities, and hundreds of local ‘reporter’ wannabes attend court trials, government meetings and community gatherings and write about their impressions for their online news reports—and they compete with long-established community newspapers.  The internet being what it is, fast and convenient and monetarily free, these alleged reporters get noticed, read and believed; create a buzz by playing fast and loose with the facts; and advertisers support the new journalists in their online effort to keep the public informed—though in the most lackadaisical and uneducated ways.  [I’d add ‘uninformed,’ but they do follow a reporter’s beat.]

In the beginning was the word

When I first searched the internet for pictures of American journalists, guess who popped up first?  Diane Sawyer, followed by Oprah Winfrey, Katie Couric, Barbara Walters, etc. …  These are not journalists as I knew the profession—and I grew up with TV.  Think of the word ‘journaling,’ you know like ‘writing.’  I was hoping to see Ben Franklin, Ida Tarbell, Ernie Pyle, Ernest Hemingway, Bob Woodward, Carl Bernstein and Gloria Steinem.

Indeed there are a plethora of well-known, and to the public better known, broadcast journalists because of the very fact they’re in TV land.  I, too, grew up watching the news: key word ‘watching’ and maybe key phrase ‘watching the news.’  But I also grew up reading a daily newspaper, more importantly seeing my parents read the paper.  For Americans, just watching the news never was intended to be how we get the full story.  With the advent of television and now the internet, citizens living in free democracies, like we do, must seek all media to learn the full story, not just overhear 20-second sound bites over breakfast or during dinner.  We have to spend more time, not less, to gain full knowledge of a story.

Along with confusion between print and broadcast journalism is the growing need for emotional appeal.  A great writer uses precise words and language to grip readers.  That still remains a talent and craft any renowned author and poet know, and along with readers have known for centuries.  TV newscasters, which in my day were sarcastically dubbed ‘talking heads,’ must rely on evoking an emotional response by viewers through voice, appearance, and technology.  What a lot of fluff just to present the news.  In the end, the news is just the facts.  And we as a society have lost track of that: to know or to want to know the cold hard facts without being entertained or persuaded.  But humans are moved more by what we see than what we read.  Reading takes time.  But it never should have stopped being important to Americans.  We have failed our nation in this regard.

Then Fox News came along, singing a song, and broadcast journalism has never been the same.  Hand in hand with the World Wide Web, news and views became politically mixed with Fox blatantly slanted to the right.  But when it comes to political internet bloggers, it’s not more conservatives than liberals.  Liberal blogs have a slight edge, about 53/47.  But most Americans would never think that, given political radio and internet talk shows, most of which are loudly right wing with hardly a peep of left-wing counterpoint.

Emotional rescue

What to do with the state of journalism today?  Does anything need to be done with journalism today?  I can tell you that real reporters are out getting the story, getting the facts straight, and writing the news—while keeping it separate from their own views or opinions.  This is their sacred duty whether the public believes it or not.

Today’s journalists are not kicking themselves for the state of the newspaper industry.  In fact, every newspaper’s online.  Maybe that is the future:  no more paper and ink.  With strong photo images and even video reports, journalists are showing they are made of stronger stuff than fluff.  Some local reporters may give the talking heads competition.  After all, a reporter can write and tell a story.  That’s not necessarily true among broadcast journalists.

Our society feels the need to monitor journalists from newspapers to magazines, TV broadcasts to online news.  If anything in the media needs monitoring, it should be advertising dollars.  How much for a full-page ad in a major daily?  In a monthly magazine?  On an online newspaper edition?  For 30 seconds during TV news?  Get the picture?  Bottom line, it’s a lot of money.  Again, why?

Our emotions are being bought.  We are being manipulated by glitz and glamour that comes with watching TV news—the big guys more so than the mid-size and small markets, of course.  But the visual counts, and it comes with a hefty price.  Our major broadcast journalists are treated like movie stars or TV stars.  And they are.  That is the point and our problem with trusting journalists.

Good journalists are not like most people.  In pursuing truth, they won’t be swayed by money, power or prestige.  They are intense and take their jobs seriously.  They report facts; if they are lucky, they write with a sparkle; and while everyone else is busy gossiping about what was read in the news, journalists are on to the next story.  They don’t need monitoring.  They monitor themselves.  As our democracy depends on accurate news along with the equal but separate right to express views, there are aspects of the modern media business that need scrutiny.  When it comes to finding the truth, any good journalist would tell you:  Follow the money.

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The menace and the great society

Picture a society of 300 million people.  Despite their large population and diverse cultures lending to an eclectic appearance, they are for the most part a happy people.  They get along well enough with neighbor and state.  Their nation is extremely prosperous and popular around the world.  So sincere and content are the people of this land that they readily come to the aid of their fellow man in times of disaster and hardship.  Their altruism reaches across the sea to other people living in places where life remains poor and bleak.  People around the world envy this idyllic nation mostly for its innate human rights: free speech and religion, even thoughts and ideas.  Ah, and the motto of this comparatively young nation: The pursuit of happiness!

But there is one enormous problem for those living in this great free society.  Every so often, but increasingly, a dozen or more inhabitants are randomly injured and even killed by a menace, always the same exact menace.  The attacks are often unforeseen and sporadic.  Within the past couple decades the menace has caused countless deaths and insurmountable sorrow throughout the land.  Mostly the menace haunts large gathering places of humanity: shopping centers, movie theaters, schools, colleges, night clubs, baseball fields, parks, Christmas parties, halls of justice, concerts, even churches.  But by all accounts, high schools have been the preferred target.

The menace comes around again and again, leaving the same macabre scene of bloody carnage and wounded survivors physically, emotionally and spiritually—some permanently traumatized.  Incredulously, there seems to be no solution to rid this beautiful society—no doubt the greatest ever on earth—of its deadly menace, which to most people of the world seems very strange.  In fact, people of the world don’t think the menace cannot be conquered.  The world remains aghast at the perpetual atrocities by the lone menace allowed free range in an otherwise peace-loving society.

Ad nauseam 

Within the white dome buildings with towering columns and spacious porticos, the great society’s elected leaders remain at an impasse: divided on how to eradicate their nation’s growing menace.  One side, including the grand leader, has come to believe the menace will only be conquered by the same menace—not unlike a vaccine containing a little of the deadly virus to build immunity and prevent mass illness and death.  They think their idea is logical and sound.

But other leaders do not believe in the same method to eradicate the greatly feared menace.  This group refuses to believe in fighting a menace of this caliber with the same or similar menace.  They seek solutions without really knowing how to bring down once and for all the omnipotent menace, still roaming the great society, and as the citizenry young and old has learned to accept, most certainly planning the next scary bloody insane massacre.

After the latest high school massacre, though, hundreds of students who lived to tell about it found themselves collectively emboldened to speak out against the menace so that it never strikes another school ever again.  Their rage was not so much at the menace but at their society’s leaders, even the grand one.  Unified in mind and voice and of one accord, they called the oldest generation—the generation of their grandfathers than their fathers—weak, feeble and impotent.  Using microphones, cameras and the internet, they instantly spread their message across the land: Down with leaders who support the menace!  Down with the organization that supports the menace and allows it to spread!  Down with leaders who take money from the organization that supports the menace!

Even the grand leader could not hide and pretend he did not hear: words spoken by the youth, a generation growing up without a single day’s peace while attending the great society’s schools.  Having survived an attack by the menace, confronting the deadly evil they had heard about all their lives, they became energized by a shared fervor.  The teen survivors were joined by others whose lives were marred by the menace in school massacres across the land.  For some reason, they were summarily granted a meeting with the grand leader face to face.  Not to waste the leader’s time, they rationally and calmly presented only one request: No more menace.  We’re sick and tired of the menace.  Do something about the menace now.

But instead of going after the menace, and finally doing away with its deadly power, the grand leader called on arming teachers to fight the menace at school.  This was not at all the scenario envisioned by the massacre survivors.  Why didn’t the grand leader understand their simple plea?  They were quite clear: No more menace.  Massacre survivors young and old never called on more menace to fight the menace.  To the survivors, that was nonsensical, like a Hollywood action movie, based on fantasy not reality.

At this point in time, the menace has not left the great society and still remains the constant evil that will not be destroyed.  As for other lands, the menace rarely rears its ugly head.  Every society on earth has prevented the menace at least from spreading as it has done so freely throughout the entire great society, shore to shore, engulfing thousands in blood, death and fear.

“Strange,” others around the world ponder.  “The great society is not at war.  Is it?”

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Future of American elections? To the Way Back Machine

So now that we really, really know for sure with absolute certainty that Russia truly was indeed behind creating chaos in our last presidential election—with the sole intent to denigrate Hillary Clinton and install Donald Trump—we gotta come up with the perfect plan to protect the next U.S. election.  We gotta think of an equally terrible, evil and mind-boggling scheme … to save American democracy in our lifetime!  Even Mexico is calling for the return to U.S. domination and world leadership.  The U.S. used to be the Good Guys, remember?  Here’s what we do (chuckle, snort).  It’s so simple, a child could have thought of it.  But, sh sh sh, don’t tell anyone.

OK, since high tech got us into this colossal political pickle (for those of us who think Trump’s presidency is a train wreck,) for our next major election, we simply go back in time!  Let’s pick a year like 1984 or 1989.  Throw a tarp over those newfangled computerized voting machines and store ’em in the closet at the county clerk’s office.  We can vote by hand, just like our forefathers and a lot of our foremothers did for generations, since our nation’s founding.  We just handpick all our candidates.  Pssst.  You know, you don’t have to vote for every race on the ballot; just pick and choose the ones important to ya.  An incomplete ballot’s legal, maybe just requiring our hand-written signatures like in days of yesteryear.

I’m afraid I can’t do that, Dave

Isn’t this a fabulous idea?!!  Wouldn’t the Russians be confounded by our decision to beat them at their own game?  Just dump computer technology for our upcoming election, see how it works.  Oh, and we all must agree to forget about Facebooking and surfing the ’net for political information.  Most voters don’t know how to tell the difference between news and views anyway.  That’s how we got tricked by the Great Russian Bear.

For those of us old enough to remember how voting used to be before the days of computers and the prevalence of hacking, it went like this:  We’d show up to the polls, get a ballot, and then poke out the holes beside the candidate names we chose.  The ballot first was manually checked—probably at a cost much cheaper than hooking every county in the nation to a computer ballot system—and in a day or so, we knew who our elected officials would be.  Simple as making apple pie.

Even with the new voting computers in the 2000 presidential election, voters claimed the lights of the name they touched did not go on and instead another name lit up, meaning their ballot was incorrect if they didn’t repress the candidate of their choice until the correct light went on.  Along with this was the Florida mess where the old punch-card ballots were somehow unclear to read.  We learned related terms like impregnation and chad, but the state’s election board called it.  It got messier when the U.S. Supreme Court was called in to finalize between Bush and Gore.  At the turn of the computer age century, it was like we were living back in Mayberry USA.  The entire nation was left rocking in our front porch swings awaitin’ the presidential results, strummin’ on the old guitar and singing folk songs.  Yehhp, yep, yep, yep, yep, yep.  We got the news about the new president in a couple of weeks.  It wasn’t that big of a deal in the great scheme of time.

And our obsession over time for election returns also played a part in the disastrous 2016 presidential results.  Americans have become the most politically impatient people on earth.  Come on, ya’ll!  The rest of the world population is laughing at us.  Who can blame them?  We’re immature, most of us hardly voting to begin with, then we want to know election results a few hours after casting ballots.

Whoa Nelly

We gotta hold the brakes when it comes to our future national elections.  Our entire form of government, still just a crazy cock-eyed 242-year-old philosophical experiment, is at stake.  Besides relying on super fast voting computers that can be hacked, half the country got sucked into Russian Bots.  These were somewhat cleverly disguised hard-punching nonsense political ads casting Hillary as the devil incarnate and Trump as the choice of Jesus Christ Himself.  What kinda American idiot would believe such a thing?  Tens of millions did.

So the Russians got us and got us good.  We don’t have time to be smartin’ over it.  What’s done is done, and we can’t let it happen again … ever, never again.  Voting sans computers is a start.  Voting is just too precious a right, a right a lot of people on the planet would love to have and as human beings deserve.

Why are Americans so cynical about our own elections, saying things like the choice is always ‘the lesser of two evils?’  American cynicism stems from money—money, money, money, money, money.  We allow this pervasiveness to buy elections when we agree money’s the root of all evil; well the love of money is evil.  That would be another thing to change: campaign financial caps.  We could promote campaign finance reform in a national ad like “Who loves America more?”  That usually gets our countrymen’s attention.  Which party, Dems or Repubs, would be willing to cap candidate election spending?  And what would be the cap?  Not billions of dollars again!  That’s how we got into our current political nightmare.

My fellow Americans, the Russians proved to know more about us than we know ourselves.  They played on our deeply held Christian beliefs, distorted history, racial prejudices, class jealousy, job insecurities, pop culture worship, and pitiful education.  Many of us were duped, dare I saw were ‘patsies?’  We started believing whatever we read on the internet.  Isn’t that a bit un-American?  Wasn’t it Will Rogers who used to quip, “All I know is what I read in the papers?”  That means we have to check all accounts to get the full story.

This next election, let’s agree to be on guard by the oncoming flood of Russian internet ads that feature Christ, crime, guns, immigrants, jobs, economic future, fear and panic.  Think before we click.  It takes time to research the facts and find the truth.  We can start by researching the small print campaign ad notice ‘Paid for by.’

But make no mistake: Russia is out to create havoc and chaos in our American political system, playing on our deepest, darkest fears.  Yet the one thing the enemy doesn’t understand about being a real American is our independence.  We all call ourselves American, even feel empowered within a political party.  Yet each one of us has our own views … about everything.  Many Americans rarely vote straight ticket.  Thinking for oneself is the seed to a perpetual democracy.  A lot of us forgot about our individual independent “I’ll think for myself, thank you” streak back in 2016—and in so doing totally freaked out.

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From Dead Bird Mall to Red Bird Mall once again

The former Red Bird Mall now resembles historic ruins.  For decades hardly anyone wanted to shop there, preferring to venture across Dallas or in recent years nearby Cedar Hill for its trendy outdoor walking mall.  Many cities across the U.S. are burdened with mid-century malls.  Old and gray and huge as the sea, they remain sprawled across a good hundred acres—taking up way too much space and offering no tax revenue.

The death of a mall is a pitiful sight especially for Baby Boomers like me with memories that keep us forever 16.  The biggest thing to have come to my neck of the Dallas suburbs was this very mall.  Opening in 1975, it seemed destined for eternal business with anchors like Sanger Harris, JC Penney and of course Sears.  The mall shops were crazy eclectic but competed to fulfill our every want and need.  More shoes and dress shops than a busy gal could visit in one day, a couple of record stores (for the latest album rock) and eateries galore made the mall an inexpensive teen date: a place to roam and people watch.  Christmas time was especially crowded.  As a teen I always liked going to the mall.  It made me feel alive.

My first real job was at that mall where I scooped ice cream at Baskin-Robbins.  We wore pink baseball caps and smocks.  I learned to operate a cash register, figure tax, and count correct change back to customers.  After school on the days I went to work, the price of a single scoop had increased a penny or two, sometimes a nickel.  If I recall correctly, a scoop at some point was 20 cents then more and more, corrections noted in pencil near the register.  The owners, a married couple, wanted to train me in management.  Turned out the young assistant manager was stealing from the register and summarily fired.  But I had greater dreams to fulfill and passed on pursuing management.  Besides, the job paid $2 an hour when the minimum wage was more than that.  When I inquired about the discrepancy, the owners explained if a company is small, employees don’t have to be paid the federal minimum wage.  After some months, I quit to finally earn minimum wage at a barbecue joint.

But working at the mall really appealed to me.  Many occasions I’d approach every single store, on both floors, and ask for an employment application.  Through high school and early college, I usually could land a job at the mall.  My sales clerk experience included the children’s clothing department at Sears and a clothing store called Woman’s World that specialized in the latest fashions for larger ladies.  I enjoyed my breaks at Sears because I could go to the candy and nut counter for a bag of warm cashews and an Icee.  At the ice cream shop, employees got a free scoop for coming to work.  I usually passed but when succumbing to temptation chose Daiquiri Ice on a sugar cone.  I was trying to be sophisticated.  Besides, I liked the cool turquoise color.

 All’s fair in mall and war

Because of the mall’s location, in south Dallas, a lot of whites referred to Red Bird Mall as Black Bird Mall.  What an awful thing to say, just because a lot of shoppers were black.  But see, the majority whites at the time were not yet willing to be inclusive or think of the community and our country as multicultural and multiracial—as I had come to realize in college.  The racial epithet of sorts was around 1989.  Yes, there was crime at the mall, perhaps more than other malls in Dallas, still at the time unverified as fact by the general public.  It seems an urban legend started the moment Red Bird Mall opened: a horrible story about a little boy attacked in the mall’s restroom.  Hearing the story as an adolescent, I believed it and was on guard if ever having to use the mall restrooms, eerily placed down long corridors.  After I grew up, going alone to the mall seemed unsafe.  I could tell things had changed.  The young crowds seemed rough, loud—and most importantly to business—weren’t there to shop.  But neither was I most of the time in junior high and high school.  I did shop for and buy a prom dress at the mall my junior year: a lacy baby blue evening gown and a very fond memory.

In an effort to rejuvenate the mall, it was renamed Southwest Center and its interior walls redecorated in a style reminiscent of the Old Southwest, more New Mexico and old Mexico than modern Dallas, Texas.  It just didn’t fit for those of us born and raised in this area.  As the poor economy of the late ’80s and early ’90s continued to threaten businesses from independent shops to national retail chains, my old shopping ground got a new nickname: Dead Bird Mall.  It was a hilarious yet honest depiction given all the mall vacancies.

Eulogy for a dead mall

A year ago the Dallas mayor proclaimed intentions to yet again reincarnate Red Bird Mall, first off to rename it as such because originally it referred to a nice upper middle-class Oak Cliff area of Dallas.  The city is working with businesses like Starbucks to once again populate the vast concrete territory still harboring some semblance of a mall.  But perhaps malls should be a thing of the past.  As wonderfully convenient, though costly, as shopping malls were—everything under one roof—times have changed.  People shop online first to purchase so many things.  Then there’s Wal-Mart and Target.

So what’s gonna bring ’em out to the modernized Red Bird Mall?  Perhaps a lot of small single buildings connected by outdoor walkways, fountains, floral landscaping with shade trees, benches, ponds and nature—a beautiful place for meditation, reading online and waiting while others shop.  Rule one should be in considering a new shopping development to revitalize Red Bird Mall: Why do people want to go there?

In retrospect, maybe we should list all the reasons people stopped going there: safety, loud unruly crowds, loitering, theft, assault, guns, drugs, evening hours, humongous terrain, accessibility, health issues, and impractical shops.  Consumers of the 21st century may have no need for the old mall experience that millions of us hold dear in our memories.  Our generation knows better than most: The past tends to be romanticized … because we don’t want to reminisce about the way things really were.

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Mid-century suburban life cemented memories

It was a picture perfect morning.  Early spring 1967.  Mom was changing her bed.  A set of washed sheets blew in the breeze to dry.  I could hear them playfully snapping as they hung on a line in the backyard of our suburban house.  I was 4 years old, standing against the bedroom wall, taking in the moment.  The windows were open, and fresh air caressed my face.  I remember white walls, white sheets, and the feeling that this moment was most wonderful.  I realized I was alive.  And Penny Lane was playing on the radio.

All senses were engaged so this pleasant childhood memory would remain in my mind for life, returning every once in awhile this time of year … and anytime and anywhere that Beatles’ song was heard.  Life was pleasant, simple, clean.

Around this same time, however, other outdoor sights and sounds would be disconcerting.  We lived right next to a suburban forest of sorts: short trees, thick brush with stickers and faded plants, nothing beautiful but natural nonetheless.  Soon the rumbling noise of tractors, bulldozers and construction men interrupted all I knew about life, about peace.  Before the work crew appeared, we had lived on a rural road in a Dallas suburb.  My parents had chosen that sleepy nook because they were from the country themselves.  But they had no idea our earthen street with maybe five houses spaced far apart would be smothered in concrete cement … forever.

As I ventured outdoors, driving my big red trike on the wood sidewalk, I noticed a huge street sign abutting the untapped brush: Dead End.  Probably the first words I learned to read.  Then one day that sign was mowed over, trees uprooted, the land flattened and platted for dozens of modern late ’60s brick homes.  Before the houses were built, first the concrete was poured over our dirt road.  Then the wood sidewalk was turned into cement, curb and gutters replaced the ditch, and lots of digging was done to install concrete pipes for sewer and water lines.  My Dad never got our house hooked up to the city sewer line; we would remain septic tank folks.

Urban sprawl

After the white dust settled, the rubber was poured, its thick pungent tar smell still rudely embedded in my mind.  The street was laid in maybe 15-foot blocks with rubber strips in between I suppose for ‘breathing’ through all types of Texas weather, to keep the concrete from buckling.  As I grew into an older child, I liked placing my toes in the occasional newly squirted pliable rubber across our residential street.  I had learned to accept annual work crews, pounding concrete excavations, heavy metal repairs, finished up with new rubber.  Playing in the new street rubber was lots of fun for a city kid.

Our community grew and grew especially during the 1970s as families from other states were relocating to Dallas but desired to live outside the city.  We were called a bedroom community.  The main restaurant we had in my early years was just Dairy Queen.  But soon McDonald’s came to town followed by every fast-food establishment and pizza joint known to kids across the U.S.  Teen years were filled with meeting at those hang outs to socialize with fries and a Coke or Dr. Pepper.

Having grown up pretty well adjusted and content within a suburban bubble, I never realized my hometown lacked, mmm, charm.  Not until I went off to college and traveled around Texas did I see the huge disparity in quality of life.  Other towns were much older than the mid-century suburbs, but they had generations of families who maintained their communities’ grace.  Old large houses were renovated into restaurants, law firms, or just nice homes for doctors and those who could afford the upkeep.

Streets were lined with trees providing shade.  I’d never seen such a thing except in very small towns like where my parents grew up.  Walking around my neighborhood during the summers left me squinting from the sun and getting a pink burn.  Shoes were a must given all the hot concrete.  I grew up where houses from the early 20th century would have been considered old and necessarily torn down.  Trees were not a priority.  I learned that urban fact when all the trees were yanked to build more homes, larger and larger through the decade.  What was more important to my community leaders was moving in more families.  Our community expanded until there would be no more undeveloped land, no more nature.  And when the entire town was built out, they started building up with more apartments.

Progress was our middle name

What were suburban city officials thinking in the mid 20th century?  They were the Greatest Generation but in charge of ‘modern’ city development.  More population meant more taxes for more amenities, right?  When I left my concrete city, I realized the error of their ways.  Communities nowadays are better planned.  I suppose if it weren’t for all those cement towns with no beauty, style or nature, the new and improved housing developments would not have been created.  Modern residential neighborhoods emulate 19th century city neighborhoods.

And what got me to thinking about all this?  Well, the city in which I live has been bull dozing and pounding apart my residential street, right at my driveway.  We—the city crew and I—have had to get along and make things work as the heavy-duty work trucks park in the way of me trying to move my car to leave and then later return home.

The unannounced street work jarred my early childhood memory as I sat indoors feeling and hearing the vibrations against windows and across the wood floor.  Construction tractors were breaking up the entire street to fix a busted water line from the big cold a month ago.  The first job had been a patch; this time it was a permanent repair.  The sound of smashing concrete and men yelling orders is one I grew up with and have had to learn to accommodate as a city dweller.

Ah, but since I left that cement sea that was once my hometown, I’ve learned the art of meditation.  Now any time I want, I can clearly relive that moment some 50 years ago when life as I first realized was splendid … “beneath the blue suburban skies.”

 

 

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Wanna run for Congress? Millionaires need not apply

New Rule: From now on, anyone running for U.S. Congress and Senate, cannot have an annual salary more than, oh I don’t know, $100,000.  ?  Sound good?  Still unfair?  No more than $75,000?  Something that would put him or her in the league of regular folks, maybe no more than $40,000?  Come on now, there are a lot of people in this country who earn salaries like $30,000 and $40,000  a year and even raise kids.  But the point I’m trying to make is NO MORE MILLIONAIRE POLITICIANS!!  Yea!!!!!!  Rahhhhhh!!!

With our usual federal government shut downs, it seems it’s not so much a liberal-conservative fight as a disconnection between millionaires and regular folks.  Millionaires have never cared about poor people (and for them that includes the vast middle class), what the Millennials used to refer to as the 99 percent (of us).   Remember when the kids protested on Wall Street just a couple of years ago?  Then we elect a self-promoted billionaire as president?  What’s up with that?  How did our nation change on a dime?  Just wondering what happened to the collective rage against all people rich.

Only millionaires play chicken with people’s lives and livelihoods.  Regular folks would never do such a thing.  We have more empathy toward our fellow man, sort of.  I mean, we are Americans, and since the Reagan ’80s our national motto has been “I got mine. You get yours.”  Works out great for some folks, maybe even most Americans with the wherewithal to earn a college degree or born with business savvy and ambition or tech or high-paid trade acumen.  But not everyone does well in our great land.  There are all kinds of reasons: physical disabilities, chronic illness, mental illness, addiction, low self-esteem, low intellect, anti social personality disorder.  Then there are issues dealing with race, color, sex, religion and ethnicity.  People of color have been saying for decades there are points against them in our great nation when it comes to who gets the jobs and promotions and why.  It doesn’t matter how many bi-racial family ads are on TV now.  The nation as a whole hasn’t let go of discrimination.

Billionaire Boys Club

So now really we have a billionaire club infiltrating politics.  And since politics is about governing people’s lives, I’d say it’s unfair and I’d go so far as to say non-Christian.  Wouldn’t you?  OK, let’s leave the issue of religion out of it.  Let’s not ask “What Would Jesus Do?” when it comes to a government shut down.  After all, the great majority of our nation’s millionaires and billionaires and Congressional representatives proclaim to be Christian.

The first time I was ever aware of our government’s money problems was in 1981.  That was the first time I heard our government was broke.  And we’ve been broke ever since.  Well, there was that shining moment when President Bill Clinton proudly announced our new national debt was $0.  That’s zero dollars.  The politicians, especially the ‘vast right wing conspiracy,’ had convinced us concerned Americans the budget could never be balanced. Shame on them.  Clinton was lucky he rode the perfect wave of the telecom boom … which turned into a tech and dot.com bubble that eventually burst.  Nevertheless, he did prove our national debt could be resolved.

Now I’m just thinking out loud, but does anyone else think our entire federal budget is just a house of cards?  We’re just robbing Peter to pay Paul?  If we are truly unable to keep our government financially operating time and again, then something’s, like, major wrong with our nation.

The one person I would never trust to fix our perpetual federal debacle and international embarrassment is a millionaire.  Wanna know why?  Because I know that millionaires never, ever, ever, never, ever, ever spend their own money.  Trump never did contribute faithfully and willingly and lovingly to his own presidential campaign.  He’s got to be the first in American history to not gamble on his own presidential bid.

And the likes of him, billionaires and millionaires, are in charge of our federal budget?  Something’s out of whack.  And it’s been out of whack for too long.

Roll over Tom Jeff’rson

Our nation’s Founders in their wildest dreams could have never imagined the vast financial mess of our great country, supposedly the greatest and richest on earth.  How could a nation built on democracy, free will, equality, and even everybody’s pursuit of happiness go so profoundly astray financially?  Maybe it is the guaranteed ‘free will.’  Humans don’t do well with free will.  We have a tendency to put off tomorrow what we don’t want to do today, like pay the electric bill.  We get credit cards to take care of our needs then our wants, then we can’t pay them either, blaming high interest rates.  Over a period of five decades—our prime working years—life becomes a series of calamities: illnesses, job losses, home and car repairs, spouse death, divorce, stock market crashes, loans, inflation, recessions, raising kids, college, etc.  We find we aren’t any better off than when we’d first begun to work.  The future looks bleak.

That’s the kind of thinking that got Trump elected.

The bottom line about governing is very simple: THE BILLS HAVE TO BE PAID.  That’s how families do it as well as cities and states.  In government jargon, it’s called a zero budget, where they figure out the money coming in over a year or two and budget it.  We don’t dip into money that does not belong to us like Social Security, Medicare, education and the military.  We don’t borrow from nations to fight our wars, because those nations may turn around and use our debt against us.

The real shame about being an American is how we allow millionaire congressmen (a few of whom, by the way, have nothing better to do than show us their junk on the internet) to play Kick the Can with federal financial obligations.  Why do we allow them to do this?  Too much trouble to get involved?  We don’t want to be thought of as old coots firing off phone calls, letters and emails to our elected officials in hopes they actually will be persuaded by our angry words to change their ways?  Why are we afraid of people we elected into office?  Who’s really in charge of this country?  We’ve forgotten: The people have the power.

For a couple hundred years, our form of government has allowed us to elect others to govern, to run the business of America.  And if the ones we’ve elected can’t govern, then we the people are going to have to start doing it.  A change in qualifications for office—especially banning millionaires—would be a good start.  I think the constitutional framers never intended for a bunch of rich men to run the United States of America forever.  Our 18th century American forefathers, those who lived during the Age of Enlightenment, who were free thinkers and fans of Western philosophy, knew a democratic government could only work and last if it’s tended to by all citizens including farmers and laborers, and not just and only by educated dandies.

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Winfrey for President? O-prah-ther

So the Democrats last hope is to run mega TV star Oprah Winfrey for U.S. President?  She can’t run for any other office in the land?  It has to be the absolute top spot in the federal government and the most powerful position in the world?  Isn’t she already kind of our president anyway?  Since recently receiving the Cecil B. DeMille Award at the Golden Globes, the mass media merged with show biz to gush over the possibility of running Oprah for president in 2020.  To which her longtime companion Stedman Graham replied: If the people want her to run, she would do it.  So there.

Well, not so fast.  Powerful, attractive, intelligent woman that Oprah is, there are skeletons in her closet, and the media if they investigate hard enough will find them.  Certainly her ferocious Republican opposition will.  And Oprah is not running on the Republican ticket, though she’s probably benefited mightily by their policies.  Oprah has never held an elected government office.  Yes, she’s created and operated a media conglomerate including her own network.  But given her background, I have to wonder about her ‘handlers,’—the real know-how people Oprah shrewdly hired to perform actual daily operations, because Oprah’s real job is being a well-put-together celebrity.  [Pssst.  I met one of her TV show handlers who confided Oprah is “high maintenance.”]  Who cares, the Dems would say.  Oprah is the most popular person in the universe.  She would be a shoo-in as first woman president and first African-American female president.  Surely our nation is ready for this by now!

Have you been reading the internet and seeing all the hate groups out there, the ones fully empowered by the Trump presidency?  They are tens of millions of Americans and no fans of Oprah.  Yes, Oprah will have the women’s vote but not necessarily the men, not our red-blooded, beef-eatin’ hairy American men particularly of white stock.  I’m just being honest.  Still, Oprah could win the U.S. presidency simply by placing her name on the ballot.  Americans feel we know her.  She was on TV forever.

Roll ’em

Oprah’s skeletons for scrutiny if she ran for political office include: leaving college to take a job offer in TV media, never marrying (even Gloria Steinem eventually married), former employee lawsuits claiming her business a climate of anti-male harassment (OK, that part is laughable considering the vastly common workplace scenario between the sexes), and declining to support impoverished American youth who asked for computers and bikes instead of a quality education (which she indeed provides for an all-girl school in Africa).  And there’s the issue of her teen-age promiscuity that ended in the birth of a premature baby.  The alt-right would give her the ol’ one-two morality punch even though Oprah’s baby boy died shortly after birth.

But the fairer sex of the American populace would be most forgiving of this and all of Oprah’s skeletons.  Oprah has been candid about her entire life, we believe from watching her every day for twenty years.  She does not feel one bit guilty about leaving college to do what others have done when offered a big career break, plus she eventually finished her degree after fame and fortune.  She has proclaimed her longtime beau, Stedman, to be the only man in her life who always treated her with respect.  By not marrying, she is certainly ‘cool,’ more interesting than if she did go through with a wedding and sign on the dotted line.  The teen-age promiscuity was directly related to her childhood years of sexual abuse by several family members, about which she has divulged in painful detail.  It seems once Oprah became a national sensation, a drug-addicted relative spilled the beans on her love child at age 14.  The relative needed money from a tabloid and attempted to smear the big-name star.  It only served to make Oprah out to be ‘every woman,’ more like regular gals than the upper classes.

Along with surviving the shame of incest and rape, her most empowering story line is her childhood poverty, once living in a home with no running water.  This kind of poverty often instills in a child the big American dream, to chase stardom.  And Oprah did.  She was in her element in The Color Purple, again boasting that her character’s important scene about fighting off male beasts was shot in one take.  Oprah could relate honestly and painfully to the character she played, a hefty black female from the early 20th century South.

Harpo productions

The one criticism about Oprah or her talk show that has left an imprint on America today (yet won’t be a campaign issue) is the condensed sound bite.  Her talk show formula was not unlike Donahue or Geraldo: interview an author, celebrity, panel of experts, psychologists, and assorted regular people (called guests) with the same situation for the show’s daily theme (gay, bi, trans, addicts, family dramas, diseased, impotents, swingers, shop-a-holics, weight losers, childhood stars, social outcasts, etc.).  First the issue or problem would be laid out and discussed and then experts would speak on how to make life better—Oprah always interjecting her brand of homespun yet deeply profound Christian-New Age wisdom.  It worked like a charm.  By 4 p.m. Central Time, viewers felt like they’d really learned something from watching Oprah.  But really, we didn’t.

Unlike Phil Donahue—who left audiences in the ’70s with more questions than answers and certainly unsure of his own opinion on controversial subjects—Oprah’s quasi-educational episodes were just tidbits of information, maybe not worth a full hour of our attention.  If you wanted to delve into the specific issue, read the promoted book fiction or nonfiction.  But for someone who supports education as the most important thing to benefit one’s life, Oprah and her audience never grasped that higher education, like a master’s degree and doctorate, will create more doubt than answers to life’s dilemmas and mysteries.  The highly educated are comfortable with doubt, the less educated frightened by it.  The Oprah formula hoodwinked a generation of Americans into thinking they knew about life and stuff simply by listening to someone else and maybe empathizing.  That’s not real knowledge.  Real knowledge is off the couch and real life lived outside the TV box.  Oprah herself really lived, really experienced life in abundance and splendor.  But her tens of millions of fans not so much.  So the show was a national disservice in this regard.

But, hey, Oprah is the one who introduced our nation to Barack Obama and his lovely wife Michelle way before he ran for president.  He was charming and handsome and unique.  She knew he had star power, plus he was a Democrat.  She backed him financially, and he won two terms as President of the United States.  At his first inauguration, she was spotted among the crowds, leaning on a fellow onlooker, listening to his historic speech, smiling, hazel eyes teary and aglow—she looked so proud, like she really had accomplished something monumental, perhaps the most important thing she ever did with her life.

Now, should Oprah seriously consider running for president?  It is an interesting notion but one I am not inclined to support.  The media should get real and stop promoting her: like they declared Hillary Rodman Clinton when she ran time and again, referring to her candidacy as a ‘coronation,’ like there was just no way she would lose especially that second time when Obama was not on the ballot.  Ugh, Hillary lost to a foul-mouthed boastful rich white man, one Americans felt they knew from watching him on his TV show.

Would it be any different with Oprah?   If Trump is game two years from now, he would fight Oprah the same way he did Hillary.  It would be dirty, unfair, filled with lies and innuendos, and the American TV-watching public would love it.  Oprah, I think, is no match for the kind of filthy politics into which we have lowered ourselves today.  In a different era, perhaps someone with her stature, charisma, class and endless money could compete for the U.S. presidency.  But knowing what we know now, even Oprah Winfrey couldn’t win.  Oprah, after all, is above it.