Author: cheriebell69@hotmail.com

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Who among us can hold a candle to Nobel Peace Prize recipients?

The loudest American who had been vying for the 2018 Nobel Peace Prize was U.S. President Donald J. Trump himself.  But Trump is first and foremost a braggart, more brass than class.  [That’s a turn off to the international Nobel Peace Prize selection committee.]  Compared to past recipients—Americans and others around the world, individuals and organizations—our current president lacks a certain … humbleness … selflessness … humanitarian empathy … quiet dignity … grace … compassion … wisdom.    In short, Trump’s no Albert Schweitzer, who earned the Nobel Peace Prize in 1952.

A list of past recipients sheds light on certain shared qualities among those chosen for the esteemed Nobel Peace Prize: 2017, the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (a world policy still rejected and unsigned by the United States of America); 2014, Malala Yousafzai, the Pakistani girl who was shot in the head by the Taliban for attending school yet survived to fight for girls’ education rights around the world; 2013, the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons; 2009, Barack Obama, for his early order as U.S. president to end perpetual war in Afghanistan and Iraq; 2007, Al Gore; 2002, Jimmy Carter; 1999, Doctors Without Borders; 1993, Nelson Mandela and F.W. de Klerk; 1990, Mikhail Gorbachev and not Ronald Reagan; 1989, the 14th Dalai Lama; 1985, the International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War; 1983, Lech Walesa; 1973, Henry Kissinger; 1964, Martin Luther King Jr.

Reading this list brings to mind another human characteristic: bravery. Established in 1895, the Nobel Peace Prize recognizes academic, cultural or scientific advancements.  It seems cultural advancement is an underlying reason for bestowing the international peace prize upon Dr. King, the Dalai Lama, Gorbachev, Walesa, Mandel and de Klerk, Presidents Carter and Obama, and VP Gore.

A loud-mouthed bully is usually not awarded a peace prize; it wouldn’t make a lick of sense among the cultured world intelligentsia.  President Obama won because the world absolutely loved him.  And the world doesn’t hold President Trump in the same esteem.  Trump’s goading of North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un to a High Noon nuclear showdown is not worthy of a Nobel Peace Prize and may not be the reason for North and South Korea possibly ending their decades-old war.

If anyone ends up deserving the 2018 Nobel Peace Prize, it very likely could be Kim Jong-un and Moon Jae-in, president of the Republic of Korea.  The world recently witnessed a meeting like no one could have fathomed between those two leaders.  Yet they stood together with sincere smiles and mutual laughter, bonded by common language, culture and history, and talked about ending their countrymen’s long, long stalemate.  It was as if neither man could remember what all the fuss was about.  They are from a different generation that started the Korean War many moons ago in the last century.

Another brick in the wall

Trump can’t claim the Reagan route for insisting a nuclear nation change from communism to democracy.  That’s because Reagan alone did not end the Cold War between the U.S. and the USSR.  The East/West ‘war’ already was ending by a new generation, the product of changing times, people who readily admired American and Western way of life and harbored such feelings secretly for decades.  Through the black market of the Eastern bloc, Soviets loved American blue jeans, watching TV shows like “Dallas,” and listening to good ol’ rock ’n’ roll especially riotous punk bands.  In the 1980s Western entertainers were allowed to tour Soviet nations.  But watching Western TV in the privacy of tiny cramped apartments is what really broke up the old Soviet Union.  The people want to be free, live and speak freely, choose their leaders, and pursue their individual and unique passions in this one human life.  American TV, movies and music—dominating the world while echoing freedom in every human thought, desire and need—brought down communism throughout Eastern Europe and finally Mother Russia Herself. And something else was happening, too: 24-hour cable news and personal computers.  These world-conquering concepts and revolutionary inventions brought new meaning to putting the genie back in the bottle.  Can’t be done.  Gorbachev knew.  He realized his fate and the future of the world, thank God.  He let it happen.

Change of heart is another human characteristic worthy of the world’s attention and consideration for the Nobel Peace Prize.  Why Kim Jong-un seemingly has had a public (and humbling) change of heart from his ambition to proceed toward nuclear war and annihilation remains unknown.  But … we’re gonna find out.  Communist Korea along with the rest of the world can’t keep anything secret anymore.  Those days are gone.  Can I hear an Amen?

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Casting perspective on immigrants living in America

“I hereby declare, on oath, that I absolutely and entirely renounce and abjure all allegiance and fidelity to any foreign prince, potentate, state, or sovereignty, of whom or which I have heretofore been a subject or citizen; that I will support and defend the Constitution and laws of the United States of America against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I will bear arms on behalf of the United States when required by the law; that I will perform noncombatant service in the Armed Forces of the United States when required by the law; that I will perform work of national importance under civilian direction when required by the law; and that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; so help me God.”

The Oath of Allegiance

Basically, naturalized U.S. citizens swear to:

  1. Support the Constitution;
  2. Renounce and abjure absolutely and entirely all allegiance and fidelity to any foreign prince, potentate, state, or sovereignty of whom or which the applicant was before a subject or citizen;
  3. Support and defend the Constitution and laws of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic;
  4. Bear true faith and allegiance to the same; and
  5. Bear arms on behalf of the United States when required by the law; or
    B. Perform noncombatant service in the Armed Forces of the United States when required by the law; or
    C. Perform work of national importance under civilian direction when required by the law.

——————————————————————————————

NOTE: Naturalized citizens are NOT required to speak the Queen’s English.  They can speak any language they want as free citizens living in the United States.  If they need to do certain business related to almost all aspects of government, they most certainly need to read, write and speak English or be accompanied by an interpreter.  It takes about seven years, by the way, for a person to learn a language well enough to speak with confidence.

So, my fellow Americans … why are we giving these people a hard time?  Given all American immigrants must learn, like really knowing U.S. government and American history better than anyone who just took the courses way back in high school; not carrying guns unless serving in a military capacity; supporting and defending the Constitution and the U.S. laws against all enemies; and totally and completely renouncing the nation of their birth—why are we giving these people a hateful hard time?

According to 2012 statistics, 40 million immigrants were living in the U.S.  Practically half of those immigrants were naturalized American citizens.  The other half could be living here illegally.  But more likely and rationally, the great majority of the other half could be living here legally while waiting to become naturalized American citizens, which is their human right.  There’s a group among us ‘naturally-born Americans’ who would have us all believe that our country has a huge illegal immigrant problem at close to 20 million people.  But given our hard-ass U.S. disposition, from the feds to citizens, I think the number of truly outlaw illegal immigrants daring to live among the likes of us in this day and age is considerably much lower than 20 million.

Out of approximately 325 million people who now make up the U.S. population, immigrants are slightly more than 10 percent, and again half of those are naturalized American citizens.

Why are we giving these people a hard time?  Yelling at them in grocery stores to speak English, like the language is American or something?  The U.S. has no national language because we’re from every nation on earth.  Even the Native Americans spoke various languages among their tribes.  Makes me wish we could communicate telepathically like the real aliens we need to fear.  But I digress …

The real number of immigrants living in these here United States is practically 100 percent of us save the Native Americans, which by the way due to the great majority of our forefathers is now only 2 percent of the U.S. population.  The issue is not about immigrants, language, odor, food, culture, hair, religion, creed, color.  Wait, that last one is probably hitting the nail on the head.  American prejudices have a lot to do with skin color, that involuntary pigmentation that none of us can control.

White people in America have a lot to learn when it comes to getting along with other people on the planet.  God made humans all different, and yet many people just hate that about His creation, His doing, even to the point of thinking people of color are not really human beings; therefore, they can be lynched, imprisoned, hassled, segregated, isolated, scorned—and there will be no price to pay.  Oh, there’s a price to pay.  It’s morality and humanity and decency.  Immigration, legal or illegal, is not the most pressing problem we face as a nation.  As Americans on earth, our number one problem is what it’s always been from our beginning: puredee hate and hostility for anybody not ‘white’ in skin, culture, religion, and language.  Talk about strangers in a strange land …

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Recalling a grandmother’s life & times and practical faith

That little girl on a TV Western, the one that ends with her frolicking in a meadow, wearing a pioneer dress circa 1907—she is my grandmother.  We called her Maw Maw, so named when her first grandchild could not say ‘grandma.’  Like all grandmothers, she once was a young vibrant girl, maybe not so much carefree given the times.  Her name was Rosa, named after her father’s most beautiful girlfriend, he would joke, referring to the woman he married.  Rosa was raised with a bunch of rowdy older brothers.  They gave her a nickname not fit to be printed here.  That’s how sexist they were, perhaps all males at the turn of the 20th century.  She was born in 1901 in Indian Territory, soon to be renamed Oklahoma.  She called it God’s country.

Her family was apparently homeless, traveling in a covered wagon along dirt roads and through wild terrain town to town.  Perhaps they were day laborers.  The wagon could not hold all of them, so each one had to take turns walking alongside the horse-drawn transportation.  Maw Maw told the time when her dad finally saved enough money to buy a plot of land, but his sons defied him and wouldn’t let him.  So he didn’t make the purchase, and according to her, not too long after that property was found to have oil.

She taught herself to ride a horse, a scene in which her brothers busted out laughing, claiming girls can’t ride horses.  She showed them.  By the time she was of a young lady, she was raising chickens, a trade she’d continue through the 1960s.  I recall dilapidated stacked coops behind her house, adjacent to a large vegetable garden.  But the Maw Maw I knew was getting too old to deal with feisty feathered friends.  Even gardening, always while wearing a hand-made bonnet to avoid the sun, was hard on her bones.  Besides, the times were changing.  Townsfolk weren’t allowed to keep a bunch of chickens and coops due to mandated sanitation standards.  A small grocery store had opened just a short walk from Maw Maw’s house.  She had to cross a major highway to get to the store.  Fortunately, the highway running through Maw Maw’s sleepy town was rarely busy, so not only could she manage the occasional walk, her grandkids merrily volunteered to run to the store and gather her list of foodstuffs.

Maw Maw was an excellent country cook, never using a recipe, her specialty buttery soft yeast rolls.  Mmm.  She could sew, too, making good use of flour sack cloth to dress her young’uns, even sewed my dad’s blue jeans.  And, of course, she was a quilter.  She gave me one when I went off to college.  I keep it stored in a cedar chest just like she would have done during the summer.

She married young and started having kids.  I wonder if she were old enough to vote when women finally were granted that right in 1920.  She raised chickens and vegetables and taught her eight kids to do the same.  Their daily chores, as my dad recalled, included milking a cow and chopping wood.  In those years, the family lived isolated in the country.  But their house was not their own.  Paw Paw plowed the land as sort of a sharecropper’s deal.

When the Depression hit, my young adult grandparents got religion along with millions of Americans in the rural South.  Prior to that, they attended outdoor dances where they’d uncomfortably watch drinking turn into brawling.  Maw Maw was a musician, playing what she called the French Harp, which is a harmonica.  She may have had other musical abilities like piano and guitar because several of her children were musically inclined.  But the family left all ‘worldliness’ in the past; any music would be strictly gospel.  And they lived a holiness lifestyle in dress and deed for decades, ruled by the dogged determination of the family matriarch.

Maw Maw was not even 5 feet tall with petite features.  How did a little woman with raven hair and blue eyes come across as the Mother of all mothers?  But her kids would mind her in fear as those were the days parents would hit their kids and yell at them for misbehaving.  She only had an 8th grade education.  But in her day, prior to a world war, high school was not required.  She read the Bible more than any other book.  She actually studied it.  And whenever the church doors were open, her entire family was there, even if it meant throwing a quilt on the floor for a new babe to sleep.

She lived a long time, surviving Paw Paw’s death at old age.  I remember their 50th wedding anniversary, probably in 1968.  All her kids and grandkids crowded into their wood-frame house.  During the festivities, an aunt placed an empty tissue box on my head and a cousin, telling us we’d be the flower girls in a pretend wedding ceremony.  It seemed the entire town dropped by to congratulate my grandparents’ monumental anniversary.

Maw Maw would go down in family history as the talker, the social one.  Paw Paw preferred to take to his room and sit in his rocking chair whenever friends or family dropped by.  He was more content to listen than speak, maybe his way of avoiding disputes.  Maw Maw and Paw Paw had separate bedrooms after the birth of their last child, when she was 42.  This was not uncommon for their generation.  But after Paw Paw died and Maw Maw had to get used to living in their house alone, one night she heard him calling her from his bedroom.  She opened the door and slipped into his empty bed.  That became her bedroom.

Almost a decade later, Maw Maw had a stroke when she was 81.  She never recovered, remaining bedridden and incapacitated for five long years.  Before the stroke, she always expressed her greatest fear: having a stroke and lingering for years in a nursing home.  Family made sure she remained in her own home, her daughters and nieces taking turns caring for her every day, never leaving her alone at night.  She couldn’t talk anymore but to anyone who dropped by to visit, she’d greet with a very tight grip.  Capturing us by the hand, she’d look deep into our eyes.  She was desperately trying to tell us something.  What could it have been?  “Help me!” maybe?  I’d rather think “I love you!”  Perhaps simply “Love!”

She passed away on the afternoon of the Challenger explosion.  Maw Maw never believed man walked on the moon.  Those thoughts of certainty were her charm.  Throughout her life—a link to our pioneering forefathers—Rosa was self sufficient; surviving childhood diseases and worldwide financial crises; able to live off the land; believing in the good earth; knowing from  the soul despite any appearance to the contrary, God provides all needs and leaves no one forsaken.

 

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Holocaust survivor marked physically, emotionally, but not his spirit

The tattoo on Michael Jacobs’ arm was a number: 118860.

The mark remained skin deep his entire life.  It served as a reminder to him, and for others, that he had spent his teen years in a Nazi concentration camp.  From 1939-45, the former Mendel Jakudowicz of Poland was forced to live life in one of the most notorious camps, Auschwitz.

After the war, Jacobs found a home in Dallas.  A few decades ago, he started traveling the country, telling his story to congregations at churches and to anyone who would listen.  He called himself a Holocaust survivor.  He’d even traveled back to the Old Country and toured the death camp he somehow survived.  He wanted to remember every detail; every injustice; the loss of human dignity; the macabre sights and sounds; the ancient hateful prejudices unleashed ferociously among his neighbors, the German people.  He told me his story when I was a reporter in a small Texas town where he was booked to speak at the Methodist church.  Listening to his horrific ordeal, I envisioned gray scenes in the dead of winter: people with somber expressions frozen in black and white images, silent yet dignified.

A bright-eyed 15-year-old boy entering Camp Auschwitz, Jacobs first saw ovens.  Optimistically he thought his captors were going to teach him the trade of a baker.  He soon found the ovens were used to destroy human remains.  Nothing was joyous about life in Auschwitz where prisoners were sentenced to slavery or death.  Their crime was their religion.

As the Nazis were coming to power—incited by their beloved leader Adolph Hitler—Jacobs’ family was forced to leave their home and move into ghettos.  And from there, residents were collected and packed into trains heading to various concentration camps.  His family divided, Jacobs faced uncertainty in a concentration camp alone.  He was stripped of his clothes and issued a numbered wool uniform with black and white stripes and a matching cap.  The tattoo procedure was painful.

Jacobs was assigned to accompany a young Nazi soldier and told to follow his orders.  He obeyed, wanting nothing more than to survive the times.

Back in prison, Jacobs and other able-bodied males had to search Allied planes shot down by the Germans.  They were to break down the parts into salvageable piles of scrap metal.  The forced laborers had to be very good, as Jacobs said, “One wrong move and we went under the oven.”

Ironically Jacobs was learning a lucrative trade.  When he immigrated to America in 1951, settling in Dallas, he founded a scrap metal business which became prosperous.

During internment, Jacobs dealt with deep depression.  In whispered conversations, inmates would encourage each other.  “Why don’t you look up at the sky,” he recalled one man saying to him one night when he was feeling particularly down.  “See how the stars smile at us?”

As he lay on a filthy bunk in a cold, crowded dormitory, he would close his eyes.  He imagined himself as a bird: soaring above the screams, gunshots, and stench.  Meditation was a form of escape.  “At that time, I was free,” he told me.

After enduring hell on earth for several years, one day the prisoners awakened to find the camp’s cruel commanders gone.  The prisoners had heard the Allies soon were coming.  Jacobs took cautious steps to leave, unsure if this were another hoax and he would be shot.  Slowly he gained confidence and then ran away.  Tired and weak, he stopped at a house and was welcomed inside.  Still wearing his prison camp clothes, he didn’t recognize himself when he looked in the mirror.  He had aged decades.  He stood on a scale and weighed less than 100 pounds.

Eventually he would learn that 80 of his family members, including his parents and siblings, did not survive the war.  Jacobs was alone to learn the ways of the world.

He said what got him through the horror he endured was positive thinking.  He held no bitterness toward his captors.  Life, he could say as an old man, had been good.

The power of positive thinking is the human spirit.  Jacobs’ survival skill was his tolerance of those who hated him—and his understanding that the world had gone mad for a little while.

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“The Queen’s Rules” still should apply today

For what seemed to be the longest time, the only major fast-food chain in my Dallas suburb was Dairy Queen.  It had no competition, or so it seemed to me as a little kid in the 1960s and early ’70s—until McDonald’s and all the rest came to our town.  Dairy Queen was on the other side of town from where my family lived.  For a 6-year-old kid, it was a big treat to get to go out to eat every once in awhile, and Dairy Queen had ice cream!  The next few years spent dining at Dairy Queen, I collected many fond if not fuzzy memories of a bygone era.

When I was a young reader, I noticed a large poster on the Dairy Queen wall near a booth where we’d sit.  The poster was of the Dairy Queen girl, dressed in Dutch attire, holding a public decree that displayed “The Queen’s Rules.”  I learned several big words reading the rules at Dairy Queen.  One was ‘profanity.’  “Mom, what does proh-fan-eye-tee mean?”  And Mom explained, “That means no,” she stopped to continue softly, “cuss words.”  Seeing my confused innocence, Mom would have to give me some examples of bad words so I’d know what not to say inside Dairy Queen.  My parents didn’t cuss much; well, Mom had her two choice words so we’d know when she was extremely mad about something.  In those days, cuss words were never spoken on TV, which was all network, pre-cable and pre-DeNiro.

Another big word for me was ‘loitering,’ a real trouble word as I attempted pronunciation.  “Mom, what does lo-eye-teh-ring mean?”  And Mom would explain, “That means no one should be hanging around here without buying something to eat or drink.”  Oh, I see.  I learned at an early age that restaurants were no place to hang out without purchasing food or drinks.

Bell bottoms, bare feet and halter tops

As I grew a bit older, around 8, I clearly realized the generation gap between parents and teens.  Dairy Queen was a ‘happening’ on Friday and Saturday nights.  I liked to go at those times and people-watch, especially any hippies I might spot.  They were called freaks back then: usually bare footed with torn jeans or short-short cut off jeans, girls in halters (that meant no bra!).  The high school teens and young adults played the absolute coolest songs on the jukebox: “Green Eyed Lady,” “One,” “American Woman,” “Cross Eyed Mary,” “How Many More Times”—a real hard rock concert, man!  The older teens were so cool.  I couldn’t wait to join them in ten years.

But they also were rude and loud: guys horsing around, dating couples who couldn’t keep their hands off each other then kissing—wooooo.  Actually, I was kinda embarrassed to see that sort of thing.  I didn’t understand—hormones still a mystery of life.

“No dr-uh-gs or al-ko-hahl,” I continued reading from the Queen’s Rules to Mom.  I knew nothing about drugs.  But once in awhile among the teen crowd, a loopy guy would float about giddily.  Maybe he was on something.  Because smoking was allowed, teens openly smoked cigarettes inside the restaurant, some laughing loudly, carrying on with their crowd, having fun, eating, drinking and being merry.

“No loo-woo-d cohn-duk-t,” I read aloud.  “What’s lewd?”  Mom explained about appropriate dress and behavior, pointing out a teen couple who was on their way to a full make-out session.  My nose crinkled in disgust as I’d remark, “Ooooooo.”

The Queen rules

Even as a kid, I figured the Queen’s Rules were put in place because of the growing Woodstock counter culture: the loud rock music, the long hair, the penchant to go bare foot, the suspected drug use, and the psychedelic clothes, halters, short-shorts, and touchy-feely coupling.  It seemed all this was inappropriate inside Dairy Queen because it went against the Queen’s Rules.  I followed the rules, because I was 8 and Mom was sitting across from me in the booth.  The older teens rockin’ Dairy Queen were unaccompanied by their parents.  Having their old ladies around would have put a damper on their … freedom.  Yet through the years, I noticed the Queen’s Rules had been taken down at most Dairy Queens for some reason.

So when I heard about the Starbucks’ incident whereby two men asked to use the restroom without purchasing anything, I did not think the business unkind or unfair.  If anyone can sit at Starbucks, small yet cozy coffee shops, and not be obligated to purchase coffee or something to consume, that’s news to me.  The race factor may have contributed to a manager’s rush to call the cops within minutes of the men asking to use the facilities sans purchase.  But why didn’t one of the men buy a cup of coffee, tea, bottled water or soft drink?  Starbucks is not a public lounge, after all, but a business.  They exist to make money off everyone who enters.  How did we lose sight of that?  Is Starbucks to blame for its casual, laid-back atmosphere?

When traveling the highways and heeding nature’s call by stopping at a gas station or restaurant to use a restroom, the courteous thing to do is purchase something before we leave.  Doing otherwise would be rude of us.  Taking advantage of any business, no matter how world renowned and prosperous, is impolite.  Kudos to Starbucks for nipping what is perceived by the masses to be race discrimination among staff.  Shame on those who jumped on Starbucks to protest what may not have been a purely racist intention.

In the near future, Starbucks should take a cue from 1970s’ Dairy Queen.  Evidently, time has come today for restaurants to once again publicly post their own set of patron rules and expectations—so everyone knows and understands we ought not take advantage of a spot that’s open for business.

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What we post and see online is known by all

Who among us did not realize when posting stuff on Facebook that advertisers were watching our every word and pix?  Facebook, and the entire internet for that matter, is free for one reason: advertisers.  They monitor what we say and reveal as well as what internet sites we roam from Facebook and other social media.  That’s how we get all the news we can use from the internet for free.  The internet never promised us security and privacy.  It’s been routinely hacked.  Some users are trolled.  And the Russian bots and fake news proliferated, in accordance with our nation’s guaranteed right of free speech.

So why did the U.S. Congress make a federal case out of Facebook’s lax security?  Why did they feel the need for a public scorning, scolding, and intellectual crucifixion of Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg last week?  Our nation has a heap more problems than the privacy settings of Facebook accounts.

Was the Zuckerberg testimony some sort of search for evil, as Americans are known to seek when bad things happen to us?  Was this some sort of dog-and-pony show by our elected officials, democrats and republicans, still smarting over the Trump presidential win and subsequent leadership?  Why not grill that computer guy with the pink hair and body piercings who blew the whistle on Cambridge Analytica and its connection if not command and directives by one Steve Bannon?

Now we are supposed to wait around until Facebook lets each of us know if we were one of the 80 million users whose accounts were sought to persuade a Trump victory?  Here’s the deal: Trump was going to win whether or not 80 million Americans were inspired by Facebook’s political ads, Russian bots and unknown demographic influences.  Hillary Clinton actually won the majority vote by two million, but she did not win the Electoral College because she lost Ohio, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Michigan.

Who even looks at the ads on Facebook anyway?  I’ve managed to turn a blind eye.  And while scrolling the Facebook feed, most of what I see is a resent internet poster on life being full of love and loss.  If anything would make me want to drop Facebook, that would be it.  Yet I remain a participant for the occasional real news from families and friends.  That’s maybe two percent of what I get from Facebook these days.  It used to be fun years ago.  Remember Throwback Thursday?  Keeping up with that was tedious and tiresome especially as I was swamped by work in the real world.  But it was a fad, and so is Facebook and maybe social media altogether.  We bore easily after a few years.

The In Crowd

The cool thing nowadays is to remove your Facebook account.  A few million have done just that (as if the Russian bots can’t find some other way to influence, tantalize and confuse us on the internet).  The internet has always been a deal with the devil.  Computers are just switches using 0s and 1s.  And that’s the problem in trying to maintain some kind of security such as online purchases with a credit card.  Simply put, it can’t be done.  We’ve seen time and again hacking of major accounts from banks to department stores, government departments to hospitals and colleges.  It’s a modern man-made mess.

Because of privacy concerns, I was late to Facebook.  I didn’t want everyone to know my business: where I went on vacation, when I went on vacation, my news and blues and latest hairdos.  But like practically every American, I figured ‘What the hell?’  Why not get on social media and mix it up?  Things went smoothly enough … until the 2016 election.  It was sad to see how comments for and against Trump, Hillary and Obama were taken by long-time friends and family.  I’d say relationships will never be the same and patched up.  Some would say I have a big mouth—but no more so than others on Facebook. Besides, I always supported free speech, even if Obama was called a n**&^% by my Facebook friends.

Free speech is what I’m all about.  I put up with comments I don’t like.  To keep peace among my kin, I turned to tweeting my all-out sassy quips against, well, you know who.

The idea of Cambridge Analytica and Facebook in a data breach scandal is just too overwhelming and scary for some folks.  They feel violated, their deeply-held political, religious and societal views being studied and used to swing an election, or so the tale goes, wagging the dog.  We need to grow up and face the technological age in which we live: Anything we say on the internet and social media can and will be used against us.

One final thought on the subject: There really is no way to delete what’s said online.  It’s out there now in cyberspace … to be found out by someone, somehow, someday, somewhere.

 

 

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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.