If it were up to the New York Knicks fans, the President would have been Eighty-Sixed out of the game. With his picture on the Jumbotron with the national anthem playing, ABC couldn’t mute the disapproval of the fair-weather New Yorker that they have come to disdain. One writer at the digital publication, Jezebel, wrote, “At Monday’s NBA Finals, Trump was as much of a good luck charm to the Knicks as a fork is to a toaster.”
This past Sunday, NBC broadcast the most deranged interview of Meet the Press that the Orange Felon has given to date. On a one-hour show where there are normally three or four guests, they gave him 40 minutes to basically lie on national TV, berate, and patronize journalist Kristen Welker. And then stormed off when he was challenged about his assertions of “election fraud” in California. AND he’s still going on about the 2020 election that he has challenged and lost in court over 60 times.
NBC owes the country an apology and, out of fairness, equal time to the opposition to counter all the lies and prevarications he was doling out from the war on Iran to the effects of the war on the economy to midwestern farmers, and finally on California elections.
It’s far past time for the national press corps to hold this corrupt president accountable at every interview, press conference, and rally! Why? Because freedom of the press matters.
Free speech is the first right that guarantees all the others. That’s what the Founding Fathers knew and understood. However, it erodes fast every time this corrupt tyrant exclaims, “fake news!”
Over the last year, we’ve seen hundreds of teachers, professors, and other employees fired for speaking out online. Federal officers have wounded, jailed, and deported journalists for their coverage of the immigration crackdown. Trump himself has insulted the press. He’s launched frivolous lawsuits against reputable news outlets. And he’s pushed to further polarize the country and co-opt the very meaning of the phrase ‘freedom of speech.’
In recent years, the United States has suffered assaults on its democracy the likes of which we have never before seen. It has been documented in multiple documentaries that the search for insight into this most basic First Amendment right that so many of us have taken for granted has been threatened time and again. Most recently, by the Trump administration’s culture wars on PBS, American colleges, and the press in general, we have seen the violent responses to protests against ICE in LA, Chicago, Washington, D.C. and Minneapolis.
And for the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, the Orange Felon has built a giant MMA ring on the White House lawn to celebrate violence with spectacle, rather than freedom from tyranny! This has echoes of Caligula and the ringmasters of the Roman Coliseum forcing gladiators to fight to the death to entertain the masses. The problem is that so much of our national sports, reality TV, and other forms of entertainment have become spectacles meant to satiate the masses and keep us distracted. And just what are we being distracted from: the Epstein files, the grift on the national treasury by the Trump family, and the gutting of all the national programs that keep Americans safe and informed.
This is what America gets for electing a fake billionaire-reality TV celebrity who is a convicted felon and who should probably be in prison, not the White House.
Distraction from local matters
As the Trump circus dominates the national consciousness, it’s becoming easier to be distracted from local matters and to become less focused. The Fred Brown proposal for Western Avenue and the POLA High School proposal for the LA County Courthouse site come to mind. As the national narrative becomes more combative and vitriolic, we should remember that we are all still neighbors here. This community has accomplished many good things over the years to house the homeless, feed the poor, and to clean up the environment.
I have witnessed when people of good faith come together with a joint mission to do what is best for the greater good. And finding that “greater good” is what is mostly argued about – but that is a worthy argument.
What we have now is a lack of vision about just what this greater good needs to be for the San Pedro Bay community. That’s the missing element. People can complain about this project or that proposal, but never offer a reasoned alternative that draws consensus and not division. We have so many small-town personal prejudices that we can’t see what is good for the whole town without petty turf wars breaking out. And the truth be told, that is what has stopped San Pedro from achieving its dreams.
I will be posting this part of my editorial on Facebook and will be asking you, the readers, for solutions to the problems of this place. Not just what’s good for you but for the whole town, because we are a unique village – put away the pitchforks and let’s find some common ground.