Christmas Again Wins the Annual War

by Walter Brasch

      The mythical War on Christmas is over and once again Christmas won.

      The war was created out of fairy dust, and then neatly wrapped up and delivered to religious right-wing extremists by pretend-generals Bill O’Reilly, Sean Hannity, Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh, and a cast of dozens who have seized the public airways.

 One of the battalion commanders is Rep. Doug Lamborn, a Republican from Colorado. He introduced a resolution, which 35 other Republicans co-signed, that defends the holiday. That resolution calls for the House of Representatives to recognize “the importance of the symbols and traditions of Christmas,” to “strongly [disapprove] of attempts to ban references to Christmas; [and] expresses support for the use of these symbols and traditions by those who celebrate Christmas.”

      There are only two major problems with that bill.

      First, it’s hard not to find Christmas. The annual Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade ends with a Santa Claus float to signal the beginning of Christmas season, even though Christmas sales begin about Halloween. Businesses make their greatest profits between Thanksgiving and Christmas by turning everything red and green. Homes and businesses throughout the country have Christmas lights, wreaths, and decorated Christmas trees. Several Christmas trees are even in the White House. Unlimited Christmas music fills the air and on radio. The media are overloaded by Christmas advertising and news. Every major TV network has a plethora of re-run Christmas shows, from the animated “A Charlie Brown Christmas” and “How the Grinch Stole Christmas” to four-star films “Miracle on 34th Street,” “White Christmas,” and It’s a Wonderful Life.”

      There is no war. But the ignorant extremists believe if someone says “Happy Holidays” instead of “Merry Christmas,” that is an attack on Christmas. A few million Americans, led by the jingoistic “take-no-prisoners” right-wing media, defend the holiday by shouting, “Merry Christmas” at everyone from a homeless veteran to strangers at airports to store clerks to business executives; it’s a battle cry that rivals the Rebel Call of the 1860s. Jesus would first be appalled, and then laugh himself into tears at the hate shown by these sanctimonious self-indulgent holier-than-thou misguided souls.

      Second, the First Amendment guarantees Americans not only the right to worship whoever and whatever they wish, whether it’s Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism, atheism, or deism, the prevalent religion of many of the most notable Founding Fathers. Because of the First Amendment, you see hundreds of thousands of churches conducting services without government intervention. The First Amendment also guarantees the separation of church and state and prohibits the establishment of a state religion. That’s why you don’t see manger scenes in front of court houses and hear Christmas prayers at city council meetings. But you do see city workers putting festive lights and decorations on street lamps.

      Nevertheless, in ignorance of what the Constitution dictates, the extreme evangelical right-wing, which doesn’t seem to respect any religion other than their own, load their canons of deceit every December to attack the ACLU for leading the War on Christmas. But, the ACLU—and numerous other national organizations—not only protect the First Amendment’s dictate against the establishment of a national religion, they also vigorously defend, often in court, the right of all citizens, including the extremists, not only to worship their own religions but also to proclaim “Merry Christmas” to whomever they wish.

      The resolution that Rep. Lamborn introduced is itself unconstitutional. Rep. Lamborn—who took a mandatory law course while an undergraduate journalism major—and then many more in law school—should have known his proposed resolution is an infringement upon what the Founding Fathers wanted and believed. But, he is just playing to his audience—and not the Constitution.

      His resolution, introduced two weeks ago, is buried in the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform. But, it will probably resurface 11 months from now. The conservative media and their followers regift this nonsense every December.

      [Dr. Brasch, a Jew and an ACLU chapter officer who specializes in defending and protecting the First Amendment, celebrates all holidays, including Christmas, and respects all religions as well as those individuals who choose not to believe in any religion. He is the author of 20 books; the most recent one is Fracking Pennsylvania.]

Today’s Media: Often Pandering to Bias and Ignorance

by Walter Brasch

      The Texas board of education didn’t find anything wrong with a world geography textbook that said slaves from Africa were workers, but that immigrants from northern Europe were indentured servants.

      This is the same school board that five years ago demanded that textbooks emphasize that slavery was only a side issue to the cause of the civil war, and that Republican achievements be emphasized in political science and civics textbooks.

      For good measure, the officials also wanted a “fair and balanced” look at evolution versus intelligent design or creationism, and that global warming is only a theory, overlooking substantial and significant scientific evidence.

      Because Texas adopts textbooks for the entire state, and there is minimal local choice, publishers tend to publish what Texas wants. The geography book had a 100,000 sale in Texas alone. However, McGraw-Hill, under a firestorm of protest from educators and parents, is modifying the text—African slaves will no longer be “workers” but slaves in the next printing.

      Publishers in America, trying to reap the widest possible financial benefit by not offending anyone, especially school boards, often force authors to overlook significant historical and social trends. For more than a century, books which targeted buyers in the North consistently overlooked or minimized Southern views about the Civil War; other books, which targeted a Southern readership, discussed the War of Northern Aggression or the War Between the States.

      Almost all media overlooked significant issues about slavery, the genocide against Native Americans, the real reasons for the Mexican-American War, the seizure of personal property and subsequent incarceration of Japanese-American citizens during World War II, the reasons why the United States went to war in Vietnam, the first Gulf War and, more recent, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

      Textbook publishers, choosing profits over truth, often glossed over, or completely ignored until years or decades later, the major social movements, including the civil rights, anti-war and peace movements of the 1960s and the emerging environmental movement of the 1970s. It was the underground and alternative press that presented the truth that the establishment press under-reported or refused to acknowledge, timidly accepting the “official sources.”

      Textbook publishers aren’t the only problem. The news media have ignored or downplayed mass protests against the wars, whether Vietnam or Iraq. They have ignored or downplayed mass protests against fracking. And, during this election year, all media have decided which candidates should get the most news coverage. There are several excellent Republican presidential candidates, but the media like the pompous and boisterous Donald Trump; he gives a good show. On the Democratic side, Hillary Clinton gets the most coverage of the three major candidates. Analysis of network air time by the Tyndall Reports shows that ABC-TV’s “World News Tonight” during the past year gave Donald Trump 81 minutes of air; it gave Sen. Bernie Sanders less than a minute, although Sanders is drawing even larger crowds than Trump. It’s no different with CBS and NBC television coverage. Total broadcast network time for Trump, according to Tyndall’s data, is 234 minutes; for Sanders, it’s about 10 minutes. The problem, of course, is editorializing by omission.

      At one time, the media led the nation in unveiling social injustice and other major problems. Although they had their defects and biases, the nation’s media understood they were the system that helped assure a free and unencumbered forum for debate about major issues. More important, they also understood that their role wasn’t to perpetuate fraud and lies, but to seek out and present the truth. Seemingly in conflict—present all views vs. present the facts and the truth—the media also understood that newsprint and airtime should not be wasted upon being a megaphone for ignorance.

      Now, their role is to follow, while pandering to the entertainment value of social and political issues and giving cursory glances at the news value. It’s not what the Founding Fathers believed and, certainly, not what they wanted. But it is, in the 21st century, the media’s vain attempt to restore profits.

      [Dr. Brasch has been a journalist more than four decades, reporting and editing on newspapers, magazines, and television. He is also professor emeritus of mass communications from Bloomsburg University.]

Blustery Donald Trump vs. The Quiet Christian

by Rosemary and Walter Brasch

      Before a cheering and whooping crowd in Mount Pleasant, S.C., Donald Trump, spewing the blustery rhetoric of a demagogue, declared that the United States should ban all Muslims from entering the country.

      He claimed to have Muslim friends who supported his position. He claimed that Muslims want “to change your religion.” He claimed that a poll, one created by an anti-Muslim extremist, showed that one-fourth of American Muslims believe violence against Americans is justified.

      With absolutely no proof to support his accusations, and significant evidence to dispute it, for more than six years he and those who follow his hate have claimed President Obama was born in a foreign country and is a Muslim. Apparently, Trump is incapable of reading and understanding the Constitution, especially the part that says there shall be no religious tests for the office of the presidency.

      The blue-eyed, dyed-blonde-haired Aryan, who professes to be a Christian, also wants to create a wall along the country’s southern border to keep out illegal immigrants. He has yet to explain where the money will come from to build the wall and to protect it, and refuses to acknowledge that such a wall is impractical, and the Obama administration has already added money and agents for border protection. He wants to deport every one of the 11 million undocumented workers already in the United States, most of whom work in low-paying jobs, are trying to assimilate into the American melting pot culture, and have never had even a parking ticket. But, the billionaire bigot can’t provide specifics how to deport them.

      His speech on an aircraft carrier museum was one day after President Obama, trying to reassure the people of the nation’s commitment against domestic terrorism after the San Bernardino murders, asked the nation to remember “Muslim Americans are our friends and our neighbors, our co-workers, our sports heroes—and, yes, they are our men and women in uniform who are willing to die in defense of our country.”

      Trump’s demand to block Muslims from entering the U.S. was rejected by the other Republican presidential candidates, all of whom had pledged to support him if he was the party’s nominee. His beliefs were also rejected by all of the Democratic candidates, and by sensible people throughout the world. However, about two-thirds of all persons who are likely to vote in the Republican primaries also believe in a ban on immigration of Muslims, according to the latest Bloomberg Politics Poll. Fear merges with religious bigotry and white supremacy to give Trump a significant advantage.

      Trump’s demand for a ban on Muslims, if ever carried through, is unconstitutional. And, yet, he is the leading Republican presidential contender. He appeals to the segment of America that believes its own problems are caused by others and who are ruled by fear not reason. In a paranoid belief that the government is their enemy, and using one part of the Constitution to justify their gun mentality while denying much of the rest of it, they have loaded their houses and cars with guns, preparing to defend their fears against a Muslim invasion or an attack by the 101st Airborne Division. The right wing extremists and Trump’s probable voters have willingly allowed themselves to be encrusted by whatever hateful rhetoric is blown past them.

      In every one of his speeches, Trump gets ovations for his rhetoric, and for his condemnation of the mass media, while using the media to get his message to the people of the extreme right wing.

      On the same day that Donald Trump was blustering and flinging lies and half-truths, the mass media reported that Jimmy Carter was now cancer-free.

      Carter is the antithesis of Trump. He is quiet, humble, and works to serve humanity not himself.

      He graduated in the top 10 percent of his class at the Naval Academy, one of the most rigorous colleges in the country, and became a lieutenant in the nuclear submarine service. The man in charge of the nuclear Navy was Adm. Hyman Rickover, one of the most brilliant and demanding officers the military ever had, and one who inspired and set the example for the young officer.

      But, Jimmy Carter didn’t stay in the Navy, even with a future that would probably have put at least one star on his collar. After his father died, he left the Navy to help his family run a peanut farm in rural Georgia, and was successful as a state legislator and governor.

      On his second day in office as president, he pardoned all draft evaders of the Vietnam War. Drawing upon his own experience and culture, he created the departments of Energy and Education. But his greatest role was to try to reduce conflict around the world. His leadership led to the SALT II nuclear arms reduction treaty and to the Camp David Accords, which brought together Egyptian president Anwar Sadat and Israeli prime minister Menachem Begin. Sadat and Begin shared the Nobel Peace Prize; Carter would receive one in 2002 for his continued work of quiet diplomacy.

      The foundation of the Carter Center is to help humanity. Carter or one of his volunteers or staff have monitored elections throughout the world, assisted in developing agriculture, and reducing or eradicating disease.

      Jimmy Carter, who once lived in public housing, is an excellent carpenter, who is active in Habitat for Humanity, where he helps build homes for the impoverished, working out of the glare of the media spotlight.

      Unlike the leading presidential candidates who feel some kind of a need to publicly boast they are Christians and to “outChristian” one another while saying very unChrist-like statements, Jimmy Carter quietly goes about living his faith. For 35 years, he has taught Sunday School, relishing the role of a volunteer teacher.

      He is the author of 23 books, most of them focused upon improving humanity throughout the world, several that explore human rights and religion.        

      Donald Trump can bluster all he wants. He can distort the truth, rant and rally his minions to standing ovations. But, he will never be as effective, or as important, as the 91-year-old man from Plains, Ga., who quietly goes about a life dedicated to helping others.

      [Rosemary Brasch is a retired secretary, Red Cross family services disaster specialist, and university instructor of labor studies. Walter Brasch is an award-winning journalist, former newspaper and magazine reporter and editor, and professor emeritus of mass communications. He is also the author of 20 books; the latest one is Fracking Pennsylvania: Flirting With Disaster.]

Downsizing the News Staff; Downsizing Quality and Credibility

by Walter Brasch

(Part 2 of 2)

           

      For more than a decade, advertising, circulation, and news quality in both print and electronic media have been in a downward spiral. That spiral has twin intertwining roots.

      The first root is the rise of social media. The complacent and stodgy print media were slow to catch onto the concept and rise of social media and its influence upon a generation that conducts its life by a fusion of smart phones to ears. When owners figured out they needed to have a digital presence, they first gave away content in a desperate bid to keep readers, and then began to charge for it to those who didn’t have subscriptions.
      Like their TV cousins—CNN, FoxNews, and MSNBC—newspapers became 24/7 operations, with reporters now expected not only to find the stories, do the research, report, and write stories for one edition a day, but also to rewrite and update their stories for the newspaper’s website. It wasn’t long until editors had print reporters take small portable cameras and their cell phones into the field to also transmit visual stories to the newspaper’s copy desk. The result is a diminished quality as reporters now have more work to do in a time frame that keeps increasing, but are working with the same salaries and benefits.

      The second root is the Great Recession, which began about December 2007 during the last year of the Bush–Cheney administration when the bubble manipulated by financial institutions, with minimal governmental oversight, finally burst. The recession ended about June 2009, six months into the Obama administration.

      For years, media owners had been wallowing in 10–30 percent annual profits, near the top of all industries, didn’t put their income into improving their properties and their news operations, but took the money and increased shareholder returns, thus keeping their own jobs.

      With the Great Recession, business cut back on advertising. This led to fewer news pages and then to narrower page sizes as publishers began to cut expenses. The Great Recession also led to readers with less disposable income cancelling their subscriptions. The business model for newspapers is that higher circulation means higher rates for advertising; conversely, lower circulation means publishers charge less per column inch for advertising, leading to less profit. In most newspapers, advertising accounts for about 70–80 percent of revenue.

      When profits continued to shrink, owners and their financial staff and analysts, few of whom ever had to chase a story, cut back staff, froze salaries and benefits.

      Cutting back staff means that whoever is left not only has to transmit video from the field and rewrite stories for the paper’s website, they are now forced to increase their own productivity to cover stories that the laid-off reporters once covered, and not cover certain stories that should have been covered. Over time, this has led to a decrease in the quality of both reporting and writing, and a decrease in investigative and in-depth reporting, which takes both time and resources.

      At one time, newspapers had proofreaders, whose job was to make sure news stories had no spelling and grammar errors. But, to increase profits, publishers eliminated proofreaders, giving their work to the copy desk. Copyeditors check reporters’ stories for accuracy, often asking reporters to fill holes in their stories or to verify certain facts. Copyeditors also tighten stories, moving sentences and paragraphs to improve readability, flow, and to assure that the most important information isn’t buried somewhere in the middle of the story. Copyeditors also delete unnecessary verbiage and news source quotes that don’t add anything to the story. They write the headlines, format reporters’ copy and place it onto the page. Copyeditors, along with city editors and managing editors, also decide what stories should get larger headlines and what pages they should go onto to give readers a roadmap of importance.

      As publishers began laying off copyeditors, the finesse of the copydesk has been replaced by “Shovel Editing”—take a shovel and throw what you have onto the page.

      With fewer staff, owners decided that filling what is left of the diminishing news hole, caused by less advertising, is more economical if they use syndicated material—perhaps a feature from several states away now dumped onto a local page but with no local angle, packaged entertainment news that spills the salacious news about some celebrity’s forthcoming divorce, or more press releases, which are barely edited or verified because copyeditors are already overworked. Some newspapers have filled their pages with bloated stories about misdemeanors, largely handed to them by police departments and by larger photos of car crashes and check-passing ceremonies that take up space that once would have been used for news stories.

      As newspapers began their descent, circulation decreased—partially because other online sources became more prevalent, largely because newspaper content had become soft. Many local newspapers, under the direction of editors willing to stand up for journalistic credibility, have maintained an excellent news operation. But overall, during the past decade, Americans turned to a comedy cable channel, tuned in Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert for 44 minutes of truth four times a week, and tuned out ink on newsprint.

      The economy has rebounded; unemployment is down to 5 percent. The average wage for a newly-minted liberal arts graduate is about $41,000, according to the National Association of Colleges and Employers. For a new reporter, it’s about $10,000–$15,000 a year lower, according to a study from the University of Georgia. More important, some of the better graduates of journalism programs are planning for careers in PR, advertising, and other non-news fields.

      Profits should be rising for newspaper groups. But, owners still give no or just minimal raises to their editorial staff, and they haven’t replaced the jobs lost during the past decade.

      The soul of a newspaper is its newsroom, something many owners say but never believe. While downsizing the news rooms, owners’ actions have caused a further downsizing in media credibility and have directly led to a downward spiral in the viability of both print and broadcast media.

      The solution to stopping the decline is to restore jobs to the newsroom, hire the best reporter–writers and editors, ones who have a broad knowledge of culture and society, pay them decent wages, give them better benefits, give them time to develop, report, and then write in-depth stories. While doing this, owners need to disregard financial experts who throw useless verbiage and skewed statistics that focus solely upon the “bottom line” and how to “maximize profits. They need to stop hiring $500 an hour media consultants, more adept at massaging statistics than in reporting social issues, who claim readers want shorter news stories, shorter columns, flashy graphics, and prefer crime and entertainment stories.

      When a solid news product re-emerges, the readers will return. When the circulation increases, so will the advertisers and the revenue.

     [In a four-decade career in journalism, Dr. Brasch has been a newspaper and magazine reporter and editor, multi-media writer-producer, television writer, and professor of mass communications. He is the author of 20 books, most of which fuse history and contemporary social issues; his most recent book is Fracking Pennsylvania. He is also the recipient of more than 200 journalism awards for excellence, including multiple awards from the Society of Professional Journalists, National Society of Newspaper Columnists, National Federation of Press Women, Press Club of Southern California, AP, and the Pennsylvania Press Club.]

Downsizing the News Staff; Downsizing Quality and Credibility

by Walter Brasch

(Part 1 of 2)

      On Monday, Nov. 2, every National Geographic staffer was told to report to the magazine’s Washington, D.C., headquarters the next day to await a phone call or e-mail from Human Resources.

      Ever since Rupert Murdoch’s 21st Century Fox corporation bought the magazine in September, there were rumors the new owner would maximize profits by terminating employees. Those predictions came through when Management fired 180 people, and told dozens of others they were being offered “voluntary buy-outs.” The corporation also announced it was eliminating health coverage for future retirees and was freezing all pensions. Management told the public there would be no loss of quality, but it’s hard to believe those claims when the same management sliced photo editors, designers, writers, and several fact-checkers from the payroll.

      The same day Murdoch terminated 9 percent of his staff, the owners of the Philadelphia Inquirer and Daily News fired 46 journalists, leaving only one copyeditor at the Daily News. A month earlier, the Los Angeles Times cut about 10 percent of its news room staff. The Chicago Sun-Times fired all its 28 photographers, including one who won the Pulitzer Prize, and is relying upon lower-paid freelancers and wire services.

      The New Orleans Times-Picayune, which won a Pulitzer Prize for its coverage of Hurricane Katrina, plans to cut one-fifth of its news staff. Beginning in 2012, executive management in Cleveland reduced the newspaper from a daily to three times a week and fired staffers at that time. The Times–Picayune isn’t the only newspaper to have downsized its newsroom and reduced frequency. Among metro dailies that are now printed only three or four days a week are the Detroit Free Press and Detroit News, the Seattle-Post-Intelligencer, the Cleveland Plain-Dealer, the Syracuse Advance-Standard, and the Harrisburg Patriot-News. The Times-Picayune, Plain-Dealer, Advance-Standard, and the Patriot-News, all owned by Newhouse Newspapers, slashed their newsroom staff before reducing the frequency. Executive management had claimed there would be no loss of quality; Management was wrong.

      During the past three decades, the number of daily newspapers declined from 1,730 in 1981 to 1,331 last year, with almost 100 newspapers ceasing publication just in the past three years.

      During the past decade, newspaper owners, seeking to squeeze every dollar of profit they could, terminated about 22,000 employees, almost a 40 percent cut from the peak of 55,000 in 2006. Last year, management cut 3,800 positions, according to the American Society of News Editors. Although some of those laid off were marginally productive and skilled, most were experienced journalists who set standards for distinguished reporting and writing.

      The remaining field reporters are now required not only to find the story, report it, and then write it, they now have to film it, using either a small hand-held camera or their cell phone, write it for the print edition, and then rewrite it for the web edition, updating the story for the web as often as necessary. Because of the need to fill the newspaper columns and web bandspace, while increasing the workload because of layoffs, in-depth and investigative journalism, which requires not just resources but time, has become nearly non-existent.

      The major news magazines, including TIME and Newsweek, have sliced their news staffs. However, the trend to downsize to maintain or increase profits hasn’t been as severe in the magazine industry compared to the newspaper industry. The reason is that most of the nation’s 20,000 magazines already have few full-time editorial staff employees; freelance writers produce most of the stories.

      The layoffs aren’t confined to the print media. Almost all cable networks, from the Golf Channel to MTV, TV Land, Nickelodeon, Turner Broadcasting, and Disney’s ESPN have cut or are planning to cut staff. Turner cut 1,500 jobs; ESPN announced last month it cut more than 300 employees, most of them producers and editors.

      The major over-the-air network media have been reducing the number of reporters, writers, and producers since the early 1990s. Broadcast radio eliminated about 19 percent of its employee positions, down to 91,000 at the end of 2014 from 112,000 in 2002. “Rip-and-read” journalism—a DJ or other staffer taking news from a wire service and merely reading it—continued to replace local reporters reporting local stories. Even DJs have been eliminated in most stations, with technicians pushing buttons to bring in automated syndicated programs that have breaks for local commercials.

      Disney’s ABC-TV chopped 400 positions, about 25 percent of its news division in 2010. CBS and NBC news divisions have also cut staff and coverage. On local TV stations, the downsizing is apparent with fewer stories of significance being aired, and with the declining quality of both reporting and writing. As is the case with radio, technology has reduced the need for technicians—as well as producers and editors. On some stories, a lone reporter is now forced to set up the camera, check audio and light levels, and interview the news source.

      The social media have also begun downsizing, with Twitter laying off more than 300 of its 4,000 person workforce in October.

      Owners blame the economy for their decisions to downsize. They blame loss of advertising. They blame the rise of digital media. They blame changing reading and viewing habits of the younger generation with a me-first egocentric attitude and a smart phone fused to their ear. They blame the lower ratings and declining income on the fragmentation of TV viewership because of the rise of hundreds of cable networks. They blame everyone and everything for their decisions. But, they seldom blame the real reason for the decline in circulation and ratings—their own incompetence.

      (Next week: Causes and Solutions)

[In a four-decade career in journalism, Dr. Brasch has been a newspaper and magazine reporter and editor, multi-media writer-producer, advertising copywriter, and professor of mass communications. He is the author of 20 books, most of which fuse history and contemporary social issues; his most recent book is Fracking Pennsylvania. He is also the recipient of more than 200 journalism awards for excellence, including multiple awards from the Society of Professional Journalists, National Society of Newspaper Columnists, National Federation of Press Women, Press Club of Southern California, AP, and the Pennsylvania Press Club.]

Terrorism on American Soil

by Walter Brasch

      During this past week a three-year-old boy in Rock Hill, S.C., killed himself when he was playing with a loaded gun in his house.

      He wasn’t the only one in Rock Hill to die from a gunshot. In July, a man killed himself after shooting his wife, her son and the son’s girlfriend. The following month, someone killed a 30-year-old woman; someone else that same week killed a 27-year-old man.

      Rock Hill, a city of about 66,000 is not unique.

      About 2,700 children are killed every year from gunshot violence; about 60 percent of them are homicides, the rest are suicides or unintentional deaths, such as that of the three-year-old. Every year, another 15,000 youth are wounded from gun fire. Overall, about 33,000 die from gunshot violence; 76,000 are injured from gunshot violence, according to data compiled by the Brady Center. The names, faces, and lives of everyone killed or injured just blend into tables of statistics.

      Articles in the Journal of Trauma, Injury, Infection and Critical Care reveal an even greater problem. The rate of gun violence leading to death is about 20 times greater than the combined rates of the next highest 22 first world countries. More than 1.7 million American homes have unlocked and loaded guns; the probability that one of those guns will be used in a murder, suicide, domestic dispute, or unintentional shooting is about 22 times more likely than if there was no gun in the house, according to a study led by Dr. Arthur Kellerman, dean of the School of Medicine at the Uniformed Services University of the Health Science.

      The leadership of the NRA doesn’t want anyone anywhere for any reason to mess with its militant stand to allow Americans to own and use guns. They wrap themselves within the cloth of the Second Amendment to advance their arguments and pander to the masses, never understanding that there are limits and exceptions to most of the amendments.

      The paranoid conspiracy-clad leadership, along with their allies and followers, believe civilians need weapons to protect themselves against possible government invasions. That scenario is in the netherland of impossibility, but even if true, anyone with a semi-automatic rifle has little chance against an army of tanks, drones, and missiles.

      The NRA leadership says, apparently not recognizing the absurdity of their statements, that President Obama is coming for your guns. He hasn’t done so in seven years; he won’t do so in his last year in office. But the fear the NRA and its allies spew is more than just blustering rhetoric; it is based upon profits. Every time there is a mass shooting, the gun industry sends out that message. Dealers sell more guns to frightened Americans. This benefits the gun manufacturers, which create more guns to meet more demand, leading to more donations by manufacturers and the public to the NRA and fellow gun lobbyists, and which finds its way to politicians who puff out their chests, claim to believe the Second Amendment is absolute, develop acute panic attacks when all reasonable measures to limit guns are presented, and become part of the reason why there are so many guns and so many gun deaths in the United States.

      Technology exists to mass produce “smart guns” that won’t fire unless they’re in the possession of the owner. The NRA opposes this. Technology exists to code every bullet, which would help law enforcement to better identify who might have killed or wounded 110,000 people every year. The NRA also opposes this.

      The NRA leadership claims the solution to gun violence is better psychological evaluation. But, their paid-for politicians generally don’t like social service programs, especially those that are funded by the taxpayers. More important, the NRA leadership, all of them conservatives, can’t explain how mass psychological evaluations don’t violate the Constitution.

      However, 72 percent of NRA members want stronger background checks before anyone can legally buy a gun, according to a poll by the Center for American Progress. Overall, about 83 percent of Americans want stronger background checks.

After every mass shooting, whether in schools, malls, or theaters, Americans cry, and politicians send crocodile-tear condolences to the media, which then amplify their words, as if they all care about the victims. But, the gun manufacturers, the NRA, the politicians, and the media don’t care. They just go through the motions of pretending they do.

      In Texas, a paranoid state senator, proudly sporting a perfect score by NRA criteria, this past week said he opposed having Syrian refugees admitted into the United States because they might buy guns and commit acts of terrorism. He said it was too easy to get guns, but he has also spent his political career opposing responsible gun control measures.

      This past week in Minneapolis, police arrested three White supremacists who shot five Afro-Americans at a peaceful protest rally; each of the shooters was carrying a legally-purchased gun. In New Orleans, 17 people at a park were injured by gunfire; witnesses identified one of the shooters as having a silver-colored machine gun. In Biloxi, Miss., a man pulled a concealed 9 mm. gun and killed a waitress who had asked him not to smoke in the restaurant. In Colorado Springs, police arrested a 57-year-old man who used an AK-47 semi-automatic assault rifle to kill three people and wound nine others. One of those killed was a police officer; five of the wounded are police officers. (Three weeks earlier, in Colorado Springs, a man with a semi-automatic rifle killed three people before being killed by police.)

      Next year, when we gather with our families to celebrate Thanksgiving, those of us still alive might wish to give thanks that we weren’t killed intentionally or accidentally by someone wielding one of the 300 million guns that Americans cling to as if they were the essence of their own lives.

[Dr. Brasch is an award-winning journalist and the author of 20 books, most of which fuse history and contemporary social issues; his most recent book is Fracking Pennsylvania. He readily admits to being a mediocre trap shooter.]

The Republicans’ Rhetoric of Hate and Fear

by Walter Brasch

     Fear, laced with paranoia, is driving the American response against allowing Syrian refugees into the United States.

      President Obama has said he would accept 10,000 refugees, all of them subjected to intense scrutiny before being admitted to the country. France, with a population about one-fifth that of the United States, despite the worst attack on its soil since World War II, will accept 30,000 refugees.

      Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) told the Senate, “We are not a nation that delivers children back into the hands of ISIS because some politician doesn’t like their religion.” Sen. Bernie Sanders (D-Vt.), a Jew, said the nation should “not allow ourselves to be divided and succumb to Islamophobia,” and that when “thousands of people have lost everything—have nothing left but the shirts on their backs—we will not turn our backs on the refugees.”

      They are among a minority. Only 28 percent of Americans believe the nation should allow Syrian refugees into the United States, according to an independent Bloomberg poll. Fifty-three percent say absolutely deny any Syrian refugee, and apparently anyone who is a Muslim, a place in the United States; 11 percent say admit only Christians; 8 percent aren’t sure.

      The governors of 30 states, mostly in the South and Midwest, have also said they don’t want Syrian refugees in their states. Gov. Mike Pence (R-Ind.) has even ordered his state agencies to deny residence to two Syrian families who had undergone extensive background checks by the FBI and other agencies and were scheduled to be relocated in Indianapolis. The governors’ opinion, fueled by politics not compassion, really doesn’t matter; the acceptance and relocation of refugees fleeing oppression is a federal not a state issue.

     Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), born in Canada but with dual American and Canadian citizenship, doesn’t want Syrian refugees in his adopted country. Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), whose parents were Cuban refugees, doesn’t want Syrian refugees in the U.S. Gov. Bobby Jindal (R-La.), born in the United States three months after his parents left India, doesn’t want his adopted country to admit Syrian refugees.

        Donald Trump, with a northern European heritage and currently the leading candidate for the Republican presidential nomination, had previously declared if he was the president he would build a wall between the U.S. and Mexico and round up and deport 11 million undocumented aliens, actions clearly in the fairy-tale netherland of impossibility, but definitely in the land of rhetoric meant to pander to his extreme right-wing following. In response to the murders in France, he says he would require all Muslims to register, and would close mosques. However, not one terrorist attack in the United States was hatched and carried out in a mosque. More important, Trump’s actions would be a violation not only of the First Amendment but everything the Founding Fathers believed.

      Jeb Bush said the U.S. should admit only Syrian refugees who are Christians. It was a stupid comment when he said it; it was just as stupid when he later “clarified” it by saying if the U.S. admitted any Muslim, it should only be after extensive screening. As President Obama tried to explain to the fear-mongers, it takes up to two years for the U.S. to admit any refugee from any country, and only after extensive screening. Even more important than screening refugees, the Constitution clearly doesn’t allow either acceptance or rejection of those who seek U.S. residency because of their religion, something Bush and the conservatives should have known, especially if they wish to run for any office, from local constable to the presidency of the United States.

       Gov. John Kasich (R-Ohio) says he has an idea how to defeat ISIS. The proselytizing presidential candidate wants to create a government agency to promote Judeo-Christian values around the world. It’s doubtful that many conservatives will be promoting any “Judeo-” values, because American Jews tend to lean more to liberal beliefs than other religions.

      State Rep. Glen Casada, Republican caucus leader in Tennessee, wants the Tennessee National Guard to round up all Syrian refugees who are lawful residents of his state and to deport them—if not back to Syria, at least to some other state. State Sen. Elaine Morgan (R-R.I.) wants to create internment camps for any Syrian refugee admitted into her state. Most Pennsylvania republican legislators, spewing their caucus’s talking points, said they had “grave concerns” about Gov. Tom Wolf’s decision to allow Syrian refugees to live in the state where the Declaration of Independence was written.

      Texas State Rep. Tony Dale, one of the nation’s most ardent defenders of the right to own guns, and who consistently receives grades of “A” from the NRA, added yet another reason to deny Syrian refugees admission to the United States. Without recognizing the irony and the hypocrisy, he said it would be too easy for refugees to buy guns.

      In the history of the United States, just the members of the white-hooded Protestant-professing fire-and-brimstone Klan killed and maimed more Americans than all the murders by non-Christian terrorists—and that includes 9/11. Add in the number of serial killers, the racists who killed children in churches, the zealots who killed health care personnel because they performed legal abortions, and the people like the Oklahoma City bombers and the Unabomber, and the number of pretend-Christians killing Americans rises to hundreds of times greater than any Muslim attack.

       Responding to the Islamophobia perpetuated by braggadocio-spewing politicians, an outraged President Obama said that the conservatives believe they could stand up against the leaders of any country, but “Apparently, they’re scared of widows and orphans coming into the United States.” There are some conservatives who say the U.S. should take care of their own first before admitting any refugee. But, conservatives, true to their political ideology, consistently vote against social programs, including aid to combat veterans. When not resorting to inane arguments, the extreme right-wing says the way to destroy ISIS is for the U.S. to send a few hundred thousand soldiers into Syria. It’s jingoistic hysteria couched in fear. It’s also the same logic that didn’t work in Iraq, and isn’t working in Afghanistan.

      In 1939, more than 60 percent of Americans, according to a poll by the American Institute of Public Opinion, said the U.S. should not admit 10,000 European Jewish children. Later that year, the U.S. turned back the MS St. Louis, carrying 908 passengers, most of them Jewish refugees.

      During the early 1930s, there was a politician who blamed Jews for his nation’s problems, and who used the rhetoric of fear, hate, and paranoia to become the elected leader of his countrymen. None of the Republican presidential candidates or their right-wing followers rise to the level of that politician who became a dictator. But, their poisonous hate and Islamophobic rhetoric matches that of Hitler.

     [Dr. Brasch is an award-winning journalist, professor emeritus of mass communications, and author of 20 books. His latest book is Fracking Pennsylvania.]

’Twixt the Cobwebs of Halloween and the Lights of Christmas

by Rosemary and Walter Brasch

      At one time, people placed carved pumpkins with a candle inside on their front porches to announce the beginning of the Halloween season.

And then it became a contest. First, best Halloween pumpkin. And then who could decorate their trees and hedges with the best fake cobwebs, followed by fake witches in trees.

      Next came Pumpkin Chunkin’, where teams make catapults and launch pumpkins.

      The beneficiaries of all this, of course, are the candy companies—which have steadily decreased the number of miniature candies and increased the price of them in giant bags—the card industry that began marketing their products not long after Labor Day, and just about every company that has figured out how to produce their products in orange and black.

      After Halloween comes Christmas decorations, bypassing anything for Veterans Day. At one time, homeowners and businesses set up Christmas displays after Thanksgiving, but it takes more than a month to replace pumpkins with lights, displays, and inflatable snowmen.

For Thanksgiving, wedged between Halloween and Christmas, we get supermarket ads shoving turkeys, cranberries, and sweet potato pies down our wallets.

      Overlooked in national celebrations, and shoved out of the decorating frenzy of the other holidays, is what is probably the most important day of the year—Black Friday, the day after Thanksgiving. Last year, 87 million Americans bought more than $50 billion in merchandise in the four-day period after Thanksgiving. This is definitely not enough. We consumers must push that number even higher.  

      There are no home displays to commemorate what is the busiest buying day of the season.

      We have an idea.

      Instead of replacing the cobwebs of Halloween with the Lights of Christmas, why not decorate our homes and yards with the spirit of commercialism? It’s definitely the American Spirit.

      Because plastic pumpkins are replacing organic ones, and artificial Christmas trees are replacing those pesky biodegradable real ones, we can make sure that Black Friday becomes a truly plastic holiday. Indeed, plastic pumpkins will never go away, much like our plastic credit card debt incurred on that one special day.

      In front of our houses we can decorate trees with maxed-out and cancelled credit cards. Special blacklights can shine upon the new silver data chips in the cards to create a ghoulish effect of avarice and conspicuous consumption. Batteries not included.

      Every season needs its own special clothes. In October, we wear Halloween costumes and orange sweatshirts; in December, it’s Christmas sweaters. For Black Friday, store clerks could wear black hoodies, reminding all of us about the mugging our bank accounts are receiving.

      Black Friday sales allow the human species to determine the survival of the fittest. That leads to thousands injured in car accidents while speeding to 30 sales in one day, and to the survivors of Mall Trampling exercises to reach those elusive 20 percent discount on whatever it is that the retailers think will attract the most customers this year. The benefit, of course, is to hospitals.

      In front of our houses, we can replace inflatable pumpkins with an inflatable ER, complete with an overworked inflatable nurse who automatically deflates after a 12-hour shift.

      On our doors, we can replace Christmas wreaths with Sheriff’s Sale signs or, at the least, “late notices” from the utilities companies.

      With proper merchandising, corporate America and fraggled homeowners can spend the last four months of the year, from Labor Day onward, in one long holiday. We can call it The Months of Con. Or, maybe, Months of Fusion. Or, perhaps, The Season of Debt and Con-Fusion.

      [Rosemary Brasch is a retired secretary, Red Cross family services disaster specialist, and labor studies college instructor; Walter Brasch is a journalist/author. His latest book is Fracking Pennsylvania.]

Snuggling Up to Celebrities Not Part of Journalism Training

by Walter Brasch

    

     One of the basic tenets of journalism ethics and practices is that reporters must keep their distance from news sources.

     They’re allowed to be friendly. They’re even allowed to share a meal with a news source. But, they must be independent. It’s a “Caesar’s wife” thing—they must be above suspicion.

     This past week, Lara Spencer, co-anchor of ABC-TV’s “Good Morning America,” snuggled up to Donald Trump.

     In a photo posted to Instagram, she is seen with her left arm around Trump’s shoulder, her right hand across his stomach. Both are looking at each other and smiling. Spencer posted the following message to the photo: “Can’t beat having the REAL DonaldJTrump on.” She added the emoticon of a smiley face.

     When Spencer was anchoring “Inside Edition,” a news-and-gossip half-hour syndicated show that focuses on celebrities, she was mostly deferential to the celebrities. That was expected. Hosts of those shows gain access to their sources not by asking tough questions or raising critical social issues.     But, “Good Morning America” is in ABC’s news division, not its entertainment division.

     Unfortunately, Spencer isn’t the only one to get close to her news sources. Reporters on the local police beat or who regularly cover local government often have a closer working relationship with their sources than they do with their editors and public. In the nation’s capital, reporters who should know better often attend parties and receptions with our elected officials and various members of the governing establishment. Some have been known to play tennis or go to the same social clubs with news sources. Some even enjoy taking all-expense-paid trips, set up by PR agencies for their clients who are hoping for a good story. The explanation by reporters is that it helps them get closer to their sources to get more information, which they pass onto their readers, listeners, and viewers.

     This is plainly bull.

     Reporters who get socially close to their sources do so because they enjoy the closeness to celebrities, politicians, business executives, and even PR hacks more than they enjoy talking to the homeless, to the marginally-poor, to those who are citizens with no financial or political power. Reporters assigned to the White House didn’t dig into the facts and challenge Richard Nixon about allegations of a burglary at the Watergate or of a cover-up; that was left to two general assignment reporters, who were mocked and scorned by the nation’s “elite” reporters. Failure of reporters to challenge George W. Bush about reasons for the invasion of Iraq led to the nation becoming involved in a war that cost the lives of 4,425 Americans, and injuries, some life-threatening and permanent, to about 32,000.

     Lara Spencer is a broadcast journalism graduate from Penn State. Cuddling up to sources for a photo-op is not what is taught at Penn State. Spencer should have known better.

These Judges Don’t Put Criminals into Prison

by Walter Brasch

     

       By Tuesday’s election, the seven candidates for the Pennsylvania Supreme Court will have spent about $10 million.

      Their expenditures can be seen in lawn signs decorating almost every part of the state’s landscape, in millions of full color postcards, some as large as 8-1/2 x 11, mailed to almost every voter in the state, and in TV ads.

      They have already spent about $4 million for TV ads, many promoting each one’s own qualifications, most of the ads attacking the other candidates.

      There are three vacancies on the Court because two of the justices had to resign over scandals. One justice used her staff to do personal work for her. One justice was implicated in a sex scandal. The other reached the mandatory retirement age of 70.

      In most elections, the voters barely know who the candidates are and randomly select one. Because of a massive publicity campaign—largely funded by outside organizations—we have had as much exposure to the judicial candidates as we are enduring from the presidential candidates.

      The judicial candidates are primarily focusing on how tough and how fair they are as judges who will put the bad guys and gals into prison, and how they will be able to bring integrity back to the Supreme Court.

      But, bringing integrity to the court and putting away the guilty is not the role of the state Supreme Court.

      Supreme Court justices review appeals in both civil and criminal cases to see if there were judicial improprieties or if there were defendant’s rights violations. The Supreme Court also looks at cases, which may be an individual suing government, to determine if there were constitutional violations. The Supreme Court also oversees the conduct and business operations of the lower courts.

      The Supreme Court, at least in theory, is non-partisan. But, with this campaign looking more like a political contest, and with the Republican slate of 3 candidates and the Democratic slate of three candidates viciously attacking each other, the voters should be more concerned with why does this race seem to be more important than any other, and what will be the direction this branch of government will be taking, and not if a candidate is tough on crime.