Chewbacca and the World of Semi-Reality News Media

by Rosemary and Walter Brasch

      A Facebook video of a woman wearing a Chewbacca mask and laughing almost hysterically in her car has drawn more than 140 million hits from numerous sources in the past two weeks.

      Candace Payne, a 37-year-old mother of two from Grand Prairie, Texas, has had to hire a publicist to help field the numerous calls from the media—and, perhaps, wookies who want to have an affair.

      Why so many people have been intrigued by the three-minute video may be because people just need to laugh in a year in which political hate and the media have come together to annoy anyone with a temperature. It may also be because the people realize that the media have been abysmal purveyors of information, and the political conventions and what passes as TV news have become circuses of mediocrity.

      The presidential primaries are filled with candidates attacking each other, with lies and half-truths fogging the political debate, all of which are faithfully recorded, published and aired but seldom evaluated and challenged by the media.

      The mass media, especially television, have devolved from in-depth reporting to entertainment news, erroneously believing that’s what the public wants and needs. And so, TV leads off with whoever makes the most outrageous statements, with the opposition countering with even more outrageous statements. The media focus upon Trump’s outrageous statements and the protests by Hispanics and liberals at his rallies; for the Democrats, the media focus upon Hillary Clinton’s scandals, all of which are trumped-up exaggerations without facts.

      Only in the past few months has Sen. Bernie Sanders received any acknowledgement from the media. Still far behind in media coverage are Dr. Jill Stein (Green Party), Gary Johnson (Libertarian party), Bob Whitaker (American Freedom party), Darrell Castle (Constitution party), Gloria LaRiva (Party of Socialism and Liberalism), Jim Hedges (Prohibition party), Mimi Soltysik (Socialist party), and dozens of other candidates who have ideas that America should at least have a chance to hear, but are placed into a black hole by the media, which believe they have no chance to win the presidency.

      Because the media have become the megaphones for outrageous behavior rather than communicators of information, Donald Trump has spent very little for print or electronic media advertising.  As long as Trump puts on a big enough dog-and-pony show, he gets coverage, forcing his rivals to spend ad dollars to match the free TV time he wallows in. But, after Trump and Clinton finally secure their parties’ nominations, their campaigns, the Republican and Democratic National committees, and dozens of Super PACs, all proclaiming they want to cut governmental programs and spending, by the November 8 general election will have spent more than $2 billion on political advertising in the mass media.

      The pretend-journalists who cover the campaign lean to insipid “objectivity,” afraid to challenge the candidates and terrified of delving into substantive issues. Many just don’t have the intellectual depth to know enough to challenge the lies and half-truths, so they lob easy questions at the candidates and then believe that by tossing bland questions to the public, they are getting “the pulse of the people” who fulfill the media expectations by responding with equally useless answers—“Uh, like, I kinda like him [or her] because he [or she] says what I believe and what I, y’know, want to hear.”

      For most reporters and their editors, there is the fear that if they get too intellectual, if they challenge the candidates, those candidates will not grant them access while their audience tunes them out, preferring the reality entertainment that now passes as political coverage. It is a reality where a woman in a Chewbacca mask makes more sense than the political candidates and the news media that cover them.

      [Rosemary Brasch is a former secretary, labor union grievance officer, and instructor of labor studies at Penn State and UMass. Walter Brasch is an award-winning journalist, professor emeritus from the Pennsylvania State System of Higher Education, and author of 20 books; his latest one is Fracking America.]

      

Donald Trump: A Problem Even for Conservatives

By Walter Brasch

      The bully of the playground continued to be in the media spotlight and charging ahead to the Republican nomination for president.

      In the 11th Republican debate, Donald Trump, bold and arrogant as always, kept up the attack against his three remaining opponents. To the man who once delighted in being called The Donald, Sen. Ted Cruz was “Lyin’ Ted,” a reference he made more than just a few times. However, several political fact checkers over the past three months have dismissed Trump’s claims as little more than half-truths, exaggerations, and lies. Politifacts, which checks candidate statements, revealed that about three-fifths of what Trump said during the campaign are incorrect. Among some of the errors Trump has made are that some of the families of the 9/11 suicide crews were in the U.S. prior to taking the lives of almost 3,000; that five detainees at Guantanamo Base, Cuba, whom Obama released were back on the battle field attacking Americans; that Mexico sent its citizens, especially criminals, into the U.S.; that the U.S., under the nuclear ban treaty with Iran, would be required to defend that nation if there was an attack by Israel; and that several polls show him ahead of Hillary Rodham Clinton. Several times over the past two decades, Trump has flip-flopped on issues,  and then later claimed he hadn’t.

      Sen. Marco Rubio, said Trump during the debate, was “the little man.” Rubio, however, got in a penetrating remark about Trump’s small size of his hands possibly being the size of another part of his body. There was no fact-checker present to verify if Rubio was accurate on that statement.

      Sens. Cruz and Rubio, both far-right conservatives and political rivals, have banded together to denounce Trump, each hoping for the Republican nomination, each facing a storm of Trump’s blustering that has led voters to place him firmly in command of getting that nomination.

      Ohio Gov. John Kasich, more moderate than each of his three rivals and sharper on foreign policy than them, has tried to remain above the bickering, but the debate and the campaign have deteriorated into little more than a bar room brawl, with name-calling dominating a voice on issues and Trump, Cruz, and Rubio interrupting and talking over each one numerous times. In contrast to the Democrats’ debates, which focused upon issues, this one in Detroit was more like a heated session of TV’s “The View” than a true debate, with Trump’s profanity-laced debate points duplicating his profanity-laced campaign speeches.

      A few hours before whatever the Republicans wanted to call it, Mitt Romney, the Republicans’ nominee for president in 2012, called Trump a phony and a fraud. “If Donald Trump’s plans were ever implemented, the country would sink into prolonged recession,” said Romney who argued that Trump’s proposal of a 35 percent tariff-like penalties “would instigate a trade war and that would raise prices for consumers, kill our export jobs and lead entrepreneurs and businesses of all stripes to flee America.”

      Turning to foreign policy, Romney plainly stated, “If we Republicans choose Donald Trump as our nominee, the prospects for a safe and prosperous future are greatly diminished.” Romney said that Trump, who believes he’s “very, very smart,” is not “very, very smart.” In response, Trump numerous times before, during, and after the mock-debate called Romney a loser, adding that Romney’s campaign was a “catastrophe” and “an election that should have been won by the Republicans.”

      One part of Trump’s not so smart knowledge of the issues was when he declared he could save $300 billion from the federal budget solely by a regulation of drug prices, an outlandish claim with no substance. However, there have been numerous examples, other than his demeanor, of Trump not being qualified to become the president.

      Although he blares constantly about his $10 billion bank roll and how smart he is as a businessman and entrepreneur, while refusing to release any documents to substantiate his business income, Trump has declared bankruptcy of properties four times. Several of his companies—among them Trump Airlines and Trump College—have failed.

      Before his campaign Trump ostentatiously claimed that President Obama was born in Kenya not Hawaii and questioning Obama’s right of the presidency. The truth, upheld by newspaper notations, a birth certificate, and the federal courts, proved Trump and the “birther movement” wrong, but yet they have been consistent in throwing out their nonsense. He claimed that Sen. John McCain, subjected to torture by the North Vietnamese, was not fit to be president because of that imprisonment. “He was a war hero because he was captured. I like people who weren’t captured,” said Trump.

      During the campaign, Trump mocked New York Daily News reporter Serge Kovaleski’s muscular disorder; he mocked Hillary Rodham Clinton’s appearance.

      He has HHH  unleashed numerous policy proposals, most of which have little foundation of reality.

      He has repeatedly stated that if he was president he would build a wall between the U.S. and Mexico, and require Mexico to build that wall. However, he never addresses how he will get Mexico to fund that 2,000 mile wall. He has claimed that President Obama plans to allow about 250,000 Muslims from Syria to emigrate to the U.S., a claim that is about 11 times larger than reality. More important he doesn’t publicly look at the expense of additional border patrol agents and staff to patrol that wall, or how to keep illegal immigrants from tunneling under the wall, or going around the wall by boat or air, especially since he has proposed no new budget for the Coast Guard.

      He now says he had spoken out against invading Iraq after the 9/11 attack, but the facts are clear that he never supported going into Iraq. He claims he has seen thousands of Muslims on the New Jersey side of the Hudson River cheering when the planes from Al-Qaeda, but again, experts and eyewitnesses dispute those claims.

      He says he wants a moratorium on all Muslims entering the United States, which is allowable under the Constitution, but doesn’t negate innumerable arguments of the logic or morality of banning those who pose no threat to the U.S. nor why he is singling out one religion other than the fact that some radicalized Muslims, less than .001 percent of the 1.6 billion Muslims in the world, pose any clear and present danger. He also doesn’t address how to fund an increase in the number of Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents and staff to enforce stricter immigration rules set by executive decree.

      He was slow to renounce the endorsement of David Duke, former hrand wizard of the Ku Klux Klan.

      Although he viciously attacks his last three opponents, he has thin skin. When anyone challenges his opinions for any reason he bellows back in superheated hyperbolic attacks. When Fox News anchor Megan Kelly posed tough questions to him, his response was to refuse to show up for a debate that she later hosted. This past week he dropped out of as a speaker at the Conservative Political Action Committee meeting, unwilling to accept the few boos and jeers that would surely be sent to him, and not needing C-PAC for support.

      Several Republican leaders have spoken against Trump; many conservative talk show hosts agree, hoping for a Cruz or Rubio nomination. But this time they are solidly in the minority as Trump, using a $100 million campaign of misinformation, has unleashed his inner soul of demagoguery upon voters, to make them believe that a billionaire is just like a lower middle-class citizen who does go to bars, has a few drinks and sometimes engages in verbal profanity to argue his position.

      If the Republicans have a contested convention or if Trump has captured enough delegate votes to be the nominee it could mean a continuing decline of the Republican party that would diminish the prospects to retain their Congressional majority and also affect local races.

      [Dr.  Brasch is an award-winning journalist, professor emeritus of mass communications, and author of 21 books, His latest book is Fracking America: Sacrificing Health and the Environment for Short-Term Economic Benefit. The book is available through www.greeleyandstone.com or amazon.com]

The Trump Tower of Egotistical Exaggeration and Lies

by Walter Brasch

      When the presidential primaries began more than a year ago, the two leading candidates were Hillary Rodham Clinton for the Democrats and Jeb Bush for the Republicans. It seemed at that time that there would be another Clinton–Bush race in the general election.

      That, as any voter knows, has changed drastically.

      Sen. Bernie Sanders, officially an independent but running as a Democrat,  has shuffled off his one-digital support to being about equal to Clinton among Democrats, tying with Clinton in Iowa, beating her in New Hampshire, but losing in Nevada. Sanders’ supporters tend to be younger and are energized by his presence and persistence in pushing a liberal agenda that focuses upon individuals and how government can assist a broad spectrum of the population. His campaign is similar to the support for Sens. Gene McCarthy and Robert F. Kennedy in 1968 and Sen. George McGovern four years later, both of whom energized those in their 20s and 30s and older voters who identified themselves as liberals. Sanders could still win substantial support from Super Tuesday, March 1, when voters of 11 states cast their ballots. However, several states are in the south and southeast, which lean heavily conservative, even among Democratic voters. Although Sanders has pushed Clinton more to the left, she might be able to go into the Democratic convention with a substantial lead and the nomination.

      Sanders is helped by the Republicans who have hammered Clinton’s failure to separate her personal and federal emails during the entire time she was secretary of state. The problem got traction from Clinton’s weakness early in her campaign to adequately defend the use of personal emails and not using an encoded federal system. Since that time, she has faced a Congressional hearing and had not only explained her reasoning for using one phone but managed to erase any doubt of her violation of federal laws. But the Republicans continued their attack, spreading distortion and half-truths, using the media to channel their message. A couple of dozen emails were classified confidential or secret, but only after Clinton left office.

      On the Republican side, the race has evolved from Bush as the leader in early polling to the presence of 15 candidates, all more political sounding than presidential. By the end of 2015, the candidates were shown in editorial cartoons as clowns clustered in cars. Donald Trump was portrayed by almost every stand-up comedian and in the media as just your average ordinary boisterous and egotistical billionaire with a hilarious hair-do to being the chief clown to being the possible Republican nominee.

      The nine Republican debates were mostly random acts of personal attacks rather than true debates. Several times Trump called out “liar” to Sen. Ted Cruz, but several political fact checkers point out that about three-fourths of Trump’s statements are half-truth, exaggerations, and outright lies. This would be the same Trump who numerous times said that President Obama is a Muslim who was born in Kenya, and has challenged Cruz’s citizenship, which has been constitutionality affirmed by having an American mother.

      Among his more outrageous proposals, he has repeatedly stated he said he would deport all 11 million undocumented foreigners in the U.S., and build a wall along the entire U.S.–Mexican border. But, Trump doesn’t address the issue of cost—and how a conservative could justify that cost for building and then monitoring it—or the more realistic probability there will be innumerable problems to round up even a fourth of the illegal immigrants and separate them from their parents, or ways to tunnel under, climb over, or just go around that wall by entering the U.S. by boat on two coasts or by planeloads of immigrants and refugees who would land in desolate air strips with no control towers. This, of course, is the same Trump who used about 150 illegal immigrants to help build the Trump Tower.

      He has played to the fears of a radical terrorist Muslim invasion by arguing for a moratorium on any Muslim trying to enter the country, an inane proposal that would require several million dollars to enlarge the number of Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents and support staff, already at 20,000, and would ultimately be shot down in the federal courts.

      Among all his boasts and braggadocio, with his name in giant letters on office buildings, hotels, casinos, and a questionable failure at Trump College, he has defaulted into bankruptcy four times. Trump’s speeches are accepted and applauded by voters who believe bar-room profanity laced into ignorant chatter is just the kind of speaking that they do, and see the billionaire as one of their own.

      By Super Tuesday, most of the Republican candidates and all of the moderate Republicans will have dropped out of the race, run over by the Trump express, fueled almost entirely by Trump’s own money and more media coverage than any other candidate. With the moderate Republicans out of the race, it appears the most conservative ones—Sens. Cruz from Texas and Marco Rubio from Florida have the best chance to defeat Trump. Trump has shown enough strength to capture the delegates in the conservative south and southeastern states on Super Tuesday, possibly making his nomination inevitable.

      Trump’s message appeals to those who see him favorably as an outsider to Washington politics and to those whom Trump has managed to play to their fears and paranoia.

      But none of that matters because he spews out what a traditional base of conservatives want to hear, and his rhetoric supersedes how he plans to carry out any of his proposals, but gets him the votes he needs to be the Republican nominee.

      Far more important, his rhetoric sounds as scary as anyone who began as a small voice of the people and then became their dictator.

      [Dr. Brasch’s latest book is Fracking America: Sacrificing Health and the Environment for Short-Term Economic Benefit.]

      

Sick of Presidential Politicians Grubbing for Votes

by Walter Brasch

      Like millions of Americans in the middle of February I have the flu.

      Unlike millions of Americans I have a deadline.

      Forced to stay at home, sucking Vitamin C drops, I have read newspapers, listened to radio, and watched television as a source of diversion.

      Dominating the media is the campaign for the presidency.

      In Iowa, all of the candidates went to fairs, restaurants, and anywhere there was any sign of carbon-based organic life to grab votes. Because hogs and corn stalks haven’t yet been granted the right to vote, the candidates resorted to talking with humans, and making sure that everyone got more useless swag than the presenters at the TV awards shows. The newspaper reporters were doing their best to report interactions between candidates and humans; the TV reporters were reporting on the polls. Very few were asking the tough questions.

      When the votes in the caucuses were finally decided, Hillary Rodham Clinton barely edged Bernie Sanders on the Democratic ticket. However, it was a victory for Sanders who was getting single digit acceptance a few months ago; for Clinton, it was a hit in the head that she needed to revitalize her campaign.

      For the Republicans, Donald Trump, as expected, continued spewing insults at his rivals, shouting about immigrants and building something along the U.S.–Mexican border that would make the Great Wall of China look like a picket fence. Sugar-coating his own rhetoric, he somehow convinced Iowans that America was no longer great, but in his hands, which were holding up his ego, he would make America great again. One of his solutions was he “would bomb the shit” out of them. He never explained how he was going to do that with a nation and military that he thought wasn’t so great. Nevertheless, Iowa Republicans swooned over his carnival squeals and delivered him a blue ribbon victory.

      Minutes after the election results were announced, the candidates, trailed by a horde of byline hungry reporters, began their rapid descent upon New Hampshire, where they shampooed, rinsed, and repeated their assault upon anything with a heartbeat. The Republicans increased their attacks on President Obama, renewed attacks on Hillary Clinton’s e-mails, and erroneously called Bernie Sanders a Communist. Underlying their vitriol for Democrats was a pile of vitriol of each other, invoking the legacy of Ronald Reagan while grossly violating his 11th commandment that Republicans should not be attacking each other. For Clinton and Sanders, their own debate was more like a sharp discussion of issues rather than personal attacks. When the votes came in, Trump again got the plurality, but Ohio Gov. John Kasich surprised the media and the poll analysts by coming in second. Two candidates dropped out of the race; the rest scrambled their positions and staff trying to figure out why they no longer were second or third, and what to do to body-slam Trump who was scoring points by pretending to be an extreme conservative by launching an even greater fusillade of insults at what he believed were a bunch of wannabe losers.

      By the time the candidates and reporter menagerie made it to South Carolina, Sarah Palin and Donald Trump were basking in a love fest while Nikki Haley, governor of the third state in the primary shuffle declared her support for Marco Rubio and not Jeb Bush. To account for that insult, the former Florida governor brought in the heavy artillery—his father, the 41st president and his brother, the 43rd president, a reminder to the voters that the Bush genetic markers called for another Bush to surround the White House.

      Somewhere during the campaign, the candidates stopped long enough to pretend they were in a legitimate debate. For the Republicans, it was a case of Trump vs. The Other Guys, all of whom seemed to be trying to get media attention.      Sometime between the New Hampshire and South Carolina primaries, Supreme Court associate justice Antonia Scalia died. Within minutes, Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell declared he would block any nomination that President Obama presented for confirmation. The other Republican leaders and presidential candidates picked up the message and ran with it, declaring that a president in the his final year should not nominate a Supreme Court justice, fearful that any nominee would be a liberal whose presence on the Court would turn it from a 5–4 conservative majority to a 5–4 liberal majority. Barack Obama, backed by most elected Democrats, said he was still the president and would fulfill his constitutional responsibility to make nominations.

      By the time the gaggle of reporters and what’s left of the candidates limp into Super Tuesday, March 1, the public will be burdened by the last of the presidential swag and hoping that everyone—candidates, on-air reporters, and bloviators—get

laryngitis.

      As for me, hopefully my flu will be over and I’ll be able to find amusement in something other than a flush caused by high volume egotistical hyperbole laced with half-truths and statements, all of which are enough to inflate my blood pressure.

     [Dr. Brasch is an award-winning columnist and author of 21 books; his latest book, published this week, is Fracking America: Sacrificing Health and the Environment for Short-Term Economic Benefit. Assisting on this column was Rosemary R. Brasch.]

      

The Late Great Commonwealth: Catching Up to the Republican Primary

                  

                            by Walter  Brasch

            It’s the beginning of April, and that means I just finished celebrating New Year’s Eve, and will soon begin shopping for Valentine’s gifts. In a month or two, I may even get around to toasting St. Patrick.

            It’s not procrastination, it’s just that I’m a Pennsylvanian, and the state encourages me to be behind the times. At one time, Pennsylvania was first in just about everything-—and then Ben Franklin died. Since then, we’ve been first in ridiculous license plate slogans.

            When other states, including those settled by Puritans, got rid of their “blue laws,” Pennsylvania still bans the sale of cars on Sundays. By archaic practices, it still allows municipal governments and school districts to raise taxes and create more buildings without giving the people the right of a vote, common in most states. It is also the only state that still taxes people for income, property, and their occupation. Forty-nine other states believe pigeon shoots are animal cruelty; we proudly proclaim our state as the last bastion of the right to “bear arms and blast birds.” And, we don’t allow Independents to vote in our primaries.

            Iowa, with anomalies known as a straw poll and a caucus, is the first major battleground in presidential races, having usurped New Hampshire, which thought having the official primary was a birthright dating to when granite first showed up in the state. Nevertheless, whether Iowa or New Hampshire, Americans understand that the people need something to break them out of their Winter funk when snow covers what will eventually become cornfields in Iowa and the ski lifts of New Hampshire will no longer be inoperable because of blizzards.

            With nothing else to do in January, the media schussed into the Hawkeye State—just as soon as they could find enough chauffeurs to drive them to wherever Iowa is. With megawatt lights and dimly-lit minds, they infiltrated the state so that the voters not only had their own individualized politicians, they also had their own puppy-dog reporters prancing brightly behind them to the coffee shop, factory, and bathroom.

            Surrounded by the media who smugly said they were only telling the public what they needed to know to defend and preserve democracy—and millions in advertising revenue—the candidates played to the press, attacking each other rather than attacking the issues. In neatly-packaged seven-second sound bites, politicians and the media sliced, diced, and crunched the campaign to fit onto a 21-inch screen.

            Because of an inner need to believe they matter, the media predict who will win the nomination, changing their predictions as quickly as a fashionista changes shoes. For what seemed to be decades, the ink-stained bandwagon has pulled voters and campaign dollars, and left Pennsylvania voters waiting at the altar for candidates who don’t care anymore, abandoned by the media who have found other “stories of the week.”

            For all practical purposes, the Pennsylvania primaries, with large slates of uncontested local and state races, is about as useless as a Department of Ethnic Studies at Bob Jones University. By the time the 2000 primary rolled into Pennsylvania, Al Gore and George W. Bush each had 65 percent of the delegate vote needed for their parties’ nomination. In 2004, Bush and John Kerry had already locked up the nominations. In 2008, Pennsylvania became a pivotal state for the Democrats for the first time since 1976, with Hillary Clinton defeating Barack Obama before losing the nomination by June. For the Republicans, it was “business as usual,” with John McCain having already sewn up the nomination.

            A Republican needs 1,144 delegate votes to get the nomination. Mitt Romney, America’s best runner-up, has 568; two-term senator Rick Santorum, recovering from a blistering loss to a moderate Democrat in Pennsylvania’s 2006 Senate campaign, has 273; Ron Paul, who may or may not be a Republican, has 50. Newt Gingrich has 135 delegates; however, this week he announced he downsized his staff and campaign, and is layin’ low—except, of course, for the times he can get free TV time to lambaste Romney and Santorum who are engaged in a vicious personal battle that has bubbled out of the TV ad cauldron.

            The April 3 primaries will add a maximum of 98 delegates. And that brings Super Northeast Tuesday, April 24. The Republican leftovers and their never-ending TV ads will blitz Pennsylvania, which might even become relevant.

            Even if Connecticut, Delaware, New York, Rhode Island—and Pennsylvania with 72 of the 231 delegate votes—go for Romney, it won’t be enough to get him the nomination. However, it will be enough to cause major financial backers to pull their support for Santorum and what’s left of the Gingrich campaign, leaving Romney to flip-flop into the Republican nomination convention, Aug. 27, in Tampa, Fla.—which seems to be the Republicans’ destiny.

            [Dr. Brasch has covered political campaigns for more than three decades. His latest book is the critically-acclaimed fast-paced mystery Before the First Snow, available at amazon.com and his publisher, Greeley & Stone.]Within the next week, another nine states voted.