So……..the President of the United States announces a major speech days in advance to address the currently longest running government shutdown in history. This is high drama: Dems vs Trump. Wall vs no wall. Government employees held financially hostage. Air traffic safety compromised. Coast Guard working for nothing. Food stamps dwindling. Farmers pressured. This is a gunfight on the White House lawn.
Sal and I are on tenterhooks. ‘What’s he gonna say?’ “I think he’ll stick to his stupid wall demand and concede some crap and blame everyone but himself. Same as usual.”
“I think he’ll read a speech and not talk in Donald-speak. He’ll say God Bless America, This great nation, our great workers and all that usual BS and then try to scare everyone by threatening getting raped and mugged and drugged.”
We were both right.
But the blog today is NOT about Trump. Not directly, anyway. It’s about the media and it’s about Arizona and it is bloody weird!
The speech was set for 2:00 pm. Which came and went ’cause Trump kept everyone waiting for ten minutes or more. It was carried by the White House You-Tube channel. I could not find a thing on TV.
Turns out that it was NOT CARRIED BY ANY TV STATIONS IN PHOENIX!
Our place gets only about 15 or so TV channels. Fox, ABC, PBS and a bunch of local stations. They were all up and broadcasting their regularly scheduled cooking shows, basketball games and, of course, the send-us-money religious shows. There was a re-run of the Six Million Dollar Man series and Lawrence Welk and the like. REAL CRAP. Nothing on the news. NO BREAKING NEWS. Nothing on Trump. Not even a commentary panel with pundits. Nada.
After the nausea inducing speech (heard on my computer YOU-TUBE channel) which, indeed, was one BIG LIE (easy to determine: it was all read from a teleprompter and the sentences uttered were generally grammatically coherent. NOT the usual Donald gibberish of broken thoughts and repeated phrases – but still Trumpian in content; lies and fear mongering, insincerity and blatant extortion) we flipped through all the channels afterwards again and again to see commentary. Nothing.
Basketball and cooking shows.
“Well, they HAVE to address it on the evening news. We’ll tune in then.”
We did. They did not. The media did report that Trump spoke and they gave the Special President’s newscast maybe 30 seconds of airtime. Felt like less. There was no followup panel. There was no commentary. There was no analysis. There was just more re-runs, CSI and Basketball highlights.
Trump refers to the media as FAKE NEWS. I kind of agree with that. I can read enough from a variety of sources to know that much of the ‘mainstream’ news that we all get is ‘canned’ and edited so much that it is almost FAKE but I mean it in the sense that it is commodified and dumb-downed so much as to be meaningless.
He means they lie. So, I disagree with him on that – especially coming from the liar-in-chief. But yesterday, I agreed with Trump….on that score, anyway. That was lying-by-omission. It was literally a crime NOT to carry that speech in my opinion. It was also a crime NOT to have commentary and analysis.
On four of the channels there was a several minute piece on a guy wearing a huge ‘Merican flag made into a jacket and walking through an airport instead. Plus we had a couple of cute kids hanging out for more than a few minutes on TV to illustrate to the viewing audience the concept of friendship………..
How is it possible that 15 channels of media, some of which are national networks and one of which is Trump’s very OWN sycophantic FOX NEWS not carry that speech? How is it possible that there were no ‘expert panels’ talking about it? How come Arizonians are shown old re-run sitcoms instead of that?
ARIZONA IS A CENTRAL PIECE IN THE BORDER WALL ISSUE!!!!
We (biased and tainted Sally and Dave) tend to think the average ‘Merican is not very well educated in ‘what is going on’……on anything, actually, ‘cept the Kardashians and the NFL. How can they be? This may have been one of the most significant speeches given in Trumps chaotic presidency so far and no one listened because there was nothing to hear……..
A conspiracy of ignorance…………..?
Our Off the Grid Home 
I for one am tired of the same crap coming from the Donald, so perhaps everyone else felt the same. I mean, what could possibly new be coming out from him? I am driving back from Ottawa in this -20 hell, thinking about Orlando…
LikeLike
I can understand (somewhat) an average, under-educated Arizonian choosing to watch old episodes of the Rifleman instead of the president he/she helped elect babbling on about my state’s southern border…..kinda….but how could the media choose NOT to show it? ABC News NOT show it?! How could Arizonian pundits NOT comment? Is that part of a larger plot to keep people glued to old sit-coms? To keep ’em stupid?
LikeLike
Are they colluding for a conspiracy of silence?
Did you see that kid with the smirk in Washington taunting the indigenous elder who was a Viet veteran? Oh, that smirk, so familiar in America, no matter what you do, it wins.
LikeLike
I honestly do not know why a media outlet (virtually feasting on the spectacle of Trump so much of the time) would NOT cover that event…I really do not. But I do believe that capitalism finds selling porn and football more profitable than real education on current events. BECAUSE the people will watch porn and football.
They will NOT watch politics/real news. Most people ARE truly bored with current events. They REALLY do not care. That is surprising to me. But, you combine democracy and capitalism and you get very quickly to the lowest common denominator and it is, in HC’s famous words, DEPLORABLE.
LikeLike
relative to your previous blog, and somewhat to the speech/ mm silence thread above.
Churchill quote ‘ the best argument against democracy, is a five minute conversation with an average voter’
LikeLike
I hate to say it, but I agree 100%. But is it entirely the average voter’s fault if they are not taught and educated…? I admit that forced education is a hard slog (remember high school?) and maybe, in a free country, you are allowed to be ignorant but doesn’t THAT suggest that you might have to pass a test to vote and isn’t THAT non democratic?
LikeLike
Much is said about what is taught or not taught in Canada’s secondary schools. All the curriculum is on line and is not secret at all. Is the Canadian political system taught? Yes. Is indigenous history taught? Yes. Of interest is that it is not the revisionist history preferred by some.Nor is it a pathetic failure as often portrayed in Hollywood’s depictions. A teacher who dresses like George Washington to teach History is a satirical figure and in contrast to popular opinion does not represent best teaching practices.
LikeLike
I appreciate your defense of the ‘system’. And I’ll concede that Canada is WAY better than the US in 1st and secondary education. And most universities, too.
Way, way better. But that is no standard by which to judge. The real standard by which to judge is something more….I dunno….’abreast of the times’? Real life? Life skills? Skill-skills?
My kids went to school. It was a good school, they say. Most people. They came out and went to university and got their degrees. To be fair, they are intelligent, curious, investigative and way more ‘hip’ to what is going on than their contemporaries but they DO NOT KNOW about the topics we discuss here like the merits of democracy, the corruption inherent in Capitalism, philosophy and such. They are too busy to indulge in what will really affect them. That stuff is something you kinda grow into when you are well past your high school years. In other words, they enter the workforce and life innocent and ignorant of the real world and, of course, they are NOT going to ask dear old dad or mom very often.
Again, to be fair, my kids did ask a bit about law and such…even a bit of finance and economics but mostly just as it might apply in any given moment to them. And 90% they learned on their own. They are not interested in the whole shebang. AND they are 1000% more knowledgeable than most. Put bluntly: I do not think my kids got a great education in school. NOT bad. NOT great. I’ll give it a C++.
Which segues nicely: my son learned way more from his kid-buddies about computers and he is now a computer manager business guy for a university. So…even in his chosen field, the ‘street’ became as much of a teacher as high school…likely much more.
My daughter is even more ‘street educated’. She is, by nature, a generalist, a manager, a project manager, a ‘can-do’ anything type manager. She ‘gets it’. And all that she ‘gets’ was NOT taught in school. She is mostly self taught in everything. She learned management by working lesser jobs. So her education – tho also very general in nature (Arts) did not advance her learning as much as say, working in Hong Kong, traveling the world and just being a smart cookie. I’ll give her teachers a C+……..
My criticism of education is simple: common denominator teaching dumbs down at least half of the class. When the students get to initiate some of their own learning, education grows and teaching becomes fun and less ‘custodial’ in nature.
LikeLike
Using specific cases as the basis to evaluate an entire system is challenging. I’ve heard television hosts say the following, “I do not remember them teaching this or that. Perhaps more definitively saying, “They never taught that when I went to school.” Never is an absolute without an exception. Never goes on to infinity. How about allowing for exceptions such saying some, a few, a handful, a percentage but why the absolute, categoricals?
LikeLike
I apologize. I didn’t think I was saying anything so absolute…sorry. I KNOW some teachers bridge light years for some students. Some are life-changers. HUGE. I have a few that I still regard highly but I have way more that I have forgotten and not just a few that I loathed. But the system is a system and, as such, suffers from the nature of systems. Kids, on the other hand, are NOT systems. They are individuals and they are trying to get into the system. Square pegs trying to be jammed into a wall of round holes. Regardless of how you cut it, a cookie-cut system does NOT meet the needs of most of the individuals. Maybe it doesn’t have to? Maybe it only has to be a place of custody with SOME learning…? I recommend our educational system over most others but, if I could have, I would have taught my kids differently.
LikeLike
No apology needed. Not a big fan of absolutes unless it is something like a quotation from Keats describing the unchanging unaltered beauty of an urn in his poem “Ode on a Grecian Urn,” Its beauty is described as, “Beauty is truth, truth beauty.” The urn only knows truth and beauty. Truth is unalterable, unchanging like the urn.
LikeLike
Great point that cookie cutter education may not accommodate individual needs. The current model is the inclusion model which tries but does not always succeed in meeting individual needs. Thinking of a grade 12 course called Communiction 12 that MIGHT include lock downs in face of threats, it might also include new English speakers, International students, some students with excellent skills,students attending school from prison serving part of a sentence which is to attend school, homeless students, cynical students,sick students, students with many challenges, disaffected students, bullied students, drug addicted students, hungry students, transgender students…the class composition might be highly varied. Some students are given food, some are given a safe place to be, a non-judgemental classroom is one of the possible goals of a school.Some times there are unreflective moments and unkind words are blurted out. But the building of relationships and a community proceeds. Class size might be upto 30 students. In grade 12 some might be sixteen, seventeen, eighteen and some times adult learners. This composition might apply to any high school class room to some extent. And a class might have fewer challenges. This is not a defense of the educational system.
LikeLike
looks likes this follower has contracted ‘worditis’ the need for a high word count
LikeLike
True. But Sid is a ‘defender’ of the educational system. He was a teacher and passionate about it. We don’t, as you can imagine, always agree. Still, I respect everything he says. I think it is mutual. And I can excuse any extra run-on regarding education. THAT is what he knows more than anything else. I claim he is a bit too steeped in the ‘system’. He would argue that I don’t know enough to be legitimately critical. We are likely both right.
I’ve known Sid longer than I have known Sally. Well over 50 years.
LikeLike
It’s complex.
LikeLike
Well I can only surmise the tv channels didn’t air the Presidents 2 pm message for the simple fact that……Hell hath no fury like a “Days of our Lives” fan preempted…….
LikeLike
“”Are they colluding for a conspiracy of silence?
Did you see that kid with the smirk in Washington taunting the indigenous elder who was a Viet veteran? Oh, that smirk, so familiar in America, no matter what you do, it wins.””
YOU SHOULD WATCH THE WHOLE VIDEO BEFORE REPLYING
LikeLike
The second day, I did. Nowadays you can’t rely on viral video or anything no more. It’s all fake news.
LikeLike