Donald the Menace... based on the Ketcham cartoon

You know something is different about politics... but you are not sure exactly what is going on? Always start with Marshall McLuhan the media guru. McLuhan explains that electronic media changes politics. Marshall died in 1980 and did not personally experience the Internet revolution. He somehow anticipated the profound shift that we are experiencing now-- the shift from printed word and the daily newspaper to today's electronic news, a 24/7 production crammed with Breaking News, newscasters speaking with bated breath about the most recent shocking development, political gridlock, wrestling matches between politicians and reporters and and a angry citizenry, shouting hate-filled invective at Town Hall meetings and posting their discontent all across the electronic network.

What's different about the first 200 years of American political history and the present day-- the new electronic media-- an instantaneous experience happening at the speed of light... Don't kid yourself. This did not happen before. Just like the present electronic media did not happen earlier in our history, the new environment is totally new and we are living a new reality.

Listen to McLuhan, from his last book The Global Village, co-authored wit Bruce R. Powers.

Governments need to know that electronic services, especially television, eliminate or dissolve representative government, TV ends representation at a distance and involves one in immediate confrontation of an image. The successful image will be charismatic, meaning that it represents a great many admirable types. (President Carter was Huck Finn in the White House.)

McLuhan/Powers continues-- and I have substituted the name Trump, where they stated "Reagan is an exemplar." 

For the new popular image, of which Trump is an exemplar, there can be no relevance in parties and policies but only a war of icons and images. 

Trump proved McLuhan's explanation correct-- he hardly qualified as a Republican and traditional Republicans have always distrusted him. Trump is a pragmatist and a media man and correctly surmised his only chance was as a Republican. And he won the traditionally Democratic-controlled states like Michigan and Pennsylvania. Politics was now "a war of icons and images" with party and policy a twentieth century concern that has fallen by the wayside.

If Jimmy Carter suggested the character Huck Finn, with many of Huck's admirable traits-- who is Donald J. Trump in the pantheon of fictional characters? Checkout the hairstyle and personality on the Hank Ketcham cartoon. Ketcham base 5 1/2 year old Dennis on his own son and wrote and draw the cartoon strip from 1951-1994. The cartoon was made into a TV show from 1959-1963. And check out this amazing coincidence about Ketcham-- His great-grandfather was James Weaver, who ran for President twice on third party tickets in the late 19th century.

Okay, that's spooky. Ketcham had an ancestor who ran for president on third party tickets-- and he invented a cartoon character, Dennis the Menace, who drove Mr. Wilson, his neighbor, crazy with repeated trouble-making and anti-social behaviors. Ketcham must have had some rascal in his DNA.

You might argue that Trump's egregious behaviors go way beyond the silly pranks of a 5 year old boy with a lively spirit. But guess what? Donald J. Trump has turned us, the people and the media, into frustrated Mr. Wilson! And there is something we love about Donald Trump-- and we'd like to be more like the free spirited Trump-- thumbing his nose at friends, allies, and everybody else. Maybe that's why he got voted into office-- to blow things up, piss on the carpet, tear down the curtains, keep his tax returns hidden, play golf all week, etc. etc..

It's something to think about.

Trump the Swashbuckler

Everybody loves a pirate. Pirates don't live by the rules. Au contraire. Pirates break the rules. They run those pirate flags, the skull and crossbones, to put fear in the hearts of the average people, the good people, the law abiders. Trump don't need no laws. Even now at the head of the government he shows no inclination to follow the laws. And he gets everybody's attention. Because everybody, right and left wing, love a guy who has no fear of the system.

Trump became the System, the Establishment, but he breaks more laws while in the highest office in the land than Jesse James and Clyde Barker combined. Everybody loves an outlaw. Even Trump's adversaries have an admiration, a secret appreciation, for one or two of his crazy behaviors. He fires James Comey and calls him a "nut job." And he tells the Russians all about it! He hires an anti-environmentalist to lead the Environmental Protection Agency and Betsy DeVos, an enemy of the public schools, to be head of the Department of Education. Those two choices bugged me. But, I get a secret kick out of Trump's embrace of the Russians. I know people like to say "We Americans hate the Russians, because they are evil and we are good." I do not buy that viewpoint.

Strangely, the right wing, alt-right guys took a hankering to Vladimir Putin a while back. I guess they liked some of his aggressiveness, and his tough stance on the Chechens and some of his "traditional values"-- including rejection of gay culture. Apparently being a homosexual is a dangerous pursuit in Russia and that's an unfortunate state of affairs. I understand the Russian economy in not strong, oil production being their greatest source of wealth, and that's an odd state of affairs for a country that has explored space-- even getting Sputnik, Muttnik and Yuri Gargarin up in space  and circling the globe prior to the United States finally getting John Glenn up into the wild, blue yonder and around the globe. So they're smart people, an advanced society... but not making great inroads in the global economy at the moment.

But Trump has embraced the Russians, despite the tradition of American conservatives to demonize the Russians. And the liberal/left wing of the American politics agree with the conservatives on that point. All claim the Russians are earthly versions of Darth Vader. This feels like a repeat of the Cold War. For awhile we had an altered view-- as symbolized the the image we had of Russian women.

Russian women went through a make-over in the American psyche. Russian females were stereotyped by America during the Cold War. We were presented a caricature, Russian women were masculine bureaucrats, Olympic athletes lacking in estrogen or peasant women with babushkas wrapped around their heads. That changed around the 1990s and suddenly Russian women were considered Playboy magazine-style babes, the kind that keep their boyfriends warm at night. Kate McKinnon, from Saturday Night Live (SNL) does a great send-up of the crafty Russian peasant woman, living on bread and potatoes, a reminder of their earlier stereotype.

I like Trump's irreverence on the subject of Russia. He seems to admire Russians, regardless of the political repercussions. And, step back from the emotions for a moment.... if the Russians were smart enough to control the outcome of the 2016 American presidential election just by tapping on computer keyboards and generating wild stories about Hillary Clinton-- maybe they are the worthy of our respect. That's blasphemy, I know, and everybody gets holier than thou about protecting American democracy from the likes of evil Russians.

Something other than Russians is transforming American democracy. It's not the Russians. The social network, the instant, electronic media environment, has changed the playing field. The system seems to be imploding. The Republican and Democrats are like the Bloods and the Crips, the two Los Angeles street gangs, and in both worlds the colors red and blue are used to identify the adversaries.

There is gridlock in our political system-- and the divisions extend beyond the Congress out into the streets. The Trump supporters hate the Never Trump crowd and vice-versa. And Trump defies political party-- seems to stand above it. So political parties may be a thing of the past-- and the two-party political system that has defined our democracy may be on the ropes.

Trump the Pirate is endlessly frustrating like an egregious child who refuses to do what the Establishment, the media and polite society would prefer him to do. The man is a pirate-- and everybody loves a pirate, but only for a little while-- and only in the abstract. As we get to know Trump better he seems like less fun. But for now he's keeping us all entertained. Arrrrggggh!

SNL spoofs Trump/ Holt interview-- Struggling to Keep Up

Watched Saturday Night Live (SNL) last night. Melissa McCarthy was guest host and her opening theme was Mothers Day and she even brought a middle-aged Mom out of the audience, probably planted there, as part of her opening routine. She provided a backstage tour for the Mom and offered a glimpse of the inner workings SNL, Lorne Michael's amazingly durable comedy show. That was fun, and reminded the viewers that the show really is theater, somewhat reminiscent of any other kind of live theater but with the addition of TV cameras and a national audience.

Alec Baldwin as Donald Trump has become a regular feature of the opening minutes of the show and last night was no exception. Trump's interview with Lester Holt about the firing of James Comey was recreated-- an event that happened only a day or two earlier. Things move faster. The real Donald Trump felt the need to get quickly to the airwaves when he saw the country meltdown in reaction to the Comey decision. The Trump/Holt interview went out to the entire country, maybe the world, and was rapidly absorbed into the nation's collective conscious. The news volley, much like a tennis match, flies quickly and comedy must follow suit. Anything too old in the 24/7 news cycle would not work well for the SNL parody.

Michael Che playing Lester Holt did an awesome job capturing the even-keeled television newsman. The comic summoned up Holt  so accurately-- big forehead, cool, friendly, but always professional, the expressionless expression, had a certain hysterical quality. The real Lester Holt must be about as far as you can get from a SNL skit. And Michael Che actually does the "Weekend Update" segment for SNL so has some of the news anchor instincts already built in.

Baldwin was good as always and made the point that Trump is kind of a mini-Nixon, not exactly my position on the issue. But having Speaker Paul Ryan show up as an overly solicitous, ass-kissing soda fountain jerk with two scoops of ice-cream for Donald Trump was ingenious. Donald insists on two scoops of ice-cream because Richard Nixon only got one scoop of ice-cream. Baldwin and the writers had captured the Donald Trump narcissism and the Republicans fear of offending Trump with great comic efficiency.

So this skit earned an A grade-- but made me wonder about the hurry up nature of our existence-- even comedy must reflect events from only a day or two ago... or it becomes old news.

Speeding off of a cliff (the new technology)-- while staring at the rearview mirror

Marshall McLuhan was interviewed by Playboy magazine in 1969. McLuhan, the oracle of Toronto, teaches us more about the present moment, 2017, then any of our media critics or the talking heads on cable TV. I've truncated the following portion of the interview for the sake of brevity.

PLAYBOY: Is the public, then, at last beginning to perceive the "invisible" contours of these new technological environments?

McLUHAN: People are beginning to understand the nature of their new technology, but not yet nearly enough of them-- and not nearly well enough. Most people, as I indicated, still cling to what I call the rearview-mirror view of the world.

Because we are benumbed by the new technology-- which in turn creates a totally new environment-- we tend to make the old environment more visible...

In the midst of the electronic age of software, of instant information movement, we still beleve we're living in the mechanical age of hardware.

We reverse the old educational dictum of learning by proceeding from the familiar to the unfamiliar by going from the unfamiliar to the familiar, which is nothing more of less that the numbing mechanism that takes place whenever new media drastically extend our senses.

You must read the entirety of this interview-- highly recommended.

First off, how amazing that Professor McLuhan speaks about "software" and "instant information movement" in 1969! His critics dismissed his prophetic teachings-- disdainfully rejecting his theorie  as "technological determinism." And now you see almost every single pedestrian staring at his cellphone, totally enslaved by the instant information flow seducing all of us. Technological determinism indeed!

The news media salivated mightily over Donald Trump's 7 tweets this morning-- including one which mentioned Trump's reference to possibly taping his conversation with James Comey in the Oval Office. The pundits stated that Trump's behavior mimicked Richard Nixon's tapes of phone conversations-- and concluded Trump is a new version of the President Nixon, a cynical, suspicious paranoid personality brought down by his own insecurities. The media turned to the past to understand the present. Trump must be like Nixon, so the thinking goes.

Trump has his flaws, but he's not a new Nixon. Trump fancies himself the new Reagan. He is neither Nixon nor Reagan. Trumps talks constantly-- especially if we consider Tweets to be a form of conversation. Nixon was secretive, careful, circumspect. Reagan called "the great communicator" liked and mastered the television medium. Both men had considerable experience with the American political process, Nixon famously struggled with the television medium in his debate with John F. Kennedy.

Trump is something of a television expert-- and now he is the most popular TV show in television history-- including the daily soap opera co-star Sean Spicer in his White House briefings. Trump lives the hot lights of media attention but has no sense of political realities. Very few explanations of Trump can be found in the TV annals, not even from his own show--  Celebrity Apprentice.

So, how do we understand Trump? His adversaries focus on Trump's lack of morality and the absence of a political ideology. Perhaps the absence of morality and absence of a political philosphy actually do explain Trump. He's working as an improvisational performer-- staying a step ahead of the pundits by not thinking through all the rational details. He speaks more like a comedian-- and he worked wonders with that method on the campaign trail.

Every week gets more interesting than the week before. Trump has brought Reality TV to the White House and embraced Twitter as his secret weapon. This is not necessarily a good or bad thing. Expecting him to "act Presidential" seems a lost cause. He's playing by a new set of rules. None of us understand them and the rearview mirror is providing no help whatsoever.

Put on your seat belt. Dr. Hunter Thompson, the gonzo political satirist for Rolling Stone magazine, is a man much-needed at the present moment. He likes to say "When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro." Trump seems like a pro in a roomful of amateurs, cub reporters with their pencils behind their ears. Trump likes unscripted, reality television and now he does it full-time. He lives in the moment and casts all previous truths aside.

I've noticed people are turning to artists and poets for an explanation of the present angst. McLuhan always praised artists as the only people willing to look at the present. The artists among us may provide the best answers.

Mr. McLuhan, we must praise you every day!

Trump as King Midas: chops off the head of James Comey

The Donald Trump era has the feel of tremendous hedonism. Donald Trump always struck me as a Midas-like figure, a man who craved gold. He gave his Trump Tower in midtown Manhattan a golden sheen for gold was clearly his favorite color. Maybe he dislikes the White House because of its pale tones-- so bland and pedestrian. Even his hair has a gold luster.

Then there is fame. Trump lusts after fame even more than gold. And he combined the two. He used his fame, branding the Trump name to get loans to build casinos and hotels create more wealth.Trump built hotels and golf courses, not exactly a Steve Jobs like achievement. His money never resulted from innovation, only from fame and branding. And he brags about his wealth, a sin rarely indulged in by the truly wealthy. What's the point? Rich people know you only create envy in others by reminding them of your superior wealth.

Trump's willingness to talk about his riches convinced me he does not really care that much about money. Attention gets him off, more than wealth. That's why he could handle the bankruptcies and bounce back, still ticking like a Timex watch. He measured the success of his wedding to Melania based mostly on celebrity stats-- pointing out that more than 250 celebrities showed up to the reception. He was eager to have Bill and Hillary Clinton show up for the festivities-- and they did. Trump loves famous people.

Trump cannot get too much attention; he craves more; and we crave more of him. Trump's love of all  manner of fame and notoriety reminds me of King Midas, the king who turned everything he touched into gold. The talent seemed wonderful until Midas found his fingers turning his food and drink into the solid yellow metal.

Trump may have overdone it on the fame front. Like gorging on too much food, the news cycle has been gorging on too much Trump. James Comey, the recently fired FBI director tried to join the fame orgy. He clumsily inserted himself into the election news. He couldn't wait to do it again and went back at Hillary a second time. Now, with these Russian hacker accusations, and possible Trump team collusion, things got dicier and Sean Spicier, and Comey found himself on the ropes.

Trump liked Comey's pre-election high jinks, inserting himself into the 2016 election needlessly, and thereby improving Trump's chance at victory. Comey seemed like a high school kid forcing his way on to the prom committee as he strived to impress his Republican friends. Forgot he was in charge of a police agency known at onetime for its discretion in these matters.

Comey got in over his head-- and now his heads been chopped off. Trump couldn't restrain himself.

Nowadays the news seems to arrive too quickly. Mike Flynn hired, shamed and then quickly fired. Comey remained in office, briefly, surviving momentarily despite the election controversy-- but Trump quickly dumped the guy. Comey seemed like a loose cannon. Trump only likes one loose cannon on the scene-- and guess who that is?!