Archie Bunker in the White House

The New York City borough of Queens has two residents more famous than the rest-- Donald Trump and Archie Bunker. Donald Trump is real and Archie Bunker is a fictional character. Normal Lear, the groundbreaking television producer, named the show All in the Family and cast Carroll O'Connor as Archie.

Trump and Bunker resemble each other in many ways. Archie sits on his throne, a comfortable chair in the middle of his living room. He hurls insults and says the things others are thinking but are afraid to say. Archie has problems with racial diversity, homosexuality, longhairs, war protesters, etc. etc.. Each show ended with a positive message about healing and crossing barriers.

Tump's speeches do not end with that kind of uplifting message.  Trump has his throne to the Oval Office. He shoots from the hip just like Archie. Neither man shrinks from controversy.

All in the Family (AITF)  ran from 1971-1979 and helped heal some of the lingering pain of the Vietnam era. The show confronted American society's prejudices through the voice of a bigoted, white working-class guy. r

Archie's blunt language reminds us of Donald Trump. Both men have a natural, colorful speaking style. Their hate-filled rants have another thing in common, they attract a loyal following of fans. Both Archie Bunker and Donald Trump speak like guys not afraid to offend. Agree or disagree-- you cannot get Archie Bunker or Donald Trump out of your head. Both are born entertainers.

Trump and Bunker are colorful. They speak in the cadences of the man in the street. Trump has a wealthy background but does not feel elite. Archie comes from humbler stock. Archie feels fear about the future. He doesn't like change.

Trump also seems to want to long for the past. He's done everything possible to rollback the Obama year changes. He constantly inflames liberals and reporters from CNN and MSNBC.

Trump may be non-fictional but like Archie he is product of the media. Trump calls the media "the enemy of the people" but media is Trump's biggest friend. A true con man, Trump convinces us that the most outlandish ideas have validity. And foolishly the media underestimates Trump and calls him a fool. One of the conman's greatest gifts is to convince the other guy, the mark, that he is smarter than you.

The TV camera is Trump's real mistress, a gal more loyal than porn star Stormy Daniels and all the other female accusers. The media speak about Trump constantly, from both left and right, from Fox News to the The New York Times and Washington Post.

New Yorkers are famously abrasive. Usually that New York attitude does not play well in the flyover states. The American Heartland has affection for modest people, the "Aw shucks" attitude of a Gary Cooper, who rides into town on a white horse and takes care of problems like it was easy as pie.

Trump builds his own importance with the fever of a narcissist looking in the mirror. He loves to hear his name repeated. The Trump name resonates across the airwaves and social media with metronome regularity. The crude, colorful language

Despite all the odds against them, the two Queens products have hypnotized America to their way of thinking. Archie has bunked us and Trump has trumped us. And we like it!

Insight to a Killer

The following paragraphs gave me more insight into Nikolas Cruz, the Parkland, Florida killer, than all the news reports combined.

I Tried to Befriend Nikolas Cruz. He Still Killed My Friends.

By ISABELLE ROBINSON
MARCH 27, 2018

PARKLAND, Fla. — My first interaction with Nikolas Cruz happened when I was in seventh grade. I was eating lunch with my friends, most likely discussing One Direction or Ed Sheeran, when I felt a sudden pain in my lower back. The force of the blow knocked the wind out of my 90-pound body; tears stung my eyes. I turned around and saw him, smirking. I had never seen this boy before, but I would never forget his face. His eyes were lit up with a sick, twisted joy as he watched me cry.

The apple that he had thrown at my back rolled slowly along the tiled floor. A cafeteria aide rushed over to ask me if I was O.K. I don’t remember if Mr. Cruz was confronted over his actions, but in my 12-year-old naïveté, I trusted that the adults around me would take care of the situation.

Five years later, hiding in a dark closet inside Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, I would discover just how wrong I was

Isabelle Robinson's account of Cruz throwing an apple at her captures the sadistic mind of the future killer. We have all faced an aggressive act from a hostile person. Maybe that makes Ms. Robinson's commentary so poignant. Most of us have never faced the barrel of an AR-15, or any firearm for that matter. 

Cruz's depraved act, attacking an innocent student with a hard-thrown apple, seems easier to grasp at that level. That he would return years later an open fire with an assault rifle seems only like the same act-- on steroids. Or on semiautomatic weapons...

Cruz's recent Adoptive Parents:

We haven't heard much about the Snead family, James and Kimberly Snead, the adoptive parents to take Nikolas Cruz into their house in recent months. The Snead claimed to know nothing about the serious suspicions surrounding Cruz.

The Sneads encountered Nikolas Cruz very late in the process. They had a son of their own, a Douglas HS student who was in the building when Cruz gunned down his former classmates and teachers.

The Snead family offered a few comments, reported by CNN, and they proved upsetting. :

The Sneads allowed Cruz to bring his firearms into the home, but they made him buy a locking gun safe, they told the Sun Sentinel. James Snead thought he had the only key to the safe, but he now believes Cruz kept one for himself, he told the paper.

They said they told Cruz he needed to ask permission to take out the guns.

"This family did what they thought was right, which was take in a troubled kid and try to help him, and that doesn't mean he can't bring his stuff into their house," Lewis, their attorney, told CNN.

Unfortunately "his stuff" included an AR-15.

Isabelle experienced the unvarnished Nikolas Cruz five years before the tragedy. Her article makes a strong case for Cruz's classmates not having played a role in his unraveling. Cruz had unraveled years earlier, and most likely his downfall began in the cradle. Cruz sounds like a dispassionate robotic killer. He had a penchant for hurting people-- whether with an apple or bullets. 

The thing that makes me wonder— how a recent addition to your home, in this case an adoptive young man with a troubled history—arrives on the scene with his personal AR-15 and red flags don’t go up.

The Sneads didn’t take notice… Neither did the rest of the country until the Douglas High School students took action.

Trump the De-stabilizer

Let’s turn to the Merriman-Webster dictionary for a definition of the word destabilize.

Destabilize—transitive verb; 1. To make unstable; 2 to cause (something such as a government) to be incapable of functioning or surviving.

Fareed Zakaria, host of a Sunday morning show on CNN, interviewed a journalist from Iran last week. The journalist didn’t speak perfect English. Fareed asked “what do people in Iran think of Donald Trump?”

“Instable,” the reporter answered. He meant to say “unstable” but his meaning was clear. “Donald Trump is instable and he is making America instable…” he continued. He used instable rather than saying “Trump is de-stablizing America.” Ah ha, I thought. I think this gentleman has captured the essence of Mr. Donald Trump. His goal is to “destabilize” each and every situation to his own advantage.

The President of the United States has immense power. We look to the president to add stability. We presume the president reached his position through great skill and experience. The president should be the epitome of—stability. He or she shares that great equanimity with the entire nation and the entire globe. The center of the Free World is Washington DC. We want everything to revolved around the White House. The president is a center of gravity holding reality, politics, war, conflict and peaceful resolution in the center of his hand. But this time it’s different. Donald Trump seeks instability in every situation.

Trump just declared against the FBI. The FBI is in tatters and only Donald the Great can restore the department to its former glory. Strange?! Critics say the morale of FBI agents will fall precipitously because the boss said they suck… Donald throws everybody over like a jiu jitsu master. Everybody is an enemy and he has to keep the adversaries off their stride. He has to destabilize them.

Donald Trump thrives on conflict, while most people avoid conflict as much as possible. We wonder about his motive. My guess is the destabilization technique comes from his business experience. I’ve never read “Art of the Deal” but I probably should. Keep your negotiating adversary off-guard, nudge him out of his game, push him out of his comfort zone. Maybe Trump’s goal is money and making money. His job description is to lead the USA but Trump always has his eye on the dollar bill.

A real estate friend of mine told me—“your power in any house buying decision is the ability to walk away from the deal. Trump alienates all comers. He’s always walking away from the deal.

A few tidbits… heard a radio caller describe Sarah Huckabee Sanders as “a sassy diner waitress type.” That’s hysterical.

The same radio show featured Major Garrett talking about the White House press briefings, now go-to viewing. Sarah Huckabee Sanders is just too entertaining.

Major Garrett said reporters, like him, “stormed the ramparts” to pin Sara Sanders to the truth.

The same caller on the show I mentioned above described the reporters as “obsequious.” You decide….

Word Nerd section:

3 Vocabulary words:

1.   Epitome-- embodiment

2.   equanimity—evenness of mind

3.   obsequious—fawning attentiveness

I used to be a Language Arts/Reading teach

Distracted living: Breaking News always breaking….

In December 2017 we finally crossed the barrier, the barrier regarding how much stimulation the human brain can tolerate. Another word for over-stimulation is distracted living and I fear this is the life we are all leading.

The constant sexual harassment stories has brought the volume and intensity of news to the awareness of the American population. I cannot speak for the entire country but now I notice even the newscasters have been nudged beyond their comfort zone.

Breaking news… maybe this phrase was magnified by CNN and around the time of the first Gulf War in 1990? A grim, serious face newscaster like Bernard Shaw would intone news about the war in Kuwait and/or Iraq. A sudden audio cue would emanate from the screen and the phrase “Breaking News” would cross the screen in a large font. We were being cued like Pavlov’s dogs to respond to the aural cue and the catchy phrase that some event had just occurred and was even more noteworthy than whatever was being discussed previously. Switch to new topic. With bated breath we get the new, bigger story and we sponge it up like one of Sponge Bob’s underwater buddies.

So now we get the list of Sexual Harrassers and it grows rapidly, seemingly every day. As for the present count, I list a few—and not in any particular order:

Matt Lauer—host of the “Today” show for nearly 20 years, an icon of early morning TV when the stories are cheerful. The accusations of locking women into his office for sexual activity cost him his job—ending his career in the blink of an eye.

John Conyers—88 year olds, U.S. representative from Michigan since 1965, allegedly use public monies to buy the silence from his female victim/employee. If true, that’s a wicked case of political manipulation.

Louis CK—a brilliant comic performer who liked performing after the show, taking off his clothes in his hotel room to show female guests his latest schtick.

Charlie Rose—“Jurassic” -- a term which would seem to apply here and to several others. These patriarchs rise early for work but still have a fire-in-the-oven for hiring and pursuing interns in the after-hours. 

Glenn Thrush—NY Times reporter, apparently not always a mild-mannered reporter. Drinking helps with social inhibition but got Glenn is some trouble.

Al Franken—another U.S representative, this one from Minnesota. Another Midwestern reps from the north country, up where Bob Dylan and the Coen brothers, famed filmmakers known for their noir perspective--  people finding themselves in dark situations. That’s where Al Franken, allegedly a serial butt-grabber, finds himself now.

Roy Moore—candidate for U.S. Senate seat in Alabama, showed that Southern proclivity for finding the least appropriate sexual partner (often a cousin or other family member). Roy is accused of soliciting teenagers when he was a 32 year old man prowling the malls for high school girls. Alabama voters prefer an accused child molester to a Democrat, a sign of the times if there ever was one.

That’s enough on the Sexual Harrassment front… there are other names—Harvey Weinstein, Donald Trump, Kevin Spacey, and Jeffrey Tambor—but let’s quite while we’re ahead… or is it behind? Weak pun, I know. Oh, and Garrison Keeler, retired host from "Prairie Home Companion", 75 years old and the only man in the bunch to make an effort at self-defense. 

That’s enough distracted living for the moment. More “Breaking News” will happen before long. Stand ready with your phone, or by your television set. The host has changed—Stephanie Ruhle (she’s no Bernard Shaw)? But the news has only learned to break faster and faster. The pace has quickened in the 27 years since 1990.

We, the audience, demanded it, but now we may truly be sick of it. Distracted living takes a toll.

Trump, New York City and the Tabloids

New York City is the city of a million stories. The

tabloids help explain the rise of Donald Trump: pages full of celebrity gossip, divorce, crime, sex scandals, and scantily clad Page Six girls. Tabloids speak very directly. Like Trump, they have strong opinions, pull no punches but are sometimes sketchy on the details. They go for emotions. Large print headlines jump off the page and many photos stimulate the reader.

We are not talking NY Times, the paper of record. Too intellectual. Trump calls them the “failing New York Times” but secretly wants their approval. Trump rises from the NYC tabloids--the conservative New York Post and the liberal New York Daily News. If it bleeds it leads.

Credit Donald Trump with one sign of genius, his decision to stick with New York City. New York struggled in the 1970s when things looked bleakest—gangs, graffiti, and unemployment. Why did he stay? Trump is a sucker for a story and Gotham thrives on stories. And New York City has many celebrities of various stripes. Trump loves celebrities, more than almost anything else.

And then New York made a comeback. Ironically, immigrants played a big role in invigorating the city. Creative young people returned to the Big Apple, especially Brooklyn. Gentrification followed. Crime decreased. Wall Street’s massive profits trickled down across the city. The Big Apple was back. Trump Tower stood proudly in the middle of the renaissance.

Trump learned from the tabloids. It’s all about exposure and building a brand. All publicity is good publicity. And Trump got a regular gig on television—The Apprentice.

When it came time to run for President, Trump figured out the cable news game better than Hillary. Say outrageous things and arouse emotion. Tabloid newspapers influenced cable TV with its confrontational style. Donald Trump’s oxygen became cable TV. He loves being the performer and the watcher. He digests CNN programs  and reacts. As President, he sealed the deal by mastering Twitter. Trump’s tweets became his own media outlet.

We usually get the President who figures out the media environment more accurately than his/her competition. Trump wanted to be the most famous man in the world. Mission accomplished. Trump now controls the news cycle—24/7. He cannot be moved off of Page One.