A Certain Point of View: Writing, Film and Stuff

Photo Credit: Pixabay Why do some people say Mr. Trump instead of President Trump? In everyday usage, or in journalistic reporting/editorial writing? Since I studied journalism and mass communications in high school  and  college, I’ll start with how mass media refers to presidents and foreign leaders. Although newspaper and news magazines’ stylebooks allow for local variations when dealing with honorifics and titles (the  New York Times  usually places honorifics such as Mr., Mrs., or Ms. before a person’s last name upon second reference), the general style rule is: Use a government official’s title and complete name on first reference, e.g. “President Donald Trump.” After that, use the person’s last name only, e.g. “When Trump was asked about the issue, he said, ‘Fake news!’” In print media, page space is like real estate: a valuable commodity that is measured in column inches. Newspapers especially have only so much space on a page, and there is a...

Hi, there. Uh, okay. So today’s question is:  For those who didn’t vote for Trump, what would Trump have to do to get your vote in the 2020 election? First, you have to understand that the people who didn’t vote for Trump in ’16 don’t make up a huge monolithic bloc or live in a leftist, anti-American mythical land called Utopia. (Or, as the most aggressive of Trump supporters might put it, Libtardia.) I can’t speak for  every  anti-Trump voter, I can only speak for myself, although I’m sure that my reasons for not voting from the current President are not too different from other non-Trump voters. Photo by Michael Stewart/Getty Images Second, understand this: Donald J. Trump is 71 years old (as of December 12, 2017). As such, he is older than the late President Ronald W. Reagan at this point in his first term. People at that age simply  do not change  their personalities, philosophies of life, political views, or their agendas. These are pretty mu...

(C) 1996 G.P. Putnam's Sons In the horrific climax of Debt of Honor, former intelligence official and National Security Advisor (and briefly, Vice-President) Jack Ryan finds himself elevated to the Presidency...and in the sights of foreign and domestic adversaries. Even as the Capitol building smolders and the late President Roger Durling is laid to rest, unfriendly eyes are watching the new and untried President Ryan for signs of weakness...and begin plotting his -- and America's -- downfall.  In Iran, Ayatollah Mahmoud Haji Daryaei (one of the opponents of the Fowler Peace Plan in The Sum of All Fears ) broods in his office and begins to set in motion a series of crises that will tie up America's already over-extended military and intelligence services. Daryaei enlists not only his own operatives in Iran and abroad, but also the leaders of two other nations with global ambitions of their own. By creating a series of seemingly unrelated crises all at once, including ...

Episode Six: Things Fall Apart (January 1968-July 1968) Written by: Geoffrey C. Ward Directed by: Ken Burns and Lynn Novick At the onset of the Tet holiday, North Vietnamese and Viet Cong forces launch surprise attacks on cities and military bases throughout the South, suffering terrible losses but casting grave doubt on the Johnson administration's promise that there is "light at the end of the tunnel." The President decides not to run again and the country is staggered by assassinations and unrest. - from The Vietnam War's Episode List On September 24 2017, millions of television viewers watched "Things Fall Apart (January 1968-July 1968)" on their local Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) stations, streamed it on the PBS.org website, or had already binge-watched it on high-definition Blu-ray (the box set was released on September 19). Per PBS:   Ken Burns and Lynn Novick's ten-part, 18-hour documentary series, THE VIETNAM WAR, tells the e...

Recently, I was lurking around in Quora (a site where people ask questions about any topic under the sun - from Abstinence to Zulus - and other people answer them). I was looking at my feed for something interesting to reply to when I saw this: Do Democrats realize that nobody hyperventilated over Obama like they are doing over Trump? I, of course, was aghast. The original poster  - who upon seeing the avalanche of replies to his literal whitewashing of the past , deleted the question - was claiming that conservatives and Republicans had never "hyperventilated" (i.e. attacked, lied about, insulted, or even criticized )   President Barack Obama during his two four-year terms in the White House, while poor President Trump was being unfairly attacked by liberals, the mainstream media, and illegal aliens.  This is what I wrote in response: Really, Original Poster? Are you kidding me? A slick bit of right-wing propaganda which falsely claimed that (a) Obama ...

To be honest, the premise of the question is not only flawed in its logic, but it reflects both ignorance (of facts) and a strong bias (of political mindset). For starters, the “left” (i.e. Democrats, liberals, or whatever convenient “demon of the day” may be for Trump supporters) is not responsible for the decline in the coal mining industry. There are various factors involved here, but essentially, it is not the “left’s” fault. Coal mining, by its definition, involves the extraction of fossil fuels from the ground. Fossil fuels - including petroleum and natural gas - are plentiful but not infinite. So once coal miners have extracted x amount of coal from the ground at a specific mine until the coal is exhausted, that’s it…there’s no more coal to be had there. Also, coal mining creates its own subset of negative side effects, such as pollution of nearby rivers and deadly diseases that kill miners. Ever heard of “black lung disease”? It’s a deadly condition caused by the inhal...

Here we are, several days after President Donald J. Trump's infuriatingly underwhelming "first 100 days," with a Chief Executive who hasn't matured into his job and his popularity still at world record lows. Unlike President Franklin D. Roosevelt's famous first 100-day period in 1933, Mr. Trump's first months in the White House will be remembered for his crass behavior toward Mexico and other countries, his insistence on building a $21 billion dollar wall along the U.S.-Mexico border, his constant use of Twitter to spout bits of Orwellian nonsense, the mean-spirited assault on President Obama's legacy, his bumbling attempts to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act, and, of course, Russiagate. As hard as it is for Mr. Trump's devoted followers to accept, the 45th President of the United States has been an abject failure since his Inauguration nearly five months ago. His popularity, which was at record lows even before he took the Oath of Offic...