A Certain Point of View: Writing, Film and Stuff

To my conservative friends who are posting false comparisons between the Obama Administration's handling of the swine flu outbreak in 2009 and the current Administration's handling of COVID-19 on social media: Stop it. When the world experienced the swine flu pandemic, Barack Obama was just settling in as President. The first cases were reported by the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) in late March, around the same time that the Obama Administration was dealing with the disastrous state of the economy, which had been battered by the Great Recession of 2008. It took the federal government less than a month to declare a public health emergency, but because the novel Influenza A/H1N1 was a new strain, it took the medical community several more months to get a handle on the outbreak and its spread. President Obama declared a National Health Emergency on October 24, 2009. In all, the CDC estimates that at least 60 million Americans were infected, 274,000 were hospitalized, an

Typical anti-Obama political illustration. Graphic Credit: The People's Cube On Quora, Jeff Reno asks: Has there ever been a time in history when a U.S. President has been treated with less respect by the opposition party? My reply:  If you are a Trump supporter (and I’m willing to bet that you are), I’d like to remind you that Donald J. Trump is not the first President that has been treated with scorn, dislike, and even disrespect. As a matter of fact, I’m willing to state that all 45 Presidents in U.S. history, including George Washington, have been targets of derision, insults, rumors, or accusations of wrongdoing. The political rivalry between the early Republicans (the original name of the Democratic Party) and Federalists was intense, and adherents of both parties often insulted the leadership of “the other side,” using vivid and vitriolic language that would make the Russian troll farm contractors sigh with envy. The first three Presidential Elections (1788, 1

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 limit on how many

On the question-and-answer site Quora, Trump supporter Lauren Davis asks: Why do Democrats hate when people support our president? Don’t they know they make our country look bad? My reply:  Before I give you a proper answer, let me ask you this: Do Trump supporters see the hypocrisy in asking questions such as  Why do Democrats hate when people support our president? Don’t they know they make our country look bad ,  when many of them not only disrespected the previous President between 2008 and 2017 but depict Democratic Party politicians and voters as traitors, “socialists,” and overall evil destroyers of the United States? See, one of the great tragedies about our representative style of democracy is that it has gradually devolved into a vitriolic team sport. A sport, dare I say, where it is a zero-sum game of “my team is better, so yours is for losers.” Partisan rivalry in America, of course, is nothing new. George Washington did not like the party system and

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 was

  Donald J. Trump has been in the White House - courtesy of a victory in the Electoral College and (allegedly) a little help from his friends in Russia - for 63 days and counting. In that short (but seemingly endless) period of time, Mr. Trump has managed to become the least credible and most unpopular person ever to sit behind the Resolute desk in  the Oval Office. Despite a small uptick in his approval ratings - Gallup shows that 41% of Americans think he's doing well in the latest poll  - Mr. Trump still has not cracked the ceiling of 50% approval (or better) since he took the oath of office on January 20. No amount of braggadocio, no vast volume of executive orders, no huge batches of Twitter tweets or campaign-style rallies can hide the fact that Mr. Trump is both incompetent and dishonest.  Consider this: according to various news sources, Mr. Trump suffered yet another setback on his way to repealing the Affordable Care Act (ACA). The dismantling of "Obamacare&quo

Well, folks, the train wreck that is the Trump presidency keeps getting loopier with each passing day.  By now you've probably gotten word that the 45th President of the U.S. is now claiming that former President Barack Obama had his office wiretapped during the 2016 election. Yep, that's right. Mr. "Most Unpopular President" says that his predecessor took his cues from disgraced ex-President Richard Nixon and bugged the phones in Mr. Trump's suite at the Trump Tower in Manhattan to, as conservative radio host Mark Levin claims, "surveille members of his campaign."  In a Twitter tweet posted on Saturday, the President said, "How low has President Obama gone to tapp (sic) my phones during the very sacred election process. This is Nixon/Watergate. Bad (or sick) guy!" These are serious allegations, especially since (a) the FBI, CIA, NSA, or any of the federal intelligence agencies can't wiretap anyone without a court order a