A Certain Point of View: Writing, Film and Stuff

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...

Did the 1947 United States Congress have candidates like Donald Trump in mind when it created the 22nd Amendment? No. The 80th U.S. Congress, which was under Republican control in 1947, only had one man in mind when it approved the 22nd Amendment to the Constitution, and he was dead. That man was Franklin Delano Roosevelt, the 32nd President of the United States and the only one to run for the White House (and  win ) four times. When the 80th Congress went into session on January 3, 1947, it reflected the nation’s weariness with the Democratic Party’s control of the government, which had lasted from 1933 to 1946, a period that included the twin challenges of the Great Depression and the Second World War. FDR and his party had steered the American ship of state through both storms decisively if not always adroitly. but as often happens when one party lingers too long in power, the electorate in 1946 got restless and decided it wanted change in Congress. One of the...

Photo Credit: Michael Stewart/Getty Pictures On Quora, Trump supporter extraordinaire Paulie Duguay asks: Why can't people support President Trump the way U.S. Presidents in the 1940's, 50's, and 60's were supported? My reply: I wasn’t going to answer this; I have a comedy screenplay to finish and turn in, but since right now I’m stuck trying to add an extra scene the director/producer wants me to add for “dramatic tension,” I will use this rather bizarre and patently insincere question to loosen up my writing muscles and do some mental gymnastics. I’m sorry to tell you this, dear staunch Trump supporter, but this question is based on a flawed premise: that before the Sixties, Americans of all social strata and political stances supported American Presidents almost universally. This, my sweet summer child, has never been true in any era of American history. Since 1789, perhaps the only U.S. Chief Executive who enjoyed this kind of support  may have been ...

Anonymous on Quora asked:  Why is  Saturday Night Live  so disrespectful to Donald Trump? Why isn't there a law making it illegal to slander the President of the United States? Political satire, which is the type of comedy practiced by Lorne Michaels’ long-running comedy-sketch series when it lampoons any sitting President, is one of the oldest forms of satirical comment in the humanities. As long as there have been kings, emperors, prime ministers, presidents, and other heads of state, there have always been comedians and/or political cartoonists who, in their routines or drawings, comment on the political realities of the day. To those diehard loyalists of those heads of state, who tend to see things in a different light as the opposition, any criticism of their nation-state’s leadership is often interpreted as an unwarranted attack. And because the satire is often a response to a policy or political philosophy that the head of state promotes, and the loy...

Today’s winner of Silliest Question on Quora is…. Would you support a bill that would allow the President of the United States to serve for life? Short and sweet version: No. Short and not-so-sweet version: Hell, no. Longer, informative, and hopefully  educational  version; No, I would not support a bill that would allow  anyone , regardless of party affiliation, to serve as President of the United States for more than the two-term limit set down in the Twenty-Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. In case you have never read that amendment, which ironically was proposed in 1947 and ratified in 1951 at a time when there was a Democratic President and a Republican-controlled Congress, states: 1. No person shall be elected to the office of the President more than twice, and no person who has held the office of President, or acted as President, for more than two years of a term to which some other person was elected President shall be elected to the office...

This question appeared on my Quora feed today. I've answered variants of it on the questions-and-answers site several times already, but I haven't chosen a good topic for today's blog post, so here goes: To the people who voted for Clinton during the 2016 election, why did you choose to vote for her in the first place, and what do you think of the current president of the United States, Donald Trump? Do you support him now? I voted for Hillary Clinton because, after being a lawyer, First Lady of Arkansas, First Lady of the United States, junior Senator from New York, and former Secretary of State, she was far more qualified, smarter, and far better prepared for the Presidency than Donald J. Trump. As for what I think of the current President: He is absolutely the worst President ever elected to the office. He’s a con man, a divisive person who - despite the public image he has cultivated as a dealmaker and successful businessman - is not as wealthy or successful as h...

(C) 2018 Simon & Schuster Whenever I see – or hear – Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign slogan that he will “make America great again,” I can’t help thinking that many of his mostly white, older, and politically conservative supporters are pining for an America that – in their minds – existed between 1945 and 1961: the “age of Eisenhower.” To most Americans who long for a return to those seemingly idyllic years between the end of the Second World War and John Fitzgerald Kennedy’s Inauguration as President on January 20, 1961, the world was a better one than the one we live in now. The United States, with its huge advantage in nuclear weapons over its deadly Communist rival, the Soviet Union, was the undisputed leader of the “free world.” Its industrial capacity was second to none, and as an ascendant Republican Party reclaimed control of the Congress and the White House after 20 years of Democratic dominance, conservatives began the long process of undoing Franklin D. Roosevelt’...

Episode Three: The River Styx (January 1964-December 1965) Written by: Geoffrey C. Ward Directed by: Ken Burns & Lynn Novick With South Vietnam in chaos, hardliners in Hanoi seize the initiative and send combat troops to the South, accelerating the insurgency. Fearing Saigon's collapse, President Johnson escalates America's military commitment, authorizing sustained bombing of the North and deploying ground troops in the South. - from The Vietnam War's Episode List On September 19, 2017, 300 PBS affiliates across the U.S. aired "The River Styx (January 1964-December 1965)," Episode Three of The Vietnam War,  a 10-part documentary series directed by Ken Burns and Lynn Novick ( The War, Prohibition ). Produced by Burns, Novick, and Sarah Botstein, this 18-hour examination of one of the most divisive events in modern American history was 10 years in the making. It features interviews of participants from all sides, including civilians and veter...

Not in the slightest, considering that Donald J. Trump is neither one of the richest persons in the world nor one of the most successful, at least as far as his business expertise is concerned. So if you think that all the discontent with our current Chief Executive is based on mere envy, well…no. It’s not. If anything, I strongly dislike President Trump for various reasons, most of which are based on his behavior and utterances over the past 30 years, including: 1. His penchant for having extramarital affairs, divorcing two of his wives to marry the women he was having the affairs with, and constantly hitting on other women  even though he was married.  The first time he did this, he ditched first wife Ivana for Marla Maples; the second time he did this, he ditched Marla for Melania Knavs. 2. His spiteful campaign to bring back the death penalty to New York State after the “Central Park Jogger” rape case in 1989, as well as his stubborn insistence that the five tee...