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...

On Quora, Ian Ruth asks: Have the Democrats always been left wing? When I was in high school, and even well into my college years, my instructors (whether they were “teachers” or “professors”) drummed one concept into my consciousness: In any discussion, whether it’s about history, politics, literature, movies, or religion,  never  fall into the habit of making gross generalizations. For instance, not all Germans were Nazis, not all Russians are Communists, not every blonde is dumb, and not every foreign film is inaccessible or otherwise unwatchable. It seems that at least since the 1960s, the go-to gross generalization used by people who self-identify as either Republicans or “conservatives” is this:  The Democratic Party is left-wing, embraces Socialism, and rejects American patriotic values. Nonsense. First, no political party consists of a monolithic mass of unthinking drones, sort of like the Borg Collective minus the cool shit like cube-shaped st...

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...

Is Trump a "modern-day Lincoln"? Some of his fans think so. But trust me, he's not. Photo Credit: NBC Nope. Not in the slightest. The only things in common that Donald Trump and Abraham Lincoln are: Party affiliation: Republicans Ethnicity: Caucasian of European origin Last Job Held: President of the United States Gender: Male Other than that, besides the fact that neither Lincoln nor Trump were shoo-ins during their first run to the White House, they are  dissimilar in  most areas. An 1863 portrait of Abraham Lincoln, 16th President of the United States. Photo Credit: Moses Parker Rice. Mead Art Museum collection  "I am not bound to win, but I am bound to be true. I am not bound to succeed, but I am bound to live by the light that I have. I must stand with anybody that stands right, and stand with him while he is right, and part with him when he goes wrong."  Abraham Lincoln "I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot ...

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...

Three words:  “The Republican Party.” I’ve been a voter in my home state of Florida since 1984. That’s a 34-year-long span of time that encompasses almost all of my adult life. Interestingly, even though until recently (last week, as a matter of fact) I was a “No Party Affiliation” voter, I started out as a mostly-Republican voter. I was a “Cold War kid” who was born a few months after the Cuban Missile Crisis. My childhood played out in the shadows of the Vietnam War and the chaos of the era. I hated Soviet-style Communism (still do) and distrusted/feared the Russians (still do). And, because I always wanted to join the armed forces but can’t due to (back then) a physical disability, I was very pro-military. Soviets. I don't like these guys.   (Photo credit: Getty Images) Naturally, the party I voted for in the 1984 and 1988 elections (and the 1986 mid-terms) was, mostly, the Republican Party. I wasn’t a die-hard Ronald Reagan fan at the time; I thought that h...