Tag: Dennis Rodman

Categories
Letter From The Editor Opinion

Survey Says … We Don’t Agree. About Anything.

Some of the “news” I was exposed to before 9 a.m. today:

An “urgent alert” post on Nextdoor.com that read, “I love my penis.”

A tweet that led me to a video link showing President Trump praising Kim Jong-un as one the “great leaders” of the world, and saying that he “loves his people.” (These would be the people he imprisons and murders, keeps impoverished, and denies basic human rights to, I suppose.)

A story in the print-version of The Commercial Appeal about the “grandma” who put her kids in a dog kennel in her car.

A link on Facebook to a story about the facilities in Texas where the separated children of (brown) asylum seekers are being kept in cages until they can be sent off to foster homes. America!

A CNN video of Dennis Rodman in Singapore wearing a MAGA hat and pitching a crypto-currency called PotCoin.

A Commercial Appeal email that sent me to a video of state Representive Reginald Tate talking to a Republican on a “hot mic” and saying his fellow Democrats were “full of shit.”

An NPR story about U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions’ latest ruling, one that categorically denies asylum to any (brown) woman who claims to be a victim of domestic violence.

Drake Hall playing “Miss You” by the Rolling Stones.

I also made two moves in Words With Friends on my iPhone.

I don’t think I’m particularly atypical. We are bombarded with “news content” from multiple sources these days. It seems unimaginable that just a decade ago, most of us woke up, made coffee, read the paper, and went to work, assuming we were reasonably well-informed.

Information now comes at us nonstop, a pupu platter of news, opinion, tragedy, nonsense, pathos, and propaganda. None of us get the same serving. All of us filter our information stream differently, picking and choosing what catches our fancy.

Is it any wonder we can’t agree about anything?

A survey conducted last week by the the Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research and the American Press Institute found, unsurprisingly, that most Americans are unsatisfied with the current state of journalism and the news. Perhaps, surprisingly, three out of four journalists who were surveyed agreed with them. News creators and news consumers both want the news to be better, but for different reasons.

Journalists are feeling beleagured and threatened by the continued down-sizing of the newspaper industry, the dumbing down and politicizing of television news, and by the constant attacks on the media from the president, who denigrates any reporting he doesn’t like as “fake news.” The survey found that most journalists believe the public’s level of trust in news media has decreased in the past year. Forty-four percent of news consumers said it had.

Interestingly, the survey found that the public wants what most journalists say they want to deliver — stories that are factual and offer context and analysis — but 42 percent of those consumers who were surveyed said journalists too often strayed into non-objective commentary.

Here’s where it gets sticky. When newspapers ruled the Earth, readers pretty much knew what was news reporting and what was opinion. Newspapers had (and still have, for the most part) a clearly delineated “op-ed” section, where pundits unleash points of view about various subjects. It was easy to differentiate news reporting from opinion.

Now, not so much. Is that clip of Dennis Rodman news? Entertainment? A reality show gone rogue? Hell if I know. When that video of Trump and Kim gets posted to Facebook with a snarky comment from a friend, the video itself is ostensibly news, but the comment is opinion. The lines are blurred and getting blurrier. Most of the news we get via social media comes with an opinion attached. Too often, we react to the opinion rather than to the news itself.

Where do we go from here? I don’t know. But it’s worrisome that in a time when accurate, serious reporting has never been more important, most Americans can’t even agree on what it is.

Categories
Opinion The Last Word

GOP Convention Means Hot Fun in the Summertime

Richard J. Daley

People under 40 are in for a treat this summer. A new reality show combining the very best of Survivor, Jackass, Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?, and Here Comes Honey Boo Boo, will begin July 18th and run through the 21st. It promises to be the television event of the year, and you don’t even need cable. The macabre spectacle known as the Republican National Convention will be held in Cleveland earlier than usual this year, so as not to step on the TV ratings for the 2016 Olympics. The Democrats follow suit a week later in Philadelphia, so everybody can jet off to Rio de Janeiro and bring back the Zika virus.

The GOP’s soiree will take place in the Quicken Loans Arena, which seems a bit insensitive, considering their quadrennial gala will be held in a sports arena owned by a mortgage company that was sued by the government for “knowingly violating underwriting practices (and) issuing hundreds of defective loans.” But it all makes sense when you discover the arena is owned by Cleveland Cavaliers owner and heavy Republican donor, Dan Gilbert, a billionaire businessman and chairman of Quicken Loans, who accepted a government bailout for his mendacious operation. So that’s a good start on what will be the billionaires’ political convention.

Several pundits are predicting that the cyclone that’s about to devour Cleveland will be comparable to the 1968 bloody Democratic convention in Chicago. The greatest similarity is that we get to sit on the couch with our popcorn and watch the implosion of a major political party. The differences, however, are many. The national mood leading up to Chicago can best be described as incendiary. LBJ announced he would not run for reelection in March. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated in April, followed by the murder of Robert Kennedy in June.

The best hope for peace was Minnesota Senator Eugene McCarthy, who came to the convention with the most delegates. Every manner of protester flooded into Chicago: radicals, moderates, anti-war activists, hippies, Yippies, and the Black Panther Party. Mayor Richard J. Daley was the law, mobilizing the National Guard and the Chicago police with orders to “shoot to kill” arsonists, and “shoot to maim” looters. This emboldened the cops to commit sanctioned brutality against the loathed, long-haired intruders. For the next three days, while the Democratic Party was disintegrating inside the hall, blue-helmeted riot police removed their badges and went on a rampage, wading into the protestors with sadistic zeal, cracking skulls and bloodying campaign volunteers, men and women alike.

In the end, party bosses chose Vice President Hubert Humphrey, who had not entered a single primary, as the nominee. Because their candidate was crushed by the party machinery, a whole generation took their ball and went home, sitting out the election and enabling the reign of Richard Nixon and setting off another five years of bitter anti-war protests. Like Mick Jagger said, “You can’t always get what you want.”

This year, it’s the Republicans who are in chaos. With tempers boiling, talk of a brokered convention and an insider “Stop Trump” movement, there’s every potential for violence. Only this time, the violence will be inside the convention. While a delegate might mention the word “riot” under his breath, Trump just comes right out and predicts it. When Donald Trump speculated that if he doesn’t get the nomination, “I think you’d have riots. I’m representing … millions of people,” he virtually invited every Tea Party yahoo, Klansman, white supremacist, and open-carry gun neurotic to come to Cleveland. For certain, protesters will descend righteously into the city where 12-year-old Tamir Rice was murdered by a policeman (who was previously declared “emotionally unstable”) for brandishing a toy, airsoft pistol in a public park. Black Lives Matter will be in force. So should the many groups publicly denigrated by Trump: Mexicans, African Americans, Asians, war heroes, women, Catholics, Jews, Muslims, Seventh-day Adventists, Mormons, the disabled, and the poor. This time, however, law enforcement will be overseen by the Department of Homeland Security and the Secret Service (if we can keep them away from the prostitutes) and not the trigger-happy Cleveland police.

So buckle up, this is going to be ugly. So far, it looks like the only people who will speak on behalf of Trump are Dennis Rodman, Sarah Palin, Mike Tyson, Chris Christie, and Omarosa. Maybe they could get the Cliven Bundy militia to prerecord a message of support which could then be read by Duck Dynasty‘s Phil Robertson.

The strange thing is the rules committee is not bound by rules, so they can make them up as they go along. There are two scenarios here: Trump loses the nomination and begins rampaging around the land like the Cloverfield monster, or Trump wins the nomination, but the GOP announces a third-party candidate so as not to let the country fall into the hands of a sociopath who once said, “It really doesn’t matter what (the media) write as long as you’ve got a young and beautiful piece of ass.”

Who can argue with logic like that? Except, imagine for a second if that quote came out of the mouth of Barack Obama. Rednecks would be locking up their daughters. No matter how repulsive Trump is to his fellow GOP presidential candidates, almost all of them have pledged to support the party’s nominee.

Go ahead and nominate his ass. His hate-filled reality show will be renewed for 12 more weeks, then the voters can cancel him for good — and maybe the Republican Party, as well.

Randy Haspel writes the “Recycled Hippies” blog, where a version of this column first appeared.

Categories
Opinion The Last Word

The Rant (December 26, 2014)

CREDIT: Carrienelson1 | Dreamstime.com

Everybody laughs at Dennis Rodman. He is America’s favorite, cross-dressing, tattooed metalhead. His piercings set off alarms
at airports five minutes before he arrives. He’s dyed his hair every shade of the color chart wheel, plus a few other hues not seen before on this planet. He was married to Carmen Electra and linked romantically with Madonna — but then, who hasn’t been? He wore a wedding dress and full make up to promote his 1996 autobiography, claiming that he was bisexual and marrying himself. And his nickname is “The Worm.”

Rodman is also a seven-time NBA rebounding champion, and a two-time defensive player of the year. He wears five NBA championship rings with the Chicago Bulls and had his number retired by the Detroit Pistons. He entered the Basketball Hall of Fame in 2011. Rodman’s drunken bellicosity has cost him his credibility, which is too bad since he’s one of the only living Americans to have had a laugh with North Korea’s Dear Leader, Kim Jong-un.

Rodman went to North Korea in 2013 to assist their national basketball program and returned the next year with a group of former NBA players for a tour of the country. Afterward, Rodman claimed Dear Leader was a “friend for life,” and that Obama should, “pick up the phone and call Kim,” since the two leaders were basketball fans. But he was drunk and verbose upon his return. His agent claimed Rodman had been drinking heavily to an extent “that none of us had seen before,” and he promptly entered a rehab facility.

But Rodman’s message was simple: North Koreans are nuts over basketball. So, before we enter a second Korean War over a Seth Rogen stoner movie, perhaps we should consider invading with basketball. There is a precedent. In 1971, the U.S. Table Tennis Team was invited to China, where no American had been since 1949. On the team was a long-haired, redheaded hippie named Glenn Cowan, and everywhere the team went Cowan was mobbed by fans who were perhaps seeing what freedom was for the first time. The press dubbed it “Ping-Pong Diplomacy,” and it helped thaw relations with China leading up to Richard Nixon’s famous handshake with Mao Zedong, who enjoyed a game of ping-pong himself. Nelson Mandela once said: “Sport has the power to change the world. It has the power to unite people in a way that little else does.”

Speaking of sports, the island of Cuba, one of the last existing communist countries, produces great baseball players. Even Fidel Castro was reputed to be a decent pitcher. Cuban baseball stars like El Duque and Livan Hernandez risked their lives to come to this country. But with Obama’s singular destruction of the mummified, Cold-War corpse of calamities lasting from the Kennedy administration, we may soon see some free-agents.

The fastest way to transform a communist country is to give them a Major League Baseball franchise. The professional suits should get in there fast. I believe there’s already a pretty good ball club in Havana called the Leones. There’s a team in Toronto, and they’re already looking at Mexico City, so let’s give the other half of the hemisphere a chance to compete. New York could play Havana, and they could bring back all those posters that say, “Cuba, si. Yanqui, no,”

Over a half century, the CIA has tried to kill Castro by exploding cigars, poison pills, bacteria, LSD, snipers, bombers, and thallium salts to make his beard fall out. Fidel said, “If surviving assassination attempts were an Olympic event, I would win the gold medal.” Before another Bay of Pigs, let’s invade with pro baseball, Coca-Cola, and Mickey D’s.

Given the chance, I would love to go to Cuba and habla a little espanol. I’d like to see the marketplace and the old cars. A new car in Cuba is a ’57 Buick, but now they can finally get some genuine GM parts. In return, we get the near-mythical Cuban cigar. I smoked a few Hav-a-Tampa jewel sweets with the wooden tip back when I was in college until I realized that the taste was disgusting, but even I would smoke a Cuban cigar just for the hell of it. I could pull one out at a party and scream, “Say hello to my little friend.” We can also learn how to say “banana daiquiri” in Spanish and see some of those racy shows where Hyman Roth would never go. I’m sorry. I just love Godfather references.

One thing’s for sure: The Castros can’t live forever, and their successors won’t have personal connections to the revolution. Maybe an MLB all-star team could tour Cuba like the ping-pong team did China. Then dry out Rodman and make him our ambassador to North Korea. Even Lil’ Kim plays a little ball. Wilt Chamberlain and Jong-un each hold the record for scoring 100 points in a game. The only difference was that Chamberlain did it with other players on the floor. Let’s play ball for a change.

Randy Haspel writes the “Recycled Hippies” blog, where a version of this column first appeared.