Tag: Sean Hannity

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Letter From The Editor Opinion

The American Circus

CREDIT: Danny Raustadt | Dreamstime.com

A porn actress, the president of the United States’ lawyer, and the most popular television host in America walk into a court room …

Nah, no one’s going to buy that plot, right? It’s too crazy, too over-the-top. But what did we expect, really? We elected a reality show host to the presidency, and he’s turned the entire country into a reality show.

It’s getting really hard to keep up. I used to bang out this column on Monday and clean it up and revise it a little on Tuesday morning, just before we went to press. Now, that’s become almost impossible, especially if I’m writing about national politics. I’ll get Trumped every time.

This past Monday, for instance, I took a break to walk up the five stories to the roof of the Parking Can Be Fun building next to our offices. I do this two or three times a day, because when my Fit-Bit buzzes and tells me to get moving, I must obey or risk not making my daily goal of 8,000 steps. Then I will die — or something.

Anyway, I like the view from up there. You can see the river, brown and swollen with snowmelt from Minnesota; you can see the trees over in Arkansas, freshly emerged from the seasonal floods and sporting the tender greens of spring; you can watch the geese fly against a perfect morning-blue sky. You can clear your head and think about what you might want to write about. And I came up with a couple of ideas. Silly me.

When I returned to my desk, the internet had blown up with the news that Trump’s fixer’s lawyer, the attorney representing Michael Cohen, had been forced to reveal in court that Cohen was also an attorney for Fox News mega-host Sean Hannity. What? Hannity immediately intimated that Cohen was a liar and didn’t really represent him but that he wanted attorney-client privilege. What?

Porn stars and presidents and right-wing nuts, oh my! Twitter went crazy; the cable channels went into overdrive; the news cycle had a shiny new toy — and the never-ending American political circus had a new act.

Let’s think a minute about what’s happened in the past few days. First, the speaker of the House, Paul Ryan, announced he wouldn’t run for reelection. Then, on Friday, Cohen, who was supposed to be in court facing off against porn star and former Trump paramour Stormy Daniels, was seen smoking cigars on the street with Russian oligarchs and mafioso types. That night, Trump announced a bombing raid on Syria. The former FBI director, James Comey, released a book that exposed the president as a shallow, self-centered liar (shocker!) and went on television to talk about it. On Sunday, UN Ambassador Nicki Haley announced tough new sanctions on Russia — which were reversed on Monday by Trump.

And that was just the weekend.

Monday night, the cable shows chewed through the events of the day, trying to stuff in segments on Hannity’s ethical malfeasance in promoting Cohen on his show without revealing his personal connection, Comey’s provocative book, and Trump’s subsequent eviscerating tweets. The fact that the United States had bombed a country in the Middle East three days prior was lost in the shuffle, having been assessed by most as a meaningless wag-the-dog moment with no casualities and no real consequences. In normal times, any of these stories would have consumed a week’s worth of punditry and analysis. Now we’re all just trying to keep up, while the carousel goes round and round.

Perhaps figuring we all needed a break, the president and his wife flew to Trump’s resort in Florida (on separate planes) for five days of vacation, but not before leaving us with several tweets about crooked Hillary and lyin’ Jim Comey. Trump will presumably spend the rest of the week golfing and tanning. We can hope so, anyway.

Seriously, I’m exhausted just recounting all of this. I probably need another trip to the rooftop of Parking Can Be Fun, but I’m afraid I’ll miss something.

Categories
Letter From The Editor Opinion

Tigers, Redbirds, Trump, Porn, and Co-Yo

What a week it was. The football Tigers beat UCLA using a combination of great offense, timely defense, and good ol’ Mid-South heat and humidity. Those California dudes never knew what hit ’em.

And the Memphis Redbirds won the Pacific Coast League championship, beating out all the other teams on the Pacific Coast, including the Nashville Sounds, El Paso Chihuahuas, Omaha Storm Chasers, and the fearsome New Orleans Baby Cakes.

To sum it up: Memphis 2, “Pacific Coast” 0.

It was a week where I found myself agreeing with Donald Trump, at least for a few hours. After a Wednesday night meeting with Democratic Congressional leaders, “Cryin’ Chuck” Schumer and Nancy Pelosi, Trump began his Thursday morning by tweeting: “Does anybody really want to throw out good, educated, and accomplished young people who have jobs, some serving in the military? Really!” Followed by: “They have been in our country for many years through no fault of their own — brought in by parents at young age.”

The paleo wing of the GOP went nuts. Ann Coulter tweeted, “Who doesn’t want to impeach Trump?” Sean Hannity blamed it all on Mitch McConnell for “forcing” his hero to “work with Democrats.”

Trump had seemingly done a complete flip-flop on DACA overnight. My guess is that Pelosi shook Trump’s hand and said, “Oh my, it’s so BIG!!” and Trump agreed to everything she asked, including a deal to save the Dreamers and turn the border wall into a cheery Tex-Mex restaurant.

Sadly, the “deal” only lasted a few hours, and Trump quickly deleted his tweets.

So it goes with this guy. Save DACA. Eliminate DACA. Build the wall, and the Mexicans will pay for it. The wall’s already being built, and we’ll bill Mexico later. Wall? What wall? Trump is a presidential pinball, caroming from one “decision” to another, depending on the last player who flips him.

So what else happened? Oh yeah, Ted Cruz got caught watching porn, or better said, “liking” a porn video with his Twitter account. The New Yorker‘s Andy Borowitz tweeted: “Porn Industry Irrevocably Damaged by Association with Ted Cruz.” Cruz blamed it on his staff, of course. His staff. Huh-huh.

The Emmys happened. Alec Baldwin won an award for his Saturday Night Live impression of Trump. Kate McKinnon won for her SNL impression of Hillary Clinton. And America wept, thinking either of these two comedians would probably make a better president than what we’ve got. Then Sean Spicer got up and reprised his acting gig from the actual White House, and the already fuzzy line between reality and comedy was blurred beyond recognition.

What else? Oh yeah, Trump supporters held the “Mother of All Rallies” in Washington, D.C., on Saturday. About 800 people showed up. Which, as someone pointed out on Twitter, is what happens when you name your march after Mike Pence’s wife. The MOAR crowd was outnumbered by a marching contingent of Juggalos, who are fans of the band, Insane Clown Posse. Write your own Trump joke. You can’t make this stuff up. Though I kind of wish you could.

Back in Memphis, 130,000 people attended the Cooper-Young Festival. I heard a record 37,000 windchimes were sold. I also heard we’re supposed to call Cooper-Young “Co-Yo” now. And I got this from a beardy guy drinking a craft beer, so it must be true.

Overton Park Conservancy director Tina Sullivan went to the Co-Yo Fest and tweeted: “Highlight of this year’s CY Fest was the elderly gentleman asking my opinion on public nudity & saying he might organize a Naked Bike Ride.”

First, I’d like to say that I’m not that “elderly.” And second, I think we should do it around the Nathan Bedford Forrest statue as it’s being taken down.

And in a final somber note to a weird week, British writer Kathy Lette wrote: “Sad news. I’ve just heard that the bloke who invented predictive text has pissed away. His funfair is next monkey.”

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Opinion The Last Word

Offering a little help with Trump’s test.

CREDIT: Dwong19 | Dreamstime.com

I want desperately to help Donald Trump. I think I can be of great service to him, his image, his campaign, and his fight against the immigrants he thinks are trying to get into the United States to blow us up. I was elated when he made his “foreign policy” speech the other day and announced that, if elected president, he would put in place a new ideology “test” that immigrants would have to take before they were allowed into the country — to make sure we don’t let in, for heaven’s sake, any bigots. I levitated. My head spun. My eyes bulged. My heart raced. Actually, my skin crawled, but I ignored that because I really want to help. First, however, I have a few questions for Mr. Trump.

Dwong19 | Dreamstime.com

Donald and Melania Trump

1) Is this test going to consist of questions that have to be answered true or false, or will it be multiple choice? And will there be an essay component to it?

2) I assume it will be the same test for immigrants from all countries, but I don’t want to make an ass out of you and me, so can you jot me a quick email to let me know if you need a set of questions for, say, people traveling from Syria that’s different than a set for, say, people traveling from Luxembourg? You just never know these days whom not to trust.

3) Are the questions going to be opinion-based or fact-based? Like, “What do you think about baseball, hot dogs, and apple pie?” as opposed to “Who is buried in Grant’s tomb?”

4) Will you ask them what they think about Trump Tower? This could get really iffy with the stuck-up French and those smartass, superior Germans, who like that woman president of theirs.

5) Will your wife Melania’s family members from Slovenia have to take the test when they come to visit, or can we just skip over them and let ’em on in to save time? I say, make them take the test just to be sure.

6) The trend now in all communications is to keep things brief. Can we keep the test brief for everyone, or is it going to “be huge”?

7) Does the size of male immigrants’ hands need to be addressed? Is it okay if theirs are bigger than yours? I’m a little doubtful you’ll give them much leeway on this one, given the way things have been going.

8) And speaking of size and hands and such, how are the two of us going to address these giant, naked Donald Trump statues that some damn crazy artists placed in various cities the other day? They may have been immigrants. Probably from Finland or some other punk-ass Scandinavian country. The Washington Post described the likenesses of you by writing, “The eyes scowl, the mouth pouts, and the veiny, almost reptilian skin looks like it was torn off a human-size frog and dipped in bronzer.” You know that’s not what you look like. And whatever terrorist made the statues put a little, tiny, barely visible … well, I’m sure you saw the photos and the headlines and the stories and the YouTube videos showing the statues to billions of people around the world. We need to put some questions in the quiz about this. Something to the effect of, “If we allow you to enter the United States of America, do you have plans to create naked statues of me, President Donald J. Trump, with a tiny penis, and place them in public for the world to see? Please answer true, false, or I’m not really sure at this time.” If they fill in the last option, keep them out of the country. It’s as easy as that.

9) The other big thing to worry about is keeping out people who might decide they like the Clintons. You don’t want to run the risk of that, do you? As you have pointed out, Hillary and Barack Obama founded ISIS, so you can bet plenty of the terrorists they trained are going to try to get in one way or another. You better put a question on the test about that. Something to the effect of, “When Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama came to the Middle East and founded ISIS, did you get any special training from them about how to blow up Americans or any other good, Christian people? Did Hillary show you how to make a bomb and bring it to the United States? Answer just true or false on this one.”

10) And finally, there’s this question about what is in the immigrant terrorists’ hearts when they try to come into the United States. What is their real ideology? Why do they hate the West so much? I think the best way to address that is the way you described it the other day during your town hall with Sean Hannity, when you, I think, talked about getting them off the internet. You said, “Sean, when you look at what’s going on with the internet and how ISIS is using the internet and what they’re doing and what they’re doing to us and then you have people in our country that say oh, you can’t do that, that’s doing something so bad to us, here we are, people — they want to blow us up. We have to be very careful.” I think you are 100 percent right. I would just put that exact quote on the test, and if they can figure out the answer, don’t dare EVER let them in.

Categories
Letter From The Editor Opinion

Death by a Thousand Cuts

Hey, remember Ebola? The disease that was going to kill us all in the weeks leading up to the November elections? Remember that guy who died in Houston? And that nurse who rode on an airplane, endangering the entire traveling American public? And that other nurse who rode her bike around New York state, infecting millions? Remember Senator Lindsey Graham’s adorable hysterics? Remember how the national media, particularly Fox News, tried to scare the crap out of us, day after day after day? Pay no attention to the experts! Block all air traffic from Africa! Quarantine everybody for 40 days! Thanks to Obama and Harry Reid, we’re all going to die!

Yeah.

Then, like magic, the day after the mid-term elections, the crisis ended. Being something of a cynic, I predicted what would happen in an October 30th column titled, “The Ebola ‘Crisis’ Isn’t.” The usual right-wing commenters took their shots: “When a community organizer president, a lawyer Ebola czar, and the ultra liberal editor of an entertainment weekly tell you there’s nothing to worry about, you can rest assured there’s not.” And, “The Flyer editor’s a doctor now … smart dude!”

No, I’m not a doctor, but I’ll take doctors’ and scientists’ opinions over those of Sean Hannity and various anonymous nuts, any day.

And speaking of nuts … what’s really nuts is what’s about to happen to Tennessee’s health-care system. Earlier this year, Governor Bill Haslam issued a directive to all state department heads to cut their budgets by seven percent. Last Friday, TennCare released its proposed new budget, which slices $165 million in spending. That number actually represents around $400 million in lost revenue, due to the subsequent loss in matching federal spending.

From The Tennessean: “The proposed budget eliminates grants to safety net hospitals, ends funding for programs for babies born with health problems, halts coverage of hospice services, and limits in-home assistance for the elderly to those poor enough to qualify for Supplemental Security Income. Doctors and other health providers would get hit with a 4 percent reimbursement reduction. Other cuts include funding for medicines and mental health services.”

Dave Chaney, a spokesman for the Tennessee Medical Association, said, “For more than 20 years, physicians have accepted very low rates to take care of patients, and the rates keep being cut as the cost of providing care goes up and the program continues to add people and covered services. That’s an unsustainable trend.” No doubt.

And of course, it’s all made even worse by the state’s ideology-driven refusal to participate in any variation of the Affordable Care Act. That foolishness is costing the state millions more in lost, no-risk health-care funding. Unfortunately, there’s no known cure for stupid.

Maybe it would help if we could drum up some Ebola cases in Chattanooga.

Categories
Letter From The Editor Opinion

Letter From The Editor: The War on the War on Christmas

I’m hereby declaring war on the war on the “war on Christmas.” I can no longer sit idly by as Fox News escalates this annual crusade of duplicitous demagoguery every holiday season. Yes, I said “holiday season.” Get used to it.

Bill O’Reilly is the primary culprit, having spent the past several Novembers and Decembers ginning up outrage over the mythical “war on Christmas.” In O’Reilly’s world, saying “Happy Holidays” is an insult, part of a craven liberal plot designed to demean Jesus’ birthday and remove Christianity from Christmas. If a corporation, a school, or any other public entity posts “Season’s Greetings” or “Happy Holidays” in its stores or as part of its marketing or advertising, it’s perpetrating the war on Christmas and insulting all good Christian Americans, and O’Reilly will call you out on it. Because … he’s tough that way.

Now, predictably, O’Reilly’s Fox-mate Sean Hannity is jumping into this ignoble fray. And, even more predictably, so is the grizzly grifter, Sarah Palin, who’s “written” a book about this horrific problem. It’s called Good Tidings and Great Joy, and it is neither.

Palin went on Hannity’s show on Veterans Day to plug her book. Hannity introduced her by bemoaning the “unbridled and unprecedented attacks” on Christmas. Palin turned it up a notch, claiming that “angry atheists” armed with attorneys “want to tell patriots … that no longer can you acknowledge that Jesus is the reason for the season.” Because … rhyming.

Stop it, you tools. There is no Santa Claus, and there is no “liberal” war on Christmas. Yes, we can all agree that the idea of Christmas as a simple Christian celebration of the birth of Jesus Christ has gotten lost in the blow-up yard snowmen, the billion-light house displays, the shopping binges, the chrome and neon Christmas trees, and the relentless commercials and sales. But let’s be honest: It’s opportunistic retail capitalism and our own lust for more “stuff” that’s waging war on the true meaning of Christmas. If you want to get back to simply gathering your family, filling a stocking for everyone, and having a nice turkey dinner, no one’s going stop you, patriot — though Walmart won’t be pleased.

And people don’t say “Happy Holidays” because they are angry liberal atheists who hate Jesus. They say it because they’re aware that several other holidays occur in December and/or that not everyone celebrates Christmas. They’re being sensitive and sensible, especially if they don’t know you. They’re doing unto others as they would like others to do unto them. (I read that somewhere.) Anyone who could twist a greeting wishing you happiness into an insult or a declaration of war is not a Christian. They’re a fool or a demagogue. Or both.

Bruce VanWyngarden

brucev@memphisflyer.com