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Commentary: Blackburn bluster is incoherent about social media
U. S. Senator from Tennessee Marsha Blackburn recently has been obsessed with one topic—social media platforms and their supposed unfairness to right-wingers. She spent an inordinate amount of time and space in her Nov. 20 newsletter flogging the point. She included five clips of herself (one from a congressional hearing, one from the Senate floor, […]
Commentary: Tennessee PSAs Underplay COVID Crisis
Public Service Announcements (PSAs) have a long and noble history on U.S. television. Smokey the Bear taught campers to extinguish fully their campfires. In one famous “Keep America Beautiful” PSA the audience sees a character in Native American costume paddling a canoe across a polluted landscape. As litter is tossed on his moccasins we switch to a close-up […]
Commentary: Gov. Lee should seek better school advice
The East Tennessee Chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists for many years has sponsored a Legislative Luncheon in January. State legislators typically are lined up on a dais while audience members, many still digesting the Buddy’s Barbeque from the buffet line, write out questions on cards. A journalist moderator sorts through questions and poses […]
Commentary: Election Forum “No Shows” Reveal Character
A funny thing happened on the way to the forum—specifically recent online League of Women Voters forums in Knox County. The funny thing was that the Republican candidates didn’t show up while the Democratic candidates did —with one exception within each party. The League and its partner organizations planned a trio of Zoom forums with […]
Commentary: As Trump ponders his legacy, what will his library look like?
As a COVID-19 infectious President Trump stumbles about the White House and ‘roid rage tweets, you have to think someone in the eerily quiet corridors must be pondering the very near future. Once you’ve bleached your resume of being associated with the Trump-tanic, what to do next? One task would be planning where the Trump […]
Commentary: Republicans Are Freaking Out about Voting
Record numbers of Americans have been requesting absentee ballots, telling pollsters about their determination to vote, and showing up in states that have started early voting. These facts scare Republicans, and some are taking desperate steps to thwart voting. Four case studies show a bit about the Trump-ian desperation. Let’s start here in Tennessee. This […]
Commentary: COVID Cowboy is Lousy Mayor
Perhaps we should have seen it coming two years ago when Knox County voters opted to make Glenn Jacobs our county mayor. The (mostly former) TV wrestler had no previous government experience. His libertarian inclinations, revealed through blog posts, did not prepare him for the job of actually using government for public good, especially needed […]
Commentary: Election Acceptance is Not Trump’s Call
Some people have asked an odd question: what happens if Donald Trump loses the presidential election but doesn’t acknowledge defeat or leave the White House? The short answer is that those things are not up to him. After Joe Biden take his oath of office at noon on January 20, 2021, Trump is a noisy […]
Commentary: Let’s Get Debates Right in Tennessee
You might be surprised to learn that I’m a veteran of the NFL and lettered at Penn State. Lest you think I was a linebacker, let me explain the letter was for the debate team and the NFL stood for National Forensic League (established in 1925). The name was changed in 2014 to the National […]
Marsha Blackburn is getaway driver for Russian meddling
The U.S. Senate’s Intelligence Committee in mid-August released the fifth and final volume of its bipartisan and hair-raising report on Russian active measures to interfere with the 2016 election. This volume focused on counterintelligence vulnerabilities and threats. It should have been a huge story raising alarms about both President Trump and the forthcoming election, but […]
Prague Points the Way to Museum of Racist Rebellion
Last summer I was in Prague, capital of the Czech Republic, and visited the Museum of Communism. The museum had compelling exhibits on secret police interrogation, censorship, show trials, state propaganda, political labor camps, and the valiant but crushed 1968 uprising known as Prague Spring. The statues of Lenin and Stalin are by the toilets. […]
Commentary: Vocabulary words work as political drugs
Sometimes it takes a sharp mind and large vocabulary to distinguish between actual obscure and erudite words (useful for Scrabble and standardized tests) and the invented brand names for new pharmaceuticals being flogged in television advertising. That’s when I stumbled on several good political words that work better as drug names. Drug Ad #1, Problem/Solution? […]