- It’s good that a network, in this case CNN, is hosting the next round of Democratic debates. Americans need to get a first-person feel for who can take on Donald Trump. But it’s too bad it’s still a mess with too many candidates to have an actual “debate.” It’s political performance art. As a result, it’s teased like other prime-time programming. To wit: The digitally clocked “Countdown to ‘The Draw,’” two weeks before the Detroit gathering. A presidential-candidate forum shouldn’t be shilled like the NFL Draft. And are they “contestants” or candidates?
The network touts the dynamics, “face-offs,” “match-ups” and “rematches.” Everything but “starring Wolf Blitzer.” It is what it is: Show business embedded into our media and politics and there’s no rebottling that grandstanding, societal genie. The sooner we get to less than a half dozen candidates, the better it will be for democracy—and the Democrats.
- Thanks to CNN’s retrospective on “The 60s,” I caught up with some old “Laugh-In” clips. Including the segments it regularly did on “News of the Future.” One in particular still resonates. It referenced the still-futuristic 1970s with something like: “Secretary of Defense John Wayne announced today that he was leaving for Hanoi where he will punch the Vietnamese in the mouth.” A half century later, a “Defense Secretary Wayne” no longer seems so far-fetched and farcical. Just frightening.
- “Nativist, xenophobic, counterfactual and politically stupid.” That was conservative journalist Brit Hume characterizing Trump’s racist rant at the four high-profile, minority female progressives in Congress. Too bad that wasn’t Sean Hannity.
- The Miami Herald has been hammering Marco Rubio for his oh-so-parsed “criticism” of Trump’s racist rants against the four Democratic congresswomen of color. The Herald’s editorial board called his response “pathetic,” and later wrote that “he has transformed from Trump critic to sycophantic cheerleader.”
- Wonder if Time magazine would like a mulligan on that dated cover story on Rubio that labeled him “The Savior of the Republican Party.”
- Chances are the network footage of Mexican drug-and-murder lord Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman being sentenced to life in a U.S. prison is the last we’ll see of him. He’s getting the ultimate punishment shy of the capital version: Supermax confinement, which is a solitary cell and no access to tunnels. His only hope: Pay for The Wall.