19 Cent Notebook

Bad news for all my former colleagues in the news media. A recent Gallup Poll asked Americans whether they approve of how the U.S. leaders and institutions are handling the coronavirus pandemic. Donald Trump, who the press corp has roughed up regularly during the crisis, had a 60 per cent approval rating. I am drawing from secondary sources here, so, at this writing, I don’t know how Vice President Mike Pence, the CDC and Congress rated — but, according to what sources I do have accessed, they all scored higher than — the news media. More people disapproved than approved of its coverage, 55 per cent to 44 percent.

Now — I don’t like the way Trump interacts with reporters who ask questions he doesn’t like or his blanket denunciation of reporters. However, some of those questions — and he sniffs them out easily — are subtly or overtly of the “gotcha” variety.  And Trump’s base and, apparently, many others, feel he should be getting far more credit for his efforts, and far less criticism. But, this is a Democracy, thank God. I know Trump’s current dust-up with governors is being perceived as the case of a man who doesn’t understand the Constitution. I know and very much like Harvard professor Larry Tribe. But I recall, going all the way back to Reagan, that Larry will be reliably on the liberal side of Constitutional interpretation. Not sure where I fall down on the issues of the governors. I haven’t heard Larry on the matter. The folks at MSNBC like to go to him. I’m sure he’s out there, likely fulminating. God bless America!

And, speaking of that — that’s the problem, you might say, with a Democracy in which many people don’t trust what should be their reliable source of unbiased information — the Fourth Estate. Especially in a crisis such as this. The media is preoccupied, it seems, with partisan, divisive squabbles.  Trump hates them and they often waste their time hating him back.

But I’ll say this. Whenever Mike Pence steps to the microphone, I’m finally hearing that Consoler-in-Chief I welcomed during the Obama, Bush or Clinton-era crises. Trump is not good at that. Mike is. He reminds us, we’re all in this together.

A Las Vegas firm has compiled some unusual proposition wagers during this time of pandemic-related stress and tedium when bookmakers and gamblers, like the rest of us,  are in need of deep and consistent diversion and maybe a way to keep making money.  A proposition wager pertains to the occurrence or non-occurrence of certain events in a sporting event, irrespective of who wins or how many points are scored. For instance, the number of strikeouts a pitcher will throw or how many touchdowns will be scored by a non-offensive player.

In this case, the odds-makers are calling for bets on how often President Donald Trump speaks certain words and phrases during his nightly coronavirus briefing.  (I mean no criticism of the President’s pandemic policies –not here, not now, anyway — when, as a college English major and former high school orator, I point out that our Commander-in- chief employs a fourth-grade vocabulary when speaking in public. Of course, I’m not the only one to notice this. Frankly, I don’t know how this Yale graduate ever passed the verbal SATs. But one might say, he’s a man of few words — endlessly repeated.

According, that Vegas firm has determined that “we’re doing a great job” has an over/under of 2.5; “best” is 5.5; “more tests than any other country” is 9.5 and the omnibus “fantastic, incredible, amazing, tremendous” gets a whopping 24.5.

Okay, they’re plainly having a little sport, quite literally, with the Chief Executive and, as we know, ridicule hardly musses the golden coif of DT, who gives ridicule in equal measure as he receives it. And,  heck, as he insistently brags, the ratings for those  afternoon virus briefings has spiked. For most people, it’s for whatever new information can be gleaned from them — in between all those repeated words and phrases. But now we know that gamblers may be hanging on every word — or phrase.

 

My former colleague Chris Luke, who is Chinese-American, has taken me to task for that part of a Facebook post in which I seem to link China and, by extension, all Asian peoples to  the Covid-19 pandemic, presumably finding most offensive the reference to  ” a filthy street market in Wuhan” and bats being  butchered for food. She says Asian people, including apparently her relatives, are being “racially profiled” as a consequence of  the pervasive linking of the outbreak specifically to China, either to a marketplace, or a lab, or wherever in that country. Continue reading “COVID 19 ADDENDUM”

No one writing anywhere on the web can fail to say a dozen or so words about where we find ourselves, in the midst of a worldwide pandemic. This is to note it — and note that, when I can get my small head around it, I’ll want to say more, if only to myself — and to whatever lonely soul chances upon this lonely blog. Continue reading “THE INFECTED MOMENT”

That — Jersey Street – is what became of Yawkey Way after the posthumous mugging of the late, once-beloved Tom Yawkey over questions of his racial attitudes. I won’t open that big can of snakes again — but, yes, as winter grips Beantown and that short, shadowy byway astride Fenway Park awaits the crowds of opening  day and the Sox begin their ritual preps in Fort Myers – I’d have to say, as a Boston native and unalterable fan of all Boston teams, that the loss of Mookie Betts is, well, too, too bad. Who can deny it? But that’s pro sports now. We root for laundry, as Jerry Seinfeld so aptly said. Continue reading “NO JOY ON JERSEY STREET”

Something reasonable to think about — albeit also a little emotion-charged — on the subject of tolerance and bipartisanship in this fraught election season – a post by Princeton Professor and scholar Robert P. George, always a voice of reason and principle: He’s aiming it at conservative Democrats. Continue reading “THE LIFE WE SAVE MAY BE THE U.S.A.”