I still smile when a condescending journalist—it’s almost always journalists—disingenuously notes: “Twitter isn’t real life.” Usually, this occurs when the writer doesn’t agree with the poll of the day (they’re ephemeral, so why bother?), an anti-Ukraine article or some fuzzy video from the Mideast. One such fellow, with 125,000 Twitter followers (I’ll bet he considers that “real life”) is a non-hysterical Democrat who posts, with mock sorrow, “Dow is down 800 points today,” meaning the Trump Depression is on its way, but when the same financial index is up 800 points in today’s turbulent markets, he ignores it. That’s “real life,” demonstrating the Beltway media’s anti-Trump bias, since most Americans, even those who ignore social media, consume, even fleetingly, some form of news—TV, radio, even newspapers—almost every day.
New York Times columnist Michelle Goldberg—from Brooklyn!—is real as well, and though my digestive system is pretty strong, I don’t tempt fate by reading her on the regular. However, Real Clear Politics’ Tom Bevan—whom I mildly chastised recently for his frustrated tweet, “However much you hate The New York Times, it’s probably not enough”—last week provided a choice Goldbergian nonsensical paragraph, taken from a conversation about Trump’s first 50 days in the Times with Patrick Healy and Frank Bruni.
This one’s a corker: “I have a 12-year-old son who, as he learns more about various kinds of dark chapters in American history, can get really down on this country. So I often find myself in the strange position of trying to talk up American greatness because I don't want him to feel despair about the country that he's growing up in. It's occurred to me that every single thing that I have pointed out to him as a sign of American greatness or goodness, whether that be foreign aid, whether that be our support for Ukraine, our success in welcoming immigrants and refugees, or scientific pre-eminence, everything that I thought was best about America, Trump has either destroyed or tried to destroy in less than two months.”
Typically, for Goldberg (and her TDS sisters and brothers who always, but always, “fight the good fight” and “speak truth to power,” whether from home or at the chapel known as the Gridiron Club), history began when Trump took office in 2017. “Scientific pre-eminence,” is choice, with the current revisionism on everything related to Covid, and xenophobia isn’t unique to Trump or Republicans (ask Barack Obama). She doesn’t let readers know if she told the boy that that “our support for Ukraine” has enriched defense contractors, the corporations she habitually blasts, but no matter.
When I was a kid, admittedly in an era when public schools weren’t yet useless, I didn’t “get really down” about America. My history teachers, almost all liberal—goes with the territory—presented facts as facts, and encouraged discussion. That included the Civil War, slavery, child labor, FDR’s internment of Japanese-Americans, McCarthyism and, gingerly (not sure why), the Vietnam War. One day in 10th grade, there was a sit-in at Huntington High School in support of increasing black literature and culture in the curriculum, and I attended. That was an example of “American greatness.” In the same vein, if Democrats could get off the mat, stop spouting barroom slogans on their phones, and march en masse at the Capitol or White House to protest Trump’s dizzying array of edicts, that’d be an example of “American greatness” as well.
The accompanying photo, taken by Jennifer Bishop, is of me—“alternative” journalists could dress as they pleased—talking to students at a high school cafeteria in Baltimore County. I was denied entry by the nominal “guard,” but went in through another door and spoke with the kids for 45 minutes before a busybody teacher escorted Jennifer and me off the premises. The topic was a controversial new anti-drug/alcohol by Baltimore County’s School Superintendent Robert Dubel, a precursor to Nancy Reagan’s “Just Say No” and it passed for a hubbub at the time. Most of the kids were marble-mouthed, but a few registered their complaints—“Police state”!—but admitted the plan was mostly rhetoric, though 153 students were expelled, and they indulged in pot smoking, snorts of Angel Dust and fifths of cheap wine out in the parking lot.
Take a look at the clues to figure out the year: Robert Byrd was Senate Majority Leader; the “vampire of Sacramento” is arrested; the first computer bulletin board system is created in Chicago; Dallas debuts on CBS; Blondie’s Plastic Letters is released; Larry Flynt is shot and paralyzed; the awful film Grease is released; the first Susan B. Anthony dollar is put into circulation; Jason Biggs is born and Bob Crane dies; Judy Blume’s Wifey and Larry Kramer’s Faggots are published; The Buddy Holly Story is released; Paul McCartney and Wings’ “Mull of Kintyre” is a huge hit in the U.K.; Leon Spinks defeats Ali for Heavyweight Championship; and Jimmy Connors wins the U.S. Open.
—Follow Russ Smith on Twitter: @MUGGER2023