Courage

Donald Trump would like to see a lot of people--people he regards as his enemies--put in jail. 

It was reported in early October that his Justice Department was attempting to indict Cassidy Hutchinson, the former aide, during Trump's first term, to White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows.

Ms. Hutchinson came into public view because of her testimony, in 2022, before the House committee investigating the attack on the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021.  Ms. Hutchinson--who, I believe, displayed great courage in testifying publicly--described what she witnessed, and what she was told about, before, during, and after the attack on the Capitol.

Last Tuesday, the indictment the government sought against her was rejected by a federal grand jury in Washington.

Cases the Trump Justice Department brought against James Comey and Letitia James--as part of Trump's campaign against his perceived enemies--were dismissed by a judge. Two grand juries later refused to re-indict Ms. James.  Another case brought against Mr. Comey--the "seashells case"--has not yet been resolved.  The Justice Department revealed this past week that it was pursuing new charges against Mr. Comey, concerning the alleged leaking of classified information a decade ago. 

Another case, of course, targeted six Democrats (two Senators and four House members) regarding a video they made which reminded service members that they were not required to follow illegal orders. All of the Democrats in the video had military or intelligence backgrounds. The case, Trump posted on social media after the video was released, constituted “SEDITIOUS BEHAVIOR, punishable by DEATH!” In early 2026, a grand jury in Washington declined to indict them.

Trump's retribution efforts, however, will no doubt continue.

They will continue, I think, for this reason:  it is that the man who wants to jail people he doesn't like, is himself a prisoner.  

He is a prisoner of his obsessions.  He is a prisoner of his resentments, his hatreds, his need to exact revenge. 

He can't let go of his defeat in the 2020 election. He is fixated upon "winning"; upon tariffs ("I always say 'tariffs' is the most beautiful word to me in the dictionary"); fixated upon defaming and vilifying immigrants, and does whatever he can to bring fear to the country's immigrant communities.  He is obsessed with presidents Obama and Biden, and talks about them at every opportunity; he is fixated upon Vladimir Putin and other dictators or autocrats, while routinely attacking America's allies.  He is obsessed with his building projects (the ballroom, the D.C. golf course, the Reflecting Pool, The Kennedy Center, the decorative changes to the White House and its grounds), at the expense of attentiveness to issues Americans are concerned about.

And he is obsessed, certainly, with criticisms he receives, or with the most basic questioning about his decisions and his words--from reporters, commentators, from governmental and political figures, former military figures, judges, prosecutors, protesters, comedians. He has often called the media "the enemy of the people." In a speech this past week, he said that the media was "the biggest threat" to the country. 

While he clearly enjoys power, I would suggest he is perhaps even more interested in control--seeking, for example, to control what is said about him, whether from the aforementioned press he despises, or from TV hosts such as Jimmy Kimmel.

Here is something Trump has said in varying forms, over time, which is deeply revealing. As he put it, this past July: "I only like people who like me." 

Those who he feels don't like him are, it is clear, the enemy.  

One thinks of the recent controversy concerning Vivek Ramaswamy, the Republican candidate for Governor in Ohio.

On Thursday, the Ramaswamy campaign took off the air the widely (and justifiably) condemned TV ad featuring the mother of the Democratic candidate in the race, Amy Acton.

Ramaswamy, who made billions of dollars during his business career, had said he would spend four million dollars running the ad; it appears that in the end, a little less than a million dollars was spent on the airing of it.

He defended the ad, while it aired--and made no apologies about it when announcing its end.  He said of the ad, on Thursday: "It ran to completion, and we've put up four other ads."

Ramaswamy ran for president during the 2024 Republican primary season, but dropped out after the Iowa caucuses.  Dr. Amy Acton is the former director of the Ohio Department of Health. 

I have, I will mention, no affection for Ramaswamy's politics, or his aggressive, combative political style.  

Yet based solely on his airing of the TV ad, Ramaswamy deserves to lose the Ohio election.  I hope he will lose by a mile.

It doesn't take courage to put up an ad like this.  It takes cynicism, cruelty, the disregarding of human feeling.

The courage, in this story, rests with Dr. Acton.

In 1978, when she was twelve years old, Amy Acton testified, before a grand jury, that her stepfather, Cledith "Bud" Arthur, had raped her. 

Dr. Acton has said that the rapes took place over a period of three years.

I cannot imagine what it must have been like, to testify before a grand jury, as a child, about being raped by her mother's husband. Yet I know that it must have taken great courage to do so.

Her stepfather was arrested, and indicted for rape.  He pleaded not guilty.

Her mother, Donna Arthur, is now 82.  Donna Arthur lost custody of Amy Acton and her younger brother, Philip, in 1978, at the time of the indictment; the children were removed from her home, and they began living with their biological father, who had been divorced from Acton's mother when Acton was three years old.

Dr, Acton is now sixty years old. The last time she saw and spoke with her mother was in 1978, at the courthouse in Ohio where her stepfather was indicted. 

Her stepfather never went to trial after his indictment. He fled the state, and Dr. Acton's mother, Acton's brother Philip has recently said, stayed with him, and remained married to him until his death in 2004 in Pennsylvania.

In the TV ad which aired, Dr. Acton's mother called her daughter a liar, and said, "she's lied her entire life," and therefore shouldn't be trusted to serve as governor.  The ad did not refer to the charge of rape against Acton's stepfather--although the publication Politifact has reported that in a 2020 interview with the anti-abortion group Operation Rescue, Donna Arthur said that Acton lied about her stepfather, and what she alleged took place in the 1970s.  In an October 23rd piece, New York Times columnist Michelle Goldberg made note of a telling detail in Arthur's 2020 comments to Operation Rescue. Donna Arthur, Michelle Goldberg wrote, "speculated that Acton got the idea to say Bud Arthur raped her from his daughter from a previous marriage, who’d made a similar claim." (italics added)  

Governor Mike DeWine, a Republican, said, on October 22nd: "The ad, on its face, is deeply, deeply troubling.  It's wrong to run this ad." (Though Governor DeWine did not retract his previous endorsement of Ramaswamy.)  Ohio Senator Jon Husted said: "I would not have run that ad." 

Vice President JD Vance, however, attacked Republicans who criticized the ad, arguing they were "whining more about that advertisement than they are about what the congressional Democrats and other Democrats want to do to the United States of America." He also said: "Vivek Ramaswamy had the audacity to run a TV commercial which calls it out like it is and calls Amy Acton a liar."

Vance was obviously unconcerned about the morality of exploiting a family rupture, by using, in a TV ad, a mother, now 82 years old, who decades before had stood with her husband, after he was accused of raping her 12 year-old daughter.

And, of course, President Trump weighed in on the advertisement.  He wrote on social media, on October 22nd, that Ramaswamy "had put up a very powerful Ad."  He said that "Vivek should keep [the ad] up, and let everyone listen to the mother of a defective, dishonest, and incapable Candidate, explain how the daughter is a DISASTER who, uncontrollably, lies, cheats, and steals!"  He added:  "The Press is trying to convince everyone that the Ad is bad, because it's so good!  Who wouldn't use such an Ad? I would, it's called 'hitting pay dirt.'" 

I make note of the sinister, perverse nature of Trump's description of Dr. Acton as "defective." 

That she "lies, cheats, and steals!"--and does so "uncontrollably"?  Trump's insults, so often, seem to be an ongoing form of autobiography.

Trump wrote, on October 22nd, that Dr. Acton's mother was "brave," and that appearing in the ad "took a lot of courage to do."

The day before, as reported by the website MEDIAite, there was the following exchange outside The White House between Trump and a reporter.  The reporter said this:

"Ohio gubernatorial candidate Amy Acton is estranged from her mother after suffering sexual abuse as a child," a reporter noted to the president outside the White House on Wednesday.

"Where is this? Where?" Trump asked.

"In Ohio," the reporter clarified. "The governor candidate for Democrats, Amy Acton. Her mother is featured in an ad by Vivek Ramaswamy. She's estranged from her mother — "

"I don't know anything about it," Trump interjected. "I heard that there's something where his — her mother went against her. Uh, I don't know what that has to do with Vivek."

"She suffered from sexual abuse by her mother's husband," the reporter added.

"I just don't know that, and as you know — " the president continued.

"Was it appropriate to put that in a campaign ad?" the reporter wondered.

"If it was about a Republican, I can guarantee you they'd let it go, so that's why you're asking," Trump fired back. "The fact is, I know nothing about it, but I hear the mother went very rogue on the daughter, doesn't have a lot of respect for the daughter, and I think the mother is a witness to things, also. So, who knows? And you'll have to figure that out. It's a very unusual situation to have a mother hate a daughter that much, but I don't think that has anything to do with Vivek."

So: Trump claimed he was unaware of the story regarding Dr. Acton's stepfather ("I know nothing about it"), and didn't seem interested in looking into it--or having his people investigate the matter further.  Nonetheless, he clearly took Dr. Acton's mother's side--accepting at face value, giving credence to, the remarks she made in the ad. 

To Trump, it seems, the degree of hate expressed by Amy Acton's mother ("It's a very unusual situation to have a mother hate a daughter that much") provided confirmation, validation, of her truthfulness. 

The day after the above exchange with the press, Trump addressed reporters again, outside The White House.  As noted below, one of the questioners was the NBC News reporter Monica Alba.

From a story in the publication Deadline, on October 23rd:

Referring to the Ramaswany ad, Trump on Friday said, "A mother is saying, 'Don't put my daughter there because she's a terrible person and she's a liar. Why shouldn't somebody use that?"

NBC News' Monica Alba then asked him, "But do the sexual abuse allegations mean nothing to you?" Trump went on, but Alba continued to ask the question.

"Who are you with?" he asked her.

"I am with NBC sir," she responded.

"One of the worst networks you have," he said.

She continued to ask about the sexual abuse allegations, and Trump told her, "Quiet."

"Isn't she a fresh person? You're a horrible little reporter, aren't you?" Trump said.

Trump said, "If my mother said bad things about me, do you think the Democrats would put it up? I think so. But my mother thought I was wonderful." He looked up in the air and said, "Thank you, Mom."

He said of Acton's mother, "She said her daughter is a disaster. Her daughter is a liar. And she felt she had a obligation … I should be so lucky to have an ad like that."

He then asked Alba, "Why wouldn't you listen to a mother that says that? Why? Miss NBC, why wouldn't you listen?"

Alba responded, "She stayed with her stepfather."

"I don't know anything about her stepfather," Trump said.

He says he doesn't know--but if he does know, it obviously doesn't concern him.

Amy Acton is a Democrat.  That's all the information Trump evidently needs. Vivek Ramaswamy likes him, supports him, and so he likes Vivek Ramaswamy.  Dr. Acton, from what I have seen, has a genuine, humane quality to her. Yet she is just another enemy, to Trump (and to Ramaswamy, and Vance): someone to go after, someone to take down.

From New York Times columnist Thomas L. Friedman: "Trump’s Democracy-for-Diesel Deal Shames Us All"

The piece, by Mr. Friedman, appeared yesterday in the Times. 

Here are the initial paragraphs of the column:

If President Trump does not understand what will happen to him if he proceeds with his plan to trade away support for Ukraine’s democracy for Russian diesel, let me spell it out: He will enter the history books in the chapter on leaders who sold out their country’s democratic values to appease a dictator.

Donald Trump, meet Neville Chamberlain. When future students search online for “sellout,” “appeaser” or “traitor to his country’s core values,” their two pictures will come up first, side by side. And deservedly so. At least Chamberlain was trying, in what proved to be lethally misguided fashion, to avoid a world war. Trump is trying to avoid losing a few seats in Congress — and is likely to be no more successful in achieving his goal than Chamberlain was in achieving his.

I have never believed that Trump was somehow an agent of Russia’s leader, Vladimir Putin, or in his pay. It is much worse. He simply does not cherish democracy. He cherishes money. And he has no problem selling out the first for the second. When he acts in his own commercial interests, that’s his personal business. When he uses the American presidency to make a buck, it is our collective shame.

There is simply no core American value Trump will not sell out. Desperate to lower diesel prices, which are hurting Republicans in the midterms, Trump actually made a deal to import diesel fuel from Russia, even though it offers a potential windfall for the Kremlin so it can bomb Ukraine harder — and is unlikely to help lower prices or increase supplies much at all. Worse, his aides then asked Ukraine to refrain from attacks on Russia’s oil refineries, without Trump making the same demand of Putin regarding Ukraine’s energy infrastructure. It makes me sick to my stomach to even type this.

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/10/15/opinion/trump-russia-oil-putin.html?unlocked_article_code=1.JFE.Km8T.wMURS5epxsff&smid=url-share

Ukraine, and Trump's immorality/amorality

Here is a piece by Anne Appelbaum, the noted writer, author, and foreign policy analyst, in the October 12th Atlantic, online.

The piece is titled "Trump's Message to Ukraine Is Now Crystal Clear"; its subtitle is, "The president's actions over the past 72 hours look like an effort to force Kyiv to surrender."

Trump--appearing now, overtly, to be all in with Vladimir Putin, while throwing President Zelenskyy, and the country he has tried to save, to the wolves.  

The immorality--and the amorality--of Trump's conduct regarding Russia's war against Ukraine, are staggering, tragic.

America's Golden Age, as Trump likes to proclaim?  It feels, too often, more like an age of nightmares.

Ms. Appelbaum's October 12th piece includes the following:

In the past 72 hours, Donald Trump has dropped all pretense, torched a couple decades of American policy, and undermined 18 months of his own diplomacy. He lifted sanctions on the import of Russian diesel fuel, in violation of the letter and spirit of laws that he himself signed. He has threatened to stop sharing intelligence with Ukraine, unless Ukraine agrees not to target Russian refineries, thus demanding that Kyiv give up its most effective weapon while asking nothing from Russia in exchange. He has not criticized Russian attacks on Ukrainian power plants or factories, even those owned by American companies. He has offered no condolences for the recent deaths of Ukrainian children in Russian bombing raids.

He has lied repeatedly. He declared that Ukraine and Russia had agreed to an “energy cease-fire,” an announcement that surprised the Ukrainians and that in any case the Russians immediately broke, hitting a power plant in Kharkiv only hours later. He accused Ukraine of blocking negotiations, when in reality the Ukrainians have repeatedly proposed cease-fires and Russia has never agreed to a cease-fire or any meaningful negotiation at all.

He has described Ukraine’s democratically elected president as an obstacle to negotiations and told him to leave office. But on Friday, before making these new decisions, he held yet another long, friendly telephone conversation with the Russian dictator, who really could end the war today. All Vladimir Putin has to do is tell his soldiers to stop fighting, and then the war is over. The Ukrainians cannot stop fighting because, if they do, their country will be conquered and they will suffer the fate of their occupied territories: leaders murdered, children kidnapped, repression and concentration camps for everyone else. If Trump knows this, then he does not care.

Here is the link to the full October 12th piece by Ms. Appelbaum:

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/10/trump-ukraine-putin-fuel/688974/?gift=Tcay7nmVziC9n3Jf9Qllm92bYGGHtIbjwfqAuyrwR48&utm_source=copy-link&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=share

Livestreaming an execution

Defense Secretary Hegseth--announcing yesterday that Nidal Hasan, the radicalized Army psychiatrist who murdered thirteen soldiers at Texas's Fort Hood in 2009, and injured thirty-two others, would not only be executed in December by a firing squad, but that the execution would be livestreamed.

Trump, today, said he approved of the livestreaming.

Livestreaming an execution.  This is grotesque, and depraved.

From a New York Times story, today:

“We’ll make sure that people are able to watch it, that it’s public, because people need to understand there’s serious consequences for these types of things,” Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said [yesterday] in an interview with a conservative news outlet.

The Times reporter wrote:

No public execution has been conducted in the United States in 90 years, and the decision to conduct this one in front of an audience would put the country in the company of Afghanistan, Iran, North Korea and Somalia. Just 17 executions around the world were confirmed to be conducted publicly last year, according to Amnesty International: six in Afghanistan and 11 in Iran. Even Saudi Arabia, once known for hanging prisoners in public, has not conducted a public execution since 2022.

Even some supporters of capital punishment flinched at the idea of livestreaming Mr. Hasan’s execution, calling it medieval and barbaric. “Hasan should face the death penalty, but making his execution public and streaming it? Beyond disgusting,” said Senator Thom Tillis, Republican of North Carolina. “Public executions are what oppressive dictatorships like Iran and Afghanistan do. It should not be happening in America.”

Trump has been unable to win his gut-driven, impulsive, erratic war against the Islamic Republic of Iran, a war he said in March would last four to six weeks.  I am guessing--at least in part because of his inability, thus far, to bring the war to a successful conclusion--that both he and Hegseth are finding a perverse kind of pleasure in this planned livestreaming. The idea of the livestream--letting people across the world watch as the United States executes a mass murderer, a radicalized Muslim man--is hideous on its own terms.  Yet it feels, indeed, as though the announced December livestream is very possibly being used as a proxy for the administration's failures abroad.

(Please note: a few changes were made to the above in the hours after it was posted.)

2023

Three years ago, on this date, Hamas (joined by members of other terrorist groups, such as Palestinian Islamic Jihad) invaded Israel, murdering some 1200 people (more than 800 of them civilians), and kidnapping 251 others, taking them to Gaza, as hostages.

Eva Marie Saint (1924-2026)

Eva Marie Saint, who died on Tuesday at age 102, was a tremendous actress.  

She was awarded an Oscar, for the absorbing and skilled performance she gave in her feature film debut--as Edie Doyle, opposite Marlon Brando and Karl Malden, in Elia Kazan's riveting On the Waterfront (1954). 

She co-starred with Cary Grant in Alfred Hitchcock's North by Northwest (1959).  I can't count the number of times I have watched the film; with every viewing I have admired, enormously, all that she brought to the role of Eve Kendall, in what is certainly one of Hitchcock's finest movies.

Ms. Saint appeared in a long list of films and television programs through the decades.  Before her film stardom, in On the Waterfront, she had appeared regularly in live television productions--including the series One Man's Family (1950-1952), the anthology drama series Studio One (a few telecasts, between 1949 and 1953), and the 1953 telecast of The Trip to Bountiful, written by Horton Foote. The Trip to Bountiful was brought to Broadway later that year, and Ms. Saint, as with the television program, had a starring role in the play.

Her films included Raintree County (1957), A Hatful of Rain (also in 1957), Exodus (1960), The Russians Are Coming, the Russians Are Coming (1966), Because of Winn-Dixie (2005), and Winter's Tale (2014).

In late 1996 or early 1997, Ms. Saint and her husband, noted television director Jeffrey Hayden, appeared in Charlottesville, Virginia, for a public showing of a television documentary--Children in America's Schools--that their production company, the Saint/Hayden Company, released in 1996. Mr. Hayden directed and wrote the program, in addition to producing it with Ms. Saint. The host of the documentary was Bill Moyers.

Ms. Saint and Mr. Hayden, who married in 1951, discussed the documentary, and their careers, on a radio talk show I hosted at the time in Charlottesville. They were gracious, kind, engaging, and uncommonly interesting--and I've always regarded the hour or so during which we spoke as being one of the most enjoyable times I've ever spent on the radio.

Here are the IMDb.com pages for Ms. Saint, and Mr. Hayden, who died in 2016 at age 90.

https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0001693/?ref_=nm_ov_bio_lk

https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0370749/?ref_=nmbio_sp_1

Here, too, is the New York Times obituary of Ms. Saint:  

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/10/06/movies/eva-marie-saint-dead.html?unlocked_article_code=1.G1E.x9wz.9c7rpFMWJD3Q&smid=url-share

Trump, Kaitlan Collins, and the press at-large

When the President announced on Friday, in the Oval Office, that he was implementing a White House ban on the news organizations CNN, MS NOW, and Politico, he said the following, which was widely reported--and which was included in a story today in The Atlantic:

“There’s something wrong with a country that can allow people to write purposely negative stories,” he said when he banned CNN and the other two outlets. “Now, if they want to write them, that’s fine. But I don’t have to let them into my—into the people’s house.”

...into my--into the people's house.

An interesting, and telling, linguistic slip. 

Today's Atlantic piece, by staff writer Olga Khazan, is titled "A Revealing Exchange Between Donald Trump and Kaitlan Collins." It is subtitled "The president doesn’t understand how journalism works."

The piece begins by describing Trump's brief back and forth, at the United Nations on Tuesday, with Ms. Collins, the excellent CNN chief White House correspondent, and anchor of the network's weeknight program The Source.

Here is the link to the Atlantic story:

https://www.theatlantic.com/culture/2026/09/trump-kaitlan-collins-united-nations/688757/?gift=Tcay7nmVziC9n3Jf9QllmzbpQZyn35KQbb5gpFppjbk&utm_source=copy-link&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=share

A brief meditation, as Yom Kippur begins at sundown, tonight

It is one of a number of meditations in the Yom Kippur portion of the Rosh Hashanah/Yom Kippur prayer book Gates of Repentance. The prayer book was edited by Chaim Stern, and published in 1978 by the  Central Conference of American Rabbis, the leading Reform Jewish rabbinical organization.

From the 11th Century rabbi and philosopher Bachya ibn Pakuda:

Days are scrolls: write on them only what you want remembered.

The New Year

My best wishes for Rosh Hashanah, to all who are celebrating/observing the holiday...

Twenty-five years

Perhaps two weeks ago, I watched a lengthy video on YouTube, a compendium of news coverage from throughout the day of September 11th: the terrorist attacks in New York City, at the Pentagon, and on the plane which crashed in a Pennsylvania field, near Shanksville.

Twenty-five years after the attacks, the memories of the day, and its aftermath, remain clear. One thinks of the terrible violence and destruction, the terrible pain that was inflicted: the thousands of deaths, and injuries; the pictures of the missing on sidewalk fences and walls, in Manhattan; the unimaginable traumas experienced by the loved ones, and the friends and co-workers, left behind. And--the many still-breathtaking acts of heroism, of great bravery.  

One thinks of the before, the during, and the after: it all remains firmly in the mind, and heart.

Gloria Steinem

Gloria Steinem, who died on September 3rd at 92, was a highly significant figure, and force, in America's history.  I admired her very much.

Below is a piece which appeared in The Atlantic, online, the day after her death.  It is titled "Everything We Do Matters," and is adapted from her memoir An Unexpected Life, which will be published September 22nd by Random House.

Ms. Steinem wrote, in the Atlantic adaptation/excerpt:

"Among the many things I have learned is that there is no one right way to achieve peace, equality, or justice. Everything we do matters—how we behave in an elevator, how we raise our children, how we treat our partners, how we participate in our government."

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/09/everything-we-do-matters/688514/?gift=Tcay7nmVziC9n3Jf9Qllm1oXR94CZQUIea0bTl6hPEc&utm_source=copy-link&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=share

Dolly Parton

Dolly Parton's talent, and her greatness, were near-immeasurable.

Her singing was, and will remain, gorgeous.  The songs she wrote were/are beautiful.

Some of the most appealing, endearing aspects of her public self were the sense of joy, the good cheer, the good humor, she seemed to invariably convey.

Here is her exquisite recording, released in 1974, of perhaps the best-known song she wrote, "I Will Always Love You."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lKsQR72HY0s&list=RDlKsQR72HY0s&start_radio=1

Here, too, is a recording of Ms. Parton's "In My Tennessee Mountain Home," released as a single in 1972. Her album of the same name came out in 1973. (I first heard the song when it was covered by Maria Muldaur, on her 1973 debut album; the album included what became Ms. Muldaur's signature song,"Midnight at the Oasis.")

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VG2kL4ojylk&list=RDVG2kL4ojylk&start_radio=1

Ms. Parton was born in 1946, and during her early years her family lived in a one-room cabin in Eastern Tennessee. She was the fourth of her parents' twelve children. In the early 1950s, the family moved to a nearby two-room cabin and farm.

In addition to Ms. Parton's life as a singer, and an actress, she was a philanthropist of great significance.  As The New York Times reported, after her death:

In 1995, Ms. Parton started the Imagination Library, a program that sent one book per month to children in Sevier County [the Tennessee county where she grew up] from birth until their first year of school. The inspiration for the effort came from Ms. Parton’s father, who didn’t know how to read...

The program expanded across the world, and last year, the Imagination Library said it had distributed  some 305 million books [since its 1995 inception].

More than three million children currently receive books from the Library.

https://imaginationlibrary.com/about-us/

In addition to writing about the Imagination Library, the Times reporter chronicled the wide reach of Ms. Parton's philanthropy:

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/08/26/business/dolly-parton-philanthropy-books-covid-vaccine.html?unlocked_article_code=1.81A.VvLu.LP6dpPw-6h84&smid=url-share

#3: The salesman-in-chief; the denialist-in-chief

On Tuesday (August 11th), President Trump spoke to reporters about the Strait of Hormuz.

He said, of Iran, and the Strait: "They don't have control. We have total control.  We own it, and at some point, maybe they'll do something, and then they get blown away."  He said: "Right now, we're in a very good position."

Do Americans believe this?

Today, Trump gave a speech on Long Island.  In it, he made the following remark:

"After we finish defeating Iran, which is being very badly defeated, pretty soon I'll be declaring the Hormuz Strait a territory of the United States."

Perhaps, in his recklessness, he was goading Iran, or was simply musing about his power.  Or maybe he was seriously considering the idea.

If it was the latter, it would not be a surprise.

Because really, that's all he seems to believe he needs to do: declare something, wave a wand, and it becomes, or will become, true.  

#2: The salesman-in-chief; the denialist-in-chief

On Monday (August 3rd), President Trump wrote this, on his social media platform:

My REAL Polling Numbers, not those made up by the Fake News Media, are the best they have ever been...

In a poll released by Fox News on July 22nd, Trump had a favorable rating of 38%; his unfavorable rating was 61%.  A story about the poll on the Fox website noted that Trump's "job approval remains near a record low."

A report yesterday (August 6th) from the Pew Research Center, said this:

"President Donald Trump’s job approval rating – 34% as of mid-July – has changed little over the last few months. But it is lower than his rating at a comparable point in his first term – 40% in August 2018 – and those of most other recent presidents at similar stages in their tenures."

The salesman-in-chief; the denialist-in-chief

President Trump spoke in the Las Vegas Valley, on Wednesday (August 5th).

He said, during his speech at Red Rock Casino and Resort:

"The economy is the greatest economy we've ever had." 

Does he actually believe this?

A commercial

There is a TV commercial, currently airing, which makes me laugh.  The commercial is for Chase Bank, and it finds humor in the alienation, and in a resigned kind of frustration, and weariness, concerning life in the technologic age.

Here is a link to the ad:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=txJTKJcVRLE

Trump, COVID-19, and the Iran war

When President Trump speaks of the Iran war, there are echoes of how he addressed COVID-19, during the last year of his first term.  He displayed, in 2020, a remarkable inability to handle, straightforwardly and coherently, a tremendous crisis.

In 2024, I wrote the following, in this space:

On March 11, 2020, four years ago yesterday, the World Health Organization declared that COVID-19 was a pandemic.

Two days later, the Trump administration declared the virus to be a national emergency.

On March 15th, shutdowns began in states across the country.

The first COVID death in the United States had been reported on February 29th.

Near the end of May, the number of deaths, in the country, passed 100,000.  This, despite President Trump's assurances that the virus would soon "go away." The virus, he had said on April 3rd--three weeks after his administration announced the national emergency--"is going to go away. It is going away." On June 18th, he said that the virus "is dying out. The numbers are starting to get very good." In July, he said:  "I’ll be right eventually. I will be right eventually. You know I said, ‘It’s going to disappear.’ I’ll say it again. It’s going to disappear, and I’ll be right."  In August, he said that "it’s gonna be gone soon."   

On November 2, 2020--the day before the presidential election--I wrote this:  

One hopes...that the Trump ride will soon be over:  that we'll be done with the President's endless divisiveness, his endless lies, his cruelties, the racial dog whistles, the conspiracy theories, the contempt, the self-pity, the self-glorification. And, of course, there have been his stunning failures regarding COVID--and what has become his disinterest in, dismissal of, minimizing of (and his preference for falsehoods about) the virus...

The President has said, many times, that the country is "rounding the corner," concerning the pandemic. On October 23rd, he added one word to the phrase: "We're rounding the corner beautifully." On that day, in the U.S., there were over 900 deaths, due to the virus.  There were also more than 83,000 new COVID cases that day--a record, at the time, which has since been surpassed.

As of today [November 2nd], there have been more than 9 1/4 million COVID cases in the U.S.--and more than 231,000 deaths. 

By the end of 2020, the disease, still out of control, was responsible for the deaths of some 350,000 people in the U.S. There would be another 50,000 deaths by the time Joe Biden took office three weeks later, in January of 2021.

And now, there is the Iran war.

Today, in The Atlantic online, a piece by the excellent staff writer Tom Nichols appeared, titled "The American People Need the Truth About the Iran War"; the piece is subtitled "The president and the Pentagon are not being up front about what has happened in more than 20 weeks of hostilities."

Mr. Nichols was, for twenty-five years, a professor at the U.S. Naval War College.

In today's piece, he writes, at one point:

Consider the number of times Trump has said that the war is over or almost over, such as his April 17 declaration to USA Today that the fight to reopen the Strait of Hormuz is “over, it’s a great victory.” (He has made other claims of imminent victory at least 30 times, by one count.) He has insisted for months that the Iranian military is finished and that it has nothing left, as he did in the first week of the war when he said: “We’ve decimated their whole evil empire.” (He made similar claims at least half a dozen times in the first month of the war alone.) He has said that Iranian nuclear materials must be handed over, then said that the same materials are worthless and can stay where they are, and now has gone back to arguing that ending the Iranian nuclear program is the most important goal of the war.

The full piece can be read at this link:   

link&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=share https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/07/trump-iran-conflict-pentagon/688026/?gift=Tcay7nmVziC9n3Jf9Qllm7qBd5ZHcYHKCxEshldllTU&utm_source=copy-link&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=share 

July 4th, 2026

 Happy 250th Anniversary!

New York Congressional candidate Darializa Avila Chevalier, and Hamas

On October 10, 2023, the New York Times columnist Bret Stephens wrote about a rally which took place in New York's Times Square on October 8th--one day after Hamas (joined by others, including  members of the Palestinian group Islamic Jihad), conducted its massacres and kidnappings in Israel. 

At the time of the rally, it was known that several hundred people in Israel had been murdered. Ultimately it would be learned that 1200 people had been killed in the sadistic rampages--in addition to the 250 people who had been taken to Gaza as hostages.  Those murdered, and those kidnapped, included babies, children, adults, and the elderly.

In his October 10th column, Bret Stephens wrote the following, in part:

On Saturday morning in southern Israel, Hamas murdered hundreds of people at a music festival and kidnapped others at gunpoint to serve as human shields in Gaza. On Sunday afternoon in Midtown Manhattan, a speaker at a rally of pro-Palestinian and left-wing groups celebrated that atrocity...

“As you might have seen, there was some sort of rave or desert party where they were having a great time, until the resistance came in electrified hang gliders and took at least several dozen hipsters,” a speaker said. “But I’m sure they’re doing very fine despite what The New York Post says.” He was met with cheers.

I went to see the rally for myself: Would there be even perfunctory condemnation of Hamas’s methods? A brief nod of sympathy to Israel’s anguish? Some banal nod to the cause of peace and nonviolence? Not that I heard. What I saw was giddiness and gloating, as if someone’s team had won the World Cup. Hamas had perpetrated the largest single-day massacre of Jews since the Holocaust, and the crowd was euphoric.

Similar scenes unfolded across the world. In London, an estimated 5,000 demonstrators gathered near the Israeli embassy and shot off fireworks toward the building. At a rally at the Sydney Opera House in Australia, chants of “Free Palestine” gave way to the underlying emotion: “Fuck the Jews.” At Harvard, almost three dozen campus groups issued a joint statement holding “the Israeli regime entirely responsible for all unfolding violence.” A statement from Yalies4Palestine insisted that “Breaking out of a prison requires force, not desperate appeals to the colonizer.”

Whatever else might be said about these demonstrations and declarations, give the protesters and manifesto writers points for honesty. “Pro-Palestine,” to many of them, is pro-Hamas. “Anti-occupation” is opposition to Israel’s right to exist in any form. Israelis are guilty by virtue of being Israelis, so their murder and humiliation is something to laugh at. When “Zionism Is Genocide,” as placards at the demonstration put it, then no means are too awful to put a stop to it.

If twice as many Israelis had been murdered on Saturday, would it have chastened the demonstrators or made them doubly glad, by the algorithm in which the terminally self-righteous become cheerleaders for slaughter?

The rally was condemned widely, including by such left-oriented figures as U.S. Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.  The New York chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America, which had posted a tweet about the rally before it occurred, subsequently distanced itself from what took place.

One of those attending the rally was Darializa Avila Chevalier--who is on the ballot tomorrow in New York City's 13th Congressional District primary; the district includes Upper Manhattan and parts of the West Bronx. 

Ms. Avila Chevalier, the daughter of Dominican immigrants, is a community organizer, an educator, and a Ph.D. candidate in Sociology at the City College of New York.  She is a Democratic Socialist, and has been endorsed by New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani.  

Her opponent is five-term incumbent Congressman Adriano Espaillat. Mr. Espaillat is also Dominican-American, and is the Chair of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus. He is also a member of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, but is regarded, particularly in comparison to Ms. Avila Chevalier, as being more moderate, which includes the subject of Israel. The Congressman has been endorsed by such Democrats as House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries and New York Governor Kathy Hochul.

Ms. Avila Chevalier has had to defend herself concerning old tweets, reposts, and statements. In one tweet, from 2021, she posted: "Fuck Kamala Harris," concerning comments the then-Vice President made about immigration. In 2019, she posted this: "I forgot to get napkins so I just wiped my hand on the American flag behind me."  The post, one newspaper noted, was accompanied by a smiling-face emoji.  In 2020, she criticized Senator Bernie Sanders's "liberal Zionism."

In a debate with Rep. Espaillat this month on New York public radio station WNYC-FM, she was asked the following, by host Brian Lehrer:

Brian Lehrer: According to CNN, for example, during a three-day period in September 2021, you reposted now-deleted messages, declaring, "Yes, literally abolish the border," and that, "All deportation is wrong." The [tweet a caller to the show] referenced, F--using the full word--Kamala Harris, after she told Guatemalans not to come to the US illegally in 2021. And, on policing in 2020, that abolishing the police, "Means ending the police full stop, period. No more police at all, ever." And, I know you've said you've grown considerably in the years since these tweets....

Darializa Avila Chevalier: So, as you've noted, I've grown considerably since that. And I'm not interested in relitigating the politics of my tweets, which are politics of the past. I'm interested in representing this district on the issues that they face day in and day out, and the fact that we've seen so much, quite frankly, obsession with these tweets, as opposed to the substance of what we're fighting for and the substance of this campaign and what the people, the working people of this district deserve, I think is more of the same type of politics that refuses to actually engage with us, that refuses to actually acknowledge the needs of our communities.

Ms. Avila Chevalier, however, continues to defend her participation in the October 8, 2023 rally in Times Square. 

This month, as reported by the New York-oriented website "City & State," she said, in part, of the rally:

“At the core of it all for me is human dignity. And I think so often we get lost in the ‘well on this date, and on that date’ when it's all cyclical, if we don't get to the core of how we disregard the human rights and dignity of some people over others,” she said.

Yeah--this date, and on that date.  Actually, the date is germane.  Just a thought: maybe participating in an anti-Israel rally, one day after the large-scale massacres and kidnappings in Israel took place, wasn't such a good idea. 

As recently as this March, one notes, she would not condemn Hamas and its 2023 attacks.

As reported by the "City & State" article:

At a March forum with the Broadway Democrats political club, she declined to condemn Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack on Israel, when asked directly.

“The premise of that question, to me, ignores the 75 years of occupation that the Palestinian people have been subjected to and the conditions that folks were were living under before this genocide began,” she responded in part. “Palestinians have been living under a state of dispossession, of exile, of apartheid for 75 years.”

The article also noted this:

But Avila Chevalier may be changing her rhetoric as she gets closer to election day. Asked on WNYC [on June 4th] she said “yes, I do condemn Hamas,” but noted that “As far as I know, the U.S. does not send a single dime to Hamas. What we fund is the Israeli military.”

Pardon my skepticism about the sincerity of her Hamas-related condemnation.

(Please note: a detail, above, about New York Congressman Adriano Espaillat, was edited on June 28.)

The holiday

Happy Juneteenth...

I have previously, in this space, mentioned On Juneteenth, an outstanding book of essays from 2021, by the distinguished historian, and Harvard professor, Annette Gordon-Reed. 

Here is the book's amazon link:

https://www.amazon.com/Juneteenth-Annette-Gordon-Reed/dp/1631498835/ref

Professor Gordon-Reed's 2008 work, The Hemingses of Monticello: An American Family, was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in History, and the National Book Award for Nonfiction.

A Children's Dictionary

The book, below--The Picture Dictionary for Children--was a favorite of mine, during early childhood.

I have several books from childhood, and when I happen to look at them (or even, simply, see their spines on one of the bookshelves in the apartment), I'll often get a sense (usually a somewhat vague sense, to be sure, but a sense nonetheless) of that which I felt looking at them when I was very young. 

The dictionary was originally published in 1939 by Grosset & Dunlap; subsequent editions were brought out in 1945, 1948, and 1958 (the latter, two years after I was born).  The book's title page indicates that the 1958 edition was "Completely Revised," including new pictures. All of the pictures in the book are drawings, as opposed to photographs.

I was looking through the book recently, and noticed something which I found amusing.  

The book includes an entry for "radio" (see image below), which features a drawing of a large, old-fashioned radio (the kind which was a piece of furniture, and which had a place of prominence in many homes, during radio's most popular years as a medium). 

The book also includes a definition of the word "broadcast" (see below), which includes, likewise, a reference to radio.

Yet the 1958 edition, interestingly, does not have an entry for "television," despite television's ubiquity at the time (and whose rise, as a cultural force, had been accompanied by a significant decline in radio's popularity). There are, in the book, definitions of telegram, and telephone (see image)--but not television.  I also looked up abbreviations for television, on the off-chance they might have been included--such as "TV," and "Tee-Vee." "Tee-Vee" had been employed as a written abbreviation during the medium's early years--in some newspapers and magazines, for example. But neither abbreviation--as with the word television itself--appears in the dictionary I very much enjoyed as a child.

Television Influence, 1955

Influence--influences of many sorts (literary, popular culture, art, sports, science, etc.)--can be found in unexpected places.

Below is an image from the book The Great American Baseball Card Flipping, Trading and Bubble Gum Book, by Brendan C. Boyd and Fred C. Harris. The book was published in hardcover by Little, Brown in 1973. A paperback edition was released by Ticknor & Fields in 1991.

There are many images of baseball cards in the book, including one from 1955, for the player Wilmer "Billy" Shantz.  In 1954, he was a catcher with the Athletics, during their final season in Philadelphia; he stayed with the team in 1955, for its first season in Kansas City.  

His baseball career began in 1948.  In addition to his time with the Athletics, he played for various Minor League teams; a good deal of his career was spent with Triple A teams. In 1959 and 1960 he played for the New York Yankees' Triple A club in Richmond, and in 1960 was brought back to the Majors and played in one Yankees game. It was his last Major League appearance.

He returned to the Richmond team for two seasons.  He then stayed in the Yankees' Minor League system for the remainder of his career--which ended in 1969--as a player/coach, and as a manager. 

His brother was pitcher Bobby Shantz, who had a lengthy Major League career, and was the American League's Most Valuable Player in 1952.

The card below, from the Bowman company, is made to look like a television set; the picture of Mr. Shantz serves, ostensibly, as the television image.  (The bottom of the card, at its center, says, for emphasis, "Color TV.") 

The authors wrote: "Around 1955, the creative people in the bubble gum game, starved as they were for new marketing and promotional techniques, decided that perhaps it was time to take advantage of the latest national craze--television."

The end of CBS Radio News

It is a singularly unfortunate and sorrowful development--the death of CBS Radio News, which will take place today.  

At its height, CBS Radio newscasts were carried by more than 1000 stations; its newscasts, most recently, have been heard on some 700 stations.

I've spent much of my life as a CBS News watcher (via The CBS Evening News, on television), and a CBS Radio News listener (on various stations in cities where I've lived).  The newscasts on CBS Radio--sturdy, dependable, and appealing--were conveyed in the routinely straightforward, unadorned vocal styles of its anchors and reporters.  

CBS's journalists, during the radio network's history, included, of course, the brilliant and seminal correspondent and commentator Edward R. Murrow.

Mr. Murrow began reporting from Europe in the late 1930s, during the period leading up to the 1939 start of World War Two, and was based in London during the war. CBS did not at the time have its own dedicated London facility; Murrow broadcast from a sub-basement studio within the BBC Broadcasting House. 

In addition to reporting from the studio, Mr. Murrow also reported from London's streets, and from bomb shelters and rooftops, during the aerial Blitz carried out by Germany.

He also reported, notably--and deeply movingly--from Buchenwald, the day after the German concentration camp was liberated in 1945.

His broadcasts from Europe, which I have listened to on record albums, on tapes, and online, were compelling, eloquent, stirring.

Here is one one of his London rooftop reports--probably from the roof of the BBC building--from September of 1940:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Za2Lus0CkRc

Here, too, is Mr. Murrow, on his television program See it Now, in 1954 (produced with Fred Friendly), discussing Senator Joseph McCarthy: 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dwGQGM9X69o

There were a great many other notable radio voices on CBS, through the years--including the eminent broadcaster Robert Trout.  He was one of the most significant CBS News figures during the 1930s, prior to Murrow's ascendance, and remained a prominent voice on the network for decades.  He assisted Murrow, it has been written, regarding Murrow's understanding of, and use of, radio. In the book Prime Time: The Life of Edward R. Murrow (Little, Brown, 1969), author Alexander Kendrick (who worked for Murrow as a reporter during World War Two) wrote that Trout "persuaded [Murrow] that the microphone...should not be declaimed to...but used casually as an instrument of communication, like a telephone."

Murrow did not, I would suggest (listening to him today), sound particularly casual, though perhaps his style was regarded as casual during its time. Nonetheless, as reported by Alexander Kendrick, Trout's advice to Murrow--invoking the intimacy of a telephone--evidently had its intended effect.  One makes note of Murrow's typically low-key, low-register, restrained--yet distinctly authoritative--vocal manner.  His voice had a gravitational quality to it; its force pulled one in, in a striking and, yes, intimate way.

There were many others, who reported for CBS Radio, working for Murrow--such as William L. Shirer, Eric Sevareid, Larry LeSueur, Charles Collingwood, Howard K. Smith, Richard C. Hottelet, Mary Marvin Breckinridge, and Winston Burdett.

The network featured other anchors and correspondents, through the decades--including Douglas Edwards, Walter Cronkite, Dan Rather, and Christopher Glenn.

More recently, the network's correspondents or anchors included Peter King, Dan Raviv, Tom Foty, Jim Krasula, Peter Maer, Cami McCormick, Sam Litzinger, Mark Knoller, Bill Whitney, Allison Keyes, and Jim Chenevey.

When the closing of the radio news division was announced, in March, a New York Times story noted that CBS Radio News "had been whittled down to a handful of correspondents in recent years and is unprofitable, a person familiar with the company said."  The story also said this:

In a staff memo on Friday, Bari Weiss, the editor in chief of CBS News, and Tom Cibrowski, the president, observed that the radio network had “served as the foundation for everything we have built since 1927.” But because of “a shift in radio station programming strategies” and “challenging economic realities,” the company concluded that it was “impossible to continue the service.”

The same story quoted Dan Rather, the former anchor of television's CBS Evening News, who during his career was also, as referred to above, heard on CBS Radio. The story noted that after the announcement of the radio network's closure, Mr. Rather had written on Facebook that

“the end of CBS News Radio breaks my heart.” He recalled listening to its broadcasts from his childhood home in Texas and feeling inspired to pursue a career in journalism.

Concluding his elegy, Mr. Rather noted his gratitude that many of the original CBS radio broadcasts, the ones that had mesmerized him as a child, were preserved for future generations to hear.

“They are available on YouTube,” he wrote.

Here is a video, from Facebook, of a CBS Radio newscast from 2016, with anchor Jim Chenevey, whose broadcasts I enjoyed. He left the network in 2020.  FYI:  when the video appears, it will likely need to be unmuted.  You may, therefore, miss the distinctive CBS Radio News musical "sounder," at the start of the newscast--and therefore may wish to re-start the video, to be able to hear it.  The notes of the sounder remained the same for decades, but there were different musical arrangements of it, over time.

https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=10153902659215885

Lastly, while CBS Radio News may have become unprofitable, the shutting of the network was, I think, a misguided and regrettable decision. While I am guessing it is unlikely, perhaps CBS's new management might soon reverse course--and recognize that it has lost more than it has gained, by abandoning such a distinguished and reliable source of news.

Truth, and the newly-announced deal

Two days ago, on May 17th, President Trump posted the following image on his social media platform, Truth Social.  The image showed the length of wars through American history--including, as indicated, the "Iran Excursion," one of Trump's preferred phrases for the current war. 

Two days ago marked the 79th day of the war with Iran--which is roughly eleven weeks.  The May 17th image indicated that the war has been in process for six weeks.

Was this a sleight-of-hand effort to misstate the war's length?  Did the president think nobody would notice the discrepancy? 

Or was Trump not even aware of the discrepancy? 

Perhaps he was too busy thinking about the construction of his ballroom--which he discusses incessantly--or the changes at the Reflecting Pool, or the new Washington, DC passports bearing his image, or the currency which will soon bear his signature. Or maybe he was, at the time of the post, wrapped up in his belief, despite all evidence, that he actually won the 2020 election--which he talks about all the time. Or maybe he was busy thinking about the $1.776 billion fund--announced the day after the above post appeared--created for Trump supporters, who will be able to file claims asserting they were wronged by the Department of Justice during previous administrations--which would include the rioters at the Capitol on January 6th.

Trump says this, of the nearly two billion dollar fund: "I know very little about it...I wasn’t involved in the whole creation of it and the negotiation, but this is reimbursing people that were horribly treated." 

The idea of the fund is just sickening.

We also learned today that the plan includes the following addendum, providing potential enormous benefits to Trump, as described in this New York Times report: 

The Justice Department has granted President Trump, his family and businesses immunity from ongoing inquiries into their taxes, a potentially lucrative arrangement that could shield the president from significant financial liability.

The provision, quietly inserted on Tuesday as a supplement to a remarkable deal that also created a $1.8 billion compensation fund aimed at benefiting Mr. Trump’s allies, protects the president, his relatives and his businesses from pending audits and tax prosecutions.

The one-page document, signed by the acting attorney general, Todd Blanche, said that the government would be “FOREVER BARRED and PRECLUDED from prosecuting or pursuing” pending tax claims against Mr. Trump, his family members and businesses.

Evidently, the prohibitions outlined in the addendum do not include potential investigations of Trump, his family and businesses that might concern future tax returns, but that is small comfort. The deal given to Trump, et al., as part of the $1.776 billion plan (like so much of what Trump says, does, or signs off on), is jarring, and alarming.

Editorial cartoonist and illustrator Barry Blitt

Barry Blitt is known for his routinely superb editorial cartoons and illustrations, and for his great wit.  His work (for which he was awarded a Pulitzer Prize in 2020) appears regularly in The New Yorker, and, not infrequently, on the magazine's cover. 

Here is a new drawing by him, from the cover of The New Yorker's May 11th & May 18th double issue, which focuses upon America's upcoming 250th anniversary. The drawing is titled "Red, White, and Kinda Blue."

(Image © Barry Blitt, and The New Yorker)