Friends Railing at the TV Machine is Like a Warm Binky
The resistance is to be waged on many fronts simultaneously, not roam from this lion-killing-happy dentist over here to some ruthless African warlord there, from an emotionally charged faith in the best ideas, to being played for chumps by false-flag trolls; sequential interest in the body politic by meme and hashtag is over.
Or it needs to be, pronto.
Because the change you can't whip up in just one election cycle is 'job one' after a crushing turn of events such as we have witnessed. I reflect on election 2016 first and foremost with the thought of what was the McGuffin in the room?
Period, to borrow some Sean Spicer. To suggest a word to put back in the lexicon from where it has been co-opted, just one, it is to have a wish list too big for the frame.
The candidates were as different as a good education with a public life of service to boot and Chance the gardener melding with high society as it re-named him Chauncey. Words from the campaign will have their day, even losing any prophecy, but it's always going to be uphill to reach the half who couldn't care less about voting. Silent Majority (my aunt Fanny) is too many words for the premise, and not eligible for any further co-option than its original meaning and utility.
So It Wasn't "Silent Majority?"
When looking back, pick a story line; then follow it from birth to death. Like how the president with an asterisk would scuttle any reportorial probe into his once rabid birther-ism. This was 2015, sweet Jesus, and he laid down the formula with an "excu-u-use me" here and a palm push there.
Why did Katy Tur of MSNBC back down from her line of questioning? The tapes are there. Men gone to Hawaii - amazing what they were finding - and now it's bluster, space invading and interrupting?
There's a really good one word hiding in this and countless similar anecdotes: access.
It extends throughout the entire campaign. End on an up note when you can. A "leave it right there" is as good as a "thanks for coming on" to a Chuck Todd wannabe. You'll always be welcome to repeat this monkey show whenever. However, that one word access isn't nefarious for its semantics; we can undo the reliance on it without the discipline required for a quitting smoker's triggers - just stop coveting it, for crying out loud.
Your Editor Has Stopped Giving You the Stretch Sign
A word more co-opted than even journalism which can often mean one-time journalists now employed by media is the one I want back.
Don't call anyone reporter without two sources and an editor.
It's a little like two wraps and a hooey to my country cousins, because the judges (We, the People) will disqualify you without it. That's the word I want nobody to trespass. Not Frank Luntz, not Joe Scarborough, not Breitbart/Bannon, not a single member of a press corps more aptly referred to as a media gaggle.
Journalism, irrespective of the crap we're supposed to accomodate in the name of the modern, the hip, the happening, is built from reporting. Bra ads are down the hall to the left, but in here, editors are at work corralling reporters into honest reporting. We need that, he said with the understatement of a much older and crankier old dude.
Now the confusion comes with this here media thing. Trumps says media dishonest. Well, some might just be. But I don't give a crap. Media got us here, true, but they have no power to get us back. Only to sell us more soap, got me? Only facts will suffice and good humor enough not to hold a grudge. One is the province of an institution with a constitutional mention; the other is evidence of the need to be placed in one.
For the facts, you had better seek out a reporter. (Ask your grandpa.) When it comes to the other, try not to go viral, 'kay?
