Tag: Fake News

2022

Lee Abrams: The New Mainstream

America appears broken on many levels.  In fact, the whole world needs therapy. The voice of sensibility is muted by the insane effects of uncertainty and unrest

The solutions to calm a crazed planet will likely emerge when institutions sync up with the realities of the new mainstream, led by independent thinkers with the knack of creating ideas that connect with the new mainstream.  Some will be discovered and corrupted by the traditionalists while others will stay true and find ways to create change that’s in harmony with the era. Maybe a few will succeed.  It’s the era of the big idea from the world changing Amazon’s or Musk’s to the more granular that merely change industries of all sizes

We’ll never return to the past but we sure can make the future more interesting with a chance for a return to mass optimism.

But we are in the time of average and an adherence to the old playbook being acceptable and even encouraged.  All in a period of massive change.  It’s why I use the term NEW mainstream.  The old mainstream is a relic of past decades that defined what is average, yet media, is living in and targeting the old mainstream.

We are seeing it in aerospace, technology, distribution and some commerce.  In most other areas, not so much.  Information presentation (news) and media standing out as being locked into the past.

Lee Abrams, Media Expert

For example, in news, without new thinking being generated, organized and presented, informational insanity creeps in:

Mindless conspiracy theories fueled by social media.  Some, if not most, are beyond ridiculous presented by “truthers.”  Low IQ theater at its finest

Magnet news sources that draw individuals that may skew a certain direction, plummeting into the extremity mode.

Lies. Plain and simple. Amplified by compelling presentations along with the magic of photoshop and other modern transformation tools.

Safe and comfortable presentation/production at a time when things aren’t safe and comfortable…sameness in an era of change. One solution resides in the new ways of presenting information…that connects…to the new mainstream.  New thinking.  New approaches.  Newness that touches the nerve center of the new mainstream.  Marrying extreme journalism with extreme creative and unafraid of reality — the good, bad and ugly is one way.

In whatever the endeavor, the barriers of tradition are mighty and well defended, but the possibilities are endless for those focused over the horizon.  2022 will be a good time to bend culture into the shape of now.

To learn more about Lee Abrams, click here. And Lee recommends these links to better understand the need for change in media right now.

 


TRUMP BIGGEST LIE EXPOSED

The Implication of the Opposite

I have written over 200,000 words about Donald Trump and his presidency. Above all else, I have attempted to show the truth and the facts. Both seem to elude the 45th President of the United States. If you ask yourself why Donald Trump lies so much, well that appears to be part of his inner wiring. Some might call it pathological.

To quote healthline.com, “A pathological liar is someone who lies compulsively. While there appears to be many possible causes for pathological lying, it’s not yet entirely understood why someone would lie this way. Compulsive lying is also a known trait of some personality disorders, such as antisocial personality disorder.” For purposes of this discussion, let’s assume Donald Trump has antisocial personality disorder. What is that?

Psychology Today provides the answer, “Antisocial personality disorder describes an ingrained pattern of behavior in which individuals consistently disregard and violate the rights of others around them.” Most people with personality disorders deviate noticeably from the expectations of the individual’s culture. They are pervasive and inflexible. The affliction has an onset in adolescence or early adulthood.

So, who enabled Donald to lie as a young boy? Could it have been his mother or father? For someone who talks as much as Donald Trump, it’s rather curious how little he speaks about his mother. A mental health professional would surely probe that area of the Donald’s brain.

Violating the rights of others seems to be Trump’s norm. He doesn’t listen very much. He just blasts his points, even when they don’t connect with the question or subject matter at hand. During a recent exchange with a reporter, Trump said, “I don’t care what people think about me.” And there it was, right on TV, hardly reported but nonetheless the BIGGEST LIE this man has ever told.

There is no logical explanation for most of what Trump says. When he talks about homelessness in America becoming a problem only in the last two years, one wants to ask, “What fucking country do you live in, Mr. President?” Where does he get this stuff? Some people think that he just watches Fox News and then parrots their points to the world through his statements and tweets. But if you look closely, you will see that Fox is more an amplifier of Trump’s unsubstantiated speculations and fake news. He is a walking conspiracy theory.

I have adopted a filter for my brain. If Trump says something is “fake news,” I assume it’s the truth. If he accuses someone of something, I automatically suppose he is telling a lie. This is not a healthy way to view a president. When he says that Hispanics really love what he is doing at the border, I cannot even believe that he would assert such a falsehood. The facts are clear. For example, check the findings of a recent poll of Latinos in four states conducted by Telemundo and Maxon-Dixon Strategies Inc. In California, 66 percent said they would not vote to reelect him. In Texas, it was 69 percent and in New York City, 73 percent. The number was even lower in Florida, at 56 percent. So, where is Trump getting his facts? He just says whatever he thinks will help him. He lies and feels no need to prove the truth of his words. He doesn’t care about lies, but he certainly cares about what people think of him.

Caring too much about how people feel about him is Trump’s #1 weakness as a president. He’s seeking so much love from Putin, Xi and Kim that he will never be able to confront them on any matter, even our security needs, and he will never be successful in negotiating a long-term pact with any of them. A Washington Post article written by Anne Gearan, Robert Costa and David J. Lynch makes a very good point: when the door is closed, Trump is more pleasant and not like his vitriol filled tweets. When he doesn’t get what he wants, he just says, “I am in no rush to get it done.” It’s a transparent attempt to make it look like he’s gotten something, He didn’t have the fastball to accomplish the goals, and his fear of failure motivates more lies.

If most of what he says is not true and he lives in this highly polarized bubble, how could Donald Trump ever expect to get what he wants? It’s like the story about the boy who cried wolf, or on a more personal level, the 1939 Disney cartoon Little Toot, where the personified tug boat is asked in the melody of the song, “Won’t you ever grow up Little Toot?” Trump has played so many tricks and lied so often that when he speaks about something significant, no one believes him.

Donald Trump, the father, has taught his children through example that lying, fabrication and dodging the truth is the path to success. What a terrible lesson! We know why people are meaner and more vocal about things since he was elected. The children of America, no matter what age, are looking to their father figure in the White House for guidance. The net result is people have become downright obnoxious, with the emphasis on noxious.

America is bigger than politics and parties. This is our home and we must find a way back to normalcy. Trump cares so much about what people think about him it should be part of his risk assessment. It’s a threat to our well-being and security that Trump will give things away just be loved. He wants to be seduced by the Saudis, he desires to be prized by Putin and he longs to be adored by Kim Jong-Un. Why?

Could this whole mess of a person really be summed up in mental health terms? Remember the words, “individuals consistently disregard and violate the rights of others around them.”  Perhaps, Donald J. Trump admires people with the same disorder. Maybe he feels a bond with people who treat others poorly. If that is true, we are doomed if he gets reelected. It’s almost like he wakes every morning asking, “Who can I piss off today?” rather than pondering, “How can I make America better today?”

BRAND NEW BOOK ON AMERICA

Gold, God, Guns & Goofballs shows how we’ve wasted our GOLD on bad wars and corruption. While GOD is there for many people as a spiritual enrichment and the provider of glowing feelings, the truth is just praying and believing will not change our major arc. We don’t determine who gets a GUN. We aren’t sure if we have paramilitary groups ready to storm the White House or a White Castle. There is no control of weapons. The GOOFBALLS with the power constantly try to manipulate us into spending more money on bombs and tanks and wars. When all of our institutions are infected with neglect and fall in disrepair, we will only have ourselves to blame. This book is not an antidote for the left or right, it’s an accelerant to move the middle off their collective asses to go do something positive for America.

Get the Kindle Version HERE. Or order your paperback edition HERE.


FAKE NEWS vs. REAL JOURNALISM

Trump’s Attempt to Muddy the Waters

Back in February, 2017 Trump tweeted: “The FAKE NEWS media (failing @nytimes, @NBCNews, @ABC, @CBS, @CNN) is not my enemy, it is the enemy of the American People!” Then he deleted that tweet and posted something similar, but took ABC off his enemies list. Trump, obviously not a student of history, missed this fact: Vladimir Lenin and Joseph Stalin used the term “enemy of the nation/people” to refer to those who disagreed with the Bolshevik government. Did you write that one, Steve Bannon?

Trump went on a rant July 1, 2017, after receiving heavy criticism from both sides of the political spectrum due to his attacks on MSNBC talk show hosts, “The FAKE & FRAUDULENT NEWS MEDIA is working hard to convince Republicans and others I should not use social media – but remember, I won the 2016 election with interviews, speeches and social media. I had to beat #FakeNews, and did. We will continue to WIN!”

And on that same day, Mr. President continued, “My use of social media is not Presidential – it’s MODERN DAY PRESIDENTIAL. Make America Great Again!”  Along with his jingoistic rhetoric, Donald Trump, like so many other power-hungry leaders around the world, wants to control the media. He attempts to distort whatever truth is left and brands his lies as official doctrine. And the term Modern Day rings like “Modern Day Prophet” for those following along in church.

For those of us who were schooled in the trade of journalism, we take the responsibility of our craft seriously. The Fourth Estate is usually reserved for the printed press and credible broadcast news teams. The Fifth Estate, the newer term, stands for groupings of outlier viewpoints in contemporary society, such as bloggers and journalists publishing in non-mainstream media outlets and social media. The right of center to Alt-Right people use the term “mainstream media” as a pejorative term, whereas, Breitbart represents what was called “Yellow Journalism” in the 1950s.

The “fourth estate” comes from the European concept of the three estates of the realm: the clergy, the nobility, and the commoners. The Press was supposed to hold the three other estates to a standard with information gathering, storytelling based on truth and distribution to everyone equally. Yes, the King could read that he had no pants.

We know that Donald Trump has tapped into a raw exposed nerve in the disadvantaged and struggling middle class. With much of America moving away from reading the newspaper and getting their news from the internet, the line of what is credible or legit has become extremely blurred.

The price of entry into the newspaper business in most cities is so great that even large companies attempting to bring a new paper to market have an uphill, if not impossible, climb. With the internet providing more outlets than needles on a porcupine’s back there are plenty of free opinions and micro-targeted sites that can sanction what consumers think.

This tendency to interpret new evidence as confirmation of one’s existing beliefs or theories even has its own term: Confirmation Bias. It is so important to be right in today’s society that many people spend hours of every day watching a news channel that corroborates their baseline beliefs. Fox News leans to the right, while MSNBC leans to the left. That is their branding positions and, depending on who is in power, they will have better ratings.

CNN, the new Trump target, has decided like many channels and programs that there are millions of people who don’t like Trump, so that is a built-in audience. The sad part of all of this is that I haven’t mentioned journalistic integrity or award-winning writing. Those are less important in this instant gratification world. Trump produces ratings and it doesn’t seem to make a difference if you are building him up or beating him down.

THE LATE SHOW with STEPHEN COLBERT on CBS-TV has increased almost 30% according to TV News Desk (7-6-2017) and you can chart his increases with his direct aim at Trump. The Donald, whether he likes it or not, is easy to parody because of what he says and how his administration attempts to govern. Writing jokes and monologues about Trump has a built-in benefit, because if you manage to get under his thin skin he mentions you. Better yet, if he attacks you, your ratings go up even more.

I may be in the minority but I think the “news” that the President maligns is less news than fake. To our great Orange Leader, when confronted with anything that makes fun of him, or puts him down, or (can I say this?) bullies him, he launches into an overly emotional rebuttal.

The people doing the real investigative journalism are at the newspapers. Think about it, every major break or leak has come from the newspapers. The Michael Flynn lies came from the newspapers. The Comey meetings with Trump came from the newspapers. And the ethics conflicts of Kushner and the Trumps all come from the print medium.

The TV journalists at CNN are hampered by the overload of trying fit real journalism into a small box of endless talking heads and opinionated “experts” who, at times, do more harm than good. Stop and think about it, do we need Rick Santorum giving his opinion on what the news means?  He’s a failed neo-conservative right-winged politician spewing nothing by RNC talking points. What about Sean Hannity? Well he couldn’t write a lead to save his life.  Then, of course, we know what happened to poor old Brian Williams. These are the people most Americans would say represent the “news” business.? Really?

The one investigative reporter I want to hear from isn’t a journalist at all. His name is Robert Mueller. I would like to hear his story, in fact, now that would be BREAKING NEWS!


FAKE NEWS OR FAKE PRESIDENT?

Trump’s War on the Constitution

Occasionally I see, hear or read a journalist saying that Donald Trump has some grand strategy. And when pressed, the author says that this latest move was pure genius, or the tweet did exactly what he designed it to do, as if the Donald is some intelligent media designer.

There’s not much difference between Trump and a 9-year-old boy grapping the microphone at Walmart and yelling stupid kid-things into the store’s PA system. The kid’s grand plan is to get attention, same as the “leader” of the free world.

In the President’s latest tweet (7-2-2017), he proclaimed, “The FAKE & FRAUDULENT NEWS MEDIA is working hard to convince Republicans and others I should not use social media – but remember, I won the 2016 election with interviews, speeches and social media. I had to beat #FakeNews, and did. We will continue to WIN! My use of social media is not Presidential – it’s MODERN DAY PRESIDENTIAL. Make America Great Again!”

When I read this my mind heard a spoiled 9-year-old brat saying, “Mommy made me president. I’m the president. I get to be president and do whatever I want!”

This over complaining and endless whining about news coverage in the media isn’t new to presidents. Trump has decided, however, that anyone who disagrees with him, critiques him or attempts to cover his achievements or lack of them, is the enemy. One could change the term “Fake News” to “People who hate me” and it would fit perfectly in all contexts.

Steve Bannon, the administration’s dark, Spiro Agnew evil twin, has said openly that the media is the “opposition party.”  He, along with Trump surrogates, Miller, Conway and that overtly obnoxious, fake intellectual Sebastian Gorka, have crafted a White House position that is obstinate and cantankerous. Any thinking America hearing them speak can clearly see through the pretentious, defensive droning of their propaganda.

Richard M. Nixon did the same thing when he was president, even using the same terms about the media.  However, Trump is no Nixon. The 37th President had to resign in disgrace. This president, when the time comes, will have to be removed from his current residence by the Secret Service, Capitol Hill Police or maybe the Army.

Even Trump’s slogan is not new. It is a total rip-off of Ronald Reagan’s campaign motto, demonstrating that Trump is an even better actor than Ronald Reagan. An actor takes the stage and plays a part while not being the real thing. We now have a fake President and everything he does is directed to making his character likeable, rather than forging policy and decisions that are right and good for the country. #FakePresident

Trump bellyaches that his achievements are not covered in the “fake news” but he broadcasts his tirades on the very same “fake” mainstream media he continually slams. His complaints about not being covered are total lies. The media covers every speech, every signing, every tweet. His “key promises,” such as reforming healthcare, getting a better, fairer, tax code and creating jobs, have become fake, rally fodder rather than reality.

Months ago, President Trump and VP Mike Pence rode their white horses into the Carrier furnace plant in Indianapolis to announce they had convinced the company to abandon a plan to move to Mexico.  They stated publicly that this would save hundreds of jobs.  Update: many employees will soon be losing their jobs at the plant.  CNBC reports (6-22-2017) that Carrier’s plant in Indianapolis is scheduled to lay off about 600 workers by the end of the year. The jobs are going to Mexico. Nice work, little boys.

Donald J. Trump will probably write that off as “FAKE NEWS,” but the road to success for this president has to go through the media. You cannot be a great president in a vacuum. You cannot guard so dearly the Second Amendment and spit in the face of those who employ the First Amendment to keep democracy strong. Without the First Amendment, we don’t need the Second Amendment.

Fake means fraudulent, and the usage of that term by our president in the context of media coverage is troublesome on many levels. When something is fraudulent it is obtained, done by, or has involved deception – especially criminal deception. The American public, the Congress and the courts must be on-guard with this president. There’s a very small step from complaining to outlawing and, in this case, the outlawing would be executed by an elected outlaw.

At this date, the Fake President may not like the Fake Media, but if all the media outlets stopped talking about Trump, he would probably melt into a damp pool of man tan and makeup.  Sad.


Worst Press Conference Ever

“I’m really not a bad person”

In an overblown 77-minute press conference, the president of the United States took the mic away from Spicer and decided to command communication himself. His opening lecture to the press belabored his quest to discredit the media.

His attempts to alienate journalists smacks of the implication of the opposite. Donald J. Trump loves the press and lives for their attention. When he says “the tone is such hatred” in the reporting on his administration, he takes on a martyr complex that is so unattractive in any human.

His statement, “I’m really not a bad person” was as shallow as Richard Nixon’s “I am not a crook.” If you have to tell people you aren’t something, you open the door for the listener to think that you are saying the opposite. “The roll out was perfect, there was zero chaos” and “the administration is running like a fine-tuned machine” are simply not true. The rollout of the travel ban was vague and disruptive and found to be poorly written at best. I’m not sure the hail of executive orders is something to brag about, especially when they aren’t comprehended by the commander-in-chief.

The on-going reverse engineering that is taking place is atrocious. When Trump was confronted on the misinformation about his electoral vote number by NBC’s Peter Alexander, the president’s defense was “I was given that information” and then, “Actually, I’ve seen that information around.” While claiming that everybody else is fake news, the lie bubbles coming out of his little round pie-hole exposes his lack of trustworthiness with facts and figures.  

Why would any country want to deal with someone who doesn’t prepare enough for a press conference to get the facts right? Any Congressional leader who isn’t asking how do we contain this paranoid-pathological liar posing as president has probably sipped enough of the Kool-Aid of power to longer be thought of as a viable leader either. We are talking to you Paul Ryan.

The reality TV show – referred to as the press conference – had some simple rules. Ask a tough question, you’re out. Ask a question that provides a way for the host to brag about himself, you get praise. Ask a controversial question, and you will be put down with lines like, “Quiet, quiet, quiet,” and then, “See he lied about — he was going to get up and ask a very straight, simple question. Okay, sit down.”

Once again, Trump treated a Jewish reporter with disrespect going on a self-absorbed talk about himself, rather than answering the question. To the credit of other reporters, they didn’t let the president off the hook by returning to the question and pointing out it wasn’t about him. This was the worst press conference ever.

One of the ways a president can be impeached is if the office holder commits a misdemeanor. If someone continually lies to the American public, to Congress or to the Judiciary, isn’t that a misdemeanor? Let’s keep counting the lies for the writing of the Articles of Impeachment. If only embarrassing America was a misdemeanor.