Day 135 of Nat'l Emergency: Authoritarianism Rules (Unless We Won't Let It)

There’s a burgeoning cottage industry among historians and intellectuals manufacturing theses on why authoritarianism is popping up around the globe, sometimes in bastions of democracy. In some countries autocratic rulers have neutered democratic institutions. 

Yes, Trumpism immediately comes to mind. But the study of the decline of democracy predates The Donald’s assumption of office, though he has worked diligently to install America First leadership of the movement, aided and abetted by members of the Republican Party who have abandoned their historical commitment to constitutional values.

My musings are prompted by an email from a friend who related she had just listened to an interview with Anne Applebaum, a Pulitzer Prize winning author, describing her most recent book, “Twilight Of Democracy: The Seductive Lure Of Authoritarianism.” 

Here are links to two recent interviews, the first, a seven minute discussion on NPR’s “Morning Edition” 

(https://www.npr.org/2020/07/22/894074616/anne-applebaums-latest-book-twilight-of-democracy). The second link is to a 35 minute broadcast of NPR’s “Fresh Air.” The link also contains a transcript of the interview (https://www.npr.org/transcripts/869722081).

I am neither an historian nor a certified intellectual, but upon receiving my friend’s email I provided some thoughts on the allure of authoritarian rule:

“From religion to business enterprises to sports teams to orchestras to theater/movie productions to all manner of communal activity we are drawn to and often revere strong leaders, be they popes/rabbis, dynamic CEOs, coaches/managers, flamboyant conductors, visionary directors. 

“Of course, we also willingly follow the authoritative general who provides us with security from our enemies and leadership when we covet what others have. 

“It is thus in all societies. We seem to be hard wired in our DNA to seek out strong leaders. It is only in the last 300 or so years that the concept of popular democratic government has evolved. But it has not taken hold in business, the arts, the military, religion. Those disciplines would be unable to succeed under democratic rules. It would result in bedlam.

“Even in democracies like America, India, Israel, Turkey we see too many citizens revert to the innate desire to follow a strongman.

“Democracy, to work, requires education and the absence of existential fear. Trump is stoking fear. From his campaign four years ago to his dystopian inaugural address to his anti immigration rules to his 2020 campaign that spreads warnings of what may happen if the Dems win to his use of armed services to control protesters Trump trades on fear. 

“Fear is one of humankind’s most basic and motivating emotions. Even some of the most educated succumb to fear and seek comfort in an authoritarian leader.” 

It is not for nothing that our form of government is called the “American experiment.” But just as experiments can go akilter (I am reminded of an unintended high school chemistry explosion when the teacher added water to a beaker of sulfuric acid instead of the other way around), so too can our democracy implode if participants fail to act appropriately.

Asked on “Fresh Air” if she sees similarities of creeping authoritarianism in America with actions past and current overseas, Applebaum replied, “Absolutely. The use of the military, the use of language to incite violence - you know, all these are - you know, these aren’t just random things that Trump is doing; these are known tactics. You know, this is how Chavez took over in Venezuela. You know, this is the kind of language that Erdogan uses in Turkey. This is the kind - these are the tactics that Putin uses in Russia. I mean, these are - you know, it’s not coming out of the blue. These are methods that have been used in the past in other places.

“I mean, Americans like to think of themselves as exceptional. And actually, I believe in many ways, we are. You know, we’re uniquely lucky. We’re uniquely gifted. We’ve been a very fortunate nation. We’ve had - you know, we’ve achieved many wonderful things. But we are not exempt from the lure of authoritarianism. We are not exempt from people trying to create authoritarianism. There is nothing about our democracy that is magic. You know, a person who is determined to destroy it can destroy it, unless people can fight back.”

(Most of you are pandemicly stuck at home with time to spare. If you haven’t already, click on the Fresh Air link I provided above. Listen to the interview or read the transcript. It won’t cheer you up but it should galvanize your support in defense of our fragile democracy.) 

Facing Up to Mistakes

Have you ever made a mistake at work? Perhaps you are an accountant and you put an extra zero at the end of a number or placed a decimal point one column to the right. Or maybe you are an attorney and failed to file a motion in a timely manner. Or you are a shipping clerk who sent a package to London, England, instead of London, Ontario (that last one is a homage to All in the Family and the reason Archie Bunker did not get a Christmas bonus one year and thus could not buy Edith the vacuum cleaner she desired). 

The point is, people make mistakes, and so do computers if they are programmed incorrectly by humans, of course. No matter how many levels of review an organization has, human error cannot be totally eliminated. 

Try talking out loud for several straight hours a day without fumbling your words. Naturally, you will mispronounce some words. But when I refer to fumbling I mean something far more sinister, far more detrimental, to your societal position and ambition. 

In the age of instant mass communication any gaffe, any untoward remark, may be blown up out of proportion to your intent. The tragedy, the threat to our civil and political comity, and potentially our democracy, is that it usually is. 

Did Hillary’s “basket of deplorables” comment cost her the election? Didn’t help. Howard Dean’s outburst of enthusiasm after the Iowa caucus in 2004 surely blew up his presidential hopes. In 2006, George Allen got caught on a cell phone camera calling one of his opponent’s campaign trackers a “macaca” (monkey). It submarined his re-election bid as a U.S. senator from Virginia. 

Which brings us to a recent brouhaha over an erroneous news report. I classify it as a “brouhaha” not to discount the culpability of the media, in this case, NPR, but rather because when journalists make mistakes they are held to a higher standard than politicians who regularly and deliberatively lie. 

NPR screwed up in a report linking Trump ex-attorney Michael Cohen’s plea deal confession to testimony Donald Trump Jr. provided to the Senate in 2017. NPR alleged Trump lied to the Senate about the family’s business plans in Russia. NPR issued a correction shortly thereafter. https://www.foxnews.com/politics/npr-issues-correction-after-falsely-accusing-trump-jr-of-being-in-legal-jeopardy-for-lying-to-senate.amp

But admitting its mistake did not stop right wing journalists and Web sites from excoriating NPR. Indeed, a Google check of “NPR Donald Trump Jr.” finds that the top sites covering this faux pas were Sputnik News, The Daily Wire, The Daily Caller, Breitbart, RT.com, National Review and The Federalist. It is a conservative onslaught when the most objective site I could cite was Fox News.

Only Trump Sr. seems immune from fallout from vocal flatulence. Indeed, his base laps up his lies and libertine lewdness. Of course, foreign governments and independent entities such as the stock market are not necessarily impassive to Trump’s discordant trumpet. Here’s an article from The Washington Post highlighting the chaos from Trump’s erraticism: https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/chaos-breeds-chaos-trumps-erratic-and-false-claims-roil-markets-again/2018/12/04/824506fa-f7ff-11e8-863c-9e2f864d47e7_story.html?utm_term=.0681c19ad319.

The PC police long ago lost the war with Trump. But the PC police remain vigilantly active when it comes to Trump’s detractors. Eric Holder and Hillary Clinton are held to a higher standard. As is The New York Times. 

Back in September The Times published an erroneous report that U.N. ambassador Nikki Haley had spent lavishly on draperies for her official residence in a high rise building near the U.N. The Times apologized for the error and issued a correction stating it was the Obama administration that authorized the purchase. 

In no other profession are mistakes as publicly acknowledged as they are in legitimate journalism. 

I made my fair share of mistakes as a reporter and editor. My most egregious mistake was not one of fact but of judgment. After a particularly negative experience trying to buy an electric snow shovel at a now defunct local home center chain, I avenged my treatment by recounting the details in the editor’s column of the next issue of Chain Store Age. I not only named the chain but also the store manager. I overstepped the bounds of civil criticism. In the next issue I apologized.

My most amusing mistake was printed on the cover of a December 1992 issue profiling retail industry entrepreneurs of the year. Chain Store Age partnered with Ernst & Young as part of the latter’s national all-industry program to recognize corporate leaders.

From the 29 retailers selected as winners that year, we chose to put Randy Acton, president of U.S. Cavalry, on the cover. U.S. Cavalry, now part of Galls LLC, sold military and law enforcement apparel and accessories. 

For the cover shoot Acton dressed in a military camouflage outfit, helmet and all. The headline read, “Soldier of Fortune,” under which we printed, “Randy Acton, president U.S. Calvary.”

Did you catch the mistake? I didn’t, until I received a thank you note from Randy. He gently pointed out his company was U.S. Cavalry, not U.S. Calvary.

Jesus, what a mistake that was!

Tribute to George Rosenbaum; Hold The Nobel Peace Prize For Now But Give Trump the Chutzpah Award

I learned this week of the passing of George Rosenbaum. He was 88. When he was eight he witnessed Hitler’s troops marching through his home city, Vienna. Shortly thereafter his family emigrated to the United States. With that early experience seared into his memory, George would comment on some of my blogs, usually the political ones. 

I first met George in 1980. He was president of Leo J. Shapiro and Associates, a market research firm based in Chicago. Chain Store Age engaged George and Leo for what I thought would be a one-off project studying Kmart. Instead, for the next 29 years hardly a month passed without research from LJS appearing in my magazine.

As I wrote two and a half years ago when Leo passed away at age 94, the value of market research is dependent on how questions are structured and fielded. “Garbage in, garbage out” is a truism of the trade. George and Leo shaped my rough ideas into sharp analytical studies. 

Contributors to Advertising Age and often quoted in The Wall Street Journal and other business publication, LJS did research for many retail and health care companies. 

After I started my blog, George and Leo often would email their thoughts. When I hadn’t heard from George for several months, I did what is now an easy Google search. His death notice popped up. He passed away May 7. I called his wife Wednesday to express my condolences and appreciation for our relationship which continued beyond our work years.

Here’s a sample of George’s reactions to my blogs:

To a blog that asked, which is more of a threat to Western civilization: Islamic extremists or neo-Nazis? (http://nosocksneededanymore.blogspot.com/2017/11/existential-threats-jihadists-or-neo.html), George wrote: “Deaths by guns nor deaths by terror do not threaten Western liberty. The widening gap between have and have-nots caused mainly by technology makes fertile ground for despots who pledge to fix what’s wrong.  

“Bread has always pre-empted liberty. Europe has been deeded the vast number of refugees by the failed states it created after WW1 and defeat of the Ottoman Empire. 

“Pray that Israel continues to protect and support Palestine, especially if it should become a state.”

To a blog on Charlottesville and the lessons of history (http://nosocksneededanymore.blogspot.com/2017/08/charlottesville-and-lessons-of-history.html), George responded: “Well said…and even better written. Until now I never heard a spade being called a spade. The secession of the South was led by traitors. It was treason; it was not a matter of free choice or honor. The West Point graduate(s) and elected representatives took oaths and pledged to uphold the Union—UNITED States. To reconstruct that union, history was white washed. Hollywood contributed to the white wash. The removal of Confederate statues is a double edge sword that reminds us that the reconstruction is not complete. The unreconstructed want to hold on to what once was—embedded in their soul, to quote you. On the other hand, the many Southerners who want those monuments removed are working on behalf of reconstruction perhaps even themselves.

“I was still a child in Vienna when the American Bund rallied for Hitler, but this seems quite distant from present organized hate groups—some 1,300 in the US, according to the Southern Poverty League. It is now post WW2, post Holocaust. The western world and US have mobilized to control hate legally as well as socially to oppose it. The digital age makes us all vulnerable to the destructiveness of hatred. Society has reacted…as it is reacting to Charlottesville now. Prior history may relate but does not apply.

“Jews are a bellweather. We see them leaving France, Poland, Hungary. No American Jew is leaving because of fear; they are United citizens who entrust and are prepared to share their fate with all other Americans. 

“Surely this is unique…just as America is unique in all of history.”

Ever the market researcher, George contemplated a statistical response to Trump’s penchant for lying. Responding to my January 22, 2017, blog on Trump and the Truth: Never the Twain Shall Meet (http://nosocksneededanymore.blogspot.com/2017/01/trump-and-truth-never-twain-shall-meet.html), he suggested, “Autocrats are always enabled by the truths they create. And, correction is always silenced by their acolytes.  

“Truthtellers, if not removed from their jobs, are punished and pay dearly, even with their lives. Many attempts to silence Hitler failed. But, this is still the US. And, you are a flourishing truth teller, not a silent spectator. Moreover, a journalist with inbred and professional capacity for observation.  

“What is needed on behalf of America is an Autocracy Index. This is as follows:

Date   The Falsehood   The Medium   The Facts

“I believe that this could readily be funded. To date, there is already enough to create this with post inauguration material to avoid being written off as campaign rhetoric.  This could help attract financial support, establish a daily/weekly report published online by a responsible source, and even a weekly adjunct on television news, or its own show. While its beginning (the count so far) requires sweat equity, funding could reimburse daily continuity, both its management, support staff and interns.”

I will miss George’s insights, intelligence, experience and friendship.

Memo to the Nobel Peace Prize Committee: Not so fast!

While Donald Trump and his boosters tout a safer world from a denuclearized North Korea after his historic tete-a-tete with Kim Jong-un, saner, more rational observers express caution, even skepticism. As more daylight emerges from their Tuesday meeting in Singapore, it seems both sides have different interpretations of what transpired, what commitments each side made and how quickly, if ever, the Korean peninsula will be nuke free (check your preferred news outlet for details).

What you might have missed, in Trump’s euphoria and habit of hyperbole, is the reality that nothing new was contained in the photo-op signing of a joint statement. For context, read or listen to Joshua Pollack’s five minute interview on NPR (Pollack is an expert on nonproliferation and editor of The Nonproliferation Review). For those who want a quick summation here’s a pertinent Pollack quote: 

“On paper, neither side gave up anything or received anything. These are the same standing commitments that both sides have had for a while now. There’s not a lot new except, I suppose, the resumption of searching for the war dead. Having said that, the fact of this summit—the visuals, the flags, the handshakes, the smiles—all that certainly elevates Kim Jong-un internationally, enhances his credibility at home, assuming that he feels he needs that. And I think it will tend to confirm him in his mindset that testing probable hydrogen bomb and long-range ICBM is what has gotten him respect from the powers of the world, including the United States. And I don’t think he’ll be inclined to give it up” (https://www.npr.org/2018/06/12/619294287/u-s-north-korea-joint-statement-echos-past-agreements-between-the-2-countries).

Chutzpah Award: On the other hand, The Philanderer-in-Chief earned the Chutzpah Comment of the Week award by attacking Congressman Mark Sanford (R-SC) for his dalliance with an Argentinean woman while married and governor of South Carolina. 

The Trumpster endorsed Sanford’s primary challenger as retaliation for the congressman’s less than blind loyalty. Sanford lost, another indication Republican Party masses have abandoned longstanding GOP principles and are now no more objective than any cult followers.

Mixed Messages: Ft. Lee, NJ, wants to promote business in its community, but a mixed message might be part of its campaign.

A billboard on Route 46 just before the George Washington Bridge cheerfully suggests stopping in Ft. Lee for Happy Hour drinks. Are town fathers really advocating drinking and then getting back into one’s car? 

New Year's Surprises and Resolutions

Have you broken your New Year’s resolutions yet? I am not in the habit of making any resolutions, not that I consider myself perfect in all ways. I just don’t see the need to focus on an arbitrary day to begin any transformative plan.

But I have been mulling a change that would affect you as well. I am considering reducing the percentage of blog posts that deal with the Trumpster. It is hard to imagine anyone who has launched more terabytes into the blogosphere but I will try my best to adhere to my resolve.

So what will I write about? Life. Just ordinary life. Take, for example, the surprise that greeted Gilda and me when we returned home from a less than 24 hour trip on Monday. The intake pipe to the master bedroom’s bathroom toilet froze during the frigid cold snap. Good thing our house has three bathrooms.

It wasn’t the first time we experienced this inconvenience since we remodeled the bathroom 13 years ago and put the toilet, and the offending pipe, up against an exterior wall (in the 20 year priors to the remodel, the pipe never froze as it was attached to an inside wall). 

Apparently, according to our plumber, frozen intake pipes next to exterior walls are a common predicament during prolonged cold snaps accompanied by high winds. All we could do, he related, is hope, and pray, the pipe wouldn’t burst while we warmed up the wall with a portable heater. After several hours we were back in business.  

More Tales From the Cold: Thursday’s “bomb cyclone” blizzard dumped eight inches on our driveway and front walk. But the high winds kept most of the snow from sticking to our solar panels. Around 4:15 pm I confronted the inevitable, suited up in snow pants, boots and balaclava and spent the next 45 minutes making sure to propel the fluffy snow in the direction of the wind. It was, actually, one of the easiest snowstorms I’ve ever had to clear.

Time to Break My Resolution: Heck, you might think I have no willpower, but keep in mind four days have gone by since the New Year began. So here are some Trumpian thoughts:

In case you haven’t heard about it, there’s an informative article in The New Yorker by Evan Osnos detailing how our bumbler-in-chief is making China great again. Here are two links, one to the print article (https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/01/08/making-china-great-again) and the second to an interview Osnos did with Terry Gross of NPR’s Fresh Air (you can either read the transcript or click on an audio link: https://www.npr.org/2018/01/03/575288560/journalist-as-u-s-retreats-from-world-stage-china-moves-to-fill-the-void).

One of my takeaways from Osnos was that we no longer have just Russia to worry about concerning the integrity of our elections. Here’s a short clip from Osnos:

“I asked a strategist in Beijing, this very prominent figure, a guy named Yan Xuetong. I said, how long does the period of strategic opportunity last for China? He says, well, it lasts as long as Trump is in office.”

Thus, not only Russia but China, as well as other countries that have stroked Trump’s ego, such as Israel, Saudi Arabia and the Philippines, have a vital national interest in keeping the dumb-as-a-loon-in-chief in office in 2020 and in retaining a Republican controlled Congress in 2018. 

Interference in our electoral processes may well become commonplace, but Trump and Attorney General Jeff Sessions are more interested in stopping state sanctioned marijuana sales than in preventing the sanctity of our most cherished right. 

News Flashes: One of New York WCBS TV’s field reporters Thursday evening confirmed that “slush is wet!” 

Does anyone else find it amusing that ABC News correspondent Eva Pilgrim reports out of Boston? 

Was anyone else surprised Gail Collins did not include any mention of Seamus, the dog Mitt Romney strapped to the top of his station wagon when taking his family on a vacation years ago, in a New York Times column about Romney’s potential candidacy for the Senate seat being vacated by Orrin Hatch? (https://nyti.ms/2E38sXV)

Let's Hope Trump's Trigger Finger Isn't Itchy

I spent a chilling 45 minutes Wednesday afternoon listening to the author of Raven Rock: The Story of the U.S. Government’s Secret Plan to Save Itself—While the Rest of Us Die be interviewed by Terry Gross of NPR’s Fresh Air.

Garrett Graff’s book fills in the details on what most of us have taken for granted, namely, that in the event of a nuclear holocaust a few chosen elites from government and business will be whisked to impregnable fortresses  to survive and keep our country functioning with, for example, a stash of $2 billion, mostly in $2 bills the public rejected when re-introduced back in 1976 but will have little choice but to use in the absence of most other legal tender. The Federal Reserve, Graff reports, estimates it would take about 18 months to produce more currency.

Sounds funny but it’s a deadly serious book. Here’s the part that really shook me to the bone: According to Graff, there is no one who stands between a president and an order to launch a nuclear strike. No secretary of state or secretary of defense, no chairman of the joint chiefs of staff. No one is needed to validate, confirm, authorize an order. No one can counterman it.

It is not like in the movies. The “nuclear football” carried by a military aide is always near the president. “Contrary to pop culture or public perception, there is no such thing as the red phone or the nuclear button,” said Graff. “What the nuclear football entails is basically a bunch of binders with different plans. One military aide compared it to a Denny’s menu. You can go through and point at different pictures and that’s the type of nuclear war you would order.” 

When asked why and when safeguards from a would-be mad-bombing president were stripped from the protocol, Graff said, “The way that these procedures have evolved over the years is to remove any middlemen that could slow the process down, because the decision-making window would be so short as it is. The president might only have 8 to 10 to 12 minutes to make a decision about launching a nuclear weapon. There wouldn’t be any time to double check with someone else, so we have very carefully crafted a system that ensures that there’s nothing that slows down a presidential launch order. 

“Those plans were always predicated upon the idea that the person giving the launch order is the most thoughtful, most intelligent, most sober-minded individual that you could possibly imagine atop the nuclear command and control system.”

Not once did Donald Trump’s name get mentioned. But the more than 240-pound orangutan in the room could not have been far away from any listener’s thoughts. 

Located in Waynesboro, PA, not far from Camp David, Raven Rock is but one of many havens hollowed out of mountains. Some 5,000 “lucky” personnel would be assigned sanctuary there. 

I’m not sure how comforting it might be to you, but Graff said even after Doomsday the IRS would continue to collect taxes. How would it know from whom to collect? Apparently the Postal Service would be charged with compiling lists of who died and who survived.

For those who would like to hear the Fresh Air interview, including the ability of a president to declare a state of emergency that would suspend many rights and permit the state to incarcerate anyone the president judges to be a dissident, here’s a link: http://www.wnyc.org/story/in-the-event-of-attack-heres-how-the-government-plans-to-save-itself/

Reading Real News, Not Fake News, Really Matters in the Age of Trump

How much do you read? I don’t mean books. I mean newspapers and news Web sites.

I will answer first—not enough. And I’m mostly retired so I have no “time excuse.” That said, how much do you read? Specifically, how much of The New York Times or The Washington Post or The Wall Street Journal or The Boston Globe or The Chicago Tribune or The Los Angeles Times do you read? Or if you’re more inclined to go electronic, do you read the online versions of those papers, or Politico, or AP, or other reputable Web sites? In other words, how much quality daily journalism do you read?

It is almost universally agreed that democracy cannot flourish without freedom of the press. But that freedom implies an imperative on the citizenry to exercise a commitment to seeking out knowledge. Regrettably, in today’s political realm, both the populous and too many of its leaders are not dedicated to the proper exercise of a vigilant and truthful press.

The American people have just elected a president whose whole campaign was based on distortions, falsehoods and the failure to acknowledge his own prior statements. Lies repeated over and over became accepted as truth. 

Instead of relying on traditional media for news and analysis, large swaths of the public have turned to bogus news sites posting fake news stories they, at worse, believe or, at the very least, help shape negative opinions of politicians and groups that do not share their values. 

In this vortex of negativity, I am getting to the point where I can hardly read anymore about Trump. It’s too painful. (Paradoxically, as much as I try to break away from writing about him, I persist, thus exposing you, my reader, to even more Trumpish blasts.) I am even limiting my viewership of late night talk shows that lampoon him. 

And that, in a nutshell, is one of the dangers of Trumpdom, that the population that cares about the dangers he poses will be silenced by ennui as much as by the fake news that he and his acolytes disseminate.

Trump views no news cycle as complete without him in it. As president, even as president-elect, that’s to be expected, but his continued reliance on Twitter to roil the waters whenever he is criticized is troubling. He has yet to show that he cares that his tweets can have international repercussions, that his comments could move stock prices. 

For years one of my work-related buddies now retired from a technology company would include me in an email blitz of negative stories about liberals and President Obama. More often than not I’d check out their veracity through snopes.com and alert him to their falsehood. I’d admonish him to check Snopes before sending out his blasts, but he rarely took the time. It was frustrating and disappointing to observe this intelligent former executive contribute to the dummification of society simply because he was anti-Democrats. 

Fake News proliferated during the election campaign, with Facebook becoming an unwitting accomplice. Facebook finally is taking some measures to limit the transmission of false and bigoted messages. But the damage to our democracy may not be easily repaired.

Last week, Fresh Air on NPR interviewed Craig Silverman, media editor of BuzzFeed News, about his research into fake news and its impact on the election. Silverman studied the response to the top 20 news stories from mainstream media and fake media on Facebook. 

He found that “three months before the election, that critical time, we actually saw the fake news spike. And we saw the mainstream news engagement on Facebook for those top 20 stories decline.”

What does it mean? “When we look at some of the data about the impact of misinformation, it’s really significant,” said Silverman. “So we at BuzzFeed partnered with Ipsos to do a survey of 3,000 Americans. And one of the things we wanted to find out was their familiarity with fake news headlines about the election. And what we found in the end after testing a group of five fake news headlines that went really big during the election and six real news headlines that went really big during the election is that 75 percent of the time, the Americans who were shown a fake news headline and had remembered it from the election believed it to be accurate.

“And that’s a really shocking thing. It’s impossible to go the next step and say, well, they voted because of that. But I think one of the things this election has shown is that people will believe fake news, misinformation will spread and people will believe it and it will become part of their worldview.” http://www.npr.org/2016/12/14/505547295/fake-news-expert-on-how-false-stories-spread-and-why-people-believe-them?utm_source=npr_newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_content=20161215&utm_campaign=npr_email_a_friend&utm_term=storyshare

Oh, how our democracy is in trouble given Trump’s penchant for dissembling and disseminating fake news.

Bread and Circuses: He has yet to officially take office but we can discern from the last two years how Trump will conduct business as president. 

It will be an imperial presidency. Woe to the person or organization that challenges the leader. 

Expect mass rallies as Trump fulfills his ego need for public approval. Though he did not win a majority of votes, he claims a mandate because of his Electoral College win. He will seek to reinforce his ego electronically through Twitter and physically through rallies of his faithful.

It will be an administration of “bread and circuses,” as in Ancient Rome, most aptly described by Wikipedia: “Bread and circuses” (or bread and games; from Latin: panem et circenses) is metonymic for a superficial means of appeasement. In the case of politics, the phrase is used to describe the generation of public approval, not through exemplary or excellent public service or public policy, but through diversion; distraction; or the mere satisfaction of the immediate, shallow requirements of a populace,  as an offered ‘palliative.’ Its originator, Juvenal, used the phrase to decry the selfishness of common people and their neglect of wider concerns. The phrase also implies the erosion or ignorance of civic duty amongst the concerns of the commoner.”

Democratic Party resistance mostly will be ineffectual at the national level given GOP control of the Senate and House. Democrats will try to emulate the successful Republican strategy of resistance at the local level. But it may be too late in many states. Look what happened in North Carolina last week where a Republican legislature passed laws to neuter the incoming Democratic governor. If the laws are not overturned in court, expect similar actions in other states should Democrats wrest control of governor mansions in future elections.

As Trump finalizes on his cabinet and White House appointments, it’s proper to ask, should we really have expected anything different? Were we being Pollyanna-ish in hoping, nay assuming, Trump would assemble a team of broad-minded advisors and cabinet secretaries instead of the close-minded reactionaries he has named whose bona fides include climate change deniers, minimum wage deniers, and fake news propagandists?

How rich are the men and woman who will sit around his cabinet table? Their collective wealth is $14.7 billion. It exceeds the combined wealth of the bottom third of American households, 43 million family units, The Daily Mail reported (http://dailym.ai/2hOt7aT).  

As to why Trump made those picks despite campaigning on as an anti-elite, pro-worker candidate, here’s one explanation from a Politico article on the 10 key decisions of the election campaign, “Trump only really listens to rich guys.”

Trump Place in Your Face: Residents of Trump Place on Riverside Drive in Manhattan expressed their disapproval of the president-elect by having his name removed from their building. But one of the residents is showing allegiance to The Donald. He or she, as the case may be, has arranged Christmas lights from their balcony to spell out “Trump.”

Circulation Booster: Liberals seem to be turned on by Trump’s negative tweets about alleged circulation dips at The Times and Vanity Fair. Both publications reported that contrary to what Trump tweeted their subscription numbers have gone up since his election. 

http://www.foliomag.com/fact-check-vanity-fairs-numbers-not-way-big-trouble-dead/?hq_e=el&hq_m=3318124&hq_l=8&hq_v=a766c3eda3

But that is not a long term defense against bombastic unfounded statements. Trump and his followers are practicing a strategy of the big lie repeated often enough until it gets absorbed as truth.

Hearing Loss: There’s good news on the factory closing front and I don’t mean Trump’s initiative to bring manufacturing jobs back to the United States.

No, the good news might signal an improvement in marital relationships. It seems hearing loss among Americans is declining. One reason hypothesized is there are fewer plants operating where the din of machinery takes its toll on workers’ hearing (http://nyti.ms/2hK87SI).

So there goes the excuse all those laid-off workers had for not hearing what their spouses said. Of course, if Trump does manage to get more factories opened, he would be wise to have hearing ailments covered in his “terrific” replacement for Obamacare.

Summertime Catch-up Post

Summertime and the living is easy, especially when you go more than a week between blog postings. So consider this entry a catch-up for several themes that have rested comfortably within my grey matter …

Summer is a time when journalists resurrect tried and true story lines—where to find the best lobster rolls, the best books for the beach, the best roller coaster ride, and my personal favorite, how old codgers like me learn to swim. Here’s The New York Times version of the last topic: http://nyti.ms/2blnX03.

Swimming isn’t my problem. Staying afloat while treading water is. I can swim for as long as one breadth takes me. In a race with our 37 year old ex-lifeguard son Dan the other day, I was barely a half-body behind him when my lungs gave out midway across the length of the pool. I felt pretty good about my accomplishment considering it was my first time swimming in more than a year. 

I was bouyed (pun intended) by the knowledge I didn’t have to worry about treading water as the pool, at its deepest, was a mere five feet. I think all pool depths should be limited to five feet. It would encourage more non-swimming adults to get into the water with their children and grandchildren. Yes, five feet is too shallow to dive into, but that’s a small inconvenience when considering the positive effect families frolicking in the water would enjoy. And keep in mind that most lap pools are only about four feet deep. If it’s good enough for lap pool enthusiasts it should be good enough for all. 

By the way, I heard on NPR the other week that according to the Red Cross, 54% of Americans could not pass a swim test. Being in this majority is not one of my proud accomplishments. …

Baby Bombers: The young New York Yankees, nicknamed the Baby Bombers, especially Gary Sanchez, have made watching the team fun again. I know many of you aren’t interested in sports, so I won’t elaborate on why I am excited about the rest of this season and coming years of Yankee baseball. …

Are you tired of reading about Donald Trump? As a reader, so am I. As I writer, well, he does make it easy to come up with new story angles. The other day, for example, I was sorting through clothing to be donated and came across, I shamefully admit, a new, white dress shirt bearing the Donald J. Trump brand. It was still in its protective plastic packaging. I must have bought it more than 10 years ago, from Marshalls. Into the discard pile it went. (By the way, Macy’s recently jettisoned Trump-licensed shirts and ties from its merchandise mix after some of his inflammatory remarks.) …

Larry Wilmore no longer has the Nightly Show on Comedy Central to opine on Trump and other election and social news, but in case you missed one of his last commentaries, here’s one I agree with: “Donald Trump is an existential threat to America not because of Islamic terror or even Russia or Iran but rather because he undermines all of our values as a nation.” 

Lynchings Replaced by Police Action as Most Feared Black Man's Fate

Police killings have replaced lynchings as the most heinous fate of unarmed black men.

For the second consecutive day, and for too many times in the last several years, the nation has been transfixed by reports and video of policemen using the shield of their position to administer lethal punishment against Afro-American males. 

Lynchings used to be confined to the Deep South. Police-related deaths have spread across the country, from Ferguson, MO, to Staten Island, NY, to Chicago, to Baton Rouge, LA, to Cleveland, to St. Paul, MN, to Baltimore, to North Charleston, SC, to Cincinnati, to Arlington, TX, to St. Louis. The list could probably go on; it does not include civilian-inflicted lethal shootings like those of Trayvon Martin in Orlando and Jordan Davis in Jacksonville, FL.  

I was going to reference an Op-Ed article by Roxane Gay, an associate professor at Purdue University, in Thursday’s New York Times (http://nyti.ms/29j4GKz). Instead, I commend to your education a commentary she wrote back on October 29, 2015, that describes the pervasive, suffocating, humiliating conditions under which black children grow up in relation to authority, be it police or school administrations. Read it and feel the despair infecting and infesting the black community: http://nyti.ms/1GNoogR

  

Back on April 4, 1968, Sen. Robert F. Kennedy stood on the deck of a flatbed truck in Indianapolis. He had expected to deliver a stump speech to a mostly black audience as part of his insurgent campaign for the Democratic nomination for president. Instead, he told them the dreadful news that Martin Luther King Jr. had been assassinated earlier that evening in Memphis, TN. Through his passionate rhetoric, Kennedy helped prevent rioting in Indianapolis even as other cities erupted in violence. Here’s a link to NPR’s 40th year commemoration of that extraordinary evening in Indianapolis. It provides an example of leadership and humanity so often missing within today’s political cohort: http://www.npr.org/2008/04/04/89365887/robert-kennedy-delivering-news-of-kings-death

With Baton Rouge and St. Paul fresh in our minds, I wait to hear, or read, words of comfort and healing, and hope, from the two who would be our next president. 

Political Potpourri: Wedge Issues, Romney, Bridgegate, Trump as Candy Man, Couturiers

In the wake of the Orlando massacre, another wedge issue has moved to the forefront in defining the race for the presidency as well as campaigns for control of the House and Senate: gun control, specifically, the ability to deny the legal sale of firearms to those on the Do Not Fly and Terrorist Watch lists or to those with mental health issues. A subsidiary issue is the availability of assault rifles such as the AR-15 to the general public. The Orlando shooter, as well as the San Bernadino shooter and other mass killers, used an AR-15 rifle.

Wedge issues this year include abortion rights, Planned Parenthood, the Supreme Court, immigration, income inequality, same-sex marriage, the Israel-Palestinian conflict, Islamic terrorism, campaign finance, and the minimum wage. 

The essence of each wedge issue can be summed up as the forces of fear and bigotry vs. the forces of hope and tolerance.  . . .

The Democrats’ best friend in this election might be Mitt Romney. The 2012 Republican standard bearer has been vocal in his antipathy, even animosity, toward Donald Trump. If he can sway fellow Mormons to withhold their votes for Trump, Hillary Clinton could win some Mountain States that are a challenge to any Democrat (http://nyti.ms/1XR6ktS).

But Trump’s negative coat tails might not paint the Senate blue as Mormons and other anti-Trump voters might prefer to keep the Senate red as a counter-balance to a liberal president.  . . .

Just when you think this election season can’t get any weirder two reports this week evoked Watergate memories. First came word that Democratic Party files had been breached, not physically as in Watergate but electronically. Not by Republicans but by Russians who wanted to gather data on Trump.

Second, the spirit of Rosemary Woods lives on.  The 18-1/2 minute gap in Richard Nixon’s White House tapes, allegedly created by an inadvertent contortion Woods performed at her secretarial desk while transcribing them, possibly has been matched by lost or erased emails and texts from New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, communications linked to the investigation into Bridegate, the allegedly illegal disruption of traffic across the George Washington Bridge to punish the Democratic mayor of Fort Lee for not endorsing Christie’s reelection bid.  . . . 

Donald Trump and his fellow Republicans want to reduce tax rates, especially for the wealthy. They also profess a desire to return to simpler times, as life was in the 1950s. They lambast Democrats for wanting to impose higher taxes on the rich. Elizabeth Warren, says Trump, wants to impose a 95% income tax rate. 

Sounds Draconian, until you realize that back in the 1950s under President Eisenhower, when unions were strong and  the middle class grew, the top effective tax rate was 91%.  . . . 

Trump is not alone in issuing damning statements about Hillary Clinton. The other week on NPR I heard U.S. Rep. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.—one of the three female House members who prefer to be called “congressman”) attack Clinton, saying she lies and cheats while “Trump is a candy man” who gives people what they want.

I seriously doubt Blackburn knows that “candy man” is street talk for drug dealer. It would be an appropriate description for a candidate who is trying to dupe the electorate. . . 

Should Hillary Clinton win the presidency, the most negatively impacted group would be couturiers. After eight years of stunning gowns, dresses and ensembles showcased by first lady Michelle Obama, fashionistas would no longer have a White House muse to clothe. There are, after all, just so many variations on the tuxedo Bill Clinton can be expected to wear.


Your election witticism of the day, courtesy of whowhatwhy.org:

Don’t buy a single vote more than necessary. I’ll be damned if I’m going to pay for a landslide. —Joseph P. Kennedy

Random Thoughts From Recent Trips, Then Off to My 50th H.S. Reunion

Random thoughts for a May day without rain in the forecast:

Just returned last week from a three day trip to Washington, DC. During a visit to the Capitol, I watched the film about Congress in the visitor center. Imagine my surprise when Dennis Hastert showed up in the film in his role as Speaker of the House. You’d think that a disgraced politician would have been expunged from a film meant to impart the sanctity and importance of our legislative branch of government. Hmmm…..

By the way, the same film showed a cameo of Barak Obama as a senator from Illinois….

Coming back from a visit to our son and his family last weekend, the electronic sign on the Connecticut Turnpike read, “8 miles to next exit, 8 minutes,” which computes out to an average speed of 60 miles per hour. But the posted speed limit was 55 mph. Is the Nutmeg State suggesting drivers violate the law? Hmmm….

Last week I listened to an NPR segment on paid family care leave. The United States is one of but two countries without a paid family care leave program, according to the broadcast. Indeed, many mothers return to work within two weeks of giving birth because their jobs demand it or they need the money, it continued. One of the more interesting comments during the discussion was that in 28 states it was said to be illegal to take a puppy away from its mother before eight weeks. What’s that say about our government’s parenting priorities? Hmmm…..

Sometime around my late 20’s or early 30’s my brother Bernie observed that my front hairline was receding. As my father and my maternal grandfather sported shiny scalps, I was not too thrilled with his not-too-subtle tease for which there was no comparable retort as his head was and is to this day a repository of thick hair. 

As traumatized as I was by his observation, I was comforted by my wife’s assurance she would love me with or without hair. Yul Brynner, after all, was her major heartthrob, she said. 

Not to worry, my hairline has not receded these last 30 or 40 years. And, until recently, all of it has remained true to its original brown color. My beard, on the other hand, has plenty of grey and albino strands. A few months ago I noticed greying along my temples. And last week I spotted streaks of grey at the top of my head.

I bring this up because Sunday Gilda and I will attend my 50th high school graduation reunion. Not that I’m in any visual competition with my classmates, but I see no point in ceding any aging effects to any of them. (If you believed that last sentence, I have a bridge you might be interested in buying. Who’s kidding whom? Of course everyone, including moi, will be checking out how our classmates have, um, fared over the years—corporations above and behind the belt, jowls where fresh cheeks used to shine, bald pates where swept back locks once ruled. And why not? we’re 67 or 68, after all.)

I’ve gained some 50 pounds since high school. But on my six-foot frame I’m still gaunt. What of those whose body types were, shall we say, less forgiving than mine? What if they gained 20, 30, 40 pounds or more? I’ll find out in a few hours.

While on the subject of hair, did you see The New York Times article “In Praise of Naturally Curly Hair”? http://nyti.ms/1UVVLDj

It was written from a female perspective but I can tell you that having naturally curly hair generally is not an asset when you’re a man. It works well if you grow an Afro, as I did in the 1970’s. Before then I had a daily bout with unruly hair which I blame on my sister Lee. One of my earliest memories is Lee talking me into letting her do my hair. I must have been around three years old. I remember crying to our mother that Lee ruined my hair and made it curly. Forever. I’ve never forgiven her. 

Time for a new, albeit temporary, feature. During this electoral season, I’ll try to end blogs with a pithy quote about elections, culled from the whowhatwhy.org Web site. Here’s your first witticism: 

The problem with political jokes is they get elected. —Henry Cate, VII

No doubt loyal readers know of whom I would target that quote. 

For those who can’t wait to see all of the quotes, here’s a link: http://whowhatwhy.org/2015/08/15/22-witty-quotes-about-elections/

A Suggestion for Chris Rock Plus My Oscars Picks; Be Wary of the Gig Economy

Here’s a thought—while everyone expects Oscars telecast emcee Chris Rock to skewer the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences with jokes highlighting the failure to nominate for a second straight year even a single black actor for an award, perhaps a more visible and enduring display of protest Sunday night would be for the entertainer to make his entrance on stage in whiteface. 

Daring? No doubt. Provocative? To be sure. Extreme? You betcha. In bad taste? No more so than the academy’s lily-white nomination list and its mostly white, elderly male membership roster.

Rock could still joke about the “benign” discrimination, but the image of him in whiteface would linger in everyone’s minds far longer than any amusing words he might utter. 

As for the awards, here are my choices for the top six categories:

Best leading actor—Eddie Redmayne (The Danish Girl)

Best leading actress—Brie Larson (Room)

Best supporting actor—Mark Rylance (Bridge of Spies)

Best supporting actress—Alicia Vikander (The Danish Girl)

Best director—Alejandro G. Iñárritu (The Revenant)

Best picture—Bridge of Spies

The Gig Economy: In case you’ve never heard of this term, it’s a modern day euphemism for outsourcing. In other words, hiring freelancers, domestic or foreign, to do work on a job-by-job basis that formerly was done in-house by staff. 

Result? Fewer full-time workers and generally lower fees as freelancers compete for assignments. Lower overhead for companies, lower earnings for workers. For an example of the Gig Economy in practice, listen to Monday’s Marketplace Money Report on NPR: http://www.marketplace.org/shows/marketplace-morning-report/marketplace-morning-report-monday-february-22-2016

Net Net Result? While we in America bemoan the relocation of manufacturing jobs to lower wage overseas locales and hope to combat the drain of good/high paying jobs with training for technology-based work, the Gig Economy might undermine that effort. As explained in the Marketplace Money Report, Instapage paid a Vietnamese techie just $200 to design a logo, a fee that surely was equivalent to a prince’s ransom in Vietnam but wouldn’t fill a pauper’s purse in the United States. 

There’s no holding back the tide of technological advance and the globalization of the world’s economy. I’m fortunate to be retired. My mid-30’s children’s jobs probably won’t be affected, I hope. But my grandchildren? It is not a comforting thought to consider the range of employment opportunities in the year 2036 and beyond. 

Bird Talk: Looking out the kitchen window I can report birds enjoy chocolate babka cake, the remnants of which they devoured in short order since I filled the feeders. Previously they’ve savored shredded matzoh, bagels and assorted other flour-based ethnic delights.

Car Talk: Before buying a car three years ago, I pondered getting a Subaru Forester, even going so far as asking the salesman to commit to rearranging the letters of the car’s rear nameplate to Forseter. Alas, we wound up buying a Ford C-Max hybrid, instead.

End of story, until Ellie and Donny went car shopping after their recent move to Omaha. They chose a Forester but resisted my entreaties to ask the dealership to flip the first “e” and “s” in Forester.

My extended family has often contemplated how simpler our lives would have been had my parents, when Americanizing my father’s family name, chosen Forester instead of Forseter. Or even Forsetter with two “t’s.” At least half the time we’re addressed as Forester. One high school teacher of mine called me Fenster. 

Dad, though, wanted something closer to Feursetzer. So Forseter it became. You get to roll with the punches, so to speak, but I still think it would have been cool to drive around in a Forseter Subaru. 

Copy Talk: Three times (at least) in the last few weeks I’ve been reminded the hardest task for any writer is to proofread his own copy. I won’t resurrect my mistakes other than to suggest that sometimes even a faux pas can turn out to be a slick turn of phrase.

Back on January 21, in a piece titled “The Bride of Frankenstein Is Back,” I wrote “(Sarah) Palin gave birth to the no-nothing Tea Party which only wants to tear down government, or, in her case, find excuses for behavior and commentary beyond the pale.”  

I must admit, I meant to write “know nothing Tea Party.” However, when confronted by a friend with the actual text, I justified it by the Tea Party’s history of saying no to everything. 

Quick thinking on my part, but not very truthful. More like Stephen Colbert’s truthiness standard.

Snowmageddon, Trump's Promises and Press Talk

Snowmageddon: The East Coast is bracing for its first major snowstorm of the winter season. I’ve got gasoline ready to pour into my snowblower (hope it starts) and snow shovels ready to be pushed in case the forecasters are off slightly and we get just a few inches and not the half-foot or greater amount of snowflakes on our driveway and front walk. I even braved Costco early Friday to stock up on birdseed (Gilda and I have little need for milk or bread). We are loaded up on lots of DVR’ed movies and TV shows, so we will not lack entertainment should we be snowed in.

Pity the poor family that scheduled a Saturday wedding or bar/bar mitzvah. It snowed on Gilda’s and my wedding night 43 years ago this Thursday, but not until all our guests were inside enjoying the festivities. They trekked home in some six inches of snow. 

For sure Saturday won’t be a good day for sit down restaurants, though take-out Chinese and pizza shops should do well if they offer delivery (pity the poor delivery driver). Snow plow contractors finally will be able to justify tooling around for months with plows attached to the front of their four-wheel drive vehicles. And energetic high school kids will reap rewards from shoveling their neighbors’ lots.

Aside from the loss of overtime by municipal and state road clearing crews plus the lost revenue by independent contractors, the lack of snow has had other unreported economic ramifications. Fewer motorists have had to frequent car washes, for instance. Yes, hardware stores may finally sell their inventory of shovels and ice melting pellets, but they have lost out on impulse sales earlier visits to their stores might have generated. Shoe shiners haven’t had to restore slushed-up leather while auto collision shops have had fewer fender benders to straighten. 

Less snow and warmer weather have meant more people have been outdoors, eating out and shopping, though not for winter coats and other cold weather paraphernalia.

The obvious big losers in the Northeast have been ski slope operators and the businesses that rely on their clientele to patronize their coffee shops, boutiques and lodgings.   

Trump's Promises: Perhaps you thought I have been too harsh in my critiques of Donald Trump and his wacked-out supporters (oh no, there I go again demeaning the mentally challenged). Just in case you need more convincing as to the absurdity of his campaign, take a few moments to read through this exhaustive list of Trump’s promises, courtesy of Jenna Johnson of The Washington Post: http://wpo.st/29d51.

You might find the comments section quite entertaining, as well.

Press Talk:  One of the traits his supporters admire is Trump’s free-wheeling, non-politically correct speech. His no-holds-barred delivery is 180 degrees apart from the seemingly careful, programmed pronouncements from Hillary Clinton. Listening to her the other day during an NPR interview in Iowa, I was amazed and impressed (and I don’t mean those terms to be construed as all positive) by her responses. She rarely answered a question directly. Rather, she first chose to provide background information so her positions would be grounded in context, at least the context she wanted the listener to have.

I was reminded of my own interviewing experience, not when I did the questioning but rather the times I was on the receiving end of the interrogation. Now that I’m no longer a paid journalist, a word to the wise: If at all possible, avoid being interviewed. Interviews exist in a “no control” environment where words may well be taken out of context even by the best of reporters. 

When I answered questions from reporters, on average about once a week, concerning retail trends or specific companies, I spoke very slowly and carefully and always with lots of context. It was ego-boosting to see myself quoted, but I never took for granted that my words would be construed as I intended. 

So cut Hillary or any politician, for that matter, a little slack when you see them answering questions. A misspoken comment can cost the presidency. Just remember what happened to President Gerald Ford when he (wrongly) said during a presidential debate in 1976, “There is no Soviet domination of eastern Europe, and there never will be under a Ford administration.” His administration was booted out of office one month later. 

I'm Ready for My Close-up, CB

My brother’s son, Eric, made it onto NBC’s national newscast last Wednesday night. Alas, he was one of the victims of the data hacking of Anthem Inc.’s health insurance files. A face was needed to personalize the tens of millions affected consumers. Eric became everyman.

Still, it was a thrill to be interviewed for about 30 minutes, of which perhaps five seconds of Eric appeared on air. Such is the life of an everyman consumer. 

This wasn’t the first time Eric scored media news coverage. Back in 1998 The Washington Post featured his exploits at the Winter Olympics in Japan (as a spectator, not as an athlete). More on that later.

No matter how many times it happens, even if you are an every day bylined reporter, there’s never anything dull about seeing your name in print, or seeing and hearing yourself on air, TV or radio. I always turned to my editorial column whenever a new edition of Chain Store Age reached my desk. Don’t believe anyone who tells you they are indifferent to the experience. They’re deluding themselves and lying to you. It’s equally stimulating when others notice your work and bring it to your attention.

About 25 years ago I secured MasterCard as a sponsor for a Retail Credit Trends report my magazine published. A few months later American Airlines signed MasterCard to sponsor a business segment for its in-flight programming. MasterCard asked me to be part of the telecast. I was flattered but the thrill became palpable when a friend mentioned that while flying to California he happened to look up from his work at the very moment my face appeared on a big screen before him. He didn’t have his headphones on, but he said I looked authoritative.

Some 12 years later NPR invited me to its New York studio for a live afternoon broadcast (I think it was for All Things Considered) on the retail scene in Maryland, specifically why large chains, especially The Home Depot, were not placing stores in a predominantly Afro-American community. As people rarely recored radio broadcasts it was not unexpected when few of my family and friends listened to the 15-minute interview live or on tape. 

So it was that much more exhilarating when I learned one of Ellie’s friends in Hawaii called her to say he heard her dad being interviewed on NPR. That made me smile almost as wide as the time an advertising client related how a salesman started dancing around an office waiting room holding a copy of Chain Store Age open to my editorial page while screaming, “He was a camper of mine.” 

Seeing one’s name in print is not always an occasion to relish. Among my editorial job tasks was talking to the press, which I did about twice a month. I’m a journalist, so I can say this: Be wary when talking to a reporter. Measure all your words carefully. Think how they might sound or appear in print. They don’t mean to, but reporters may place your words out of context. Until I saw or heard the finished article I always worried the reporter might distort a comment made in context into a sensational quote I would need to explain to a bent-out-shape retail executive.

As long as I’m updating you on my media history, I saw the other day that HBO will air the mini-series Show Me a Hero beginning August 16. The producers filmed it without my debut as a film extra last fall; I could not make the first casting call and they didn’t bother to get in touch with me again. Ah, well …

Getting back to my nephew Eric, here’s how Washington Post reporter Kevin Sullivan chronicled his exploits at the Nagano Olympics in 1998: 

After portraying how the rich and famous enjoyed the Olympics, Sullivan wrote, “For those without royal blood or imperial purses, there’s always the Eric Plan. 

“Eric Forseter, 22, from Rockville, (MD), is spending a year bumming around Australia as he prepares for law school next year. He bought a cheap plane ticket from Sydney to Tokyo plus a Japanese rail pass, and made his way to Nagano with about $400 in his pocket. 

“Forseter found lodging at a hostel, where he spends about $30 a night to sleep on a tatami mat on the floor in a room with 10 strangers. He had to go out and buy a towel, and he's living on orange juice and croissants from the convenience store. He said his accommodations are relatively spacious, though, compared with the 15 or 20 George Washington University students crammed into another room. 

“On his first day in town, Forseter met another young man who had bummed two tickets to the high-profile Canada-Sweden men’s hockey game from one of the players. They sat in great seats right behind the goal, then moved to seats directly behind the team benches. They collected a couple of stray pucks and even a broken stick from the Swedish team. 

“That night they rolled into the Pink Elephant bar and had beers with NHL stars Brett Hull and Jeremy Roenick, who play for the U.S. team. The next day, Forseter bagged tickets for the Finland-Russia hockey game. Scalpers wanted more than $400, but a nice man invited Forseter to sit with him for free. Turns out the man is the father of NHL star Teemu Selanne, who plays for Finland. Forseter sat at center ice and chatted with Pat LaFontaine of the U.S. men's hockey team and the parents of NHL’ers Pavel Bure and Chris Chelios, who were sitting nearby. 

“Sunday night, with somebody’s extra ticket, Forseter saw figure skating, one of the Games’ premier events, for $4 — the cost of a shuttle bus. In total, Forseter figures he’s spent about $300 and had about $3,000 worth of fun. 

“‘I’m on a roll,’ he said.”