BOTH FEAR AND ELECTIONS BEHIND HEADLINES

By Dominique Paul Noth

The White House press secretary, who should be named Sarah Huckster Sanders, keeps turning once normal phrases into laughable clichés.  Whatever Trump’s vague policies on health care, Dreamers and taxes, they are “clear and consistent.”  Every such major issue is always drawing his “laser-like focus” while every Trump critic is engaging in something Trump would never do – “petty grandstanding.” 

Flake, a strong conservative,
dislikes the image of the right
that Trump projects.

The tweets – which she described to shell-shocked journalists as Trump’s way of reaching the public “unfiltered” – have actually driven both camps into derision:  Democrats to prove the president is unhinged, Republicans because his tweets minimize every policy initiative they want, as now seems to be happening with the tax bill.

The situation has finally brought calls from the public to the press to stop wasting time covering Sanders’ constant lying for her president and Trump’s unsavory tweety birds insulting everyone who disagrees with him or anyone who reports conversations truthfully.   It does seem they keep putting the daily clang of Trump in our head when we desire Bach. Even Nine Inch Nails would be more soothing.

The media now is having its feet held to the fire even as it wonders why establishment Republicans are not holding Trump’s feet to the fire the way a few respected senators have.  There’s a sad, simple reason:

Upcoming elections, one as soon as December, will keep political headlines percolating and the GOP fence-sitting.  The fever for Trump is still too high – even with only 37% supporting him in polls, even with Republicans in obvious disarray about how to place the cold cloth of truth on the feverish.  The temperature may have to fall below 25% before the Republicans will act. 

Self-protection is proving more important than public service for the GOP -- because there are still policies Republicans hope from even an unstable, impulse-driven White House.  The common Beltway description of the tax bill has become “having a baby to save a failing marriage.”

Let’s be clear that conservatives are embracing their own brand but ashamed Trump is the spokesman.  Jeff Flake of Arizona, who took to the Senate floor for a blistering speech against Trump, still votes 94% his way. Similarly strong for conservatives is Bob Corker of Tennessee who has also called Trump “debasing of American values”  and dangerous enough to lead us into World War III.

Yet both are respected as principled and interested in bipartisanship – as is John McCain who has joined them in fierce criticism of Trump’s behavior (though not all his policies).  Since they represent what many once held important in the Republican Party (small government, fiscal conservatism, freedom from tyranny) it becomes painful to realize they are throwing the glove in Trump’s face as they are leaving the field of battle, not in advance of a duel. Both Flake and Corker have announced they are not running in 2018.

The Republicans left in Congress could not have a shinier example than their speeches for  standing up to the Trump who rides roughshod over statesmanship – but  they are not streaming to join the revolt. That suggests a key requirement of running for office is cowardice.

Presidential historian Michael Beschloss suggests many Republican office holders privately agree with Corker and Flake but are afraid saying so will arouse the Trump base to primary them.  That base may be shrinking to a hard core as polls suggest independents are abandoning the president, but there are more than enough immovables to scare up silence.

It is not Steve Bannon, no longer in the White House, who is driving up GOP caution, though he is whipping the hard core hard. It is the money behind him – the Mercer fortune that can be applied against Republican seat-holders in upcoming races. So they would rather be Trump’s nannies than the citizens’ voice.

All this may actually be good news for Democrats  the clearer it becomes the Republicans are too cowardly to follow their instincts. 

Corker was popular in Tennessee, which has long been solidly red (the last Democrat elected to the Senate was Al Gore in 1990) and thus Democrats at best face an uphill campaign.   Distaste for Trump, combined with concern for health care and other basic public values, could be changing things on the ground to the Democrats advantage.

Their best hope lies in the likelihood that strident Rep. Marsha Blackburn, a vehement hard-right Trump backer who has pushed her way into being a spokesperson for GOP House policies, will likely sweep the field in the primary to face the still undetermined Democrat. Given some of the names being floated, including popular mayors, her mere presence leaves the GOP vulnerable in November 2018.

Democrat Krysten Sinema
sees her chances go up
in Arizona

Arizona is even more in play, since chances are boosted for highly regarded Rep. Kyrsten Sinema on the Democratic side.  She has a winning life story and a reputation for independence that should appeal in Arizona, particularly if the GOP choose Kelli Ward, the physician who publicly wished John McCain would die so she could be appointed to his seat (a statement that pretty much guarantees Arizona governor Doug Ducey would look elsewhere if that eventuality occurs).

She has also been so indiscriminately in Trump’s corner  and so savagely anti  the popular McCain that  a lot of Republican voters could be swayed to Sinema’s side. It may even flip Flake.  His powerful speech on the Senate floor announcing his departure --  and his vision of an unsavory Trump who will never change --  has led the GOP to search for someone more palatable than Ward to run for the seat.

But a lot can happen before those events in November of 2018.  This December 12 there is a once unimaginable opportunity to lower the GOP Senate control from 52 to 51, basically blocking the worst legislative possibilities of the Trump administration (since finding only two GOP senators  stops Vice President Pence from casting the tie-breaking vote). If that Alabama upset had been in place October 24, Republicans could not have eliminated a strong plank at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

With help, Doug Jones may pull off
an upset in Alabama

Alabama is the definition of a deep red state, has been for years.  So much so that Sen. Richard Shelby switched to the Republican Party in 1994, reading the voter tea leaves. But the GOP primary decided to put up Roy Moore, the twice removed state supreme court justice whose policies can charitably be described as unconstitutional, anti-homosexual, anti-women, anti-Muslim and anti anything he interprets as against a Christian god.

His Democratic opponent, a well regarded former prosecutor,  Doug Jones,  still has an uphill fight despite a FOX poll that puts him in an amazing tie with Moore. That’s not decisive because Alabama voter turnout has traditionally been low. 

In the past there were few Alabama elections where the results were even in doubt between the parties, which means Democratic voters have not been much involved and are out of the habit.  But Jeff Sessions, whose seat is being filled, has been an extremist attorney general, angering  much of the nation with his policies. Roy Moore has not been making headway beyond a loyal band of supporters.  Doug Jones has been successful in raising money nationwide.

So the results could be a shocker – and not just to the Alabama system. 

About the author:  Noth has been  a professional journalist since the 1960s, first as national, international and local news copy editor at The Milwaukee Journal, then as an editor for its original Green Sheet, also  for almost two decades the paper’s film and drama critic. He also created its Friday Weekend section and ran Sunday TV Screen magazine and Lively Arts as he became the newspaper’s senior feature editor. He was tapped by the publishers of the combining Milwaukee Journal Sentinel for special projects and as first online news producer before voluntarily departing in the mid-1990s to run online news seminars and write on public affairs and Internet and consumer news. From 2002 to 2013 he ran the Milwaukee Labor Press as editor. It served as the Midwest’s largest home-delivered labor newspaper, with archives at milwaukeelabor.org.  In that role he won top awards yearly until the paper stopped publishing in 2013. His investigative pieces and extensive commentaries are now published by several news outlets as well as his culture and politics outlets known as Dom's Domain.  His award-winning theater reviews appear at urbanmilwaukee.com.

WEINSTEIN AND THE TRIGGERS OF WRATH

By Dominique Paul Noth

It’s been a banner bacchanal year for leering and revulsion --  a dominating CEO hinting or demanding  casting couch liberties from the budding famous or wannabes, using female employees as his stalking horse, engaging in outright fondling and literal chasing around the hotel room, accused of rape, subject of secret tapings and commonly known for rampant misogyny. 

Brute has become Harvey
Weinstein's middle name

It’s juicy enough to be a horror film -- the continuing predatory tale of movie mogul Harvey Weinstein, who has now been deservedly kicked out of every influential film organization. 

Why didn’t Hollywood act earlier? So scream the media and the public. But let’s turn that around because Hollywood was hardly alone in the winking.  The same charge of too broad acceptance could be said about Bill Cosby, the late Roger Ailes, Bill O’Reilly and even Donald Trump.  We came to know how they operated so why didn’t we holler to the rooftops?

It was an open secret that this hurricane Harvey was a rapacious womanizer. But our society as a whole, and the entertainment industry in particular, know the power of sex in the marketplace. Both sexes tend to accept a certain level of sexual teasing, a tolerance for woman-chasing as long as it more amuses than horrifies.

Prosecutors may never be able to make a rape case against Weinstein (the time element). But outside the courtroom there’s no doubt anywhere of his savage sexual come-ons disguised as auditions, the power plays Miramax covered up, the system of protectionism and the failure of groups, even the entertainment unions, that should have intervened faster. 

But a lighter version of such sexual misbehavior – with dark hints of far worse -- is not only tolerated in our society but welcome.   It sells tabloids in the supermarket, entire channels on cable television, series on networks and it’s turning darker and more salacious as standards loosen up. It takes quite a bit of coverage to switch our smirking SNL acceptance into a Weinstein level of social disgust.

What is the switch point? For one thing, volume of encounters, a predatory pattern.  For another, power.  The predator is in the position to force cooperation or has developed a successful pattern with women whose looks have a lot to do with their employment. 

There’s yet another reason, though we are proving more selective here, the possibility of escape because of wealth -- that they will continue to get away with it without media exposure and public condemnation. Stripping away their authority becomes the remedy when the courts fail.

These seem the trigger moments when we stop joking about the Weinsteins of the world and act against them. But in the past our outrage has been misapplied.  Yellow journalism and public fury ended the career of Fatty Arbuckle, a silent film star lynched in ink by untruths.  An abnormal fear  of womanizing and politics barred Charlie Chaplin for generations while in modern times we quickly forgave Hugh Grant, Eddie Murphy and others for dallying with prostitutes.  Today’s Internet sweeps up rumors rapidly even as it seems to loosen standards.  That, our evolving attitudes and our past mistakes should serve as some sort of cautionary tale. 

Why does Trump escape censure?

We need to talk more about what triggers the kind of outrage that sticks to Weinstein and Cosby but not to Donald Trump.  If anything positive comes out of this case it is turning our glares at the justice system.

A little known 10-year-old Twitter hashtag, #MeToo,  is choking with messages from women abused my men in power.

The publicity has emboldened all manner of women even knowing the complaints may not go anywhere given the antiquated status of our laws. 

Elected officials should realize the wrath lands particularly hard when the courts and society cannot dole out punishment.  All these headline-making offenders who spent years establishing authority over men and women were often praised for it.

Nor do they fit the traditional rape stereotype of the back alley prowler. Asked to comment on Weinstein, Brandeis law professor Anita Hill (who obviously knows about this) pointed to the fallacy of  who to be careful around.  “Too many are under the impression that the people who do this are losers, and that’s not the case,” she told Newsweek. “Liberal men, high-achieving men, educated men, men who claim to support women, can be harassers.” 

Today’s headline-generating scandals recall how the 1950s and 1960s amalgamated conflicting trends in American society, with powerful effects on adolescents in their formative sexual years.

Feminism grew slowly on one side while the other side entrenched the Playboy magazine view of the world, an era when “Bikini Beach” movies were innocent silly fun at one level and ogling adolescent fantasies on another. 

Weinstein born in 1952, O'Reilly 1949, Trump 1946, Ailes 1940, Cosby 1937. They assuredly shared a similar generation of cultural attitudes and behavior that society tolerated or was even attracted to. By their twenties they moved in similar circles of wealth and Type A power.

This does not mean Weinstein’s behavior can ever be excused. Frankly, unlike the others, it could have been nipped in the bud. But it needs to be understood in the context of the world he grew up in and that we, Americans, created.

The late Hugh Hefner was a slick marketer in this cultural turmoil  -- magazine interviews in which the future President Carter (hard to imagine a better man) confessed to “lust in his heart,” the only phrase anyone remembers from that article.  There were frequent magazine essays defending free sex, same sex and even feminism while the centerfolds unfolded merrily in high school bedrooms.  As one writer has noted, Hefner could “mainstream pornography” if he could tie it to upper class aspirations.

Some men moved past that  obsessive interest in the female form even as some women shot past the boxes society put them in.   But not all men and not all women, not by a long shot.

Natural impulses were extended into aggressive exploitation.  The language and teasing of the times are now rich fodder for TV shows like “Mad Men.”  Even today where groups of men gather, you hear the same butcher shop snicker when a woman in a miniskirt walks  by.  “If you don’t want us to look at the meat, don’t hang it in the window.”   Men get defensive when women get angry about treatment like this  – blaming the woman for their  reaction.  

The movies today may acknowledge all ages and generations but the bulk of the profits still stem from catering to the adolescent male mind, even as that mind lingers into adulthood.

Cultural icons embody attitudes that would stir anger today. When Jimmy Kimmel on his late-night TV show conjured up the ghost of Frank Sinatra to sing his real hatred (historically documented) for casino owner Trump, we first had the faux Sinatra confess he was still “banging ghost broads” in heaven before insulting Trump in familiar Sinatra song patois (****you to the moon I’d like to sock you in the snout).  The Sinatra annals are full of stories not only about women flocking to him but some women coerced into giving sexual favors to Frankie baby, and this was the avatar that was familiar to this generation – a vulgar combative man’s man. 

Yet no expert on popular song can overlook Sinatra’s depth of interpretation, sense of swing and amazing intonation.  Do we stop listening to Sinatra? Of course not.

Tina Fey and Amy Poehler drew one of their biggest Golden Globes laughs in 2013 when they singled out director Katherine Bigelow and the controversy over “Zero Dark Thirty.” “When it comes to torture,” Poehler quipped, “I trust the woman who spent three years married to James Cameron.”  Is there now a move to ban “Titanic”?  Don’t be silly.

Comic Seth McFarlane says his 2013 Oscar joke to the supporting actress nominees (“Congratulations, you five ladies no longer have to pretend to be attracted to Harvey Weinstein”) was based on what he heard from friends in the business.  A year earlier “30 Rock” used a similar joke without apology: “Oh, please, I’m not afraid of anyone in show business. I turned down intercourse with Harvey Weinstein on no less than three occasions out of five.” Before we blame Hollywood for looking away, both these moments were viewed and laughed at by millions.

Dominant and even brutalizing males have long been part of our (male dominated?)  culture.  Go back to Anita Hill and those hearings about Clarence Thomas’ nomination to the Supreme Court.   An in-bred southerner whose record on civil rights was quite disturbing, the late Robert Byrd of West Virginia, immediately recognized the verity of what a conservative Baptist African American (Hill) was saying about sexual come-ons by Thomas and took to the Senate floor to defend her.  His remarks barely dented how a bunch of middle aged white men, led by the likes of Joe Biden and Orrin Hatch, treated her – and of course, Thomas survived and she was ridiculed.

These men were hardly isolated chauvinists in 1991. It was women in office conversations who discounted her the most, saying in effect, “Anita should grow up” – that this kind of sexual innuendo from male bosses was natural in the workplace and women had long ago learned to shrug it off.  The office women of 1991 are not far from the Donald Trump Jr. of today.

While these Hill doubters sneered at the feminists' freakout of TV talking heads,  Weinstein was becoming established in the movie business and “The Cosby Show” was No. 1 in the TV ratings – to put in perspective how our society runs on parallel tracks.   Straying into adultery or calling on prostitutes? A one-day headline.  Sexual brutality forced on the less powerful? That lights our torches. 

There will be no historical rescue of O’Reilly and his backstage master Ailes, though neither was convicted. Their proclivities and bellicosity extended to how women were dressed, talked about and treated on Fox News, and their documented stalking of female employees fits the image their product projected.    

Weinstein, thank the Lord, was seldom a hands-on producer, with all that term implies. So his exposed offenses certainly should not cast shade on the films he executive produced whose artists elevated the profession:  “The King’s Speech,” “August: Osage County,” “Silver Lining Playbook,”  “The Iron Lady,” “Mandela” and so forth. 

Cosby case sickens and saddens

The case of Bill Cosby, though, is more complicated and upsetting – just like the hung jury he recently experienced.  

Few can embrace the hero of black culture, the early and innovative Cosby who made his mainstream mark in Playboy clubs (wasn't that a hint?), was a philanthropic giant, dominated TV living rooms for a decade and established a long-style form of observational comedy that didn't sound perverted. To the contrary, he was Jello Pudding family friendly, even though stories of infidelity trailed him.

His offenses violently contradict his family image. It was private behavior so in contrast to public persona that it becomes unforgivable.  I feel much like Jerry Seinfeld did in a recent interview about how he had so admired Cosby in his own formation that he was tempted to defend him  but he can no longer listen because he  “can’t separate” Cosby from the allegations.

Even today Cosby might  argue that this sickening feeling whenever his name comes up is unfair. After all, he has escaped court  punishment.  His “Cosby Show” associates are undeserving victims of his serial abuse. But the image of drugging and seducing women -- and his escaping because of his fame and built-in protection -- stands in such stark opposition to the Cosby the nation loved that, right now like Seinfeld, any past warmth turns bitter in the mouth.

It may take generations for that to change – not because we think better of the offenders but because we learn to think better of ourselves.

About the author:  Noth has been  a professional journalist since the 1960s, first as national, international and local news copy editor at The Milwaukee Journal, then as an editor for its original Green Sheet, also  for almost two decades the paper’s film and drama critic. He also created its Friday Weekend section and ran Sunday TV Screen magazine and Lively Arts as he became the newspaper’s senior feature editor. He was tapped by the publishers of the combining Milwaukee Journal Sentinel for special projects and as first online news producer before voluntarily departing in the mid-1990s to run online news seminars and write on public affairs and Internet and consumer news. From 2002 to 2013 he ran the Milwaukee Labor Press as editor. It served as the Midwest’s largest home-delivered labor newspaper, with archives at milwaukeelabor.org.  In that role he won top awards yearly until the paper stopped publishing in 2013. His investigative pieces and extensive commentaries are now published by several news outlets as well as his culture and politics outlets known as Dom's Domain.  His award-winning theater reviews appear at urbanmilwaukee.com.

TIME TO RIP THE COVER OFF FACEBOOK

By Dominique Paul Noth

Facebook salesman Mark Zuckerberg

According to the tabloids, Mark Zuckerberg has spent the last four years countering that brilliant Aaron Sorkin portrait of his shallowness in 2010’s “The Social Network” and has used massive philanthropy, business suits and political speeches to paint a more likeable portrait.

The one thing he hasn’t done is pay attention to Facebook and its two billion accounts that made him one of the richest men in the world.

Until September he denied that Russians were using Facebook in any significant way – and then was confronted with Russian ads, some paid in rubles, that were using Facebook’s targeting abilities in particularly ugly ways.

Such as seeking out people who posted disparagingly or suspiciously about Muslims and then sending them anti-Clinton items (what Donald calls fake news).

Such as targeting secession movements from Catalonia to Texas to encourage disgruntlement with current governments, specifically devaluing belief in democratic solutions.

Such as spreading dissension between Clinton and Sanders supporters by choice use of items pretending to be news and playing up long-standing but unproven enmities.

Such as using the image of a black woman firing a rifle to inflame sentiments.

Last November Zuckerberg was actually pulled aside and warned by President Obama about the misuse of Facebook underlying Trump’s election, yet ignored that as well. 

Now his company if not him has to testify to Congress and try to explain to the public just where his brain has been for the last few years.

He has gotten rich for inventing Facebook, but if it is out of control, what is his right to keep running it?  Or does he even know how?

Facebook and social media in general have developed an unprecedented power that governments and their citizens are finally seeing not as a salvation but as a threat.

It also turns out that Russians siding with Putin may also have grasped the possibilities of algorithms more cunningly that Silicon Valley did and may or may not have needed Trump underlings to help out.

Siri on your phone is a useful if sometimes annoying example of algorithms. So are many other accepted pieces of coding.  There are applications you install because they promise one thing, such as anti-virus protection, but may open a trapdoor to something nefarious.  There are computer viruses and bots (automated software) that can replicate commands from hidden call centers.

Adults chuckle that their kids are more comfortable with computers than they are.  Yet even most kids don’t understand the stew of math, propaganda, coding and fraud. There are a lot of curious portals out there and they are now working hand in glove with familiar utilities like Google and Facebook.

The slowness of Facebook to grasp the mischief inherent in its creature is actually frightening.  I occupy an infinitesimally small sliver of Facebook with only 1,000 shared visitors mostly friends and necessary contacts.  So why, dating back two years, could I see problems worth writing about that Zuckerberg couldn’t?

I never leapt to the realization of Russian involvement, but in 2015 I wrote about how cunningly Facebook’s elements were being used by both practical jokers and politicians seeking a publicity advantage. I even said  “If Isis uses the Internet to recruit the unthinking, they now have helpers in such politicians as Wisconsin Gov. Walker.”

And in June of 2016 – more than a year ago --  I wrote another piece describing the insane dislike of Bernie Sanders supporters for Hillary Clinton fans, and vice versa, on Facebook.  I speculated that this was also political mischief because in real life these people, if they were real people, would never express such vitriol without some shrewd goading.  As I observed then, in calling for some code of ethics, “On the Internet these usually don’t exist at all.”

Looking back now, a lot of that vitriol was stemming from bots not people, yet amazingly few of the victims – even today! -- want to admit falling for all that.  The consequence of the admission would be devastating psychologically when people ask themselves why they stayed home or voted opposite of expectations or common sense.

There is growing evidence that thousands, perhaps hundreds of thousands, of accounts on Facebook and Twitter are not individuals but clones -- robotic agents for spreading “information,” to make real-life recipients believe they are part of a mass movement.

These poor citizens. They believe their innocent photos of puppies and recipes reflect the benign use of Facebook for the bulk of those two billion listed users.  These puppy lovers, convinced that their Facebook pals wouldn’t deceive them, repost alt.news and fake news portraying Hillary as a demon, Trump as a savior (literally) or whatever momentary fancy moves them.

One lesson just came from Las Vegas. The algorithms that add weight to initial searches on Google created a flood of falsehoods, including the wrong name of the shooter, which was spread on Facebook.  Such incidents are no longer a rarity.   Google searches turn into Facebook posts for hours or even days before actual information can slowly seep in and correct misimpressions – doing worse damage than a news crawl at the bottom of your TV screen.

The New York Times also detailed how fictions about juvenile sex and Shariah law used social media to unbalance an entire town.  More and more users of Facebook are realizing that the “Like” button is almost a virus, opening the door for years to misapplication of what you Liked and what you didn’t.

There may be an egotistical key to all this. That steady drumbeat of misinformation makes it seem that people who love you -- or people who care about your opinion -- are just trying to keep you in the know.

There are few objective online companies that identify fake news sites out of the volume of sites that can be created by anyone with basic coding ability – or even by Internet providers who provide the expertise for a price, with little concern about ethics.

This is an awkward moment for democratic societies.  We may admit that the Russians attempted to play with our voting databases (the US has sent confusing mixed messages about the attempt in 21 unnamed states) but we seized on assurances by state and federal agencies that the Russians did not succeed in physically pushing the wrong button.  We the People did.

Which means Trump was genuinely elected president.  How awkward.

People walked into the voting booth confident of their beliefs – or stayed home confident of their reasons for doing that, in large part believing in all the lies including that Clinton won the contest against Sanders unfairly, or that a vote for Jill Stein was not a wasted vote (though there is more and more evidence than it was wasted and was part of the Russian invasion).

Only in hindsight can we blame ignorance or deception.  Time has confirmed it was a minority of citizens who elected Trump, but unless the majority is willing to overthrow the Constitution we are stuck with him. For now.

In the meantime we should openly recognize the dangers of cyberspace are not some scientific sleight of hand.  The dangers are real and largely untouched.

This is also a particularly awkward turn for journalists like me and others who welcomed the free range of opinions the Internet allowed.  The occasional misuse – forwarding news accounts while denying the originating journalist just financial due – was regarded even by starving journalists as an almost worthwhile price for broader dissemination of real research and write-ups for the public. Many never grasped this also meant wider misinformation.

The greedy acquisitive nature of media companies – the commercial reasons they want control of the main digital pipes of the Internet – made many citizens champion net neutrality.  And still do. Frankly, the Internet seemed a welcome freedom from government interference, or the shackles of orchestrated behavior.   Saying what you think – is that bad?

Only now are we realizing that those so-called platforms – Facebook, Twitter and so forth -- rather than becoming agents of better knowledge were easily turned.  They are not harmless diversion but harmful attacks on the truth.  

These social media brands should no longer be called “platforms” but “channels” or “publishers,” not much different than TV, print and other established outlets.  They may need ethically trained and alert gatekeepers rather than technologists manipulating the codes for maximum attention rather than moral considerations.

Technology advances faster than the law can keep up. In many areas. Who in the 18^th century could envision a legal handgun that could kill 58 civilians from 500 yards away in five minutes? Or a society churned by the inability to distinguish factual information from false.  Surely our Constitution could stretch to handle such matters?   Surely it won’t.

I am not so egotistical to believe the Russians needed help against naïve America, though I remain ever more open to the likelihood of  Trump or his aides being involved,  knowing their nefarious financial connections of the past. But bluntly there are hacker sophistication and propaganda skills far beyond what Trump has ever demonstrated.

As Congress and Robert Mueller continue their investigation, the president looks foolish to think it is all about him. It is actually all about us – how we are influenced or even led around by the nose, and who is doing it, and why -- and how we change it.

About the author:  Noth has been  a professional journalist since the 1960s, first as national, international and local news copy editor at The Milwaukee Journal, then as an editor for its original Green Sheet, also  for almost two decades the paper’s film and drama critic. He also created its Friday Weekend section and ran Sunday TV Screen magazine and Lively Arts as he became the newspaper’s senior feature editor. He was tapped by the publishers of the combining Milwaukee Journal Sentinel for special projects and as first online news producer before voluntarily departing in the mid-1990s to run online news seminars and write on public affairs and Internet and consumer news. From 2002 to 2013 he ran the Milwaukee Labor Press as editor. It served as the Midwest’s largest home-delivered labor newspaper, with archives at milwaukeelabor.org.  In that role he won top awards yearly until the paper stopped publishing in 2013. His investigative pieces and extensive commentaries are now published by several news outlets as well as his culture and politics outlets known as Dom's Domain.  His award-winning theater reviews appear at urbanmilwaukee.com.