In my extensive readings on the pursuit of happiness I’ve learned there are two cardinal rules on which the supposed experts all agree: happy people think happy thoughts, and while we can’t control events, we can control how we react to them.
That happy people think happy thoughts seems obvious. But for those of us wired to see the glass nearly empty, happy thoughts feel instinctively dangerous. I relate to George Costanza, Larry David’s alter ego on Seinfeld, who said he wouldn’t want to win the lottery because he feared he’d soon be stricken with cancer. At my age, if I suddenly began to see life as a bowl of cherries, I’d worry about being in the early stages of Alzheimer’s.
The lesson about controlling how one reacts to events has always made sense to me. It’s the foundation of Alcoholics Anonymous, whose serenity prayer is one of the best instructional guides to a joyous life:
God grant me the serenity
to accept the things I cannot change;
the courage to change the things I can;
and the wisdom to know the difference.
The serenity prayer popped into my mind the other day when I saw a video of President Trump in the Oval Office berating reporters and boasting about multimillion-dollar settlements he won from their networks, with promises to pursue more. Trump struck me as unhinged, and he gave me the heebie-jeebies. A sitting president should avoid looking like he wants to silence a free press, regardless of how despicable he finds it.
No one deserves to be spoken to the way Trump berated those reporters. But I was also angered by the reporters, who framed their questions to guarantee a nasty Trump response. I fear Trump and his worst impulses, but I also blame the corporate media for his reelection and his ability to act without restraint.
Had the media covered Biden honestly and exposed his declining acuity early on, he wouldn’t have sought a second term. Democrats could have had an honest primary and perhaps nominated someone competent enough to appeal to mainstream Americans. Instead, we got Kamala Harris, who tanked in her own state’s presidential primaries, and her choice of Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz — a man who backed tampons in boys’ washrooms and displays a curious affection for China.
And now we’re reading about Harris again, this time in her newly published book, where she admits she had concerns about Biden’s decline — after repeatedly insisting that he was sharp as ever when she served as vice president.
My instinct was to write a nuanced blog post about how America desperately needs a more experienced and talented media to combat Trump. But then I caught myself.
Why bother?
I’d just posted some contrarian takes about Jimmy Kimmel, a performer I’ve never found funny or insightful. Had Trump stayed out of it — and FCC chair Brendan Carr not sounded like a Mafia boss threatening broadcasters he regulates — ABC might have quietly axed Kimmel’s low-rated show without much fuss.
What got Kimmel in trouble was his “joke” that the MAGA crowd was trying to spin Charlie Kirk’s assassin as anything but one of their own. Even the New York Times conceded Kimmel’s claim about Tyler Robinson, Trump’s alleged assassin, was wrong. Prosecutors said Robinson objected to Kirk’s “hatred,” but never specified which views. Robinson’s mother said her son had recently shifted left, the Times reported.
It was Kimmel’s dishonesty — and his smirking suggestion that Kirk got what was coming to him — that set off the firestorm. For many Americans, Kirk was a hero for standing up to the elitist culture Kimmel personifies. To conservatives already primed to see media lies everywhere, Kimmel understandably pushed them over the edge.
And examples of corporate media dishonesty keep coming, which readers of these outlets are blissfully unaware.
NBC News just ran a false story claiming ICE agents “grabbed” a little girl outside her Massachusetts home to pressure her father. The story fit the “heartless Trump-era ICE” narrative, but wasn’t true. NBC buried a correction at the bottom.
Stories like this fuel anger, sometimes violence. Someone opened fire at an ICE facility in Texas today. Just two months ago, an individual ambushed another ICE facility there, targeting officers. California Gov. Gavin Newsom fanned the flames with an X post gloating that Homeland Security chief Kristi Noem was “going to have a bad day today. You’re welcome, America.” Similar taunts circulated online in the days before Charlie Kirk was murdered.
I abandoned the piece because nuance no longer matters. Facts barely matter. America has devolved into a tribal mosh pit where you’re either for Trump or against him, and any attempt to interject nuance is a fool’s errand.
What I wrestle with is whether stepping back makes me a coward. Calling out hypocrisy is a recurring theme of this blog, and staying silent about media dishonesty isn’t easy. I have trouble accepting that today’s journalists don’t adhere to the ethics and fairness standards that were steeped into the consciences of most reporters in my day.
Meanwhile, look at what went largely ignored this week: a Google letter to House Judiciary Chair Jim Jordan, declaring the company’s commitment to avoid censorship. “Reflecting the Company’s commitment to free expression, YouTube will provide an opportunity for all creators to rejoin the platform if the company terminated their channels for repeated violations” because of Biden administration pressure, the letter said.
Google — whose empire spans the dominant search engine, Gmail, YouTube, Maps, Chrome, Android, and the internet’s advertising backbone — reaches billions daily. ABC and Disney’s streaming outlets reach only millions. In fact, Kimmel relies on YouTube for a big chunk of his audience.
No wonder the mainstream press gave Google’s letter scant coverage. It admitted: “Senior Biden Administration officials, including White House officials, conducted repeated and sustained outreach to Alphabet and pressed the Company regarding certain user-generated content related to the COVID-19 pandemic that did not violate its policies.”
And there was this: “It is unacceptable and wrong when any government, including the Biden Administration, attempts to dictate how the Company moderates content,” attorney Dan Donovan wrote on Google’s behalf. “And the Company has consistently fought against those efforts on First Amendment grounds.”
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has admitted the same White House pressure. With Biden’s Covid czar Jeffrey Zients being a former Facebook director, it’s hardly reckless to assume he played a role.
The resolve of many free speech absolutists fades when faced with speech they dislike.
Another challenge for me is resisting the vitriol and gratuitous disparagement Trump has turned into an art form. On this front, ChatGPT has been unexpectedly helpful. I often ask the software to review my posts for accuracy, fairness, and language that might inflame. When I called Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez “clowns” for flying first class and private jets to their “Stop Oligarchy” protests, it suggested “political performers.”
Trump Derangement Syndrome (TDS) is usually defined as being so consumed with hatred for President Trump that a person can no longer respond rationally to anything he says or does. It should also apply to anyone who mirrors his style and is incapable of civil discourse. America could use TDS Anonymous meetings, with a serenity prayer to help even Trump supporters resist the urge to rant or disparage gratuitously, like the president. Alcoholics Anonymous members are taught to keep their side of the street clean, meaning not to cite someone else’s bad behavior as an excuse for their own.
Going forward, whenever I wade into politics, I’m going to stay in my preferred lane and focus on growing wealth disparity in America, which I regard as the single biggest threat to our democracy. I’m unaware of any country imploding because a court jester was cancelled, but I know of several that collapsed when the “haves” overwhelmingly exceeded the “have nots.”
I’m also increasingly focused on health and self-care, which brings me to Marilyn Hagerty, a newspaper columnist in Grand Forks, North Dakota, who became a national sensation in her early 80s after posting a favorable review of the local Olive Garden restaurant. Hagerty’s column went viral, and food snobs mocked her mercilessly.
When a reporter asked about the criticism, Hagerty brushed it off: “I’m working on my Sunday column and going to play bridge this afternoon, so I don’t have time to read all this crap.”
I’ll keep Hagerty in mind when I see hostile comments to my posts. She lived to 99 and was in good physical and mental health until she suffered a stroke just days before her death.
Hagerty knew what mattered, and her wisdom is worth heeding.