jimnyc
11-15-2016, 07:54 PM
Of course it won't happen, but Yups.
Before election night was even over, Hollywood was comparing 11/9, the election, the worst disaster since 9/11. Yeah, that will win you points, show your tolerance, go high and show class - by minimizing the worst terror attack on our soil. But that was just the beginning. The assassination threats poured in on twitter. Every possible political scenario has already been played out. The leader of the KKK is now in office, abortion will be illegal soon, everyone and anyone can buy tanks and anything they want. Gay marriage to be repealed. Woman's rights gutted. On and on. Yes, all real.
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Time to pause, reflect — and stop predicting
There was a moment in the 2008 election when, at a town hall, John McCain heard a supporter tell him, “We’re scared of an Obama presidency.” The man was worried that Obama associated with terrorists.
McCain stopped the supporter and said, while he, McCain, thought he was the better candidate, Obama was “a person you don’t have to be scared of as president of the United States.”
The crowd booed, but McCain held firm. And everyone calmed down.
We can learn some things from that. One, this isn’t the first time citizens have been scared of a new presidency. Two, a calming word from the other side can go a long way.
Hillary Clinton tried to do that with her graceful concession speech. President Barack Obama tried to do it, too, meeting with President-elect Donald Trump and saying, before the cameras, “If you succeed, the country succeeds.”
But most everyone else who didn’t want Trump as president — especially in the media — has severely gone in the other direction. Dire predictions. Tears. Declarations that the nation as we know it is over and that we are on the verge of “a covert form of Jim Crow” (the New York Times) and “white supremacy’s last stand” (a CBC commentator).
Well, first, I sure hope they are wrong. But second, I’d like to pose a question to the “experts” in our business:
Why, after getting this whole election so colossally wrong, after misreading voters, misinterpreting polls, misjudging what people thought and how seriously Americans took certain words and actions — why do we rush right back out and declare, with such certainty, what’s going to happen next?
Are we in the media even listening to ourselves? Are we learning from our mistakes? Or are we so bent on making memorable statements, on being on what we think is the “right side of history,” that we threaten to mold that actual history before it even happens?
Someone once said of the new president, “I am scared that if (he) gets into office, we are going to see more of the Ku Klux Klan and a resurgence of the Nazi Party.”
Perhaps you’re nodding in agreement? You’re saying, “Yes, Trump will do that!”
Except the person who said it was Coretta Scott King, in 1980, and the man she was talking about was Ronald Reagan.
History didn’t begin yesterday. And unpopular presidents are not new.
So can we all slow down? Please?
Hold off on assumptions
I will state right here that I have no idea what will happen with a Trump presidency. I wrote one column about him 16 months ago, saying when the time came, he would not end up being the president, and I was wrong. Wrong. One column. That’s enough to teach me a lesson.
But after months of stating their opinions as near facts, only to be proven massively incorrect, pundits everywhere — particularly on cable TV news — went right back to their declarations.
The same people who foresaw an inevitable Hillary Clinton victory were, within minutes, explaining the new results as anger, racism, misogyny, or in one case “whitelash.”
My first question would be “How do you know?” It was only minutes after Trump’s win. Without even an interview, these experts determined it must be this, that or the other ugly thing.
And in the two days that followed, I heard an unusual number of respected journalists telling us what the nation thought by saying, “I’ve had phone calls …” and “people have been stopping me and saying …” (something, ironically, Trump does all the time). While a personal anecdote can be powerful, it is not a national sampling.
Shouldn’t the numbers be thoughtfully examined before we resume screaming? Take this suddenly popular theme of “whitelash” or “white supremacy.’’ Maybe people forget that 70% of the voters in this election were white. They voted in huge numbers for both candidates. So to tag the results as a “white’’ way of thinking is not only every bit as insulting as suggesting a black or brown way of thinking, but also it doesn’t make sense. When President Obama won his first election with 96% of the African-American vote, nobody called it a “blacklash.” Yet despite nearly 40% of white voters casting for Clinton, her defeat was a “whitelash?”
Same skepticism goes for the oft-repeated notion that this was uneducated white people lashing out. A comfortable theory, perhaps. But the numbers show that Trump actually won big with college-educated white men, 54% to Clinton’s 39%.
And if the next argument is, “Well, yeah, but that’s men,” Trump also earned 45% of the vote from college-educated white women, who fall in the same demographic as Hillary Clinton.
Now, I’m not smart enough to explain that. But I’m responsible enough to know I can’t ignore it. Any more than I can ignore the fact that, despite the insulting, denigrating way Trump has spoken about women — something that turned my stomach — 42% of American women voters, of all races and ethnicities, chose him. Or that nearly 30% of Latinos did as well, in spite of Trump’s string of insults against Mexicans.
Rest here - http://www.freep.com/story/sports/columnists/mitch-albom/2016/11/12/mitch-albom-donald-trump/93731484/
Before election night was even over, Hollywood was comparing 11/9, the election, the worst disaster since 9/11. Yeah, that will win you points, show your tolerance, go high and show class - by minimizing the worst terror attack on our soil. But that was just the beginning. The assassination threats poured in on twitter. Every possible political scenario has already been played out. The leader of the KKK is now in office, abortion will be illegal soon, everyone and anyone can buy tanks and anything they want. Gay marriage to be repealed. Woman's rights gutted. On and on. Yes, all real.
-----
Time to pause, reflect — and stop predicting
There was a moment in the 2008 election when, at a town hall, John McCain heard a supporter tell him, “We’re scared of an Obama presidency.” The man was worried that Obama associated with terrorists.
McCain stopped the supporter and said, while he, McCain, thought he was the better candidate, Obama was “a person you don’t have to be scared of as president of the United States.”
The crowd booed, but McCain held firm. And everyone calmed down.
We can learn some things from that. One, this isn’t the first time citizens have been scared of a new presidency. Two, a calming word from the other side can go a long way.
Hillary Clinton tried to do that with her graceful concession speech. President Barack Obama tried to do it, too, meeting with President-elect Donald Trump and saying, before the cameras, “If you succeed, the country succeeds.”
But most everyone else who didn’t want Trump as president — especially in the media — has severely gone in the other direction. Dire predictions. Tears. Declarations that the nation as we know it is over and that we are on the verge of “a covert form of Jim Crow” (the New York Times) and “white supremacy’s last stand” (a CBC commentator).
Well, first, I sure hope they are wrong. But second, I’d like to pose a question to the “experts” in our business:
Why, after getting this whole election so colossally wrong, after misreading voters, misinterpreting polls, misjudging what people thought and how seriously Americans took certain words and actions — why do we rush right back out and declare, with such certainty, what’s going to happen next?
Are we in the media even listening to ourselves? Are we learning from our mistakes? Or are we so bent on making memorable statements, on being on what we think is the “right side of history,” that we threaten to mold that actual history before it even happens?
Someone once said of the new president, “I am scared that if (he) gets into office, we are going to see more of the Ku Klux Klan and a resurgence of the Nazi Party.”
Perhaps you’re nodding in agreement? You’re saying, “Yes, Trump will do that!”
Except the person who said it was Coretta Scott King, in 1980, and the man she was talking about was Ronald Reagan.
History didn’t begin yesterday. And unpopular presidents are not new.
So can we all slow down? Please?
Hold off on assumptions
I will state right here that I have no idea what will happen with a Trump presidency. I wrote one column about him 16 months ago, saying when the time came, he would not end up being the president, and I was wrong. Wrong. One column. That’s enough to teach me a lesson.
But after months of stating their opinions as near facts, only to be proven massively incorrect, pundits everywhere — particularly on cable TV news — went right back to their declarations.
The same people who foresaw an inevitable Hillary Clinton victory were, within minutes, explaining the new results as anger, racism, misogyny, or in one case “whitelash.”
My first question would be “How do you know?” It was only minutes after Trump’s win. Without even an interview, these experts determined it must be this, that or the other ugly thing.
And in the two days that followed, I heard an unusual number of respected journalists telling us what the nation thought by saying, “I’ve had phone calls …” and “people have been stopping me and saying …” (something, ironically, Trump does all the time). While a personal anecdote can be powerful, it is not a national sampling.
Shouldn’t the numbers be thoughtfully examined before we resume screaming? Take this suddenly popular theme of “whitelash” or “white supremacy.’’ Maybe people forget that 70% of the voters in this election were white. They voted in huge numbers for both candidates. So to tag the results as a “white’’ way of thinking is not only every bit as insulting as suggesting a black or brown way of thinking, but also it doesn’t make sense. When President Obama won his first election with 96% of the African-American vote, nobody called it a “blacklash.” Yet despite nearly 40% of white voters casting for Clinton, her defeat was a “whitelash?”
Same skepticism goes for the oft-repeated notion that this was uneducated white people lashing out. A comfortable theory, perhaps. But the numbers show that Trump actually won big with college-educated white men, 54% to Clinton’s 39%.
And if the next argument is, “Well, yeah, but that’s men,” Trump also earned 45% of the vote from college-educated white women, who fall in the same demographic as Hillary Clinton.
Now, I’m not smart enough to explain that. But I’m responsible enough to know I can’t ignore it. Any more than I can ignore the fact that, despite the insulting, denigrating way Trump has spoken about women — something that turned my stomach — 42% of American women voters, of all races and ethnicities, chose him. Or that nearly 30% of Latinos did as well, in spite of Trump’s string of insults against Mexicans.
Rest here - http://www.freep.com/story/sports/columnists/mitch-albom/2016/11/12/mitch-albom-donald-trump/93731484/