There are 6 comments.

1. Inactive
   Mark Alexander

   @MarkAlexander

   11:34 AM EDT ⋅ May 19, 2020

   Love your podcast (GLoP as well).

   Some lesser-known opinions about Pres. Trump.

   1. Do you know what New York minister led the church Trump grew up in? The minister who also officiated his first wedding? Norman Vincent Peale, the author of “The Power of Positive Thinking.” In other words, Trump has Peale in his DNA. I’d argue his language is less about vanity and more about Peale (although both reinforce each other). This also accounts for how he compliments foreign tyrannical leaders. He expects the best, and then negotiates accordingly when they behave poorly.
   2. Trump displays all the characteristics of an “Entrepreneurial CEO.” I worked for entrepreneurial CEOs in the semiconductor industry (an industry that makes regular Hi-Tech look slow by comparison–constant change is the norm, and my job was to help new and newly promoted managers globally learn how maintain “stability in motion” while walking on the moving ice flows of a crazy industry).The key characteristic of such CEOs is the constant assimilation of new information and changing course immediately. Such behavior appears chaotic to lower level directors and managers, but the successful CEOs are trusted as they demonstrate success.You can imagine how an entrepreneurial CEO would appear to politicians, bureaucrats, and Washington media darlings, who all know the “rules” and “protocols.” He would look crazy, and an agent of chaos. I would argue that Trump is so non-political it is actually crazy to interpret his actions in terms of politics. And so he is targeted by everyone because he is threatening the foundation of everything they subconsciously hold dear.
   3. Trump experienced early on the constant lies of Russiagate and more, such that, in the beginning what was him lashing out “in response to” media lies, has now transformed into a “proactive response” as his experience with media and political attacks have become habitual. I would argue that, however unseemly, this is an appropriate response to the greater unseemliness of the attacks.

   I would enjoy any efforts to take me to task on these points.

   Cheers,

   Mark Alexander aka The Underground Grammarian

   @UndergroundGra4

2. Inactive
   dicentra

   @dicentra

   1:18 PM EDT ⋅ May 19, 2020

   Attempting to create horrible villains out of Hollywood’s idea of right-wingers fails in other ways besides making the ostensible baddie into a hero. 

   1. Star Trek: The Next Generation attempted to make capitalists the feared enemy in the guise of the Ferengi. They ended up being the comic relief, and in ST: DS9, the amazing performance by Armin Shimmerman made Quark a genuinely interesting character.
   2. ST:TNG then tried to make their prime villains “the ultimate consumers,” as Guinan called them. The Borg were supposed to be scary because they scooped entire civilizations off planets and assimilated them, but soon their collectivism and lack of individuality became the main focus of their villainy. Space Soviets, in essence. Utter left-wingers.
   3. M*A*S*H tried to make Frank Burns the stereotypical Bible-bashing hypocrite but he ended up being comic relief instead.
   4. Burns’s co-fanatic, Maj. Hoolihan, was also supposed to be awful, but Loretta Swit made her multi-dimensional and interesting.
   5. Father Mulcahy was supposed to be the hapless, ineffectual priest confounded by all the commandments being broken around him, yet he ended up having true moral courage on a number of occasions and ended up as a man of true conviction.

   They try to turn the caricatures in their heads into compelling characters, but they never can do it: all the interesting story lines require the stereotypes to become something else, whether heroes, comic relief, or left-wingers.

3. Inactive
   Jon1979

   @Jon1979

   12:37 AM EDT ⋅ May 20, 2020

   dicentra (View Comment):

   Attempting to create horrible villains out of Hollywood’s idea of right-wingers fails in other ways besides making the ostensible baddie into a hero.

   1. Star Trek: The Next Generation attempted to make capitalists the feared enemy in the guise of the Ferengi. They ended up being the comic relief, and in ST: DS9, the amazing performance by Armin Shimmerman made Quark a genuinely interesting character.
   2. ST:TNG then tried to make their prime villains “the ultimate consumers,” as Guinan called them. The Borg were supposed to be scary because they scooped entire civilizations off planets and assimilated them, but soon their collectivism and lack of individuality became the main focus of their villainy. Space Soviets, in essence. Utter left-wingers.
   3. M*A*S*H tried to make Frank Burns the stereotypical Bible-bashing hypocrite but he ended up being comic relief instead.
   4. Burns’s co-fanatic, Maj. Hoolihan, was also supposed to be awful, but Loretta Swit made her multi-dimensional and interesting.
   5. Father Mulcahy was supposed to be the hapless, ineffectual priest confounded by all the commandments being broken around him, yet he ended up having true moral courage on a number of occasions and ended up as a man of true conviction.

   They try to turn the caricatures in their heads into compelling characters, but they never can do it: all the interesting story lines require the stereotypes to become something else, whether heroes, comic relief, or left-wingers.

   “All in the Family” went about five episodes in 1971 trying to write Archie as having no redeeming social characteristics … until they got to the episode where Gloria has her miscarriage. The choice then was to either keep Archie as a miserable right-wing SOB with zero compassion for anyone, or give him some personality shadings that in turn would also open up more possible future story lines.

   The end result of ‘humanizing’ Archie was a show that lasted for a decade … but also a show where viewers identified with him more than with his progressive son-in-law, which definitely was not the plan.

4. Inactive
   Theodoric of Freiberg

   @TheodoricofFreiberg

   10:38 AM EDT ⋅ May 20, 2020

   I love the Commentary podcast and rarely miss an episode, but the first half of this one was pretty silly. Does Christine Rosen really think Nancy Pelosi is a grownup?

5. Inactive
   Merrijane

   @Merrijane

   12:10 PM EDT ⋅ May 20, 2020

   Lol. My podcast app auto downloaded an episode from March 20 and I didn’t even notice until the last four minutes. 

6. Member
   Duane Oyen

   @DuaneOyen

   

   5:30 PM EDT ⋅ May 21, 2020

   Did anyone listen to this?  There was not one person (half of John Podhoretz) who was aware that a Doctor of Osteopathy is directly equivalent in the US to every MD, with exactly the same board exams, license rights to every procedure and drug prescription, residency fellowships at the Mayo Clinic, etc.?  They talked as though a DO is a quack who claims that any disease can be cured through spinal manipulation (as is the practice of some chiropractic practitioners).

   Man, the AMA guild has been wildly successful in its battle to demean all possible price-moderating competition.