Author Archives: Mark M. Meinero

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SETTLERS

Perhaps it’s our nature to believe that, as Pangloss says in “Candide,” “all is for the best in this best of all possible worlds.”

Especially for Americans. We’ve been the world’s most prosperous country for a century or so. So we have a standard of living that is pretty high – and certainly much better than those struggling in poor or war-ravaged countries.

So complacency is a default mode. 

The problem with complacency is that it runs into another aspect of nature – aspiration. We want to be better. We want to be the best.

Sometimes that’s not so good. This must be the greediest period I’ve known in my 71 years. Those who have a lot want a whole lot more. A Republican Congress passes a tax bill that disproportionately favors the wealthy. Tesla tries to make Elon Musk the world’s first trillionaire. A CEO grabs a tennis player’s autographed hat from the kid he gave it to.

But more often than not, aspiration is a positive. Staying the same is almost impossible, because time affects everything. But trying to get better, to do better – that is how we make progress and advance society.

Most of the people who have come into this country without documentation didn’t do so to take away American jobs or flout American laws. They did so because of an aspiration to live a better life than one of fear or deprivation in their native country. That aspiration was so strong that they didn’t let the inability of this country to figure out how to let them in legally stop them.

The people of the United States could have responded in kind – double entendre intended. They could have realized that while this country has led the way in exploration and innovation, nothing stays the same. You have to keep growing to stay a leader. 

And the key ingredient to American growth has been taking new ideas from people of different backgrounds and synthesizing them into progress.

So welcoming immigrants has always been in our best interest. 

Unfortunately, that is not the path the plurality of voters chose last November.

And forget complacency. That would be a positive compared to what they voted for.

Regression.

It’s in the phrase. “Make America Great Again.” Implying that America isn’t great now. That the path of inclusion is not the way to a better future. That the restrictions and limitations of the past were a far better way than adapting to changing times.

So you have three paths for what might no longer be the world’s oldest democracy.

— Moving forward. Taking the gift of fresh blood and ideas, and then parlaying them into a stronger, safer, more equitable society.

— Moving backward. Thinking things were better without regard to people who are different from the majority of the country. That the old ways of doing things, that the old rules and laws, that the old ideas about society and science are the path to happiness.

— Complacency. Believing you can fight off change or the reversion to the old norms. Saying things are OK as they are and attempting to weather the storm that’s brewing around us.

There’s a part of me that thinks the plurality of Americans is in the third group.

If we stay quiet, if we don’t encourage but don’t discourage the reactionaries in our midst, they’ll burn themselves out or just get tired. Let’s hang on to what we’ve got.

As if that is what will allow us to keep it.

We’ve become settlers – and not in the pioneer sort of way. We’re ready to settle for what we believe is peace. 

But that’s not how it works.

We shouldn’t want to preserve democracy. We should want to improve it. Abolish the Electoral College. Make it easier to vote. Limit the spending and campaigning so that we’re not so overwhelmed by political ads and social media posts.

We should want to maintain our standard of living. We should want it to grow. We should do what we can to eliminate poverty, hunger and homelessness. We should aspire to new technologies – not just in developing iPhone 17s, but in transportation and medicine. We should make sure our children, elderly and disabled are cared for without straining a family. We should ensure that every one of us is entitled to love who we choose to love and be loved by who chooses to love us.

We should not settle for what we have. We should want more – and we should want it enough so that everybody who wants more gets a fair shot at getting it.

That’s obviously not happening now. Now is the autumn of our discontent.

But before we can fight to end MAGAism and Trumpism, we must know what we want. And what we should want is not for things to stay the same, because they can’t.

It’s September 11, the 24th anniversary of the worst attack on the American homeland that we can remember. Let’s resolve not to be afraid – as we’ve been too often since that sunny day in Manhattan and Virginia –  of adversaries foreign and domestic, the bin Ladens and the Trumps. 

Let’s not settle. Let’s strive to be better.

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DE MORTUIS NIL NISI BONUM. EXCEPT…

James Dobson died last week – and if you didn’t hear the news about that, it might be because the cheering drowned it out.

Not a lot of people in my circle of acquaintances know anything about Dobson, which is something worth discussing in itself.  If you didn’t, Dobson was an evangelical author and the founder of such fundamentalist organizations as the Family Research Council and the radio program “Focus on the Family.”

The short way of describing Dobson is that everything you loathe about Christian fundamentalism in contained in the works and words of Dobson:

The school children murdered at Sandy Hook were God’s retribution for homosexuality.

Women in a marriage consent to sexual activity in exchange for the protection provided by a man. 

Girls speak twice as many words a day as boys.

And the only way to get a child to behave the way you want is through painful punishment.

Dobson spread this stuff, Family Research Council claims, to 200 million people around the world. It was his way of combatting what he perceived to be the permissiveness that was swept into society beginning in the 1960s.

He was MAGA brainwashing before Trump’s ascent. He was the anti-Dr. Spock.

A persistent theme in the social media posts about Dobson’s death is the idea that his philosophies and teachings are the reasons adult kids have nothing to do with their parents.

Among the more common phrases on the Bluesky site: “rot in hell,” “rest in piss,” “good riddance.”

I found out about Dobson during the early days of the Internet when I tried to start a parenting news website called Raisin. I kept seeing press releases from Family Research Council and its mouthpiecs. Gary Bauer, a former Reagan administration official who tried to run for president in 2000 and got less than 1% of the vote in the New Hampshire Republican primary.

So that’s how I became acquainted with their extreme ideology.

As I said, most of the people I know have any idea about any of this. They’re not evangelicals and they certainly would be more apt to follow trained child psychologists’ advice about how to raise their kids. 

My friends and acquaintances would be horrified by the thought that their children might be afraid of them. Their operating theory is that a child is conceived in love – and that’s the guiding principle in their upbringing.

So think about it. There’s an America where Mr. Rogers, Elmo and Arthur are the heroes. There’s another where a wooden implement is the dominant force.

It might explain what’s at the root of our super divided society. The old ways of doing things vs. the thought out way of doing things. If you can see a “Make America Great Again” philosophy in this retro view, it’s understandable.

To the point that there was actual glee in Dobson’s death at age 89.

The Romans believed that of the dead, you should speak nothing but good. To which actress Bette Davis, when hearing about the death of rival Joan Crawford, supposedly said “You should never say bad things about the dead, only good. Joan Crawford is dead. Good.”

It seems cruel to pick on dead people. I get it.

But there’s a reason the Munchkins sing “Ding Dong the Witch Is Dead” when Dorothy plops the farmhouse on the Wicked Witch of the East. Some bad stuff was going down in Oz, and until her demise, the Munchkins were suffering.

It’s a little more serious here. Thousands of adults who are troubled or estranged from their parents are wishing that some god really did strike people down with lightning. it was just too late when it came to Dobson.

The lessons I take away are twofold.

One, I think I’m OK, but I really hope I have lived my life in a way that my passing is not reason for anyone to celebrate.

Two, I can think of at least one person who’s a constant presence in our lives these days whose death might be celebrated more than Dobson’s. I, for one, have Champagne on ice for that one.

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MIXED UP

Anyone who thinks winning the lottery is the ultimate success isn’t married to someone they love.

Somehow, I think the odds are longer. There are more than 8 billion people on this planet. Out of them, I found the one. 

There are two reasons I bring this up. 

One is that last week was the 40th anniversary of our engagement. I’d like to say that I did something wonderful for the occasion. But, honestly, I’d forgotten the occasion when I exchanged an unused Met game ticket for the contest that night. So much for being sentimental (for those irate about this, rest assured the Mets lost.)

The other reason is the resurfacing of comments by Indiana Gov. Mike Braun. Three years ago, when he was a senator, he told inquiring reporters that the Supreme Court should leave the matter of interracial marriage to the states. It was taken – I wonder why – as an indication he’s not crazy about the idea. Soon after, he backtracked and said he didn’t understand the question and opposes all forms of racism.

That’s nice.

I suspect this remark resurfaced in light of a lot of Trump-inspired opprobrium about people who aren’t white. WItness the occupation of Washington, D.C., by red-state national guardsmen, the effort to gerrymander non-white representatives out of office and even Trump’s attempt to tell us that slavery got a bad rap that caused that no-big-deal Civil War.

My relationship – hey, my marriage – is interracial. Being different races isn’t the reason we’re married, just as being different races wasn’t a reason not to marry. It’s just that the one in 8 billion people I fell in love with happened to be from the other side of the world.

The side benefits of interracial marriage are amazing. I’ve been exposed to cultural experiences I never would have seen. My kids – who, like every offspring of interracial parents I’ve seen, are gorgeous – can tell the difference between good-and-bad dan tats and cannoli.

If there’s a minus, it’s that other people sometimes seem bothered by it. 

We’ve gotten fisheyes from department store clerks in Florida, cab drivers in Hong Kong, waiters in a Brooklyn restaurant. My kids didn’t tell me until they were grown up how much antipathy they faced in our mostly white suburb. 

On the other hand, we’ve been blessed with total support and pride from both our extended families. 

Obviously, that isn’t always the case.

Interracial marriage wasn’t completely legal in this country until 1967, when the Supreme Court ended so-called “miscegenation” laws via the case of the Lovings of Virginia – a Black woman and white man who married. That ruling voided those laws everywhere, although it took until 2000 – 14 years into our marriage – for the last state to do so.

Most laws against interracial marriage focused on Black and white couples. Especially Black man-white woman couples that caused nightmares for those who combined racism and sexism. But there was also hostility toward all other kinds of combinations – any mix of white, Black, Latino, Asian and Indigenous people (and, of course, any mix of sexual orientation involved, but that’s a topic for another time).

When I was born, less than 5% of Americans supported interracial marriage. Even when the Loving decision came, a majority opposed the idea. Shortly after we married, it turned – more Americans supported interracial marriage than opposed it. ( I don’t think we had anything to do with it, but who knows?)

In the last Gallup survey taken four years ago, 94% of Americans approved an interracial marriage – just about a complete reversal of the percentages from the 1950s. About 1 in 5 American marriages are multiracial.

It’s a wonderful thing to see.

All kinds of combinations sitting in the stands at Citi Field, walking with their families at Disney World, attending a Beyonce concert in Los Angeles, running to a gate at O’Hare.

It also seems to drive some people crazy.

Part of what we’re seeing from Trump and the MAGA creeps is an attempt to reestablish “racial purity.” Whites with whites. Other races with their own, in a diminished stature.

It seems to make them nuts – not that they need much to achieve that – to see multiracial kids and not know whether to treat them as white or whatever other race they are. How can you profile people if they’re not exactly the ones you want to profile?

The fact is interracial marriage is contributing to what makes America truly great – the idea that we are committed to the important principles of love and inclusion. Interracial marriage has given us Barack Obama, Derek Jeter, Alicia Keys and The Rock.

It doesn’t matter if you’re the same race. It doesn’t matter if you’re a mix of two or more races. 

It matters what you bring to the American table, what you contribute to make this a better country, and whether or not the person you love is that one in 8 billion you dream of finding.

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GRAB ‘IM BY THE PUSSFACE

When Vladimir Putin sets his blood-stained werewolf claws on U.S. soil Friday, a massive contingent of the world’s peacekeepers should grab him and his henchmen.

After putting Putin and the lot in handcuffs, they should board a nonstop flight to The Hague. That’s where he could stand trial at the International Court of Justice – credibly accused of crimes against humanity in his country, Ukraine and throughout Europe.

I’m sorry. That was just my imagination, running away with me.

Alas, what’s going to happen is that Putin will be greeted by perhaps his most ardent admirer, Donald John Trump. Who, unfortunately, holds the title of President of the United States.

Trump believes he can help facilitate a peace agreement after three and a-half years of Russian aggression against Ukraine. He’s doing this without any legitimate representative of Ukraine any closer than the nearest McDonald’s.

So, basically, this is the excuse Trump needs to get face time with his dream boy, Vladdy P. 

Some people think he’s also looking for a diversion from the flap over the Jeffrey Epstein files. But if you’ve fallen for the idea that there’s something about the Epstein files that’s going to undo the Trump presidency, the Brooklyn Bridge is available for a small fee. 

We all know that Trump joined the debauchery of Epstein Island – we know because the girls, now young women, told us. It still hasn’t caused the MAGA pickup truck jockeys and frat boys to back away from the gold-plated demon.

As for Putin, it’s a chance to travel to another country and actually get welcomed.

This meeting is taking place at Elmendorf Air Force Base near Anchorage, in part because Alaska doesn’t have a town named Munich. It’s also on the base, someplace you can’t imagine the leader of a world power going, because there’s no safe place in America for Putin other than where he can be protected by the U.S. military.

There are more than a million Americans of Ukrainian ancestry. And there’s more than a few, I imagine, who fantasize about doing something to Putin that would only partially make up for the horror he’s inflicted on extended family and friends.

Putin signed off on bombing hospitals. Housing projects. Water supplies. Electrical power grids.

He’s on board with kidnapping children. With torturing prisoners.

But despite overwhelming numbers and seemingly unlimited munitions, Putin hasn’t been able to take Ukraine – something he thought he’d do in three days. The Ukrainians lucked into one of the greatest leaders of my lifetime in Voldodymyr Zelenskyy and he has perservered.

So far.

Joe Biden recognized how important it was to support Zelenskyy and the Ukrainians. He did all he could, especially given the fact that the moronic Republicans controlled the House after the 2022 midterms.

Trump, on the other hand, clings to a bunch of fantasies.

One is that he is the equal to Putin. Another is that, if Barack Obama and Jimmy Carter could be Nobel laureates, so could he.

He’s bought into the smoke being blown up his massive ass from Benjamin Netanyahu and that Cambodian leader that he’s some sort of man of peace. As opposed to a demented tyrant who’s perfectly fine with kidnapping people off U.S. streets and hustling them to jungle jails outside the country or concentration camps inside.

(Note to those who cry foul when we call the places ICE takes its victims “concentration camps”: If you complain now, you’ll be considered complicit when history books call them concentration camps 50 years from now.)

And Trump’s idea of peace is that you have to let Russia have the land they’ve stolen from Ukraine in order for the fighting to stop. In other words, he’s the Neville Chamberlain of the 21st century.

That’s why Zelenskyy is warning Europe that Putin is pushing to take as much land as possible ahead of the Alaska meeting. “Wait, Donny, don’t forget this town we took last night in your ‘peace’ offer,” or the Russian version of that.

Whatever happens Friday, it will be another pathetic day in American history perpetrated by Donald Trump. January 6, 2021 tops the list obviously, but the Helsinki meeting with Putin will have a new challenger for second place in total humiliation.

That is, unless Trump is smarter than we all think and has the zipties and orange jumpsuits ready for Putin and his gang.

Fat chance.

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HOW MANY SIT-UPS CAN YOU DO IN TWO MINUTES?

The people with whom I went to high school would be floored to learn that, in my 71 years, I’ve run two New York City Marathons and more 10K and 5K races than I can remember.

They would be floored because I was not – shall we say – physically fit when I was a teenager. 

I was heavy. That’s the kind word. There are lots of reasons why. But as much as my heart saw myself as athletic, my body never cooperated.

When I went off to college and then after I graduated, I saw the advantages of working out. One day, on a beach vacation to Rhode Island, I started running. I did that on and off into my late 60s. When I tore my meniscus hiking and developed arthritis, I switched to a stationary bike – although I am thinking about making my first run as a 70-year-old in the next few weeks.

The reason I mention all this is that there is nothing about what one of the women instructors on my Peleton calls my “fitness journey” that has anything to do with having taken physical education classes in school.

And so when Trump, in one of his efforts to bring back the tried-and-truly-useless of the past, declared last week that he wants the Presidential Fitness Test returned to the nation’s schools, it sounds about right.

He hasn’t the slightest clue what it would take to help our nation’s kids live healthier lives.

The Presidential Fitness Test, for those who forgot, was this four-part event that your whole gym class did. It consisted of sit-ups, squat thrusts, straddling some lines and running a lap around the school track.

The point supposedly was to show how fit you were compared not only to your classmates, but to other kids around the country.

The test was one of the stupid things about physical education in elementary and secondary schools.

Gym classes are mandatory because, supposedly, they instill the notion that kids should be fit.

But what they do is completely ridiculous.

For kids who are would-be athletes, wanting to compete in interscholastic sports, they’re 45-50 minutes of beating their chest and showing how strong, fast or whatever they are.

But for kids who need help in getting healthy, they’re a waste of time at best and, often, a chance to be humiliated or bullied.

There is no effort – none – to help kids in need find a program that will help them improve their physical well-being. 

The test that Trump wants to reinstitute is about competition and superiority. He panders to bullies because he is one – and this gives them another chance to show off.

Most kids don’t need any more of that. They need to be encouraged to do healthy things. They need someone to ask them what kinds of things they’re comfortable with doing. They need to start slowly and build a love of physical activity as a way to get in touch with themselves and the world around them.

I’ve run races in my home of New York, in Florida and California and even London. Not once did I think about something that happened in a gym class that was about conforming to the rules and competing against the school jocks.

Not once was I made to feel useless, even though I came nowhere close to winning a race. As opposed to when I couldn’t do a forward roll, swing off the rings or wrestle a state champion almost 100 pounds lighter than me,

And yet, I’m willing to wager that I’m in a better place physically than 90% of the people in my gym class because I enjoy exercising.

President Barack Obama got rid of the Presidential Fitness Test because it was a complete waste of time and unhelpful. 

Just like Trump.

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A NOT-SO-SECRET WEAPON

In the middle of a hot New York summer day, a guy from Las Vegas walked into a Park Avenue office building, murdered a security guard, two other people working there and an NYPD officer, and then turned the gun on himself.

The New York Times just reported that the man bought the gun – an assault weapon – from his boss for $1,400. He then drove to New York with the intent of inflicting some sort of pain on executives of the National Football League.

We can wonder about why he did it. We can ask if he was mentally ill. We can dismiss him as a troubled soul.

What we can’t dismiss is the goddamn assault weapon.

For 10 years, from 1995 to 2005, there was a ban in this country on some semi-automatic firearms as well as on large capacity ammunition magazines. President Bill Clinton signed it into law, with the support of former Presidents Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan. President George W. Bush let the law expire.

Because the law wasn’t in effect long enough, critics say there’s no statistical proof that it cut down on murders.

But it sure seems as though there would have been anecdotal proof on Monday in New York.

And yet, you know and I know and everybody in Congress and everyone in the gun-fetish lobby that’s the National Rifle Association that the end result of this horrible murder will be the status quo. 

No laws will be passed. No regulations enforced. In fact, the bangbangers will argue that New York’s stricter laws on assault weapons are useless, that the only way to prevent this sort of mayhem is to arm everybody to the teeth.

Here’s the thing:

One of those murdered Monday was Officer Didarul Islam of the New York City Police Department. He was working a second job as a security officer at the office building when the gunman sauntered in with his assault rifle.

Islam got world-class training to shoot the handgun he carried. It was no match when someone carrying a war weapon initiated an attack that no one could have possibly expected.

So why don’t police unions and police organizations organize and march and sell bumper stickers demanding that this country regulate the sale of weapons that overpower the men and women trying to protect us?

It always seems as though the people who fight the hardest for sensible gun control are students and parents. Because the most horrific of mass shootings – and they’re all pretty goddamn awful – are those in which children are massacred in their classrooms. Sandy Hook and Uvalde evoke painful memories and terror.

And yet, politicians bought and paid for by the NRA manage to ignore these protests. 

There’s nothing they can do. It’s the Second Amendment. The only way to stop a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun. Thoughts and prayers.

If police advocates went as all out to stop assault weapons as they do to whine about lack of respect, maybe that respect would come more easily.

But I don’t think it’s going to happen. And here’s why:

You get the sense that police officers don’t want bad people to have guns. But they seem to think that everybody they know – kids, parents, siblings, extended family, neighbors – should.

So regulating that would put their faves at odds with the law. And given the choice of possibly getting killed in a shootout with someone having imaginary CTE or arming them and theirs, they’ll take the latter.

Police officers have seen what happens when a gunman takes an AR-15 to elementary school children, And they still can’t manage to stand strong with kids and parents against those weapons.

So forget the BS about how New York is a cesspool of evil, or how it’s our socialist tendencies or lax morals or anything else these yokels from the Republican Party spit out.

Strong gun laws would go a long way toward stopping the madness that took place in New York this week. And police groups can go a long way toward getting those gun laws.

But it ain’t gonna happen.

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EYE, DON’T NEED IT

As far as I know, this is what’s on CBS:

— 10 sitcoms all based around some guy named Sheldon.

— A bunch of shows purporting to be about the FBI.

— A bunch of shows purporting to be about military investigators.

Right now, the only thing I ever watch that airs on CBS is “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert” – and I only watch the clips I see on social media.

But as we all know, that’s going to end. CBS announced that it is ending the entire “Late Show” franchise. The announcement says the economics of late night television led to the decision.

And we all know that’s crap. CBS ended the show because its parent company, Paramount, is being sold to Skydance, the pet project of the Ellison family. That $8 billion deal has to be approved by a Justice Department that insists on fealty to Donald Trump.

Fealty is not the way to describe Colbert’s attitude toward Trump. It’s more like middle-fingerty.

But let’s be fair. CBS has long stopped being the “Tiffany Network” of our youth. Is there any comedy on the network of the caliber of “The Mary Tyler Moore Show” or “All in the Family” or “M*A*S*H”? Is there any drama on CBS that reminds you of “Mission: Impossible”? Where are the “Young People’s Concerts” and “See It Now” and “The 20th Century” and “CBS Reports”?

Does CBS News carry the same cachet of the Murrow-Cronkite-Rather era? CBS paid $16 million to settle a suit from Trump that alleged “60 Minutes” doctored an interview with Kamala Harris – would the old CBS have caved like a sandcastle in a tidal wave?

It makes me wonder: Has the idea of television networks become obsolete?

In my younger days, networks were gathering places. News – local and global. Sports. Music. Ed Sullivan tried to entertain an entire nation in one hour. It might have been schlocky at times, but it was an effort to bring the nation together around a small screen.

Now they only seem interested in maximizing the cash generated for the least amount of effort. You used to look forward to the fall preview issue of TV Guide and the new shows on the networks. Is there still a TV Guide, much less a fall season?

Maybe it’s time to say goodbye to eyes and peacocks and whatever you call the ABC logo,

Maybe networks can be formed by confederations of artists: performers, writers, tradespeople, producers. First, teaming to create interesting new programming. 

Second, forming a link among the shows that give them a shared branding. Arista or Canelot or some other fantastic name that link news and programming of the highest quality at little or no cost to viewers.

It’s complicated, but it doesn’t seem impossible. It’s what over-the-air TV was, in a way, when people my age were born. 

Right now, with cable and streaming, we have more choices than ever before. But it never seems as though there’s anything GOOD on. Instead of another news panel on what goofy thing Trump said today, how about innovative investigative reports on health crises around the world, or medical breakthroughs, or re-examining historic events.

A TV confederation would need to find a way to make it economically feasible for the people working in it. That, not the technology, seems to me the biggest stumbling block. 

What’s going to keep legacy networks in business is the understandable argument that camerapeople and make up artists and actors need to feed their families. If you can make it so that so that people make decent livings without the infrastructure of networks and affiliates, it would make American media more immune to the kind of ridiculous pressure it faces from the Trump gang.

I don’t have a lot of answers. I’m not sure how this would work. But I’m sick of capitulation and mediocrity. 

Colbert’s cancellation isn’t the end of this – I would not bet money that he will still be on the air until his contract runs out next May. I think the Ellisons will unceremoniously end “The Late Show,” Jon Stewart and “The Daily Show” and anything resembling independent reporting at CBS News. 

It will be the watery pablum that CBS puts our every night.

It’s time to revolutionize American media. To think differently.

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BEWARE THE SHINY OBJECT

This is THE thing.

Jeffrey Epstein. He’s Trump’s kryptonite.

His files – once and if they’re ever revealed – will show Trump’s mendacity to all his worshippers. The disclosures in there – about how Epstein procured Florida girls to provide companionship for his A-list clients. Including Donald J. Trump, who once referred to being best friends with Epstein.

This. This is what will make all the MAGA types sit up and take notice. This will show them what he really is, how he’s duped them for years about who he is.

If you watch TV or social media or just walk around and hear desperate Trump haters talk, you know what I’m talking about.

This is the scandal that won’t go away. His supporters won’t let this go away, despite his rantings on Truth Social and in the White House, where he is supposed to be working for us.

Yeah. Right. Sure.

It wasn’t that long ago that the fracture between Trump and Elon Mask was the event that would break MAGA fever. That without Musk’s financial support and with his opposition to the budget framework, the bill would fail to pass.

How’s that going?

There are people who think Trump is bothered by all this Epstein talk. They’re Charlie Brown believing Lucy is going to hold the football as he kicks it.

Jeffrey Epstein died at his own hand in a New York prison cell in 2019. He had been arrested once before – in 2005 – on child sex charges. But his punishment from Florida officials – including one who later became Trump’s Secretary of Labor – was beneath lenient, and many of the girls who were victims had no idea of the easy terms.

The Miami Herald, led by reporter Julie Brown, shed new light on the case in 2018 and that’s how Epstein came to face the federal charges that resulted in his suicide. 

When those stories were published, they were mandatory reading for the journalism class I taught at WIlliam Paterson University in New Jersey. I told students – when they would ask how long an assignment should – that it should be as long as it takes to tell the story well. Most often, that’s three paragraphs. In the case of “Perversion of Justice,” it was thousands of words.

It was a disgusting tale and, of course, it immediately attracted denial from Trump – who was president in 2018, not Joe Biden or Barack Obama. 

Was Trump somehow involved with Jeffrey Epstein’s cruel and disgusting business? Look at the pictures and then try to convince yourself otherwise.

If you have half a brain, that exercise won’t last long.

But like everything else with Trump, he has a way of rolling off these things that’s super- – or sub- – human. 

And the people who support him – the ones loudly proclaiming they’re through with him over his administration’s failure to “release the Epstein files” – are – I’d say – about 10 days away from doing a George Costanza. 

They’re going to act as if nothing happened.

Yes, MAGA people used Epstein as a centerpiece of their message that Washington elites – particularly Democrats – are pedophiles and belong locked away forever. Or rubbed out. It helped get Trump support that helped blind people to the things in his agenda that would harm them.

Let’s face it, next to child sex allegations, tariffs on Canadian lumber and penguins in the South Pacific aren’t nearly as salacious (well, maybe the penguins). The absolutely insane notion of attempting to fire the Federal Reserve chairman that Trump bandies about will probably decimate your stock portfolio – but isn’t the Ghislaine Maxwell stuff so much more titillating?

Epstein is yet another of Trump’s shiny objects aimed at distracting you from mass deportations and climate change failures. He’s right, actually, when he says there are more important things to worry about – like how Texas miserably failed to protect girls at a summer camp from flooding or how Netanyahu seems intent on setting the entire Middle East on fire.

In the end, I predict one of two things will happen.

One is that he “begrudgingly” releases the Epstein files (I know Pam Bondi is the name of the releaser, but independence is not a word she’s trained to understand). Lo and behold, there are no prominent names in there. Somehow. Or somehow they’re all people who’ve run afoul of Donald Trump over the past 79 years.

Two is that he stonewalls. At some point, his followers are led to the conclusion – probably by some pseudo-holy clown like Franklin Graham – that maybe certain “elders” should be allowed to partake of 15-year-old females. 

And then the MAGA crowd decides, hey, maybe that’s right. Shouldn’t our leader be infallible in his judgment of what’s proper?

Sounds far-fetched, huh? 

Think about this.

Donald John Trump was convicted by a jury of his peers of 34 felony counts of fraud.

A jury in a civil suit found he had raped E. Jean Carroll in the 1990s. Other women, including his ex-wife, sued him for various forms of sexual misconduct. He made the “Access Hollywood” tape bragging the free reign he thought he had with women. He’s accused of deliberately walking to the dressing room of teenage girls during a beauty pageant he ran.

If not of this stuff is bad enough to make people realize what a horrible piece of human excrement Trump is, what makes you think that anything he did with his buddy Jeffrey Epstein will change any MAGA moron’s mind?

Sure, let the Epstein thing play out. Justice should always be served.

Just don’t count of any consequences when it comes to the 47th presidency of the United States. They haven’t happened yet.

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POWER OF THE PURSE

Those mouse ears you bought the kids at Disney World funded a concentration camp.

The Tesla charger you used to refuel your plug-in vehicle paid the salary of a DOGE dope.

Your flipflop order on Prime Day Two bought a truffle cream canapé at an overwrought wedding in Venice last month.

The president is an addled megalomaniac, Congress bows to his will and the Supreme Court accedes to it all. News media, corporations and universities cave to his BS lawsuits like sandcastles in a tsunami.

Americans disgusted by this point in our history (hand raised!) feel powerless to stop what’s happening.

We’re not. At least not now.

We might not be able to 86 the sycophants who approved the ridiculous Trump spending plan until next November.

But we can show our disgust and make this nonsense hurt them a little bit with the power of our wallets.

We need to spend money. To buy food, services, goods, vacations.

How we spend it makes a difference. We don’t need to give it to people, organizations and places that spit in the face of our values.

A friend calls this “casting your dollar vote.” When he said it, he referred to an awful soap commercial we watched in his dorm room. The ad was so bad he swore never to buy that brand of soap.

It no longer exists.

I doubt it was just my friend’s disgust that sank the brand. But other people might have drawn the same conclusion – why should I buy a bar of soap made by people who think THAT ad is clever?

That isn’t always going to happen. But you can inflict economic pain on people who find contentment in inflicting real pain on real people.

Florida is a prime example.

Its malevolent dumpling of a governor brags about cooperating with the American Gestapo, ICE, in building “housing” in the Everglades. It’s a facility meant for the people being rounded up from the streets, without any form of due process or respect.

They call it Alligator Alcatraz. That’s a misnomer. In Alcatraz, prisoners were men convicted of crimes by a jury of their peers. There isn’t a jury verdict in the lot here, which makes this a concentration camp.

And they sell merchandise for it and chuckle at the idea that any potential escapees face death from predatory wildlife.

Why, why, why, why would a family of decent people like yours spend a penny of your money in a place like that? Especially in a place that generates a whole lotta income from vacationers like you.

In the summer, it’s a no-brainer. What with the hurricanes, tornadoes, miserable heat and almost hourly thunderstorms, why would anyone want to suffer through Florida?

But, when winter comes, there are places to go that aren’t run by Hothouse Hitler wannabes.

Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands are part of the United States. So are California and Hawaii. You can leave the country, too, and feel better about it for not supporting evil.

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Every time you look online this week, somebody or something is mentioning that it’s Prime Week at Amazon.

But you’re also seeing that the sales this year aren’t particularly good. I’ve seen the word “stink” used.

I wouldn’t know. I’ve quit Prime.

Jeff Bezos saw Lex Luthor in a Superman comic and decided he found a role model. He gutted the Washington Post’s independence and donated money to the MAGA cause.

And he flaunted his wealth. Sending Katy Perry on a joyride to space. Ordering up a $500 million superyacht with a helipad aboard.

And, of course, his recent $50 million wedding in Venice.

Why should you pay for that?

To be fair, it’s hard to wean yourself from Amazon. You need something somewhat urgently at the cheapest price. You know you can get it tomorrow. That’s tough to walk away from.

It seems a lot tougher to live in an oligarchy.

While vacationing in Mystic, Connecticut, this week, I visited Bank Street Books and did my part to keep their business going.

Could I have gotten the book I bought for less on Amazon? I don’t know. I don’t care.

The same applies to Elon Musk. I’ve been off X since he took over Twitter. Not interested in what he does with Space X. And when I rent an electric car in September, I’ll make certain I charge it somewhere unaffiliated with Tesla.

And then there’s the companies that support Trump overtly or tacitly.

Take Target. Once the darling of people who believed chic could be affordable, the company turned its back on one of its largest customer groups – black people. It roiled Back diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives because MAGA types squawked and Trump growled.

Black ministers understood the power they held in their wallets. They organized an open-ended boycott of Target that has severely pared company sales.

And here’s the thing: there’s no guarantee Target will ever get those customers back. Instead of admitting its mistake, it’s trying to muddle through. People can find other places to shop or make do if they think giving their money to people who don’t respect them is a bad idea.

Earlier this year, I wondered about my orthopedist. His mug is plastered or digitized on billboards throughout New Jersey.

Just for my information, I went into the Federal Election Commission’s data base of 2024 campaign contributors. And – surprise! – this doctor donated at least $30,000 to various incarnations of the Trump campaign.

He’s now my former orthopedist. I feel awful that any portion of that $30,000 came from me – even if it was through my Medicare account.

Don’t feel like this. Before you spend money on things that are important to you, think about who’s getting that money.

There are companies determined to keep DEI initiatives and not cooperating with ICE goons.

There are companies run by men and women not just unafraid of a changing society, but willing to embrace it.

You don’t have to shop at Home Depot or Wal-Mart. You don’t need a MyPillow.

And you don’t have to go to Texas or Florida, where diversity and equity are ridiculed and met with a 21st century concentration camp.

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THE NEED FOR SPINE-AFFIRMING CARE

The following are things I normally don’t contemplate in the course of a day: The University of Pennsylvania, women’s swimming.

And yet, here I am, writing about the University of Pennsylvania – henceforth to be called its sports team name, Penn, to save electrons – and women’s swimming, which I usually only watch during the Summer Olympics, if climbing or basketball isn’t on.

The reason is that Penn reached a “settlement” with the Trump administration for having allowed transgender athletes to compete for the school’s female teams. In particular, the women’s swimming team, for whom Lia Thomas set school and NCAA records three years ago – before Trump won last November’s election.

The administration claims Penn, which was adhering to NCAA policy at the time, violated Title IX rules regarding fairness in women’s participation in sports.

Penn has agreed to take away Thomas’ school records, set down its new policy in writing and apologize to women who competed against Thomas. In return, the Department of Education has agreed to release $175 million in federal funding for which Penn had already qualified.

So, to start off, let me say that while I didn’t attend Penn, I personally know some really smart people who did. 

I also know that Trump attended Penn, but given what I’ve seen from other grads, he didn’t picked up anything from history, literature or any other required courses. And I do wonder how many fellow attendees of Penn’s renowned business school, Wharton, have bankrupted six casinos?

Anyway, here’s my first thought: Thomas started competing in college as a male swimmer, and made Penn’s men’s team. After freshman year, she came out as transgender. She was unable to compete in women’s races until her transitioning hormone treatments took hold.

Thomas broke no rules that existed when all this happened. Because of the changes in her body, her race times slowed – although they were still fast enough to be among the top female swimmers in the nation.

Some of her teammates didn’t want her on the team. But some of them did. So did several swimmers from competitor schools. 

Once Thomas won the women’s 500-yard freestyle at the NCAAs, there was an effort to take the victory away from her. And any OIympic hopes she had were dashed when swimming’s international governing body banned transgender women except for those who transitioned before puberty.

So let’s pretend – and damn I wish we really could – that Trump didn’t win last November. That he and the Republicans somehow incensed by this didn’t put their thumbs on the scale.

How could the government claim that Penn violated Title IX or any law if what they did was legitimate in 2022? Think of it this way – if New York recriminalizes marijuana in 2027 after establishing state-regulated weed shops, will the government prosecute the lines of people who go to the cannibis store in Nyack every weekend?

That’s what really troubles me about this whole thing. Trump is setting up a situation where things that were legal in the past can now not just be declared newly illegal, but prosecuted under laws that didn’t exist when the action occurred.

Meaning that you have to predict what’s going to make MAGAs upset two years from now so that you don’t violate some future law that you don’t know about.

And that’s really difficult. Because worrying about an epidemic of transgendering never seemed to be either in step with reality or much of a threat to society.

I mean, as long as someone doesn’t infringe on your rights, why do you care how they identify? I’m for being happy – if someone is going to be happier transitioning, why should they be stopped or, worse, criminalized? People have been crossing gender lines as long as people have memories.

But it’s really not about gender bending. It’s about control. It’s about deciding that your attitudes toward life need to be everybody else’s. Particularly if you can benefit from it financially or politically.

That’s what happened here. Penn broke no laws. It abided by the rules at the time. Had it barred Thomas for whatever reason, the school would have been in violation of the rules.

And yet, because a new regime with new rules took power, the school has to grovel to get the money it had already been granted. Not only that, it has to “apologize” to athletes who competed against Thomas. 

Now here’s the part that really, really bothers me:

Why didn’t Penn stand up to this?

Does the school really believe it acted wrongly or in bad faith when it let Lia Thomas swim? Did it do so with malicious intent to denigrate women’s sports, even with the support of some of their athletes?

Did the school know, when Thomas transitioned, how the hormone therapy would affect her ability to compete? Did anybody – including Thomas – know for a fact that she would retain some of her athletic skill?

And, finally, does anybody actually belief that men, in order to win some kind of athletic recognition, would subject themselves to the psychological and physical trauma of transitioning from male to female?

Is the money that big a deal? Have we become so afraid of the legal process that we fear the consequences – even if we did nothing wrong?

It’s not just Penn and it’s not just about this issue. Just this morning, Paramount, parent of CBS, agreed to pay $16 million because Trump claims “60 Minutes” manipulated an interview with Kamala Harris to his detriment. The company agreed because it wants Trump’s government to approve a merger that should be decided on its merits, not who got paid.

Columbia capitulated. Law firms capitulated. He’s trying to get Harvard to do it. There’s quite a collection of elite roadkill.

I get it – Trump perceives himself as having the power over everything. But he doesn’t – unless it’s given to him.

How do we stiffen spines for a fight to preserve this country? That’s the kind of affirming therapy the institutions we’ve thought of as the protectors of freedom need desperately. 

Right now. 

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