Cagle World

“This just in,” as we say in the news business.

British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher recently called Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden to complain about President Donald Trump.

This is indeed big news, mainly because Thatcher has been dead for six years.

But, if the former vice president says he spoke to Thatcher, who am I to question?

Biden later corrected himself and said he was talking about current Prime Minister Theresa May, who is very much alive. Biden called the mistake a “Freudian slip,” which is also kind of a strange thing to say.

Ironically enough, Biden make the Thatcher comment during a fundraiser in South Carolina during which he called Trump a “clown.”

Trump supporters pounced on the Thatcher reference because they like to portray Biden as a sort of inappropriate, forgetful uncle who shows up every Thanksgiving and, after he leaves, you’re thankful you don’t have to see him for another year.

But, never to be outdone, President Trump returned the favor and gave the left, and the media, yet another reason to gesticulate.

I wrote a few weeks back about how Trump finds a way to insinuate himself into news events that have absolutely nothing to do with him.

He did it with the Notre Dame cathedral fire when he offered firefighters some unsolicited advice on how to extinguish the blaze.

This time the topic was the controversial finish of the Kentucky Derby. The horse that crossed the line first was disqualified for obstructing the path of other horses.

Trump tweeted: “The Kentuky Derby decision was not a good one. It was a rough & tumble race on a wet and sloppy track, actually, a beautiful thing to watch. Only in these days of political correctness could such an overturn occur. The best horse did NOT win the Kentucky Derby – not even close!?”

The media immediately noticed both the “political correctness” reference and the lack of a “c” in Kentucky. The latter was an honest mistake which Trump later corrected. Nevertheless, the tweet became fodder – as most of Trump’s tweets do – for The New York Times, CNN, among others.

“It’s about the man behind the tweet. A man who also happens to be the leader of the free world,” wrote CNN’s Chris Cillizza in a full-blown “analysis” of the tweet.

I don’t know what Trump meant by “political correctness” but at least I spent way too much time thinking about it. Was the winning horse an illegal immigrant? Was he banned from speaking on a college campus? Did he wear a MAGA hat to the Derby?

I told you I spent too much time thinking about it.

Democrats, your serve.

New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez enjoys sharing videos of herself that make her look clueless. Ocasio-Cortez, keep in mind, is the author of the “Green New Deal” which would cost somewhere between $51 trillion and $93 trillion and features a variety of unrealistic goals including eliminating fossil fuel use in 12 years and rendering air travel unnecessary.

But in the short term, she has bigger fish to fry, or dispose of, as the case may be.

She posted a video in which she reveals a discovery in her new apartment.

Behold! She gives you…the garbage disposal.

“OK everyone I need your help,” she says in the video, “because I just moved into this apartment a few months ago and I just flipped a switch and it made that noise and it scared the daylights out of me. I am told this is a garbage disposal…I’ve never seen a garbage disposal. I never had one in any place I’ve ever lived.”

Say what you will about Donald Trump but the man knows a garbage disposal when he sees one.

Republicans, back to you.

Senator Ted Cruz, R-Texas, recently called the presidential candidacy of Colorado Democrat Michael Bennet a “Seinfeld campaign – about nothing.”

The reference to the popular sitcom did not escape the notice of one of its stars, Jason Alexander, a.k.a. George Costanza, who tweeted, “I’ve met Bennett. He is a great man and real choice for POTUS. As for Cruz – the jerk store called and they’re running out of you.”

If at this point, you’re asking, what happened to political discourse in this country?

Here’s more breaking news: This is it.

–

Copyright 2019 Rich Manieri, distributed by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.

Rich Manieri is a Philadelphia-born journalist and author. He is currently a professor of journalism at Asbury University in Kentucky. His book, “We Burn on Friday: A Memoir of My Father and Me” is available at amazon.com. You can reach him at [email protected].

If you felt the ground shake and witnessed wild beasts living together in harmony, that was actually a supernatural event triggered when Republicans and Democrats agree on something.

As I listened to NPR, in my car, to Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y) talk about his meeting with President Trump on infrastructure, I almost had to pull over.

Schumer said, among other things, that Democrats and the president – yes, President Donald J. Trump – “want to get something done on infrastructure in a big and bold way.” He said there was “good will” in the meeting.

I first checked the date. It wasn’t April 1.

That left only two possibilities.The man I heard on the radio was an impostor. The real Schumer was in a closet somewhere, bound with duct tape and an ether rag stuffed in his mouth. Or that was really him on the radio, talking about how his meeting with Trump was very “constructive.”

I suddenly felt lighter.

Could this be a sign that Republicans and Democrats realize they are failing the American people and have awakened, committed to a new sense of cooperation for the benefit of their constituents?

And what could be better than addressing our crumbling infrastructure – roads, bridges, the power grid, water supply? This is good government. Perhaps Congress can finally start doing something to turn that measly 20-percent approval rating around.

And then, like a frying pan in the face, reality arrived.

The infrastructure package would cost about $2 trillion. Neither the Democrats nor the president talked about how they were going to pay for it.

This, of course, is the tricky bit about wanting expensive things – the paying.

I would enjoy a snowmobile, an 80-inch TV and a pizza oven. But I really won’t have them until I exchange currency for the items.

It’s safe to assume that Trump and the Democrats will have vastly different ideas about how to fund infrastructure improvement.

Raising the gasoline tax, which hasn’t been raised since 1993, has been talked about but Trump is unlikely to go along with any sort of tax increase, no matter what’s being taxed.

And the skeptic in me says that Republicans and Democrats, with an election looming in 2020, realize they need to at least pretend to want to get something accomplished so when the whole thing blows up they can say, “Hey, we gave it our best shot. It’s their fault.”

May 13 will mark the beginning of “Infrastructure Week.” I figured I’d let you know in case you want to send a card.

Unfortunately, “Infrastructure Week” has taken its rightful place next to “National Unicorn Day” and Tinkerbell’s birthday. You can celebrate all you want, but you’re not going to see anything.

If there’s one thing, just one, on which Republicans and Democrats should be able to come together, it’s infrastructure. Maintaining sound roads and bridges, along with a stout power grid, is fundamental responsibility of our government.

Of course, doing things that are “fundamental” for which it is “responsible” is not a strength of this current iteration of Congress, nor has been the strength of several previous iterations.

And even with infrastructure there are naysayers.

“We’re in the middle of a constitutional crisis here,” former Schumer aide Brian Fallon told the New York Times Tuesday. “The most important job the Democrats have right now is to uphold the rule of law against a president who thinks the law doesn’t apply to him. We have bigger fish to fry than trying to look like we gave it a shot on infrastructure.”

Buzzkill.

And there are plenty of distractions to keep both parties from focusing on infrastructure.

On this particular day, Senate Democrats are grilling Attorney General William Barr about what he said regarding the Mueller report before it was released. This Capitol Hill hearing featured all of the political classics – grandstanding, righteous indignation, raised voices, not to mention the call by Hawaii Sen. Mazie Hirono for Barr to resign.

So much for “good will.”

I have that heavy feeling again. My optimism is about gone.

And now I’m wondering if that shaky ground was really just the start of another sinkhole.

–

Copyright 2019 Rich Manieri, distributed by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.

Rich Manieri is a Philadelphia-born journalist and author. He is currently a professor of journalism at Asbury University in Kentucky. His book, “We Burn on Friday: A Memoir of My Father and Me” is available at amazon.com. You can reach him at [email protected].

Bribing your way into college. Who would have thought?

It would have been a way around my rather pedestrian exam scores. My old man did threaten to put a horse’s head in the beds of several admissions officers but, fortunately, the good folks at Villanova University saw their way clear to let me in before my father went all Vito Corleone.

I do wonder what would have become of me had I attended, say Harvard or Stanford. I dream. I dream. Perhaps I would have been secretary of state, or the president of a big company, or a college professor with a column.

I realize I wouldn’t make it farther than the parking lot of either institution in today’s hyper-competitive climate in which parents are willing to do just about anything to make sure their children have a meaningful college experience.

Earlier this week, we learned what “anything” might entail.

An FBI investigation revealed a massive college admissions scam in which parents paid a consultant millions to get their kids into some of the country’s most prestigious universities by any means necessary – bribing entrance exam administrators, paying off people to take tests for their students, phony resumes, doctored exam scores, bribing coaches to say kids were athletes when they weren’t and more.

The accused include a couple of actresses – Felicity Huffman, of “Desperate Housewives,” and Lori Loughlin, one of the stars of “Full House.” Say it isn’t so, Lori!

Nine college coaches were also charged. The head women’s soccer coach at Yale, said investigators, took a $400,000 bribe to admit a student, who apparently didn’t know a soccer ball from polo mallet, as a student-athlete. The student was, in fact, admitted. This little transaction cost the parents more than $1 million.

The ringleader of the scheme, William Rick Singer, who pleaded guilty Tuesday to racketeering, money laundering and other charges said he facilitated 761 “side doors” to admission.

“They want guarantees, they want this thing done. They don’t want me messing around with this thing,” he said, according to court documents. “And so they want in at certain schools.”

There are a lot of storylines here – the Hollywood angle, the money-is-no-object-when-it-comes to-my-baby narrative, the athletic recruitment scam.

But one of the interesting things about this case is that no students were charged because, according to the FBI, they didn’t know what their parents were up to.

And herein lies the irony.

Parents are so desperate to create a meaningful college experience for their precious children, they are willing to cheat to do it which, of course, makes the whole pursuit meaningless.

We can fool ourselves and believe that this is the kind of thing that happens only within elite circles but it’s actually happening all over the country, on a much smaller scale, and it’s usually not about the children.

In her book, published in 2015, “How to Raise an Adult,” Julie Lythcott-Haims, a former dean at Stanford, asks a key question about parenting, specifically among baby boomers.

“Did Boomers’ egos become interlaced with the accomplishments of their children to such an extent that they felt their own success was compromised if their children fell short of expectations?”

The answer is “yes.”

“Our kids’ accomplishments are the measure of our own success and worth; that college bumper sticker on the rear of our car can be as much about our own sense of accomplishment as our kids’,” writes Lythcott-Haims.

What the FBI revealed this week was a byproduct of something much bigger than a scheme to buy a college degree. This case, sweeping as it is, only highlights the problem.

We use our children as chess pieces. We plan their every move, without their involvement.

We help them avoid conflict. We intervene on their behalf. We make all the bad things go away.

And I’ve spent enough time in and around higher education to see the consequences – young people unprepared for adulthood, terrified of independence, unable to manage time, unable and unwilling to take constructive criticism, unable to deal with rejection and disappointment.

If any good is to come from this latest scandal, perhaps it is the realization that our young people are the ones who will have to deal with the results of our overparenting.

Hopefully, at some point, we’ll realize that the bumper sticker isn’t worth it.

–

Copyright 2019 Rich Manieri, distributed by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.

Rich Manieri is a Philadelphia-born journalist and author. He is currently a professor of journalism at Asbury University in Kentucky. His book, “We Burn on Friday: A Memoir of My Father and Me” is available at amazon.com. You can reach him at [email protected].

The U.S. Senate failed to pass a bill that would require health care professionals to provide life-saving medical care to babies born alive after a failed abortion.

It’s difficult to write such a sentence without recoiling.

Yet, all but three Senate Democrats – Bob Casey Jr., Joe Manchin and Doug Jones – voted against the bill.

The Senate voted down the Born-Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act by a count of 53-44.

All of the Democrats running for president in 2020 voted against it: Bernie Sanders (Vt.), Kamala Harris, Cory “I am Spartacus” Booker, Kirsten Gillibrand, Amy Klobuchar and Elizabeth Warren.

You have to give Casey, Manchin and Jones credit I suppose, though I’m not sure how we got to the point in this country where not supporting infanticide makes you an outlier.

It occurs to me that Democrats often chide Republicans and the National Rifle Association for viewing every attempt at firearms regulation, no matter how sensible or tangential, as a slippery slope toward full-blown repeal of the Second Amendment. It seems the ultimate irony that these same Democrats, who support gun control as a way to save lives, have no problem casting a vote for infanticide.

No Democrats acknowledged the anomaly. Instead, this was all about women’s health, they said, one after another.

“This bill is just another line of attack in the ongoing war on women’s health,” Sen. Jeanne Shaheen said before the vote.

Neither Shaheen nor anyone else could adequately explain exactly how this bill is a “war on women’s health.” Probably because it isn’t.

“That is the actual intent of this bill, reducing access to safe abortion care would threaten the health of women in Hawaii,” Mazie Hirono said on the Senate floor.

This bill isn’t about health care for women. It isn’t even about abortion because the legislation wouldn’t have affected access to abortion in any way. But the rejection of the bill is about appealing to a far-left constituency that is growing increasingly radical and influential, which is why the Democrats’ remarks before the vote really had nothing to do with the legislation itself.

“What this bill does is address the health care of a baby that is born alive after a botched abortion. We’re not talking about abortion, folks. We’re talking about the life of a child that is born,” Republican Sen. Joni Ernst said.

Beyond the politics, it makes perfect sense that if you have no moral compunction about killing a child before birth, allowing her to die immediately after birth isn’t much of a distinction. This sort of thinking is consistent and logical, if you believe that life itself is basically accidental, devoid of eternal significance and, ultimately, meaningless.

I’m not going to debate the meaning of life here but I do have to wonder what the Democrats are thinking and question whether they are so steeped in ideology and groupthink that they are incapable of seeing any issue through an objective lens.

“This is about the most simple thing you can say, which is that a baby is a baby, and they have dignity and worth,” Republican Ben Sasse, the bill’s sponsor, said., “And it’s not because they’re powerful. It’s because they’re babies.”

This is, of course, is what the bill is about and the Democrats know it. The argument that the legislation is somehow an infringement on “reproductive rights” – a euphemism coined by the left to make abortion sound less awful – is mendacious, even within the context of today’s political drama, and that’s saying something.

The failure of this bill is an abomination and it has further exposed the modern Democratic party as one that views infants as collateral damage in its pursuit to fundamentally transform the country.

The fact that only three Democratic senators voted in favor of the bill is unconscionable, though not surprising if you’ve been paying attention.

The Democratic National Committee’s new platform calls for, among other things, the repeal of the Hyde Amendment, which bars the use of federal (taxpayer) funds to pay for abortions.

So, to recap, according to the political left, not only should abortion be available on-demand, we should all have to pay for it. And in the event of a botched abortion, we don’t want any physician sticking her nose in and saving the baby’s life.

If we didn’t know where the Democrats stood before, we do now.

–

Copyright 2019 Rich Manieri, distributed by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.

Rich Manieri is a Philadelphia-born journalist and author. He is currently a professor of journalism at Asbury University in Kentucky. His book, “We Burn on Friday: A Memoir of My Father and Me” is available at amazon.com. You can reach him at [email protected].

It’s a terrible story. Unconscionable.

Justin “Jussie” Smollett, a black, gay actor, told police that he was attacked by two racist Trump supporters on a Chicago street Jan. 29.

Smollett said that, among other atrocities, the two white men beat him up, poured bleach on him, tied a noose around his neck and shouted, “This is MAGA country,” a reference to President Trump’s “Make America Great Again” campaign slogan.

The news triggered a torrent of outrage, particularly among progressives and the Hollywood left, who couldn’t wait to exploit this outrageous incident as a not-so-shining example of “Donald Trump’s America.”

Democratic Rep. Rashida Tlaib, of Michigan, tweeted, “The dangerous lies spewing from the right wing is killing and hurting our people.”

The media also grabbed the baton. CNN news anchor Brooke Baldwin grimly declared, “This is America in 2019.”

It would be indeed, if it were only true.

Smollett, who is one of the stars of the show “Empire,” has been arrested and charged with filing a false police report. Police believe he made the whole thing up and staged a hate crime. Numerous published reports say Smollett paid two Nigerian brothers to participate in the “attack.” You would think Smollett would know by now lying to police is frowned upon.

According to the Associated Press, in 2007 a California misdemeanor complaint was filed against Smollett, to which he pleaded no contest, to giving false information to police when he was pulled over for driving while under the influence. Smollett, according to the AP, was accused of identifying himself as his younger brother and signing a false name on the promise to appear in court.

What’s wrong with this guy?

I’m no psychologist but I don’t think anything is wrong with him. Nor do I necessarily think there’s anything emotionally imbalanced with others who make up similar stories.

We love to medicalize bad behavior.

The Daily Signal, the news website of the conservative Heritage Foundation, chronicled 19 hate crime hoaxes since Donald Trump was elected president.

Among the phony stories:

– An openly bisexual student at North Park University, claimed to be the target of hateful notes and emails following Trump’s election in November 2016. NBC News ran with the story. Turned out the student wrote the notes herself.

– A Philadelphia woman claimed in November 2016 that she was harassed at a gas station by white, Trump-supporting males, one of whom pulled a weapon on her. Never happened.

– An 18-year-old Muslim woman in Louisiana claimed in November 2016 that two white men, one of whom was wearing a Trump hat, attacked and robbed her. She made it up.

I could go on, but you get the idea.

If those who concoct such whoppers aren’t emotionally impaired or desperately crying out for attention, why do it?

Dr. Wilfred Reilly, a professor at Kentucky State University, author of the book, “Hate Crime Hoax” and a vocal opponent of white nationalists, told Fox News that “the demand for bigots in America greatly exceeds the supply…”

In other words, if want you to believe, in Donald Trump’s America, that there are roving bands of MAGA-hat wearing racists victimizing minority groups, you’ll do anything, including making a phony police report, to confirm the narrative.

It’s classic groupthink – the willingness to suspend reason and common sense to achieve a consensus which, in this case, is that Americans are meaner and more racist since November, 2016.

Is America a more racially divided country now than it was during World War II, when tens of thousands of Japanese Americans were sent to internment camps?

Is America more racist now than it was during the Jim Crow era?

Hate crimes happen. But those who point to the FBI statistic – reported by media outlets nationwide – that “hate crimes increased by 17 percent in 2017,” need to take a second look. Another 1,000 law enforcement agencies began reporting hate crime statistics in 2017. It would follow that more data would equal more crimes compared to the previous year.

But no matter. Without objective truth, everything is relative.

Including reality.

–

Copyright 2019 Rich Manieri, distributed by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.

Rich Manieri is a Philadelphia-born journalist and author. He is currently a professor of journalism at Asbury University in Kentucky. His book, “We Burn on Friday: A Memoir of My Father and Me” is available at amazon.com. You can reach him at [email protected].

We are seeing, in real time, what happens when you get your medical advice from YouTube.

There are measles outbreaks in Washington, Oregon and New York, and it’s only a matter of time until more states are added to the emergency list if this foolishness continues.

It should surprise no one that the outbreaks are occurring in areas with high concentrations of unimmunized children.

There is plenty of blame to go around, including but not limited to the handful of crackpots who insist on perpetrating the fraud that the measles, mumps and rubella vaccine causes autism.

This theory has been debunked by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the National Institutes of Health, the Mayo Clinic, the American Medical Association, physicians worldwide and the medical community at large.

Still, the relatively small but extremely scary anti-immunization community continues to flout the evidence and insists on believing people such as Dr. David Ayoub, one of the fathers of the anti-vaxxer movement, whom The New Yorker profiled in 2018.

“Now, as you know, there’s science that links vaccines with autism,” Ayoub said. “Why isn’t that science believed? Well, it’s attacked. It’s marginalized because there are competing papers, generally very flawed papers, which refute their claims. [They] design studies in order to give the answer that they want. That’s going to happen when you have an industry this strong. The government is a big industry.”

This kind of nuttery is akin to “truther” theories that the U.S. government was behind 9/11.

It would be easy to dismiss contrarians like Ayoub as quacks who received their medical degrees from Hasbro. The problem is this anti-vaxxer movement is now getting real, and there isn’t much anyone can do about.

Most states, with the exception of Mississippi, West Virginia and California, allow parents to opt out of immunizations for personal beliefs or religious reasons.

Regarding the latter, as a Christian and avid reader of the Bible, I can say with 100-percent certainty that there is nothing in Scripture that prevents or discourages medical care, which we can safely assume includes vaccinations to protect children from horrible diseases. To suggest otherwise is legalistic, externalist nonsense.

Regarding the former, a “personal belief” that your child shouldn’t be immunized isn’t good enough, not by a long-shot.

This is something at which 47 states need to take a hard look, and not give parents an easy out by requiring them to do nothing more than fill out a form.

Perhaps we’re approaching anti-vaxxers the wrong way. Let’s try a little history. Google Dr. Edward Jenner.

Or, I can save everyone the trouble and tell you that he was the English physician who developed the vaccine for smallpox, which was killing 400,000 people a year in Europe in the 1800s.

More recently, how about Jonas Salk? He came up with a vaccine for polio in the 1950s. In 1952, polio killed some 3,000 Americans.

Keep in mind that if you refuse to immunize, it’s not just about you and your child. You risk infecting other people, which is exactly what’s happening. And it isn’t only measles. Very much in play once again are chickenpox, whooping cough, and yes, polio.

“Scenarios for polio being introduced into the United States are easy to imagine, and the disease could get a foothold if we don’t maintain high vaccination rates,” according the CDC’s Dr. Greg Wallace in an article on cdc.gov. Wallace specializes in viral diseases.

“For example, an unvaccinated U.S. resident could travel abroad and become infected before returning home. Or, a visitor to the United States could travel here while infected. The point is, one person infected with polio is all it takes to start the spread of polio to others if they are not protected by vaccination.”

If that doesn’t scare anti-vaxxers, I’m not sure what will. If they’re beyond common sense it’s plausible that they’re beyond fear.

But here’s what they need to realize.They can throw all of scientific data out the window but the evidence still exists. For the last 75 years, vaccines have prevented illness and saved lives.When is the last time you met someone who uses crutches after surviving polio?

Yet, in spite of the overwhelming proof, anti-vaxxers might still be willing to risk their children contracting a preventable disease, one that has the potential to kill.

They might be willing to take such an unnecessary risk.

The rest of us aren’t.

–

Copyright 2019 Rich Manieri, distributed by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.

Rich Manieri is a Philadelphia-born journalist and author. He is currently a professor of journalism at Asbury University in Kentucky. His book, “We Burn on Friday: A Memoir of My Father and Me” is available at amazon.com. You can reach him at [email protected].

What with Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam’s costume party, the State of the Union address, and the so-called “Green New Deal” that will have us all heating our houses with Sweet Tarts in 10 years, you might be missing something important that’s going on in Washington.

It’s the confirmation hearing for Neomi Rao, President Donald Trump’s nominee to replace Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh on the D.C. Court of Appeals.

Rao is qualified for the job – a Yale graduate, University of Chicago Law School, clerked for Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas. She’s currently head of U.S. Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs. She has a sterling reputation. And Democrats hate her.

Why?

Because she’s a conservative and the D.C. court is important.

On Tuesday, Sen. Cory “I am Spartacus” Booker, who sits on the Senate Judiciary Committee, didn’t exactly cover himself in glory while questioning Rao.

“Have you ever had any LGBTQ law clerks?” Booker asked.

The question, which referred to an article Rao wrote while an undergrad at Yale, didn’t trigger the response for which Booker had hoped. In fact, it backfired spectacularly.

Rao answered that because she had never been a judge, she’s never had any law clerks.

Booker then attempted to recover and asked if she’s ever had an LGBTQ employees.

“To be honest I don’t know the sexual orientation of my staff,” Rao responded which, of course, was the appropriate response to such a ridiculous question.

By the way, Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan, President Barack Obama’s selection, had never been a judge either before her nomination.

There are a couple of things going on here.

First, it’s the compulsion to judge someone’s character today based on what they said, wrote, did or wore decades ago.

I don’t know about you, but I am a vastly different person than I was 30 years ago. I act differently, I think differently, I see the world differently. People grow and change. But in today’s toxic political climate, there’s little room for forgiveness and genuine repentance only inspires ridicule.

Second, this is identity politics on full display and rather running from this divisive ideology, Democrats are embracing it. How else can you explain the choice of Stacy Abrams to deliver the response to the State of the Union address?

Abrams is a rising Democratic star who lost the Georgia governor’s race. She recently wrote a piece for the journal Foreign Affairs in which she fully endorsed identity politics as a necessary response to social oppression.

Abrams isn’t popular among liberals in spite of her stance on identity politics. She’s popular because of it.

Which brings back to Rao.

One would think that moderate Democrats – if there are any – would be able to support a nominee such as Rao – and Indian-American woman with an impeccable reputation.  Instead, they’re doing whatever they can to destroy her.

So, they’re digging into her college archives.

In addition to trying to unveil her as a homophobe, she’s been labeled by the left as “anti-woman.”

“A man who rapes a drunk girl should be prosecuted. At the same time, a good way to avoid a potential date rape is to stay reasonably sober,” Rao wrote as a Yale undergrad.

This is a problematic passage for Democrats who somehow interpret it as an endorsement of sexual assault.

I’m not sure I see the harm in advising a young woman to stay sober while she’s on a date. That’s a long way, it seems to me, from blaming the victim. 

Still, in the hot seat, Rao offered the Judiciary Committee an explanation of her college writings on date rape.

“To be honest, looking back at some of those writings and rereading them, I cringe at some of the language that I used,” Rao said. “I think I was responding to things that were happening on campus at that time and in the intervening two decades, I like to think that I have matured as a thinker and a writer, and indeed as a person.”

I have a solution to this nonsense, one that will level the playing field.

How about we review the college yearbooks, newspapers, term papers, essays, and letters of every member of the Judiciary Committee, especially those obsessed with the musings of Rao when she was an 18-year-old college student?

That would make for interesting, and one might even say, “cringeworthy” reading.

–

Copyright 2019 Rich Manieri, distributed by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.

Rich Manieri is a Philadelphia-born journalist and author. He is currently a professor of journalism at Asbury University in Kentucky. His book, “We Burn on Friday: A Memoir of My Father and Me” is available at amazon.com. You can reach him at [email protected].

Just when I was convinced that Republicans and Democrats in Congress couldn’t order a pizza without a six-month debate, there’s this.

I’ve discovered that members of both parties do agree on some things, such as immigration, though getting them to admit as much will be the tricky part.

Consider this statement:

“Even as we are a nation of immigrants, we are also a nation of laws. Undocumented workers broke our immigration laws, and I believe that they must be held accountable – especially those who may be dangerous.”

President Trump, right? Who else would say something like this other than Trump himself or one of his MAGA hat-wearing disciples? Who, other than a true xenophobe, would say such a thing?

I have the answer.

President Barack Obama, in 2014.

“When I took office, I committed to fixing this broken immigration system. And I began by doing what I could to secure our borders,” Obama said when rolling out his immigration plan.

I know. Obama never talked about something as preposterous as building a wall. But what’s the difference between “securing the borders” via added border patrol officers or a wall?

The difference is it’s Trump’s idea. Yes, the unartful, tweet-loving, often ham-handed Trump, who can’t seem to do anything positive without ruining it with a tactless tweet 10 minutes later.

Nevertheless, Trump’s and Obama’s thoughts on border security sound remarkably similar.

“Mass, uncontrolled immigration is especially unfair to the many wonderful, law-abiding immigrants already living here who followed the rules and waited their turn,” Trump said in November. “Some have been waiting for many years. Some have been waiting for a long time.”

“Families who enter our country the right way and play by the rules watch others flout the rules,” Obama said in 2014. “Business owners who offer their workers good wages and benefits see the competition exploit undocumented immigrants by paying them far less. All of us take offense to anyone who reaps the rewards of living in America without taking on the responsibilities of living in America.”

The immigration debate in this country isn’t about the cost of a wall – $12 to $15 billion, depending on whose numbers you believe. It’s not about the “immorality” (House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s word) of a wall. If it’s about morality, let’s get rid of all security around government buildings. We’ll no longer put fences around our properties, install security systems in our homes or lock our doors.

“It’s not the same thing,” you might say.

It’s not? Notice that I didn’t list prisons. Why? Because prison walls are designed to keep people in. The Berlin Wall was erected to keep its citizens from leaving. There’s a vast difference between putting up a wall to keep people out than building one to keep people in.

I don’t really care if we build a wall on the southern border. If someone has a better idea to secure the border, I’m open to suggestions. I do know that if you don’t have secure borders, you don’t have much of a country.

The debate over immigration is about votes.

That’s why the issue has been demagogued into a fine powder.

Democrats know that if they capitulate on the wall, they hand Trump major policy victory, help him fulfill a campaign promise and risk upsetting Hispanic voters, most of whom vote for Democrats.

Republicans are well aware that if they give up the fight, they’ll look soft on immigration and risk losing the base that got Trump elected in the first place.

I don’t believe – and neither did President Obama – that there’s anything xenophobic (a word I wouldn’t mind hearing less frequently) about wanting to secure our country’s borders.

“All of us take offense to anyone who reaps the rewards of living in America without taking on the responsibilities of living in America,” Obama said.

Obama went on to say, in the same speech, that those who break our immigration laws “must be held accountable.”

Trump has said the same thing.

“We will not allow our generosity to be abused by those who would break our laws, defy our rules, violate our borders, break into our country illegally. We won’t allow it,” he said.

Surely there’s enough common ground on which to build here. Am I right, Democrats? Can I get an “Amen!”?

I suppose silence is an answer.

–

Copyright 2019 Rich Manieri, distributed by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.

Rich Manieri is a Philadelphia-born journalist and author. He is currently a professor of journalism at Asbury University in Kentucky. His book, “We Burn on Friday: A Memoir of My Father and Me” is available at amazon.com. You can reach him at [email protected].

“We don’t report rumors.”

That seemed obvious when a newsroom colleague said it to me some 20 years ago.

We had received information – which turned out to be unfounded – regarding some salacious stories about a local politician.

“Wow, it’s a good thing we don’t report rumors,” my colleague said, as we laughed off such an absurd notion.

What has changed in two decades?

We now report rumors, and innuendo, and speculation, and a lot of stuff that’s flat out made up.

When Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s office has to release a statement debunking a report that the president of the United States committed a federal crime, you know things are bad.

That report came from BuzzFeed, whose top story as of this writing is “37 Confessions About Sex That Will Make You Feel Less Alone.” While you’re reading that, you might as well take the quiz to find out what pizza you are.

If BuzzFeed is a legitimate news outlet, I’m Rasputin.

The story that President Trump ordered his personal attorney Michael Cohen to lie to Congress was broken by a reporter who has, at least according to CNN, a checkered past that includes plagiarism. That’s like trusting a surgeon who has a history of not washing his hands.

And yet, even though no other major news outlet in the country could corroborate the BuzzFeed story, that didn’t stop them from reporting BuzzFeed’s “bombshell.”

In other news, as we say in the business, a Kentucky teenager and his high school are dealing with threats of violence following a misleading, 30-second piece of video from Washington, D.C. that went viral over the weekend.

It was widely reported that a group of teens, wearing “Make America Great Again” hats, were harassing a Native American man. The young man in the center of the video was reported to be “smirking.” Social media then did what it does, and before anyone bothered to take an extra five minutes to look a little deeper, the poor kid was worse than Hitler. Predictably, the video triggered a barrage of hateful tweets from Hollywood types, among others.

But alas, a longer version of the video, which told a different story, was subsequently released. Apparently, the Kentucky teens were pretty much minding their own business when they were verbally harangued by another group and approached by the Native American man.

The Covington Catholic High School student at the center of the controversy, Nick Sandmann, said he was “mortified” that anyone would believe he and his classmates would do such a thing.

The school was closed Tuesday due to safety concerns.

And finally, I give you breaking news from PhillyVoice.com a Philadelphia-based news site trying to compete with Philly.com.

PhillyVoice, citing “more than half dozen” anonymous sources, reported that Philadelphia Eagles quarterback Carson Wentz is “selfish” and “egotistical” and a general cancer in the locker room.

After the story broke, several veteran players, who did go on the record, rushed to Wentz’s defense, with one player calling the report “#fakenews.”

I don’t know if there is anything to the story or not. But I do know there are 53 men on an NFL roster. If you’re going to run a story that damages a star player’s reputation and potentially hurts his marketability, you might want to have more than seven anonymous sources.

But this is journalism, circa 2019. Report first, apologize later. Rush to judgement, as long as we agree with the verdict. Truth is relative.

I take no pleasure in writing this. Journalism is my chosen profession. I teach it to college students. But it’s becoming more and more difficult to defend.

I don’t think it’s a stretch to say that the three stories I highlight here would have never seen the light of day 30 years ago. The business was never perfect but the standards were different then, they just were, and there was no social media to throw petrol on smoldering embers.

The world has changed, and so has journalism.

Someone else reporting that something might be true seems to be enough.

I’m always reminding students that journalists have power, but with power comes responsibility. You’re reporting on real people who have lives and families. There are consequences.

My hope is that these 19 and 20-year-olds will be the ones who restore some sort of order.

Before the profession itself becomes a rumor.

–

Copyright 2019 Rich Manieri, distributed by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.

Rich Manieri is a Philadelphia-born journalist and author. He is currently a professor of journalism at Asbury University in Kentucky. His book, “We Burn on Friday: A Memoir of My Father and Me” is available at amazon.com. You can reach him at [email protected].

I never thought I would have to apologize for this but here goes.

Yes, I have, indeed, asked my wife to make a salad. And not just any salad. This was a salad that fed a large family. It had two kinds of lettuce, tomatoes, olives, and those little red and yellow peppers, served in a hand-carved salad bowl. And even worse, I asked her to do it more than once.

I was inspired to come clean after apoplectic CNN hosts lambasted President Donald Trump earlier this week for joking that he would serve salads to the Clemson University football team, which was visiting the White House after winning the national championship.

“So, I had a choice,” Trump said. “Do we have no food for you? Because we have a shutdown? Or do we give you some little quick salads that the first lady will make, along with, the second lady. They’ll make some salads.”

Here’s what CNN host, Erin Burnett, said about Trump’s joke.

“Sometimes what people say when they’re being funny exposes exactly who they are and what they think. Not that there was any question, but this is pretty clear.”

Liberal CNN pundit Joan Walsh called Trump’s comments “appalling.”

“It seems to me like the president will not be happy until there is not one single female Republican voter in the country,” she said. “It’s incredibly sexist… . We are not all here to make salads for men. It’s disgusting.”

Scott Jennings, who happened to be serving as CNN’s conservative punching bag for the day, disagreed.

“I certainly didn’t take his comments to be sexist,” he said. “I think that if somebody took them that way, you know, that’s fine. Probably they want to take everything that Donald Trump says as being evil.”

“How in the world can you not perceive that as sexist,” Burnett shot back, “to make the assumption that his wife will go make salads for a bunch of football players? What is she, like, the cook?”

I don’t know everything, which isn’t breaking news to some of you who email me on a regular basis.

But I have to admit that I don’t know if what Trump said about the first lady making salads is sexist or not.

It wasn’t really funny and it was definitely awkward, but it didn’t seem particularly sexist. I thought words like “appalling” and “disgusting” were over the top. But hey, that’s just me.

And I’m not taking Trump’s history or any past statements into account. I’m just trying to get some clarity on the salad reference.

Perhaps Melania Trump makes a lot of salads. Maybe she likes making salads. Maybe she makes enough salads to feed the Seventh Fleet. Again, I don’t know.

My wife assumes that I am always going to open a door for her and I do. Is that chivalrous on my part or sexist on hers? How dare she assume I’m going to open the door, or move the refrigerator, or grill the hamburgers?

Now that I think of it, if we broadly extend the definition of sexism to the suggestion of salad preparation by women, I might have a lot more free time very soon.

“Honey, can you take out the trash?”

“Oh! Just because I’m a man, does that automatically make me the house trash hauler?”

These are not easy questions for any man and when I don’t know answers, I ask someone smarter than me.

So, I began with my salad-making, physician wife. Keep in mind that she is someone who has, on more than one occasion, walked into a patient’s hospital room only to hear, “You must be the nurse. Is the doctor coming?”

When I told her of CNN’s outrage over Trump’s salad quip, she responded, “That’s the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard.”

I’ll leave it up to you to decide if you were offended by what Trump said about Melania making salads.

But it occurs to me that we might want to reserve adjectives such as “appalling” and “disgusting” to behavior that legitimately deserves them.

Unless, of course, we just can’t wait to be outraged and offended, so we seize what looks like an opportunity based on a dumb comment about salads and attempt to make it a topic of national discussion and debate to stoke more outrage and generate more clicks on a website.

I’m trying to come up with a word for an international news organization that would do such a thing.

“Appalling” will do nicely.

–

Copyright 2019 Rich Manieri, distributed by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.

Rich Manieri is a Philadelphia-born journalist and author. He is currently a professor of journalism at Asbury University in Kentucky. His book, “We Burn on Friday: A Memoir of My Father and Me” is available at amazon.com. You can reach him at [email protected].