The extent to which some individuals in powerful positions will force that power on others in the workplace, time and time again, is shocking. And the corporate culture that protects those individuals – typically due to an enhanced revenue stream – is  reprehensible. E.g.: Bill O’Reilly – Malefactor-in-Chief. “O’Reilly,” The New York Times reported (Apr. 1), “has been Fox News’s...

I’ve been “clean and sober” – no mention of you-know-who, (rhymes with “rump”) – for 21 days and I must confess, a change has come over me. I feel… a little happier. The birds are singing more beautifully; the blossoms on the trees smell more sweetly; and I’ve unplugged from most cable news. In a March 1 commentary (La La...

Last Friday (Mar. 10), I talked about the more than 8,700 classified CIA documents released by Julian Assange and WikiLeaks, whose stated mission “…is to bring important news and information to the public.” On March 9, The New York Times reported that Assange “…fresh from revealing the largest leak of classified documents in CIA history… tried to turn the table...

In an unprecedented move, White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer last Friday, barred “journalists from the New York Times, CNN, Politico and BuzzFeed—which have been criticized by President Donald Trump and his administration for their reporting—from [an off-camera press briefing]. Reporters from the Associated Press and Time Magazine boycotted the event in protest,” The Wall Street Journal reported (Feb. 24)....

In the Tom Hanks Cold War drama, Bridge of Spies, U.S. attorney James Donovan is assigned to defend known Russian spy Rudolf Abel. After predictably losing the case, Donovan persuades the judge to give Abel a prison term instead of a death sentence. At some point in the future, Donovan reasons, the Russians may capture an American and Abel could...

Last week, President-elect Donald Trump held his first press conference since being elected. While the meeting was supposed to allow Mr. Trump to lay out his proposal on how he will unravel himself from his many conflict of interest issues, the conversation quickly turned to an intelligence briefing for Mr. Trump – specifically a 2-page synopsis of a 35-page report...

No one in modern American politics has used social media to influence an audience better than Donald Trump. His tool of choice: Twitter – the technological equivalent of a 1770 broadside. Long before he ran for president, Trump would use social media to preen before a television appearance. “Be sure to tune in and watch Donald Trump on Late Night...

In his 1997 introduction to his screenplay, All the President’s Men, writer William Goldman makes this prescient observation. “The scariest thing about hype today is this: as the hype artists get more and more skilled, and they are, pretty soon hype is going to be accepted as truth.” “If Russia, or some other entity, was hacking, why did the White...

Without a doubt, last year was the year the news media and politics fused into a kind of “Kardashian” alt-reality of over-the-top, dramatic nonsense that turned logic on its head. However, I want to go back in time, revisiting an event that took place in Boston, because I think there are some interesting parallels to the 2016 presidential campaign. On...

A few years ago, a college buddy contacted me by e-mail with a headline and link to a website that talked about a conspiracy theory that he believed to be true. His message: “Jim, you need to look into this. You can’t believe what they’re doing!” This was the first of several messages all with a similar format: startling headline,...