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,...

Last Sunday on the CBS News program 60 Minutes, Scott Pelley spoke with House Speaker Paul Ryan. One exchange caught my attention. Pelley: Trump tweeted, in the last week or so, that he had actually “…won the popular vote, if you deduct the millions who voted illegally.” Do you believe that? Ryan tried to dismiss this with a smile and...

The weather was a breezy sixty-five degrees that day. Amidst a raging war, the featured speaker took his place near the front of a crowd of hundreds who had gathered to hear the solemn words. Looking at his carefully prepared notes, a hushed silence came over the crowd. “President Lincoln,” he began, “served in a time of division like we’ve...

These are, without a doubt, the Holy Grail of cultural and political questions of the moment: How does Trump appeal to his supporters? Why do supporters continue to stand by him when he lies – even when confronted with the facts – more than any candidate in modern history? What is it about this man that continues to attract both...

Citizen Kane follows the life and political campaign of an arrogant, populist millionaire who runs for governor on promises to help the “the working man,” only to be defeated by a sex scandal. Is art reflecting reality or is reality affecting art? Director Orson Wells took his inspiration from real-life newspaper publisher and “yellow journalist” William Randolph Hearst. Like his...

The political earth has had a few seismic shifts over the past 7 days. First, the discovery of a video exposing Donald Trump’s penchant for trash-talking women, and the requisite 24/7 news coverage of that; followed by the Sunday debate where Trump paced around behind Hillary Clinton like an alpha-male lion. The week ended with another round of Republicans abandoning...

“As long as you can still grab a breath, you fight. You breathe… keep breathing.”         – Hugh Glass, “The Revenant” At the second presidential debate, Sunday, Trump sure did a lot of breathing… [fact check, Jim] … okay, actually it was sniffing. Rather than show voters – and people watching all over the world –  » Read more about: The...

The latest Trump revelation, coming last Friday (Oct. 7), confirms that the Republican nominee is not only a loutish, repulsive man, but has been – by his own chirpy admission – a sexual predator. Coming from an 11-year-old conversation between Trump and Access Hollywood host Billy Bush where the reality star is preparing to do a cameo for the soap...