Mom, however, would have a different reaction.
She would be concerned for her country.
There is nothing nuanced about the war of words between President Donald Trump and many in the media.
But there’s a difference between leadership and self-aggrandizing pandering.
Still, some in the press bite the bait.
Bro, your sentiment is spot on. Your behavior and methods are not.
Her retort is what’s called in basketball a slam dunk.
If you go into journalism for attaboys, you’re an idiot. Heck, until the kinder, gentler 21st century many editors were just plain mean.
When I was an intern, the intern next to me sweated wildly on deadline. Our editor ordered him to go to lunch and never return.
I actually looked at his footwear. Phew. He was wearing Hush Puppies.
When I became a columnist, I received — and continue to receive — kind and thoughtful calls and emails. (Thank you.) But, of course, it was the nasty emails and phone calls I fretted over.
It took me 24 hours to conclude that as a professional writer I want eyeballs.
In short, my brothers and sisters such as Acosta need to develop thicker skin.
Still, Trump’s press baiting is deeply troubling.
Ever since there was such a thing as a town crier, humans have wanted to kill the messenger.
In contrast to Trump, however, Agnew’s name-calling was, ahem, amusing.
To be sure, everyone I know — and probably tens of millions I don’t know — are satisfied with the economy. But the presidency is about more than money.
And it’s about more than one man’s fragile sense of self-esteem.
It’s about things like boldly protecting the Bill of Rights, fiercely cherishing the First Amendment.
The mother who forced me to junior cotillion to imprint manners would shudder.
Perhaps it was with intentional irony at Wilkes-Barre that our president took full advantage of the first part of that phrase while stomping on the second.
Over the decades, I’ve written or edited some 50,000 articles and worked with over 1,000 journalists.
Some journalists are better than others and on rare occasions we all have made errors.
But in mainstream media, the number of fake news stories I have encountered are infinitesimal.
Lisa Sparks is a professor and dean of the School of Communication at Chapman University. Early in her career, she was a television journalist in Casper, Wy., and worked in Atlanta at — yikes! — CNN.
But like many current and former journalists whom apparently the president has somehow never met or heard of, Sparks is neither horrible nor horrendous.
In fact, Sparks — like my college professor wife — believes there needs to be far more balance in the media.
“It’s sad that none of us can trust what the media tells us,” Sparks tells me the morning after the Wilkes-Barre rally. “The media is shooting itself in the foot and journalists don’t have that luxury.
The cure, the dean says, is to restore credibility by acknowledging both sides of Trump’s presidency, the negative as well as the positive.
Sparks points to a website called TheKnifeMedia.com and reports it points to bias by both so-called liberal (CNN) and conservative (Fox News) media organizations.
It’s the kind of question that both the president as well as journalists should be asking.