Embrace the chaos, Roll with the hoopla
There's not another event like the Super Bowl. But you're saying that like it's a good thing.
Each Sunday I write a sports column for the Santa Rosa Press Democrat. I covered sports for the SF Chronicle for 20 years, and to the best of my memory, I went to ten Super Bowls. That’s plenty for anybody. (And a good reason not to go this year. Not that anyone was asking.)
It’s a great event for media and can be a career-maker for players. But no other national sports event has anywhere near the craziness and foolishness of Super Bowl week. You know the drill. Stories pop up — Can Jimmy Garoppolo lead? — and everyone weighs in. (I am predicting a slew of stories on the the freakishly muscular thighs of Nick Bosa, but who knows?)
And that’s just the football. You know the drill. Years ago someone from MTV showed up and started asking questions like: If you were a tree what kind would you be? And started the whole what’s-the-goofiest-question-at-the-Super-Bowl-thing.
And that’s just part of it. Even the halftime acts have their own press conference.
Anyhow, the week before SB Week, Nick Bosa was asked — for the second time in 20 minutes — how it will feel to play in the Big Game in Florida, where he grew up.
I think I just got that question, Bosa said.
Oh Nick. If you’re annoyed at getting asked the same question twice, you are in for a rude awakening at the Super Bowl.
Joltin’ John Bolton
The news about John Bolton’s book has sent the news cycle into overdrive. Some pundits are predicting it is a huge, and potentially impeachable problem for the Republicans.
WaPo's Jennifer Rubin, a vociferous Trump critic, laid out the case.
And that’s swell. Could it really be the smoking gun that catches Trump in a blatant and illegal lie? Sure.
Here’s the problem. That’s what we thought about the Access Hollywood tape, where Trump could be heard making his notorious “grab them by . . .” comments during the campaign. When it came out it seemed like such a fatal blow that Reince Priebus — later to be Trump’s chief of staff — recommended that Trump drop out of the race.
And, we also thought it was devastating to find that former FBI Director James Comey kept dated, detailed notes of his conversations with Trump.
Comey said Trump asked him to back off on investigations of Mike Flynn, Trump’s embattled National Security Advisor, who has pled guilty to lying to the FBI. Comey said Trump specifically told him he hoped he could “let it go.” Surely the country would see the dishonesty and back room dealing after seeing the Comey notes.
Then there was the absolute, dead-bang certain gotcha — the report of Special Counsel Robert Mueller.
Mueller’s long-awaited report was studiously legal and nuanced, but it did contain evidence of obstruction
White House legal counsel Dan McGahan told Mueller investigators that not only did Trump order him to fire Mueller, but when the story leaked, Trump wanted him to deny it happened. He even went so far as to tell McGahan to create a fictional letter, saying Trump had never suggested firing Mueller.
And yet none of that has stopped the zombie presidency. Whatever is reported, Trump denies that it happened and distracts with attacks some random target.
There’s an uproar for a time, and then we move on to the next Tweet outrage.
It isn’t as if we haven’t been warned. Consider the cottage industry of books already written on the Trump presidency. I haven’t read them all, but I have gotten through “Fire and Fury,” by Michael Wolff, “A Warning,” by Anonymous, “Fear” by Bob Woodward and am currently halfway finished with “Very Stable Genius,” by two Washington Post Pulitzer Prize winners.
And in each case, we are told that Trump is ill-informed, lawless, crude, vindictive, cruel, petty, vain and prone to titanic rages. That he continues to alienate his closest advisors and staff, who eventually sour on him and leave.
At this point there is only one response to all of that.
We know.
He seems like an awful person. After she left the White House, even Hope Hicks, one of his most loyal staff members, reached the point that she stopped answering the phone when Trump called.
And she was a forever Trumper.
It seems entirely likely that this is exactly who he is. And yet, through a series of insults, lies and misdirection, Trump has managed to stay afloat in this presidency. Lots of us may have high hopes for impeachment, but let’s be honest.
It’s a long, long shot.
The way to remove Trump is to vote him from office in November. And if that doesn’t work, the fundamentals of this republic are in serious trouble.
Maureen Dowd walks on water
We get the Sunday New York Times. That also gives us access to the internet version, which we read. But on Sunday we get the hard copy newsprint edition. In an OK Boomer moment, I go to the front door, pick it up and sit down with a cup of coffee.
The first thing I do is go to the Sunday Review section to see if Maureen Dowd has written a column. (Sometimes she skips Sundays.)
I thought this Sunday’s was particularly good. By which I mean particularly bad.
Dowd went to the impeachment hearings and came away with a gloomy sense of inevitability. Trump’s going to survive this, she said. The Republicans are so confident she describes confident GOP staffers having pub crawls with bottles of wine in the Senate office building after hours.
One Democratic Senate staffer mourned the apathy. “Our phones aren’t ringing,” he told me. “Nobody cares. It’s the saddest thing ever.”
Sigh.