The Snide

We have now seen how much arrogance money can buy. And it's not a pretty sight.

Donald Trump, will you please sit down and quit disturbing the other children?

Donald Trump is a racist. He is a bully. He is a joke of his own making. He is not very bright, and has that irritating middle school narcissism shared by other half-bright wing dings like Sarah Palin.

In fact, there is something just so middle school about that whole clique of Palin and Trump and Bachmann and to a lesser extent, Boehner. Something about the way they back bite, curl their lip at the rest of us, say stupid things and accuse people who point out the stupidity of "hating" or being envious or something else unrelated, like, or, or, or like, you know, they have a bad complexion and their mom, you know, drives an old Ford.

As if they get to say what they want and not be challenged because of who they are.

They get their slavish friends to nominate them for class president because, like, you know, they will put on just the most fabulous dance and play their favorite music, you know, and like if those other people don't like it they just should have been elected and maybe not come and they are just such a drag anyway ...

It's not that they are on the right: There are many, many wonderfully astute thinkers on the right, men and women with good ideas and the ability to articulate them. And it's not that the left doesn't have its own heaping helping of hubris.

But instead of a debate about ideas, we have these plastic Barbie and Ken dolls with their plastic smiles and plastic hair saying stupid things about ... birth certificates? Whether kids who knew him in elementary school remembered the president?

Oh, just shut up. You are tiresome and annoying and if you didn't have money or self generated momentum, no one would bother with you. Very few of those paying attention are friends. They don't really like you, either.

Can anyone, anyone? really compare Sarah Palin and Donald Trump to Obama? To Bill Clinton? To George H.W. Bush? To Eisenhower? FDR? Lincoln? Jefferson, etc?

Ever since the simulacrum Ronald Reagan, senile for a good portion of his presidency, was in office and the right realized it was only necessary to have an image of a president to be the face of policy, an actor instead of an actual person, we have suffered this train of Presidential presenters from the right.

Somewhat like news presenters, standing in front of a camera wearing a slicker in a hurricane, posing as journalists. Speaking of which, to the so-called journalists of America: WTF?

Needed now more than ever, you have ceded your responsibilities to Fox and the Huffington Post? Why are Al Jazeera and Jon Stewart the most reasonable representatives of the Fourth Estate? Where are you? Where have you gone?

It's good news

For 20 years I anticipated that the nature of reading, and newspapers, would change. My argument was that the laws of economics would not tolerate printing ink and postage if a cheaper method of transmitting information was available.

I was wrong, sort of. Then, not now. The day may actually be close at hand. Literally.

Two weeks ago I finally got tired of waiting for AT&T to bring the iPhone to Central Oregon and I bought an Android smart phone. One of it's features is a browser. Doesn't cost me any more to use than my old plan.

The screen is bright and sharp. And interestingly, it is about the width of a column of type in a newspaper. I can read The Nugget Newspaper of Sisters Oregon, or the New York Times. I can make the type larger or smaller. It is convenient to read at the coffee shop, or the doctor's office, in my car waiting for my daughters after school.

This may be it, the end of newsPAPERS as we know them. I may have been early, but others have written about the convenience of the small screen (read it here).

That does not mean it is the end of "news." Yes, newspapers are falling on hard times with competition from Google and Craig's list. Yes, the financial model of news organizations will have to change.

But as the efficiency of electronic transmission of information hammers traditional papers, there is still money to be made from content. There will be a transition, but at some point, good writers and good editors will prevail, as much because of the glut of information as despite it. We will turn to sources we can trust over time.

Readers will find quality because it has value.

Even as we assimilate it from our phones.