Viral Spring #18: If I Had a Hammer

-- By Tom Phillips
                            
Thirty-one years ago this spring, I was in Tiananmen Square amid a huge peaceful protest -- the largest the world has ever seen, the center of a nationwide movement for democracy in China.  As the protests built across every major city in China, the mood was euphoric; it seemed impossible for the ruling communist party to ignore the pent-up demands for personal and political freedom.

Americans are feeling the same euphoria today, as young people -- black, brown and white together -- turn out en masse in peaceful protests against racism and police brutality, and a president who embodies these abuses by denying them. With his poll numbers falling and ex-aides blasting him in public, it looks like a rout to some. "The Trump Regime is Beginning to Topple," headlined the Atlantic a few days ago.  

                                            

                               If I had a hammer, I'd hammer in the morning

                               I'd hammer in the evening, all over this land..  

Viral Spring #3: Cuomo's Moment; Darkness on the Heights

-- By Tom Phillips
   

One by one, the lights are going out in Morningside Heights, as restaurants close, grocery stores and pharmacies limit the number of customers inside, and other businesses stay open, but with reduced hours and only to hand things off at the door.  For the first time ever, customers have to line up outside West Side Market... and live without the late-night luxury of Koronet Pizza.

Suddenly, we know several people sick with the coronavirus.  One is in a hospital in Brooklyn.  Her daughter is not allowed to visit.

Tom's Restaurant is closed for the duration. The Hungarian Pastry Shop went dark today.  Everyone with a second home or children in the countryside has left town.  A young couple in our building were packing their vacation gear and their big dog in a car Saturday, hoping to head for the Outer Banks of North Carolina.  The beaches there are closed, but you can't really close a beach, right?  I don't know, I said.  But driving with New York plates, you might get pulled over and quarantined. Rhode Island is already doing it.  Who knows where they'll crack down next?

The rest of America finally has a reason to persecute New Yorkers.  We may replace Asians in the role of chief scapegoats, reviled and spat on in the streets, or locked up until we prove ourselves healthy.  Only because Fox News is itself based in New York can we be confident that what they call the  "Chinese Coronavirus"won't turn into the "New York Coronavirus" on Fox TV. 

That Murrow Moment

 -- By Tom Phillips

Last summer, journalists great and small were questioning whether 2016 was a "Murrow Moment"  -- whether they should cast off their  professional neutrality and warn the nation about the dangers of Donald Trump.  The New York Times, after a brief struggle, went all in -- calling out his falsehoods in every news story, while thundering daily denunciations from the editorial and Op-ed pages.

The Huffington Post huffed and posted -- and tagged every story with a disclaimer, complete with otiose adjectives:  "Trump is a serial liar, rampant xenophobe, racist, misogynist etc etc.."

On election night, Rachel Maddow melted down, blaming his win on the hapless Libertarian candidate who siphoned votes from who knows who?  MSNBC punctuated its coverage with sighs of grief and an audible "Jeez.."

Even the supposed right-wing nuts who led Fox News's coverage were in denial: long after midnight, Shepard Smith was looking grimly away from the handwriting on the wall, murmuring  "it's not over, it's not over."

But it is.   The "Murrow Moment" has come and gone.  Those who tried to turn the tide found the power of the press was zero, or less.