Would we be better off ignoring Bannon than protesting his presence?

It was a rule of thumb I once heard from a former news colleague about the importance of covering events by white supremacists and other crackpots – it was important to do so in order to expose them.

BANNON: Better off ignored?

Let the public see how lame and pathetic they truly are so as to discredit anything they ever have to say.

A PART OF me was always skeptical of such logic – particularly in this Age of Trump that we’re now in where the crackpots are more than eager to scream “fake news” and want to believe only what falls in line with their own loony ideology.

They’re more than likely to want to believe the loony talk and use the fact that it got covered as evidence of its truthfulness.

So what do I think of those University of Chicago students who on Thursday felt compelled to protest the possible presence of one-time Trump adviser Steven Bannon on the Hyde Park neighborhood campus?

I actually wonder if this is an instance where Bannon would be likely to show up, draw a miniscule crowd and wind up being ignored. Whereas attention has now been drawn to his possible arrival, and Bannon himself is likely to have a bolstered ego as a result.

AFTER ALL, WOULD so many people get so pissed off if he weren’t such an important person? If we’d ignore him, it might be a blow to his ego by showing how irrelevant he and his followers are to the true majority of our society.

For the record, a professor at the Booth School of Business invited Bannon (who when he wasn’t working for the Trump administration was, until recently, the head of a website devoted to spewing the kind of rhetoric the crackpots enjoy) to be a part of a forum on globalization and immigration.

Bannon, whom many have claimed is motivated by racist ideas, would be expected to speak out on how bad those ideas are for our nation, while an academic type yet-to-be-determined would speak on their behalf.

TRUMP: Backers consider protests a win

I could easily envision such a program attracting a couple-dozen spectators on campus, with no attention paid by the general public.

EXCEPT NOW, THEY’RE going to be able to boast to dozens of protesters tossing out rhetoric such as “Nazi thug” and “illegitimate fascist.”

Which I’m sure Bannon and his ilk will somehow take as signs of how “out-of-touch” the majority of us are with them. Only they want to believe they’re the majority. Yes, I think that when Bannon learned of this outburst, his ego got bloated.

Which is the last thing I would want to see become of a man who was considered by some to be the brains behind the most absurd of President Donald Trump’s ridiculous rhetoric during the months last year when Bannon actually had a White House office and Oval Office access.

A part of me believes this so much because I remember back to my own college days in the mid-1980s – back when a big issue for protest were the apartheid policies that resulted in a racially-segregated South Africa. Many U.S. businesses made a point of cutting their investment there so as to try to sway protests.

I REMEMBER THE protests that took place, and the forums held on campus that did little to sway anybody. In fact, I always suspected the people most inclined to back the old regime (from back in the days when Nelson Mandela was regarded as just another black man in prison) took a certain amount of pride.

A moment from the dismal past

Particularly whenever they started screaming “Communist” to describe Mandela and anybody else who had a problem with a roughly 10 percent minority being in charge of the country as a whole.

There are times I wonder if such rhetoric actually prolonged the existence of the old South Africa that might have withered away more quickly if we hadn’t made the nitwits feel all the more important for their rancid rhetoric.

Just as I’m sure there are those who are eagerly awaiting the day that Trump and his allies get reduced back to irrelevance within our society just as the days of separateness are now an absurd part of South Africa’s past.

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Trump needs new target; will it be the nation's Mexican-American population?

No matter how much President Donald J. Trump wants to say that Democrats will take the blame for the failure of his version of health care reform to pass, the masses are fully prepared to blame the Trumpster himself.

Will we soon see uptick in Trump piñatas?

And since in the world of The Donald, he is all knowing, all wise and never fails at anything, I’m sure that Trump is now scouring the scene for another issue that he can score a quick victory on.

ONE THAT WILL allow him to rebound with something resembling success. Something that he hopes will be considered more important than any mere loss with regards to health insurance access.

Which is an overly complicated issue that no one should have expected the Trumpites of the world to achieve any level of success. Even the brightest of minds have trouble with the nuances of insurance and health care. And let’s be honest, we don’t have the brightest of minds in charge of our government these days.

We have the most egomaniacal of ideologues, and ones with a nativist streak that tends to outright xenophobia.

Personally, I can’t get around the fact that the Trump presidential fantasies (nightmares for the majority of us) began with the attacks he made on Mexico and those people in this country with ethnic ties to the land down south – although in some of our cases, it was the border dropping south so that our great-great grandfathers went from being Mexican to “American.”

ALBEIT A SECOND-class status of American, because the Anglo types who settled the Southwest likely would never have done so if they had thought all those people already living there would be treated equal to them.

Will this site become common?

In my mind, the failure of Donald Trump and his pathetic band of backers to erase former President Barack Obama’s version of health care reform from the books means he’s going to try to revamp his persona with a political victory of sorts against the foreigners.

And since he has now repeatedly failed in his efforts to pass travel restrictions against people from nations where Islam is a predominant religion, he may decide that he needs to get his victory at the hands of Latinos.

Whom he’ll probably proclaim to all be Mexicans. Even the ones of Puerto Rican ancestry who have U.S. citizenship by birth, or the ones from Cuba who still get preferential treatment because of the old desire to do things that humiliate the now-deceased Fidel Castro.

I KNOW THAT in a lot of Spanish-tinged enclaves and neighborhoods in this country, including in Chicago, there is the increased sense of paranoia that immigration agents are on the verge of being unleashed for mass rounds of deportation.

Can this wall really be made to look pretty?

Which may even pick up a few U.S. citizen-types of Latino backgrounds, because the bulk of Trump backers really are clueless when it comes to distinguishing people – except to be able to say who isn’t exactly like themselves!

Could Trump’s wrath take the form of some dramatic action to try to force a confrontation about “the wall” that the president has said he wants erected along the 1,900-mile U.S./Mexico border?

The one that supposedly will be 30 feet high and beautiful to look at, from the U.S. side. Although I can already envision the graffiti marring it, along with the tunnels that will wind up underneath. Why do I suspect that any border wall will be as secure as Stalag 13 from that staple of 1960’s television “Hogan’s Heroes?”

If Trump is Klink, who's playing the part of Col. Hogan?

DOES THAT MAKE White House strategist Steve Bannon the equivalent of actor John Banner’s “Sgt. Hans ‘I know nothing’ Schultz?” With Trump himself as the immortal Col. Wilhelm Klink – making ridiculous boasts about how “No one escapes from Stalag 13” – which was about as accurate as all the “fake news” that Trump now spews on ever so many issues.

Or are we really in line for some immigration raids so we can get a few busloads of people being driven back across the border into Mexico – and in the process, probably a kid or two who gets mistaken for Mexican (and probably will wind up having parents who voted for the Trumpster)!

Winnah, and still Champeen?!?

President Trump has just shown too much incompetence, but has too big an ego to let it go and try to think the issue through rationally. Like in the 1978 film “Animal House,” when the Delta fraternity responds to their being expelled from college with “a really futile and stupid gesture be done on somebody’s part.”

The best we, the true majority of our society, can hope for is that their streak of political incompetence continues. Although the one sad truth is that real people will wind up getting hurt – all to salvage the ego of the man who couldn’t beat Obamacare!

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¿Un enemigo? Methinks Trump needs to find himself a hobby for amusement

Much rhetoric has been spewed from all angles with regards to President Donald J. Trump’s need to go on a rant last week in which he labeled those people who work in the newsgathering business as “the enemy.”

TRUMP: Does majority listen?

Which amuses me, in a sense. Because it does not come as a shock to me to learn that certain political-type people are basically insecure enough in their own existence that they see great conspiracies at work by those who serve to keep the public informed as to what takes place in our society.

HECK, I HAVE been called worse. I know of a rant that exists somewhere on the Internet that labels me a subversive and suggests I have no business being in this country.

The person who wrote that did so after I wrote a commentary for a former employer pointing out his own crackpot nature. Besides, I later discovered that the website he used to publish his rant was also filled with rants lambasting several television news anchors and reporters – and in fact the entire Telemundo television network.

I felt in good company then, and I’m going to feel like I’m on the right side of things now by having the Trumpster tremble at the very thought of my news brethren. I can make people of his ilk tremble and quake in their pants just by pulling out my notepad and pen and taking down what they say.

Which is what really bothers the people who have such negative sentiments. The idea that they can’t control every thought they spew out into the world – although the truth is if they only put a little thought into what they said, there’d be no reason for them to be fearful.

JUST LIKE TRUMP’S most recent rant – the one about the terrorist attack in Sweden that apparently never happened. I suspect that what really happened is that Trump became aware of reports indicating an increase in the number of non-native people coming to Sweden.

They're not supposed to be presidential 'friends'

And if they’re foreigners, of course they have to be up to no good. So naturally, there has to be terrorism at its root.

At the very least, it could turn out that a Swedish bikini team (remember those ads for Old Milwaukee beer?) of the future wouldn’t be filled exclusively with blondes whom Trump could fantasize about grabbing by their most personal of body parts.

Oh, the horrors!

IF IT SEEMS like I mock the people who are most critical of my professional life, you’d be correct. It’s just too difficult to take them seriously.

The extent to which Trump likely comprehends Sweden

Besides, I find enough government officials who are secure enough in their personalities that they comprehend the nature of the give-and-take of dealing with a reporter-type person. I’ve also been encouraged by the sense of support I have read coming from many people who are offended at how paranoid our president appears to be.

There may be that poll of a few weeks ago that said some 90 percent of people who voted for Trump back in November were satisfied with his behavior. But I sense that the 54 percent who voted for Hillary Clinton or someone else because they absolutely did NOT want the concept of a “President Donald J. Trump” are emboldened even further.

Society as a whole has the right idea. Besides, I know personally that as a reporter-type person, I’ve never viewed my work as a potential source of material for making friends. Being able to tolerate each other is the best I often hope for in my professional dealings.

Obama relegated to lesser role with each passing day

SO DO I fear being labeled “the enemy” (or the “opposition party,” as Trump aide Steve Bannon put it a few weeks ago)? I do realize that Trump has shown signs of being unstable enough to try to go too far. But I also believe that sense will prevail in our society.

There have been too many times during the three decades I have covered news that government officials have surprised me by doing the right thing. Who knows, it may even turn out to be Trump himself who comes to his senses? Maybe, maybe not!

All I know is that I now find humorous that Columbia Journalism Review study of 2014 that found former President Barack Obama’s press relations to be terrible – he “gives long answers, leaving little time for other questions and rarely makes news.”

Somehow, I sense many now feel a longing for the good ol’ days of a month ago – and the Trump legacy could be that it makes many realize how much more sane and sensible the Days of Obama truly were!

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