On the 30th Anniversary of the civilian nuclear disaster at Chernobyl, located just 70 miles north of Kiev, Ukraine, the New York Times has published the most astonishing story to appear about the catastrophe over three decades.  The story is mind- boggling in it’s breadth, depth and scope and terrifying in its implications.  I only wish that Mario Cuomo and Nora Bredes, both of whom I had the honor of working with to shut down the Shoreham Nuclear Power Plant 60 miles east of New York City, were alive to read this story today, to see how prescient they were.

Please read the story linked to below entitled: “Chernobyl: Capping a Catastrophe,” by the New York Times’ Henry Fountain.  

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2014/04/27/science/chernobyl-capping-a-catastrophe.html?smid=fb-share

Source of photo: What is Chernobyl?

Snarky liberals, late-night comedians, and Donald Trump detractors, like me, had a field day attacking Trump for saying he loved the “Poorly Educated.” We chortled with glee at the image of the bearded, pot-bellied, gun-gripping, redneck men and the Casino ladies with puffy hair and raspy cigarette voices, ranting their blind loyalty to their dear, demented Donald.

Well, we’ve missed the other half of the story.

On the other side of the political spectrum, I’ve been dumbfounded by the depths of contempt which Bernie Sanders’ proudly “Partially Educated” smug, storm troopers have for the facts, experience, qualifications, history and humanity. Trump’s “Poorly Educated” are convinced that their personal failures can seize power by electing—who else?—a YUUUUUGE failure. In the case of Bernie’s arrogant, “Partially Educated,” they know what they know in “real time” (aka, from the internet) and don’t know much about history, or real people, nor care. All they know is that they’re right, and we’re wrong.  Especially if we, like the New York Times Editorial Board, believe Hillary Clinton is the most “broadly and deeply qualified candidate for President in our time.”

This week, Bernie Sanders told the Editors of the New York Daily News that he did not favor the strict liability approach to gun manufacturers which the parents of the children slaughtered in the Sandy Hook gun massacre were testing in court.   Bernie’s words were his own, not someone else’s, not filtered through an editor, nor a columnist. They were not something his supporters could blame on “corporate media”, as they love to do, when they are unable to refute the facts presented. They were Sanders’ own words–entirely consistent with the anti-strict liability position he has held for years, and consistent with his six votes against the most famous gun-control legislation of his time in Congress, the Brady Bill. Plus, the Daily News has become a crusading, muckraking publication, unleashing a new generation of fantastic front-pages devastating to Right-Wingers and hypocrites, including Trump and Ted Cruz.  After his insensitive Sandy Hook comments, add Bernie to their list.

None of that “history” matters with Bernie’s “Partially Educated,” but fully privileged supporters, most of whom are white, progressive, well-off, and have, fortunately, never lost a child to gun violence. In a dialogue about the actual text of what Bernie said on the Sandy Hook case, one of his supporters told me that I was “letting the fly wag the ointment” by focusing on gun violence and not on the “bigger issues” Bernie was advancing.

Stunned by this Sanders’ supporter’s abject arrogance and inhumanity, I responded that “ the significance of the lives of the children of Sandy Hook parents blown apart by weapons of mass destruction is FAR more important than any political campaign.

His response? Are you sitting down?

“Oh, rubbish,” he said. “How about he slaughter of hundreds of Palestinian children in the Gaza war at the hands of Israel.”

The Bernie advocate compounded his horrendous, ignorant insult to the Sandy Hook parents whose children were ripped apart by bullets in an elementary school, not a war zone, with this screed:

“If you’re gong to blather on about the sacredness of children, as if they are the sole currency of the future, try to take a more global view and recognize that our government underwrites the slaughter as a matter of routine…To say that the Sandy Hook parents are FAR more important than ANY political campaign is just stupid.”

Yes, he actually said that.

This particular “Partially Educated” Bernie supporter, whom I later discovered lived in Montreal and posts photos of his beloved cat all over his Facebook page, then told me to “ease up on the sentimental, heterosexual, American exceptionalist claptrap,” and concluded our conversation by calling me an “idiot.”

I told him that I hoped to meet him in person someday so I could have the pleasure of punching him in the nose. At that, he folded up his pseudo-intellectual credentials and hid in his kitty’s litter box, never to be heard from again, but reeking from the odor of his own stench.

Now, I understand this inhuman piece of excrement does not respresent Bernie’s views, nor most Bernie’s supporters. However his arrogant, pseudo-intellectual, holier-than-thou, intolerant, ideologically rigid, “Partially Educated” behavior is representative of too many Bernie supporters I have encountered.

If any of Bernie’s backers care to know why there’s a backlash in this country against people with a real-world experience, a sense of history , a respect for evidence-based learning and solid education, and why Trump’s nihilistic appeal has resonance , they can stop searching for answers.   The “Poorly Educated” and the smug “Partially-Educated” are indistinguishable from each other.

With Donald Trump’s “montage of misogyny”, as detailed by the New York Times, getting messier and more misogynistic each moment, and with Bernie Sanders support among many progressive Democrats continuing to grow, there is one, and only one, perfect candidate for Hillary Clinton to select right now, as her running mate: Senator Elizabeth Warren.

The reasons for this truly revolutionary, all-female ticket for President and Vice-President of the United States may not, at first look, be obvious. For weeks, as I’ve been floating the idea among friends and colleagues inside and out of politics, the standard retort has been that this country would never elect two women to the two highest offices in the land; that a national ticket needs to be “demographically” balanced; and, in a year when the Latino vote has been highlighted, that Hillary’s running mate must be Latino.   In fact, until the beginning of this year, I was a prisoner of that old way of thinking as well, favoring a ticket of Hillary Clinton and HHS Secretary Julian Castro of Texas. Three major developments over the past three months have changed that and pointed the way to the future.

First, a seminal early January interview on Decider—a media industry website– with NBC Universal’s EVP of Digital, Evan Shapiro, framed the issue in a way few, if any, politicians or pundits were looking at it. Here’s what Shapiro, the smartest human being on the planet when it comes to understanding all media and its applicability, had to say:

“ Television consumption defies demographics in ways that were the norm 25 years ago. I binge-watched Jessica Jones over Thanksgiving weekend with my wife and two daughters, ages 17 & 20. What is that demographic? That’s really a psychographic around a certain niche. It’s more about psychology than demography.”

The thing to understand about Shapiro, who now heads NBC’s comedy platform SeeSo (www.Seeso.com) and also guided the IFC network, Sundance and Participant TV before coming to NBC Universal, is that he just doesn’t pull this stuff out of his “very good brain,” the way Donald Trump makes up foreign policy. Shapiro is to media research what Nate Silver is to political data: he is the guru.   When he first arrived at NBC, Shapiro embarked upon a massive research project, interviewing 11,000 people about their on-line viewing habits. He currently has nine more media platforms in development for NBC and every decision is based upon meticulous research and analysis. So when Evan Shapiro says “It’s more about psychology than demography,” everyone would be wise to listen. The implication for media—and for society—is positively McCluhan-esque.

Secondly, while Donald Trump, trained in Reality TV, showed early signs of instinctively acting upon the Shapiro Shift away from demographics to psychographics, he has been acting like a contestant on “Survivor” over the past several weeks, eating his own skin– especially regarding his life-long Achilles High Heel: Women. From his insults to Carly Fiorina, Megyn Kelly and Hillary Clinton, to his adolescent spitballing of Heidi Cruz, to his bare suggestion of “some form of punishment” for women having an abortion, Trump has singlehandely put women’s rights and gender quality at the epicenter of the 2016 Presidential campaign.

Trump’s terrible tactics—clearly not the product of a very good brain, or heart, for that matter—have exacerbated the already large advantage Democrats hold with female voters. In 2012, Barack Obama defeated Mitt Romney 55-44 percent among women, sealing his re-election. As of this month, in separate polls conducted by both NBC and the New York Times, the GOP front-runner has a 70% negative rating among all women—Republicans and Democrats. If the election were held today, Hillary Clinton clobbers Trump, 58% to 31% among ALL women, a towering 27-point advantage. In short, Donald Trump has wiped out any political demographic concerning women, and created his own psychotic psychographic: the crazier he gets, and makes the GOP look, the better the Democrats do with all women, especially crucial suburban women.

Finally, the more successful Bernie Sanders is, the more delegates he amasses and the more state primaries or caucuses he wins, the more likely it becomes that the Democratic Party will need to be reunited across ideological—or psychographic–lines, rather than along traditional demographic lines.   There is only one person who can do that and double down on the tectonic gender chasm between both parties: Elizabeth Warren.

Clinton’s selection of Warren would represent the triumph of psychographics as an astute—and research tested—political strategy. It would bring about the “revolution” Bernie and his surrogates have been advocating, since few things could be more revolutionary in the United States than the first all-female national ticket in history. And, Elizabeth Warren—whose “Warren Wing” of the Democratic Party made it possible for Bernie to find fertile ground in a party he wasn’t a member of until last year— gives Sanders’ supporters—including Susan Sarandon—a place their psyches and their votes can comfortably call home. No one knows more about taking on Wall Street than Elizabeth Warren.

And, just for fun, think of how Trump, Cruz or any other representative of a misogynist movement masquerading as a political party for the last half-century, would flail and fail in the face of two of the most intelligent, articulate female public figures in history, Hillary Clinton and Elizabeth Warren. The Clinton/Warren revolution has arrived, and it will be televised–psychographically, of course.

With much of the “respectable” media now tripping over itself to engage in a tsunami of “Mea Culpa-ing” over having helped create The Deranged Dictator Donald Drumpf (with the notable exceptions of CBS’ Les Mooves, and NBC’s Brian Roberts and Steve Burke as well as Reality-TV guru Mark Burnett–all busy gleefully counting their gold generated by the Gold-Lame Liar) , I am compelled to reprint my blog from four months ago, where I laid out the media’s mendacity in feeding the facile Fascist monster.

I also want to shove this piece in the face of Fox News–now sanctimoniously harumpfing over Drumpf’s harassment of Megyn Kelly– the Murdoch/Ailes propaganda machine which made millions fanning the flames of fanaticism of Drumpfs Dumkopfs over the decades, and NBC’s Chuck Toddler of “Meet The Press” who FINALLY recognized that doing “phone-in” interviews with a phony does not qualify as even a high-school level of journalism.

Ah, it’s so tough being so far ahead of one’s time:

NBC & Mark Burnett’s New Reality Show:  “The Quasimodo of Queens.”

Tom Brokaw’s two and one-half minute noble tsk-tsking of Donald Trump’s full-blown Fascism—coming at the tail end of a little-watched Tuesday night 6 pm newscast—was far too little, way too late from the Broadcast network which made Trump an international TV star and helped launch his political career.

Now that Trump’s big, ugly Un-American backside has been bared for all to see, those wonderful folks who gave this monster a global platform to pedal his pernicious views, are beginning to have some second thoughts, but very few have anything to do with soul searching. NBC, for example did pay Donald Trump a total of $213, 606, 575 in salary to host 14 seasons of “The Apprentice”—an average of about $15 million per season, according to documents Trump’s campaign filed with the Federal Elections Commission. Then, after they handed Trump the bully’s pulpit to pick on everyone from the disabled, to Mexicans, to Syrian Refugees, to wounded war veterans, to Muslims, NBC—no longer seeing profit in Trump’s pugnaciousness—fired the Towering Inferno after he insulted all Mexicans in late June, 2015, during his announcement for President. NBC’s Latino market was just too big for the network to fail.

Financially, as well as cosmetically, NBC’s announcement to Dump Trump was good business. Following its’ first five years, “ The Apprentice” began to rapidly lose market share. NBC meanwhile, had become the NBC/Universal/Comcast monolith after 2009, rolling up big new profits in its cable, movie and amusement park businesses. Donald Trump, like Brian Williams, was expendable, especially since company chiefs Brian Roberts and Steve Burke are attached to their $30 million plus annual salaries. Trump no longer fit Comcast’s “do no fiscal harm policy”; the days of Trump and Mark Burnett’s United Artists Media Group raising revenue and NBC’s prime time ratings were over.

NBC and Burnett made Donald Trump—long viewed as another wannabe starlet in New York politics–richer, far more famous, and extraordinarily more powerful than he had ever been before. Trump’s small million dollar start up loan from his father, inheritance of the Trump real estate fortune built with federal funds for constructing middle-income housing, and even a New York Daily News front page headline boasting of the “Best Sex I’ve Ever Had” with Marla Maples, weren’t enough to get him the kind of attention he craved. He looked like a silly little post-card painter without serious recognition of his talent.

Then, along came Mark Burnett and NBC, and the inner Trump was let loose in the living rooms of millions of Americans through the mindlessness of Reality TV. Burnett, Trump’s co-producer on “Apprentice” and “Celebrity Apprentice”, and a prime mover in bringing Reality TV to American television with his “Survivor” in 2000, and other programming such as “The Voice,” “Shark Tank,” “ Sarah Palin’s Alaska (yes, that too) and, the aptly named “Are you smarter than a fifth-grader?” boasts a net worth estimated at somewhere between $385 million to $450 million—a fortune built on convincing Americans that eating bugs and spitting bile at people was entertainment. Trump spotted a winning formula for his brand of bragadaccio, and a malleable audience to swallow his hollow values and hateful views.

Forbes reported earlier this year that Trump’s entertainment-related income since 2004—the first, and most successful year of “The Apprentice”– was approximately $500 million, from his books, speeches, beauty pageants and Reality-TV employment, the bulk of which, came from NBC, and was made possible by his ten-year run on the NBC aired reality show–including nearly $100 million in product-placement fees Trump and “Apprentice” co-producer Burnett got from shaking down program sponsors like Pepsi and Crest.

NBC can roll out all of the Tom Brokaw mea culpa commentaries it wants; it can feign high-dudgeon by having Joe Scarborough cut off Trump after allowing the Quasimodo of Queens to rant on for four minutes. The network created this monster, and, with the willing leadership of programming ghouls like Mark Burnett, it disarmed the audience of any analytical ability to recognize that its collective brain was being snatched.

Not since 1968, have I seen such dangerous animosity—and shortsighted opponent bashing—between mainstream and insurgent Democrats. The consequences of the philosophical feud for the soul of the Democratic Party were catastrophic for the country then, by helping elect Richard Nixon.  In 2016, the outcome could be far, far worse, since the GOP candidates are much more terrifying than Nixon.  Lost in all the rancor and self-righteousness on both sides is Bernie Sander’s prophetic quote: “Even on our worst days (his and Hillary’s) we are 100 times better than any of the Republican Candidates.”

The most pertinent historical analogy for the Election of 2016 that is nearly spot on is the election of 1968. Many of us, as Anti-Vietnam War college students & activists, were deeply involved in either Gene McCarthy’s or Bobby Kennedy’s Presidential campaigns against the Democratic establishment. Just as Hillary Clinton is vilified by many of Bernie Sander’s backers, we despised Hubert Humphrey, because he was tied to LBJ’s policies of pursuing the War in Vietnam. Many of us die-hards on the Left downplayed HHH’s impeccable Civil Rights Record and his courage in the U.S. Senate fighting the Dixiecrats. We were blinded by the righteousness of our cause, and no Vice-President of LBJ’s could carry our banner.

In June, 1968, RFK was assassinated after winning the California Primary. Eugene McCarthy’s candidacy fizzled and George McGovern (yes, the same one) became the RFK stand in.   The Democratic establishment was best personified by the Chicago Police’s gestapo tactics against anti-war demonstrators on the streets of Chicago, and Mayor Richard Daley shouting down liberal Senator Abe Ribicoff from the floor of the Democratic National Convention.  They crushed what was left of our spirits and overwhelmed us politically. Many of my colleagues on the Left, just left politics to go lick their wounds.

Rather than mourn, I plunged headlong into the US Senate Campaign of Paul O’Dwyer in NY against incumbent GOP Senator Jacob Javits. O’Dwyer was a leader of the anti-war movement, a Democratic Socialist long before Bernie Sanders held office, a great civil rights lawyer, my political mentor before Mario Cuomo, and a superb human being. Many of my fellow Kennedy/McCarthy supporters, still angry from defeat, vowed to sit out the election, even if it meant electing Richard Nixon. Humphrey then, like Hillary now, became an irrational object of hatred, despite a 100% Congressional rating from the Americans for Democratic Action, the leading Progressive group of that time.

O’Dwyer struggled for weeks over whether or not to endorse Humphrey. One week before the election he finally did, in the interest of defeating Nixon, Roger Ailes (who masterminded Nixon’s campaign) and their dangerous friends. I followed O’Dwyer’s leadership, and spent hours arguing with friends about the necessity to stop being petulant, swallow our wounded pride and support Humphrey because the U.S. Supreme Court was at stake, as well as progress on Civil Rights. The Nixon/Ailes “Southern Strategy” and the powerful racist Third Party candidacy of George Wallace had placed all of the social justice gains of the 1960’s at risk.   Although too young to vote for President in 1968 (the voting age was then 21),  I campaigned vigorously for Hubert H. Humphrey on the strength of his Civil Rights Record, and the future of the Supreme Court.   Devastatingly, many fervent anti-War activists who were old enough to vote stayed home, helping Nixon win the presidency by a mere 500,000 votes. Nixon went on the destroy the U.S. Supreme Court by appointing the likes of William Rehnquist as a justice, despite Rehnquist’s record as a Republican political operative in Arizona of actively preventing Blacks from voting.   Nixon also stepped up bombing in Vietnam (and Cambodia), dismantled civil rights protections,  and repeatedly violated the Constitution during Watergate.

The lessons of 1968 should not be lost on us in 2016. The real danger from an increasingly irresponsible breach between Bernie’s and Hillary’s backers is the fact that if either stay home—or support a Third Party candidacy of someone like, say, Michael Bloomberg–the Supreme Court will be lost for generations, as well as any lingering hope of advancing human rights, or mitigating the already damaging consequences of Climate Change upon our children. The effect of such catastrophic catcalling and bitterness against each could cause irreparable harm to the country, giving us a newer, far more dangerous version of Richard Nixon, and a much more powerful and insidious Roger Ailes, now in control of Fox News, determined to turn back 60 years of progress on civil rights keeping power in the hands of wealthy, white-male, Right Wingers, and leaving the rest of us behind.

President Obama’s final State of the Union (SOTU, for Tweet geeks) was like a glass of warm milk. Comforting, gentle and sleep inducing.

Having contributed to a few of Mario M. Cuomo’s speeches (like his speech at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine, when NYC was reeling from riots in Crown Heights, and his NY Press Club speech on the First Amendment) my expectations for every important speech by a chief executive are extraordinarily high. Admittedly, I was spoiled by a master of the craft.

But, on the heels of his brilliant and poignant press conference on gun control a few weeks ago which had me, and himself, in tears, I expected Obama’s rhetoric and emotions to send the Capitol Dome into orbit—a Steph Curry like finish in the biggest fourth-quarter of his career.   But Obama proved, once again, that he was neither a Cuomo nor a Curry, but the same cautious guy who talked about getting red & blue states to be nice to each other, 12 years earlier.

After seven years of increasing partisan rancor, scarcely any of which was his fault as a focused, problem-solving President, Obama took the blame for not being able to diffuse it.  That’s like someone being badgered with “When-did-you-stop-beating-your-wife?” questions and instead of hitting the insulting troll in the nose for the insinuation and forcefully saying, “I never started,” Obama admitted that maybe he should have been nicer to the abusive questioner. Pulllleeeeeese, Barack.

While his so-soothing speech contained a few barbs aimed at Ted Cruz and Donald Trump, Chris Christie and Mitch McConnell, and made a logical—and economically sensible—case for leading on climate change, Obama’s hour long fireside chat lacked fire.   Rather than lamenting obstacles in the way of voter participation and exhorting citizens to vote, a President can direct the U.S. Justice Department to legally challenge every single attempt to undermine voting rights. What was lacking on the voting rights issue, and on most others in Obama’s so-so speech, was a commitment to enforce the lofty ideals he believes in—ideals for justice and human dignity; ideals which led many of us to support him early on in his quest for the Presidency.

Despite living in NYC and being a constituent of Senator Hillary Clinton’s, I was an ardent Obama supporter going back to 2007. Attending one of the first fund-raisers for Obama at the Sheraton Manhattan Hotel with a few thousand die-hards, I was swept up in a wave of passion and hope which rippled through the mixed age, mixed-race crowd. Young people of color, clamoring to get close to the stage, held their cellphones high, cameras clicking as he spoke. This was our moment, and I was transported back to the first Bobby Kennedy rally I attended as a 15 years old, when RFK campaigned for U.S. Senator from New York.   At that rally, I held up a huge white sheet, with the words “Hello Bobby” painted on it in blue paint, and I was certain we would change the world for the better.

Forty-three years later, I held up my hands for Obama and cheered, whistling my ballpark whistle, feeling good about a new generation joining the fight for justice and equality. Having been robbed of two Kennedys and a King by gun violence, perhaps my hopes were too high, or I endowed Obama with gifts of leadership and toughness he never possessed.

The President said as much, in his last-hurrah speech, noting that if he were a Roosevelt or a Lincoln, he might have been able to get feuding factions to find common ground. It was a clever attempt to neutralize his critics, on both sides of the aisle, by invoking the images of Presidential giants leading a divided nation during times of great stress. However, his veiled comparison of crass political bickering to the national catastrophes of the Civil War and the Great Depression, was a classic Obama head fake.

Instead, his SOTU swan song, sounded to me, like a surrender. Once again, he backed away from hitting his disloyal opposition squarely between the eyes; once again, he attempted to play nice with the barnyard bullies bent on eviscerating his entrails. Obama’s last SOTU, became so…so… “too”: too soft, too little, too long, too accommodating, too trusting, too conciliatory, too weak and far too understanding,

And now, it’s too late for Obama to beat the shot clock, or hit an unbelievable three-pointer from beyond the paint. We’ve already seen all his moves.