Barbwire by Barbáno: Trumping Reagan's television rules

   Everybody knows the dice are loaded.
Everybody rolls with their fingers crossed.
   Everybody knows the war is over.
Everybody knows the good guys lost.
   Everybody knows the fight was fixed.
The poor stay poor, the rich get rich.
   That's how it goes. Everybody knows...
Everybody knows the scene is dead
   But there's gonna be a meter on your bed
That will disclose
   What everybody knows...
   Everybody talking to their pockets.
Everybody wants a box of chocolates
   and a long red rose.
   Everybody knows. Everybody knows.
That's how it goes. Everybody knows.

— Leonard Cohen, 1934-2016

I hope you understand I just had to go back to the island.
— Leon Russell, 1942-2016

Trumping Reagan's television rules
Barbwire by Andrew Barbáno / Expanded from the 5-16-2017 Sparks Tribune / Updated 5-18-2017 / Expansions in blue.

President Trump governs by reaction to media reactions to his reactions.

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Be well. Raise hell.

Andrew

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How to provide adult supervision to such destructive pre-pubescence? The answer comes from former Nevada State Assembly Majority Leader Gene Evans, D-Elko. (Yes, Virginia, there was a time when Democrats were not shot on sight in Elko County.)

Bill Harrah found Evans impressive and hired the Elko Independent-News editor.

Years later in the booming 1970s, Fun & Gaming magazine publishers Phil Olsson and John Cronan visited Evans in his Mapes Hotel office and lamented that they could not get Harrah's to advertise.

Evans advised them to "print one edition in which the name of Harrah's is not mentioned once."

Harrah's immediately became a regular Fun & Gaming advertiser.

The late, great Evans' advice provides insight about handling Tsar Donaldov Vladimirovitch Trumpsky. Some network needs to summon the courage to exercise what used to be called news judgment. That means some stories belong on page one, some on page six, some don't run.

That's hard to do with Trump because he provides pictures, even if only Twitter pages. Former Reagan media maven Michael Deaver set the standard.

"We felt like Hollywood television producers," he once told Leslie Stahl on 60 Minutes. Every day, White House staff engineered a photo op featuring Ronald the Vague which gave the media two choices: Run what we give you or nothing. So they swallowed whatever Deaver fed them.

Reagan was even able to perpetrate the fraud of caring about black ghetto blight by standing in front of a burned-out Harlem apartment building on the same day his administration announced major cuts in urban housing programs.

"They didn't hear you," Deaver told Stahl, who stated that CBS noted the disparity in its story. All viewers retained was Reagan jovially showing how much he cared.

Our petulant current president cannot be controlled but can be contained if anyone has the guts. Such treatment will cause Trump to constantly attack the offending medium for censoring his wonderfulness — which will bring more viewers to that network.

GET A ROPE DEPT. Were Trump a Democrat, the House of Representatives would already be preparing articles of impeachment for treason after the latest revelations about presidential footsie with Tsar Vladimir's minions. The impact of the ISIL security breach has been diminished because of Trump's unrelenting media hot-dogging and a compliant press corps' enthusiastic stenography of all things Donald.

TRAVUS T. HIPP, 1937-2012. This Thursday marks the fifth anniversary of the death of Tribune columnist and legendary west coast talk radio host Chandler Atchison Laughlin, Jr., aka Travus T. Hipp. He is a member of the Nevada Broadcasters Hall of Fame and the Barbwire Molly Ivins Memorial Columniator Hall of Flames. The latter is extremely exclusive with only seven members. His impact on this region when he ruled local airwaves in the early 1980s has never been equaled. He was my friend.

Travus died 84 years to the day after legendary Industrial Workers of the World (aka The Wobblies) leader Big Bill Haywood. Travus was a proud card-carrying IWW member for many years.

GUBERNATORIAL CHESS MOVES. Perhaps Clark County Commissioner Steve Sisolak reads the Barbwire. Since last week's suggestion that his commission colleague Christine Giunchigliani would be a much more viable Democratic candidate for governor next year, he's been making moves here in the north. He has reason to worry, having lost an election to her once before. More at BallotBoxing.US/

WTF DEPT. The Sparks City Council has gone mad. Last week, they actually agendized an item to consider turning steel shipping containers into low-cost apartments. Welcome to Tokyo.

Be well. Raise hell. / Esté bien. Haga infierno. (Pardon my Spanglish.)
______________
Andrew Barbano is a 48-year Nevadan, editor of NevadaLabor.com and first vice-president of the Reno-Sparks NAACP. As always, his comments are his own. E-mail <barbano@frontpage.reno.nv.us> Barbwire by Barbano has originated in the Sparks Tribune since 1988.

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THE GOOD DON. Nominations are afoot for the Nevada Press Association Hall of Fame. Time to ramp up for world-famous Tribune photographer Don Dondero. Here's the compelling case for his induction.

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TOMORROW'S NEWS TODAY: FEEL UP YOUR FIRE METER. The Reno Gazette-Journal did big spreads on three consecutive Sundays (Sept. 14, Sept. 21 and Sept. 28, 2014) on NV Energy smart meter fires. Welcome aboard. Barbwire readers were two years ahead on the fire meter issue. (Touch a Smart Meter, Go to Jail — 11 October 2012)

ANTE INTO THE GAME: Support the new season of Barbwire.TV by putting your money where my mouth is. A thousand thanks to those who keep sending show suggestions.

I encourage you to donate to the cause at Barbwire.TV/ The medium that shapes public opinion needs at least one refuge where it is not filtered through the distorted green eye shades of prissy corporate accountants for whom profit is the only priority; where self-censorship is the journalist's normal work environment and where all sins of omission are tacitly encouraged and forgiven with the wave of a balance sheet. This is important. We've got a lot of work to do.