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People, Personas, and Politics 12 – Worst Presidents Ever Scott Douglas Jacobsen & Rick Rosner March 31, 2017 [Beginning of recorded material] Rick Rosner: If I’m right about Buchanan, and I have to look it up, Buchanan is the worst president, not including Trump because he has only been president for a few weeks. But among presidents that we know, Buchanan probably has the worst, Harding is second worst, and George W. Bush is third worst. Scott Douglas Jacobsen: What about projecting forward to the next election? What might be the popular reaction and, therefore, vote results in the 2020 election? Also, the possible candidates that might come up. RR: Trump has been under wat for all but 3 or so days of his presidency. That is, his disapproval rating is currently at 54%. His approval rating is at 40%. So he’s 14% under water. 14% more people disapprove than approve of his presidency. He’s had more disapproval than approval for 63 out of 66 days. All but the first few days of his presidency. With such a low approval, it’s hard to get re-elected. But presidents have had low approval ratings before and have managed to eke out victories, or even somewhat strong victories, as their approval ratings momentarily pop up during an election. George W. Bush, managed to get re-elected even after being in a—after he ramped up the war or ramped up the threat of terror around the election, and people were scared and voted to keep him on. Obama had ratings in the 40s for much of his first administration, and managed to pop up his approval above 50% long enough to get re-elected. Then he dropped back down into the 40s for much of presidency, then his approval rose up into the 50s and ended at 61 as people saw what was coming and had premature nostalgia. So right now, Trump is doing terrible. But he may hang on, We’re waiting to see how tainted he is by Russian meddling in the election. How much he knew, how much his people colluded with Russia, that may take him down. But that may not because it is a Republican Congress, and they are trying to cover his butt. Even though Trump seems obviously terrible to most of the US population, he may still or may survive 4 years and manage to get re-elected. And that could lead to even more terribleness. He doesn’t seem to exercise much restraint now. But he does worry about being re-elected because he is already running 2020 election rallies, which is unprecedented. But as a lame duck, as someone who is not worried about being re-elected in a second Trump term, he might be even crazier than he is now. [End of recorded material] Authors[1] Rick Rosner American Television Writer [email protected] Rick Rosner Scott Douglas Jacobsen Editor-in-Chief, In-Sight Publishing [email protected] In-Sight Publishing Endnotes [1] Four format points for the session article:
License In-Sight Publishing and In-Sight: Independent Interview-Based Journal by Scott Douglas Jacobsen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. Based on a work at www.in-sightjournal.com and www.rickrosner.org. Copyright © Scott Douglas Jacobsen, Rick Rosner, and In-Sight Publishing and In-Sight: Independent Interview-Based Journal 2012-2017. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this site’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Scott Douglas Jacobsen, Rick Rosner, and In-Sight Publishing and In-Sight: Independent Interview-Based Journal with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.
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People, Personas, and Politics 11 – Drones and ISIS Scott Douglas Jacobsen & Rick Rosner March 30, 2017 [Beginning of recorded material] Rick Rosner: You could argue the drone deaths while terrible are less terrible than other means of war. Scott Douglas Jacobsen: If we take the Golden Rule, and if we apply it in that same case, we consider the perspective of the people that are receiving the drone attacks. In this instance, innocent civilians in certain countries, say, also getting killed. If it is applied to the planners in Washington, if some were to consider them terrorists for doing so, would that justify them having a drone campaign and then bombing people in DC, and having innocent American civilians killed too? RR: Okay, there’s no equivalence there in my mind. SDJ: Okay. RR: ISIS is clearly one of the most despicable enemies that we’ve had since WWII. SDJ: ISIS isn’t the only recipient of it, though. RR: It is good to have a clear enemy because you can feel that it justifies action against that enemy. SDJ: Other than justification of a feeling. What about the norm of a trial, the norm of a proper and fair trial, for criminals rather than bombing them? RR: Well—ISIS is our enemy in a war. It’s a small war that feels bigger because of the horribleness of their actions, and because a lot of their actions involve terror, which brings it home to us. But they’re bad! They—we—I feel we’re justified in fighting them. Given their tactics, it is tough to—like what just happened. 200 civilians were apparently killed in Mosul, and the ISIS strategy was that ISIS set up snipers on the roofs of 3 buildings. Probably knowing that these would be tempting enough targets. In the basements of these buildings, there were a bunch of civilians probably put there on purpose by ISIS, held there. And Trump had those targets taken out, which meant that we killed 200 civilians – which is a horrible thing. And contributing factors were, ISIS probably hoped the civilians would get killed because it would make the US look really bad. Another thing is the rules of engagement haven’t changed. Trump has apparently okayed more targets, is a little more liberal in okaying targets, than Obama. ISIS knowing this set up 20- civilians and 200 innocent people got killed. That’s a combination of ISIS being really, really evil and Trump being inexperienced and possibly having bad judgment. ISIS is—wherever ISIS goes they commit atrocities. ISIS is a fairly small force. It depends on whose estimates you believe, but the number is around 30,000 people. Obama flew about 15,000 bombing sorties against ISIS and knocked the extent of their territory down by about 50%, which is a contributing factor to ISIS committing terror because as they lose what they want to be their Caliphate. There Islamic dominion over a chunk of the Mid-East. As they lose territory, they consider themselves free to commit acts of terror outside of their territory. [End of recorded material] Authors[1] Rick Rosner American Television Writer [email protected] Rick Rosner Scott Douglas Jacobsen Editor-in-Chief, In-Sight Publishing [email protected] In-Sight Publishing Endnotes [1] Four format points for the session article:
License In-Sight Publishing and In-Sight: Independent Interview-Based Journal by Scott Douglas Jacobsen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. Based on a work at www.in-sightjournal.com and www.rickrosner.org. Copyright © Scott Douglas Jacobsen, Rick Rosner, and In-Sight Publishing and In-Sight: Independent Interview-Based Journal 2012-2017. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this site’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Scott Douglas Jacobsen, Rick Rosner, and In-Sight Publishing and In-Sight: Independent Interview-Based Journal with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. In-Sight Publishing
People, Personas, and Politics 10 – Not So Shining Beacon Scott Douglas Jacobsen & Rick Rosner March 29, 2017 [Beginning of recorded material] Scott Douglas Jacobsen: Do America’s enemies take advantage of this? Rick Rosner: Yea! I mean, ISIS and Al-Qaeda both became—particularly ISIS, it arose due to the chaos we caused in the Middle East. When we conquered Iraq, we fired the Iraqi army. Those guys went off and formed the so-called fundamentalist insurgent movements including ISIS. And then I’ve heard—who knows—that Trumps’ travel ban has been called the “Blessed Travel Ban” because it riles people up and makes then want to join. SDJ: What about Vladimir Putin and his crew, and China’s recent claims about human rights being too tilted to Western norms, do you think the weakening of American prestige on the international stage provides – at least those two countries or those two cases – further strength in the repression of their own populations? RR: Yea! Because when we are seen as clowny and impotent, then any ideals we try to promote are compromise, we’ve had, in the last 3 – of the last 3 – presidents, two of them had popular vote minorities and all sorts of chicanery associated with their being elected. And the first, George W. Bush, did a lot of damage, that we’re still struggling with. SDJ: Obama did too. Previous president Obama damage as well with the continuance of many programs including the drone program, which was considered a terrorist campaign by many. RR: Well, the drone program has both horribles and goods. If you’re killing from afar, you’re going to be making mistakes. You’re also going to make mistakes with boots on the ground. [End of recorded material] Authors[1] Rick Rosner American Television Writer [email protected] Rick Rosner Scott Douglas Jacobsen Editor-in-Chief, In-Sight Publishing [email protected] In-Sight Publishing Endnotes [1] Four format points for the session article:
License In-Sight Publishing and In-Sight: Independent Interview-Based Journal by Scott Douglas Jacobsen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. Based on a work at www.in-sightjournal.com and www.rickrosner.org. Copyright © Scott Douglas Jacobsen, Rick Rosner, and In-Sight Publishing and In-Sight: Independent Interview-Based Journal 2012-2017. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this site’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Scott Douglas Jacobsen, Rick Rosner, and In-Sight Publishing and In-Sight: Independent Interview-Based Journal with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. In-Sight Publishing
People, Personas, and Politics 9 – Worst President Renewal Scott Douglas Jacobsen & Rick Rosner March 28, 2017 [Beginning of recorded material] Rick Rosner: Starting with George Washington, he was both the worst and the best president ever. And then Adams was either going to be better or worse than Washington, but he was probably worse. Then there you go again, you’re living under the worst president ever. And then you can string together a whole bunch of presidents until you get out to Lincoln who is, I think, the 16th president, and then you get to, was it, Buchanan who was thought to be the worst president until Trump. Buchanan as the 15th president, worst president. 20 years later, you have Ulysses S. Grant who was thought to be the worst president by many people. I don’t know the presidents in between. Rutherford B. Hayes was probably pretty terrible. You get to Warren G. Harding, who was thought by many to be the worst president ever. Though he had the courtesy to die after about 2.5 years in office. So the damage he could do was limited. Then you can move on, then you’ve got, some people – who I don’t agree with – who thought Carter was the worst president ever. Then you’ve got George W. Bush, who struck a lot of people during his presidency as being the worst president ever Then you have Trump–oh! You have Trump who seems to be on the way, if he keeps presidenting the way he has been, may become indisputably the worst president ever. But he’s one of a line of, say—he’s one of maybe 6 really bad presidents. SDJ: Who would be the second-up for you? RR: Well, I know the presidents of the past 100 years than the previous 100 years. So Harding seems really terrible. He ran a really corrupt administration. He admitted to being unqualified to be president. He was banging his mistress in a White House closet, though that doesn’t make you a bad president. He messed things up. Though when looking at presidents, you have to correct for how much they had to mess up. Harding was presiding over a much smaller America without nuclear weapons. He was in the 1920s. There wasn’t as much risk in him being a screw up. On the other hand, if you look at Buchanan, who I think was the guy that led up to Lincoln, but did a bunch of bad politics that made the Civil War more probably, so he did a lot of damage. Then you look at George W. Bush, who was manipulated into lying us into a war. An unnecessary war built on false pretenses that has led to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people, has led to the worldwide impression of the United States as not the shining beacon of liberty that we’d like it to be. So I don’t know. [End of recorded material] Authors[1] Rick Rosner American Television Writer [email protected] Rick Rosner Scott Douglas Jacobsen Editor-in-Chief, In-Sight Publishing [email protected] In-Sight Publishing Endnotes [1] Four format points for the session article:
License In-Sight Publishing and In-Sight: Independent Interview-Based Journal by Scott Douglas Jacobsen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. Based on a work at www.in-sightjournal.com and www.rickrosner.org. Copyright © Scott Douglas Jacobsen, Rick Rosner, and In-Sight Publishing and In-Sight: Independent Interview-Based Journal 2012-2017. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this site’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Scott Douglas Jacobsen, Rick Rosner, and In-Sight Publishing and In-Sight: Independent Interview-Based Journal with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. In-Sight Publishing
People, Personas, and Politics 7 – Decency’s Vacay Scott Douglas Jacobsen & Rick Rosner March 26, 2017 [Beginning of recorded material] Scott Douglas Jacobsen: So perhaps one of the funny things that turns sad is the slow, whimpering death of decency in American political culture. Rick Rosner: Well, I mean, yea, because it means we’re losing—decency is among the American values. Humane behaviour to each other and the world is an American value. That we stand up for what is right. We defend the downtrodden. And part of the death of decency—not the death, the temporary absence of decency is the ‘F- You!’ to the downtrodden. SDJ: Such as the Meals on Wheels. RR: And to kids with the Head Start program and sesame Street and public television, and the National Arts Foundation or the National Endowment for the Arts. If you’re looking for grant to put metal shapes in a park, these are programs that have been squeezed down already to tiny, tiny fractions of a percent of the federal budget. We’re talking .002% of the federal budget. That they’re squeezed to nothing so the Republicans can make a political point. A dumb counterproductive one too. SDJ: So I see two trends—well, I see a lot of trends. I see one partial analysis with the reduction in decency, where it takes a vacay. Another one is increase in militaristic culture – it’s on overtime, which implies a reduction in civil culture. RR: There’s another sad making thing. It seems that people who aren’t dumb are bummed out by dumb people being in power. I had or was—I had a tweet go super viral a few days ago. SDJ: Yes. RR: After 24,000 tweets, I finally had one hit, which is awesome. SDJ: [Laughing] RR: In day one, I got a lot of positive messages. It was an anti-Trump tweet. I got a lot of positive support. Day two, the pro-Trump people found out about it, but I got a lot of dissing messages. SDJ: [Laughing] RR: But dumb ones. But it was disheartening because a lot of the positive ones were pretty clever. Obviously from people who weren’t mentally handicapped, but a lot of the pro-Trump ones were just from dumb people. SDJ: [Laughing] RR: It was attempts at jokes that were terrible or senseless. SDJ: [Laughing] RR: Like in my tweet, I mentioned that Angela Merkel had a PhD in quantum chemistry. Then some Trump person tweets back to me, ‘Even Snoop Dogg would get a PhD in quantum chemistry because everyone gets a trophy now.’ SDJ: [Laughing] RR: Which is such a non—which is such a terrible attempt at a joke [Laughing]. The idea is that under Liberalism everyone gets a trophy. So to use a quantum chemistry PhD to make a point - I looked it up, 120 PhDs are given every year in physical chemistry in the US, which is 1 PhD in that subject for every 2.75 million Americans. So no, not everybody gets a PhD in quantum chemistry. So no! SDJ: [Laughing] RR: You picked a terrible subject! [Laughing] I had one say, “You make no since.” I know that’s probably a combination of a guy whose vision is not so good, and who’s relying on autocorrect. Day one was people agreeing with me. Day two was dumb people disagreeing with me. Not that I’m the king of things to agree or disagree with, but the pro-Trump tweets obviously came from way dumber people. Along with those came the pornbots. SDJ: [Laughing] RR: Who took a couple three days to find out about the tweet. SDJ: [Laughing] RR: Then I got tweets from them saying, “Come push your penis into me. Click here!” SDJ: [Laughing] RR: It is depressing that there are so many, proudly dumb, belligerently dumb people, and we have a belligerently dumb president who is empowered by tens of millions of belligerently dumb Americans. Just statistically, you know they’re out there because half of all Americans are dumber than average, and half of those people are dumber than the average dumber than average American. SDJ: [Laughing] RR: And that’s 80 million people, but they’ve been so empowered. And means they’ve never been so encouraged to think that they’re okay and they’re right. It’s come up again and again throughout the whole election and post, which is the Dunning-Kruger Effect. If you want to have a dumb person in a movie and not a villain, and want them to be charming, you give them some insight into themselves so they know they’re not the smartest person in the world and that way they have some natural wisdom. They’re like magic dumb people in the way Forrest Gump has some, if not deep insights then, some humanity to Forrest Gump. Even though, he is someone who is borderline retarded. He’s a sweet caring guy. A good husband, a good father; he’s a magical dumb person. Dunning-Kruger Effect says that’s not the way dumb people are. Dumb people often lack insight into their dumbness, and they think they’re super awesome and are too dumb to realize that they’re dumb. So we’ve got a president elected by the Dunning-Kruger effect, which has been amplified by a media that caters to dumb, angry lunatics. So yea, it is another source of sadness there. That seems like an intractable problem. That may continue to affect politics for many, many election cycles. [End of recorded material] Authors[1] Rick Rosner American Television Writer [email protected] Rick Rosner Scott Douglas Jacobsen Editor-in-Chief, In-Sight Publishing [email protected] In-Sight Publishing Endnotes [1] Four format points for the session article:
License In-Sight Publishing and In-Sight: Independent Interview-Based Journal by Scott Douglas Jacobsen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. Based on a work at www.in-sightjournal.com and www.rickrosner.org. Copyright © Scott Douglas Jacobsen, Rick Rosner, and In-Sight Publishing and In-Sight: Independent Interview-Based Journal 2012-2017. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this site’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Scott Douglas Jacobsen, Rick Rosner, and In-Sight Publishing and In-Sight: Independent Interview-Based Journal with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. In-Sight Publishing
People, Personas, and Politics 6 – Decency and Honest Politics Scott Douglas Jacobsen & Rick Rosner March 25, 2017 [Beginning of recorded material] Scott Douglas Jacobsen: So do you think it’s a removal of two principles. One, decency; two, pursuit of honest politics, an orientation towards those. Rick Rosner: There’s just too much at risk. He and his people seem so dangerous and dumb that we don’t know what they’re going to do and how much damage it’s going to do. Where North Korea is being super noisy about the nukes they’re developing, the rockets they’re developing, and the rocket engines they’re developing, that would be scary under a normal president, and it is super scary under Trump. Trump, I mean, with regard to the North Korean situation, that’s uncertainty. If North Korea were doing it under any president, it would be scary. That’s not related to Trump for the most part. It’s just that Trump might do anything in terms of—he might provoke some kind of war to boost his approval, which is kind of what Bush did at various points. He manipulated military action from foreign enemies to good his approval ratings enough to get re-elected. With regard to trump and North Korea, you have to wonder whether crazy person versus crazy person is the best thing. I had a conversation with a conservative buddy recently. SDJ: Lance Richlin? RR: Yea, Lance Richlin, Lance and I had North Korea come up in conversation. He likes the idea of a military buildup president, which is what Trump is trying to be. He will cut all sorts of social program funding for military. So that, according to Lance, we can ring North Korea with ships on the water and along the border of South Korea a bunch of missile stations. So that if North Korea does anything super aggressive, we can just rain fire down on them, which also requires threatening China because China has a weird alliance with North Korea. They share a border. China doesn’t want a bunch of refugees flowing into its borders if North Korea completely falls apart. So China feels obligated to keep North Korea stable, which it isn’t because it is run by a crazy person. Of all the arguments you can make for Trump, the crazy person versus crazy person is one of the least non-persuasive argument. It is one where I could almost say, “Alright, maybe.” [End of recorded material] Authors[1] Rick Rosner American Television Writer [email protected] Rick Rosner Scott Douglas Jacobsen Editor-in-Chief, In-Sight Publishing [email protected] In-Sight Publishing Endnotes [1] Four format points for the session article:
License In-Sight Publishing and In-Sight: Independent Interview-Based Journal by Scott Douglas Jacobsen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. Based on a work at www.in-sightjournal.com and www.rickrosner.org. Copyright © Scott Douglas Jacobsen, Rick Rosner, and In-Sight Publishing and In-Sight: Independent Interview-Based Journal 2012-2017. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this site’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Scott Douglas Jacobsen, Rick Rosner, and In-Sight Publishing and In-Sight: Independent Interview-Based Journal with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. In-Sight Publishing
People, Personas, and Politics 5 – Stone, Parker, and Chappelle Scott Douglas Jacobsen & Rick Rosner March 24, 2017 [Beginning of recorded material] Scott Douglas Jacobsen: I feel as though there’s some Freudian reason for all of this. I don’t what. How about Trump changing the nature of comedy at the moment? Rick Rosner: That’s a simple idea, and I think somebody else has pointed it out. I think it is hard to get mad at the Kardashians for joke purposes, when what is happening in politics is so brutal. SDJ: Three of the top comedy people – two cartoonists and another standup – have talked about that. Matt Stone and Trey Parker, they said he is self-parody. So there’s no real point in doing it more. Chappelle said he’s kind of bad for comedy. RR: There’s that. Trying to exaggerate his characteristics for comedic effect is not a winning game because he’s already so exaggerated that there’s not much farther that you can go. Plus, at some point, people who are in the public eye for screwing up go from being funny to being sad. Any time somebody dies. That automatically puts a lid on them being funny for a few years, if not in perpetuity. It was great to joke about Michael Jackson. Until Michael Jackson was dead. Now it seems sad and a waste. Though you can probably still sneak in a Michael Jackson child molesting joke in if you were trying to be edgy. But it is part of the overall landscape of sadness around Jackson. Lindsay Lohan was great for a long time for making jokes about. Then she went from being funny to being sad because her screwing up got more consistent and pathetic. Same with Britney Spears. She shaved her head and attacked somebody. Probably a paparazzo, that crossed the line from funny to sad. Mischa Barton. Trump is—there are jokes to be made, but there is a bunch of anxiety behind the jokes. SDJ: Where does that line cross in the political sphere? RR: Hold on—well, there’s anxiety of two types with regard to jokes about Trump. One is, anxiety about how much he will screw up the country and how dangerous he is. Two is, anxiety about whether we’re overreacting and he is just one guy. We still have normal political processes, and everyone running around saying, “1930s Germany,” is a snowflake who is freaking out too much. There are two types of anxiety and uncertainty. It makes it tough to joke about Trump or make it hard to joke about Trump. Also, there’s just too much. We’ve been joking about Trump for two years now. Ever since he announced he would be running and riding down the escalator in trump Tower; plus, he was a kind of jokey figure before that. So there’s Trump fatigue. But you had a question. You go ahead. You were asking a question. SDJ: I have another. So with regard to the political comedy fault lines, on the one hand, there are the funny parts of it, whether the people or the situation. On the other hand, there’s that anxiety you were talking about. Where some things can possibly go very much against the better interests of people that would be more politically Left oriented, so there’s a certain sadness there. RR: Yea. SDJ: But when does funny become sad? So, for instance, when Trump talks about or talks big about some reproductive health rights issue, not in those terms – usually in an epithet form, in a phrase or a single word while taking down an individual, it becomes defunding or a bill is proposed. One defunding maneuver that comes to mind the “Global Gag Rule” that happened. Does that make it not funny but sad? Is that when that transition happens? RR: Alright, so, all of the examples I gave of going from funny to sad. There’s something about going beyond the pale – being not subject to normal human limitations perhaps. Where Trump goes from funny to sad when—well, he is different from Michael Jackson or Britney or Lindsay Lohan. In that, he’s dangerous to millions of people. The idea, not the idea—that he wants to cancel Meals on Wheels, which is a program that provides home visits and meals for homebound seniors. Seniors who can’t get out of their homes to get groceries to get something to eat, and disabled people. They serve. Meals on Wheels serves over 210 meals per year to over 2.4 million people. They provide human contact and food, and also checking in on people to make sure they’re okay. The federal government only supplies like 3.3% of their budget. But it is important money because it is guaranteed funding that allows to solicit donations. Somehow with government money in place, it makes gathering donations easier because it makes it a solid, reputable program. It only costs a few million per year. Basically, the cost of one of Trump’s trips to Mar-a-Lago. It goes from funny to sad. In that, it is so mean, so greedy, and also so dumb. Where Mick Mulvaney, the president’s budget guy comes out and says Meals on Wheels just isn’t a successful program and should probably go away. What is not successful about providing millions of meals to seniors for so little money? It has such bad optics. It shows such contempt and ineptitude that it is very worrisome, and it makes the jokes more loaded with pathos and ominousness. The Lindsay Lohan jokes became too loaded with ominousness because you were afraid she’d die. She was getting in car wrecks and getting caught puking in the gutter outside clubs. Ditto with Britney. You thought she might go completely insane. She might have to be sent away. She’s back, but she’s kind of not the Britney of before. She’s in her 30s now. She can’t be the Britney in the short schoolgirl skirt. And Michael Jackson did go ahead and die. I assume people were telling jokes about Elvis in the early to middle 70s about how fat he was getting and then he went ahead and did, which is terrible for comedy and for the subject of the jokes. I It is similar in our case, but certain liberties or political traditions of decency might die, and so we’re sad. [End of recorded material] Authors[1] Rick Rosner American Television Writer [email protected] Rick Rosner Scott Douglas Jacobsen Editor-in-Chief, In-Sight Publishing [email protected] In-Sight Publishing Endnotes [1] Four format points for the session article:
License In-Sight Publishing and In-Sight: Independent Interview-Based Journal by Scott Douglas Jacobsen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. Based on a work at www.in-sightjournal.com and www.rickrosner.org. Copyright © Scott Douglas Jacobsen, Rick Rosner, and In-Sight Publishing and In-Sight: Independent Interview-Based Journal 2012-2017. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this site’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Scott Douglas Jacobsen, Rick Rosner, and In-Sight Publishing and In-Sight: Independent Interview-Based Journal with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. In-Sight Publishing
People, Personas, and Politics 4 – Norms Scott Douglas Jacobsen & Rick Rosner March 23, 2017 [Beginning of recorded material] Scott Douglas Jacobsen: You were saying that some of the reaction to disappoint and disenchantment about Obama, if I understand you correctly… Rick Rosner: …the election, I mean the election – about how the election played out. SDJ: Yea, maybe how the eventualities of the Obama administration played out, so that then it was a reaction to vote for Trump, even though, as you noted, Trump was saying things about everybody. It was vote for Trump, and damn all of the consequences, campaign trail. RR: When you look at Obama’s approval rating, they reflect the current highly divided nature of the country. Where Obama was a pretty clean president, no scandals, except for made up ones, 3 out of 4 – I don’t know how far you’d have to go to get a president with as few scandals as Obama—Bush had the war. Clinton had sex. I guess, Bush I was a pretty clean guy with not—well, you had Iran-Contra, but that was mostly hung on Reagan. I don’t know how much Bush I had to do with that. One of the things that got him kicked out of office after only one term was raising taxes after saying he wouldn’t. But that’s not scandalous. That’s just breaking a political promise. Reagan had Iran-Contra. So 3 out of 4 or 4 out of 5 previous presidents had huge scandals. Obama did not. Yet Obama spent about half of his presidency with under 50% approval. He had a W-shaped approval curve. Where it started reasonably high, fairly quickly dropped into the 40s and 50s, popped up above 50, just long enough for re-election, dropped into the 40s and in the last year of his presidency people saw a slate of unpalatable candidates. Hi approval started climbing again due to pretty much nostalgia for his presidency, even though he was president. The approval he had in the 40s for so many years of his presidency, even though he was largely governing as a centrist and was largely scandal free shows that Republicans and Democrats hate each other right now, and will not give each other the benefit of the doubt. The defiance of norms and good behavior shows up in Trump’s election. [End of recorded material] Authors[1] Rick Rosner American Television Writer [email protected] Rick Rosner Scott Douglas Jacobsen Editor-in-Chief, In-Sight Publishing [email protected] In-Sight Publishing Endnotes [1] Four format points for the session article:
License In-Sight Publishing and In-Sight: Independent Interview-Based Journal by Scott Douglas Jacobsen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. Based on a work at www.in-sightjournal.com and www.rickrosner.org. Copyright © Scott Douglas Jacobsen, Rick Rosner, and In-Sight Publishing and In-Sight: Independent Interview-Based Journal 2012-2017. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this site’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Scott Douglas Jacobsen, Rick Rosner, and In-Sight Publishing and In-Sight: Independent Interview-Based Journal with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. In-Sight Publishing
People, Personas, and Politics 3 – Disagreements Scott Douglas Jacobsen & Rick Rosner March 22, 2017 [Beginning of recorded material] Rick Rosner: So that means that Trump has something like 9% support among Democrats. 35% among Independent. 88% support among Republicans. There’s high levels of disagreement. I think Trump came in at tied at 46% approval and 46% disapproval. The average president loses roughly 24 percentage points of approval during his first year, which, if that happened to trump, that would bring him down to 22% approval. Although, that seems less likely because he is starting 30 or 40 points below most presidents. So he has less far to fall. He has already fallen 9 percentage points. It’s not unreasonable to think he could fall another 8 or 10 points into the 20s. Once you drop below 30 in approval, no president has recovered from that. Every president who has dropped—4 presidents have dropped to the 20s in approval. All of those presidents were gone within a year-and-a-half. Once Nixon dropped into the 20s, he was gone within a year. Truman gone within a year-and-a-half. George W. Bush gone within a year or two. Again, Trump has the protection of having 46 months to go in his term. He could hang on, or the disapproval could make him crazier. The lack of approval. He could do more tweet storms to the point where the Republicans think it might be safer for themselves and the country to have a reliable and steady Republican as president with Pence. Or Trump could just quit or could cite health reasons. Not that Trump had a lot of credibility with the people who don’t like him anyway, we had the hearings with the intelligence agencies – Comey and other intelligence agency heads – before the house. They were saying trump basically made up that he had been wiretapped and had no credibility on that. People want credibility. We’re in new territory because we’ve never had a president who is considered this untrustworthy this soon in office. A president wo is so willing to use social media in an uncareful way. The math looks super unfavorable to him. But we’ve never had a president like this. So the math doesn’t rule everything. That’s pretty much what I’ve got. [End of recorded material] Authors[1] Rick Rosner American Television Writer [email protected] Rick Rosner Scott Douglas Jacobsen Editor-in-Chief, In-Sight Publishing [email protected] In-Sight Publishing Endnotes [1] Four format points for the session article:
License In-Sight Publishing and In-Sight: Independent Interview-Based Journal by Scott Douglas Jacobsen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. Based on a work at www.in-sightjournal.com and www.rickrosner.org. Copyright © Scott Douglas Jacobsen, Rick Rosner, and In-Sight Publishing and In-Sight: Independent Interview-Based Journal 2012-2017. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this site’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Scott Douglas Jacobsen, Rick Rosner, and In-Sight Publishing and In-Sight: Independent Interview-Based Journal with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. In-Sight Publishing
People, Personas, and Politics 2 – Trump, Summers, and Palin Scott Douglas Jacobsen & Rick Rosner March 21, 2017 [Beginning of recorded material] Rick Rosner: If Trump and the House, the House or the Senate—I don’t know—if Trump and Congress were of opposite political parties, it would be much more likely that somebody would try to—that Congress would try to impeach Trump. We’re still waiting to see how some of the stuff Trump has done shakes out to see if it rises to an impeachable offense. Things that might be that nature include is that he colluded with Russia for the release of damaging information against the Democrats. But that’s not news. We can talk about approval or disapproval. There are levels of approval and disapproval. That once you hit them, it seems extremely unlikely based on other presidents that you can recover. Scott Douglas Jacobsen: This is not only disapproval that’s unprecedented. It’s a significantly unprecedented level of disapproval. RR: Yea! He came in with approval numbers—something like, at least, 10 points lower on average. More than 30 points lower than the average incoming president. SDJ: You know the economist Larry Summers? He was in the Obama White House as well. He was the President of Harvard University. He made a statement about Trump and the economy as being akin to a “sugar high.” I remember watching an interview a little while ago with him. I think that the approval rating for people that were really gung-ho about Trump being in the White House might be akin to another kind of a sugar high. Super popular, but then a massive drop, a ‘sugar crash’ – so to speak. RR: Trump fits that characterization with regard to the stock market, but not with regard to the—American’s statistically are not giving him the benefit of the doubt that they are giving every other president. There’s been no honeymoon period for Trump. In fact, that honeymoon period and benefit of the doubt has been declining from president to president for at least a half-dozen presidents. There was some euphoria over Obama, but, for the most part, you see increasing levels of political division with lower overall approval ratings for presidents. SDJ: That’s a good point. I want to revise what I said then. The “sugar high,” politically, that around what Sarah Palin called the “Hopey-Changey Stuff” of Obama. The “crash” could probably be considered a little bit delayed, but the Trump phenomena could be considered that. People disappointed and disenchanted and go for a demagogue because of that – because a lot of people, apparently, that voted for Obama voted for Trump. RR: When you look at the circumstances of his election, losing popular vote by 2.8 million, saying horrible things about everybody, obviously benefitting from Comey’s interference and from Russia releasing all of the emails, many people feel it is an unfair outcome. Also, the boisterous glee of rabid Trump supporters that, in some ways, tends to not be sporting or not feel entirely American because it is ungenerous and kind of racist, and just not—just kind of saying, “F- you,” to everybody. [End of recorded material] Authors[1] Rick Rosner American Television Writer [email protected] Rick Rosner Scott Douglas Jacobsen Editor-in-Chief, In-Sight Publishing [email protected] In-Sight Publishing Endnotes [1] Four format points for the session article:
License In-Sight Publishing and In-Sight: Independent Interview-Based Journal by Scott Douglas Jacobsen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. Based on a work at www.in-sightjournal.com and www.rickrosner.org. Copyright © Scott Douglas Jacobsen, Rick Rosner, and In-Sight Publishing and In-Sight: Independent Interview-Based Journal 2012-2017. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this site’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Scott Douglas Jacobsen, Rick Rosner, and In-Sight Publishing and In-Sight: Independent Interview-Based Journal with appropriate and specific direction to the original content. |
AuthorAccording to semi-reputable sources, Rick Rosner has the world’s second-highest IQ. He earned 12 years of college credit in less than a year and graduated with the equivalent of 8 majors. He has received 8 Writer’s Guild Award and Emmy nominations, and was named 2013 North American Genius of the Year by The World Genius Registry. He has written for Remote Control, Crank Yankers, The Man Show, The Emmy Awards, The Grammy Awards, and Jimmy Kimmel Live!. He has also worked as a stripper, a bouncer, a roller-skating waiter, and a nude model. In a TV commercial, Domino’s Pizza named him the World’s Smartest Man.He was also named Best Bouncer in the Denver Area by Westwood Magazine. He spent the disco era as an undercover high school student. 25 years as a bar bouncer, American fake ID-catcher, 25+ years as a stripper, and nude art model, and nearly 30 years as a writer for more than 2,500 hours of network television. He lost on Jeopardy!, sued Who Wants to Be a Millionaire over a bad question, and lost the lawsuit. He spent 35+ years on a modified version of Big Bang Theory. Now, he mostly sits around tweeting in a towel. He lives in Los Angeles, California with his wife and daughter. You can send an email or a direct message via Twitter, or find him on LinkedIn. ArchivesCategories |