Last night, Bill Maher became the most recent defender of Michelle Wolf’s performance at the White House Correspondents Dinner (WHCD). He echoed others by saying, “She did her job!” Yes. If her job was to create sympathy for Donald Trump. On April 28, the day of the WHCD dinner Trump’s approval rating according to the Real Clear Politics average was minus 12.4 percent. This morning it sits at minus 7.7 percent.  The 44.4 percent approval rating is Trump’s highest since February 20, 2017  when a lot of skeptics were still saying, “Give him a chance.”

Let’s see.  What are all the positive things that have happened over the past seven days which might account for this shift in the polls?

• More evidence that the D.C. “swamp” has gotten even swampier a la Scott Pruitt and Ronny Jackson?  NO!
• Admission everyone in the Trump White House and members of his legal team cannot seem to get their Stormy Daniels story straight?  NO!
• A Chinese boycott of U.S. grown sorghum which will have a major impact on the farm states which voted overwhelmingly for Trump?  NO!
• Admission by Marco Rubio the GOP Tax Bill he voted for has not helped working Americans?  NO!
• VP Mike Pence calling pardoned former Maricopa County sheriff and Arizona Senate candidate Joe Arpaio “a tireless champion of the rule of law?”  NO!
•  Law suits by seven states to force Trump and the Justice Department to end the DACA program?  NO!
• Emails which indicate Natalia Veselnitskaya, the Russian lawyer who attended the June 2016 meeting in Trump Tower was an informant with direct ties to  Putin’s prosecutor general Yuri Chaika?  NO!
• Pew and Monmouth polls which show a majority of Americans support special counsel Robert Mueller and his ability to complete the investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election?  NO!

I no longer expect any of these or future revelations to influence Trump’s 35-40 percent base.  But this nearly five percent approval increase is coming from somewhere else.  I would bet the mortgage these voters have not changed their support for permanent status for DACA eligible immigrants, net neutrality, legalization of marijuana, reasonable gun control legislation, affordable health care, etc.  On all of these issues, a decisive majority support the progressive position.

Trump seems to succeed only when he identifies opponents and then tags them as the epitome of everything that is wrong with the United States.  For three years, it was Hillary Clinton.  And Nancy Pelosi.  Then Kathy Griffin.  Now Michelle Wolf, handed to Trump on a silver platter, joins the Four Horsewomen of the Apocalypse.  And it is significant his targets are always women.  A tenet of 1950s-based Trumpism is that the female gender is an economic and cultural threat to post-war America when “things were great.”

Wolf’s defenders are also calling out the White House press for apologizing to the White House and public for her remarks.  “What did they expect?”  Wolf, herself, echoed as much.  After her first reference to porn stars, she said, “Yep, kiddos this is who you’re getting tonight.”  But it is unfair to lay all the blame at the feet of those who sponsored this event for the purpose of underwriting the education and careers of their potential successors.

This is a culture war.  And you do not win by enlisting stereotypes who play into the hands of your opponents.  If we had a living,  breathing Democratic National Committee (DNC) they should have been the first to raise a red flag.  As soon as Trump announced he would stage a political rally opposite the WHCD, several things were obvious.  First, Trump would use his platform to reinforce the view that the White House press is an elite group of Washington insiders out to get him.  CHECK  Second, by encouraging members of his staff to attend, especially Sarah Huckabee Sanders, Trump knew there would be photo ops of tortured faces as his team was roasted.  CHECK  Third, in Trump’s absence there would be no counterbalance to the comedian’s shtick, regardless of who it was.  Americans love a fair fight, and this would not be one.  CHECK  CHECK

DNC Chair Tom Perez should have known better.  Obama’s former communications gurus such as David Axelrod or Josh Earnest, who were responsible for their boss’ widely praised performances at previous WHCDs, should have stepped in and offered some advice.  Think about this event as a special episode of “Friends,” not the Red Wedding from “Game of Thrones.”  How about two comedians in the SNL tradition of Jane Curtain and Dan Aykroyd’s “Point/Counter-Point?”  How about a comedian who would roast members of the White House press corps rather than Trump?  A little self-deprecating humor might have gone a long way toward offsetting Trump’s rants about the fourth estate.  And it would have put human faces on the hard-working journalists who Trump calls “the enemy of the people.”  Every pundit who covers this administration constantly says, “This is not business as usual.”  Then neither should the WHCD have been business as usual.

Ben Bradlee is turning over in his grave.

For what it’s worth.
Dr. ESP

It is hard not to notice that this is the 50th anniversary of one of the most turbulent years in America’s history.  Every day we are reminded of  the events which contributed to that assessment.  The surprise announcement by Lyndon Johnson on March 31 that he would not seek re-election.  Yesterday’s recognition of the assassination in Memphis of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.  The urban riots in the aftermath of King’s death.  And soon the assassination of Robert Kennedy (June 5).

However, a significant event for those of us who grew up on folk music somehow passed under the radar screen.  On March 3, 1968, singer and songwriter Laura Nyro released what many consider her seminal album Eli and the Thirteenth Confession.  Although the album does not rank as one of Nyro’s more commercially successful ventures, it ushered in an era of “fusion” music bringing together elements of folk, soul, gospel and rock.  Numerous tracks were re-released as covers by groups including Three Dog Night and The Fifth Dimension.  And six tracks from the album were included in the Alvin Ailey Dance Theater’s ballet Quintet.

As I often remind those of you who regularly follow this blog, the topic of any particular post and the context in which it is presented seldom results from any planned, analytical process. Instead, it is based on random observations which trigger our curiosity.  In other words, we see something and wonder, “What is this trying to tell me?”  In this case, the trigger was Wisconsin governor Scott Walker’s tweets following the election of liberal Rebecca Dallet to the state’s Supreme Court, beating NRA-backed conservative Michael Screnock by 12 percentage points.

Tonight’s results show we are at risk of a #BlueWave in WI. The Far Left is driven by anger & hatred — we must counter it with optimism & organization. Let’s share our positive story with voters & win in November.

Big government special interests flooded Wisconsin with distorted facts & misinformation. Next, they’ll target me and work to undo our bold reforms. We need to keep moving #WIForward & make sure a #BlueWave of outside special interest money doesn’t take us backward.

We have come to expect this kind of digital rhetoric from the White House, but now these electronic falsehoods were coming at us from more than just Pennsylvania Avenue.  This is what Carl Jung referred to as a “synchronistic moment,” a connection where none seems to exist.  E-lies coming.  What is this trying to tell me.  It was time to re-explore the lyrics of Nyro’s song “Eli’s Coming” and sure enough, there was the association.

Eli’s coming, better walk, walk
But you’ll never get away
No, you’ll never get away from the burning heartache
I walked to Apollo by the bay
Everywhere I go though, Eli’s coming
(She walked but she never got away)
Eli’s coming

And that is what is at the core of the resistance and what Scott Walker does not understand.  It is not anger and hatred that is driving this movement.  It is anger and heartache.  Heartache watching the erosion of the values and ideals on which the United States was founded.  Heartache because those with the power to do something about it not only sit silently, but by their muteness, enable and encourage more attacks on our democracy and the institutions which were designed to protect democracy.

And yes there is also anger which is driving this movement.  But it is internal anger.  Anger that too many of us were complacent and did not understand what was at stake.  Anger at ourselves for waiting too long before taking to the streets or writing postcards.  Anger for believing we could not make a difference.   As Shakespeare reminds us, “The fault is not in our stars, but in ourselves.”

Now we know we should have listened to Laura Nyro.  “You’ll never get away.”  And the worse may be yet to come.  The White House is being populated by more liars and sycophants.  And as we learned this weekend, Sinclair Broadcasting is turning local news programs into Pravda-like mouthpieces for the administration.  But Nyro was only half right.  It is not time to walk. It’s time to run.  As hard as we can.  As though our lives depend on it.

For what it’s worth.
Dr. ESP

How do you know you’ve made it to the big time as a blogger?  One metric is whether you have become a the target of Russian trolls.  Understanding the process how trolls work to first gain your trust and then use their access to your site for nefarious purposes is important.  As a public service, I am sharing this latest example of an attempted troll invasion of Deprograming101 to warn others who currently write, or are considering starting, their own blogs.

For amateur bloggers, WordPress is the platform of choice primarily for its ease of use.  However, it also includes some excellent features for blocking comments which do not mesh with the blog’s purpose or goals.  For example, trusted commenters, once approved, can post additional feedback without the blog administrator reviewing each individual message.  Therefore, by gaining trusted status, a troll can then start posting disinformation, provocative comments and links to other sites.

Below is an example, which arrived this morning.  The modus operandi employed by this troll is pretty standard.  Flatter the author; so he/she will approve the submission.

It’s actually a nice and helpful piece of info.
I am satisfied that you simply shared this helpful info with us.
Please stay us informed like this. Thanks for sharing. https://steepster.com/Jimgriffin

I use this example because it raises so many “red flags.”  First, it makes no specific reference to the content of the post which precipitated the comment, in this case Wednesday’s article titled, “Tell Me Something You Don’t Know.”  Second, and most obvious, are the grammatical errors.  “Please stay us informed…”  Clearly, an incorrect translation of the troll’s native language.

However, the third flag is the most clever and demonstrates the effort trolls put into their work and the training they receive.  This troll associates himself/herself with a legitimate site: www. steepster.com.  The bloggers describe their site as follows.

Three dudes in New York City built this site as a way of keeping track of the teas they were drinking. Since then, it’s turned into one of the liveliest tea communities on the Web.

Why choose a tea community when evidence suggests most of the trolls and bots during the 2016 election established false identities on sites such as Twitter, Instagram or Facebook?  Because these more generic sites with significant cyber-security resources have started to develop algorithms to identify and block this kind of content.  In other words, using sites like www.steepster.com is a trend to counter efforts by the major social media players to crack down on diabolical on-line activity.

To recap, the process consists of the following steps.  (1) Establish a presence on a legitimate social media site.  (2) Identify a blog on which to spread disinformation and foment division.  (3) Flatter the blogger to gain trusted status.  (4) Flood the site with false stories and comments to incite chaos and dissension.

CAVEAT BLOG-GOR!  And BLOG-GEE!

POSTSCRIPT

For those of you who are more interested in first-rate journalism versus gossip, I strongly recommend Russian Roulette by David Corn (Washington bureau chief for Mother Jones) and Michael Isikoff (chief investigative correspondent for Yahoo! News) over books such as Michael Wolff’s Fire and Fury.  Corn and Isikoff document interactions between Russia and sequentially the Trump Organization, Trump campaign and the White House beginning with the first time Trump, during the 2013 Miss USA pageant in Las Vegas, meets Russian oligarch Aras Agalarov, his son Emin and British publicist Rob Goldstone.  If those names sound familiar, it is because Emin Agalarov and Goldstone were among the attendees at the June 2016 meeting in Trump Tower.

As I read the book, I felt the same way I did watching Jordan Peele’s Get Out.  It is hard to characterize the book as falling into a single genre.  It is a spy novel.  It is a love story years in the making.  It is a political thriller.  It is a Shakespearean tragedy.  But most importantly, it is a must read.

For what it’s worth.
Dr. ESP