Even in such stressful times, with the pandemic still going on…and tropical storms, hurricanes, floods, wildfires and what else — politics? — is there anything that’s somehow, in some way, amusing?
Oddly enough, for me, it’s amusing — even comical, at times — hearing what big, influential people are saying in the media. Even when they’re weighing-in on serious issues.
Here’s an example. Hundreds of wildfires have been raging in California, a state that seems to irk President Trump, maybe because the Golden State is pretty blue, politically, and that particular color isn’t POTUS’s favorite, these days. You can tell by his rhetoric which, frequently, is featured in the media.
“I see again the forest fires are starting,” President Trump said recently, during a rally in Pennsylvania. “They’re starting again in California. I said, you gotta clean your floors, you gotta clean your forests — there are many, many years of leaves and broken trees and they’re like, like, so flammable, you touch them and it goes up… Maybe we’re just going to have to make them pay for it because they don’t listen to us.”
When someone big and influential says something that gets quoted in the media, the words, generally, are quoted verbatim, as this Trumpian rhetoric about California’s raging wildfires, ‘clearly’ was quoted, in Politico, The Hill and other media. Whether you’re politically blue or red, that’s just amusing.
The recently-appointed head of the United States Postal Service appeared before Senate and House committees, last Friday and Saturday, to explain why blue mailboxes were removed from cities, and why mail-sorting machines were dismantled and removed from distribution facilities across the US, at a time when – because of concerns about the pandemic — the U.S. Postal Service will likely have a surge in mail-in ballots in the run-up to this year’s general election.
“Postmaster General Louis DeJoy, pressed by senators over mail delivery disruptions, said Friday he was unaware of changes that sparked a public uproar,” according to the Associated Press, “but his responses raised fresh questions about how the Postal Service will ensure timely delivery of ballots for the November election.”
Oddly, this seems amusing, when senior executives in businesses and organizations are unaware of things that cause uproars. In this postal service situation, even postal workers were out protesting what’s been going on at the USPS.
Gosh, what else is amusing? Well, a reporter for the Washington Examiner asked this question about QAnon, a group that’s, evidently, in the president’s thoughts, right now:
“Mr. President, at the crux of the (group’s) theory is the belief that you are secretly saving the world from (a) satanic cult of pedophiles and cannibals. The reporter continued… ”Does that sound like something you are behind or a believer in?”
And the president replied: “I haven’t heard that. Is that supposed to be a bad thing or a good thing?”
Harvey Radin is former senior vice president in charge of corporate communications and media relations, Bank of America Western Region. He makes his home in Redwood City, CA.