Editorials and Opinions

Gary Tischler • June 8, 2016

In 1995, the Govinda Gallery, for many years at 34th and Prospect and founded by Chris Murray, had already made …

Gary Tischler • May 16, 2016

This past Tuesday marked the first time in a very long time that Tuesday wasn’t Super Tuesday, if you discount the fact that Bernie Sanders won another primary, this time in West Virginia.

But it wasn’t Super Tuesday. It was instead, as they might say in the halls of Trump Tower: Day One in the Presidency in Waiting of Presumptive Republican Party Presidential Nominee Donald Trump.

Or the Twilight of the Republicans, the Beginning of the End of Days of the Not Feeling So Good Grand Old Party.

Or it’s just another Tuesday with NCIS and the ageless Jethro Gibbs, and the last two episodes of very special agent Anthony DiNozzo.

One thing is certain: Donald Trump is the Presumptive Presidential Nominee of the Republican Party (not to be confused with presumptuous or pretentious). The Donald — who was apparently planning ahead when he copyrighted the phrase “make America great again” before announcing that he was running — is it.

No matter how Trump’s May 12 confab with Speaker of the House and GOP party chair Paul Ryan, and another meeting with Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell, went, it might be worth looking at how the U.S. electoral process got to this point.

There is, of course, nothing much anybody in the GOP ranks or, for the moment, anywhere else can do about it. In the immediate aftermath of this development, NBC anchor Lester Holt made a beeline for Trump Tower for an interview in which Trump said he would like to see the coming national campaign elevated to a higher level. He said he would be nice to Hillary if Hilary were nice to him.

That pretty much evaporated when he called out Bill Clinton on his scandalous past with women and said Hillary Clinton was an enabler and so forth and so on.

That was Trump being Trump, as was his reaction to the fact that House Speaker Paul Ryan could not as yet find it in his heart to endorse him. Trump was stumped; he didn’t see that coming and was peeved.

Trump is apparently under the impression that he has already won the election, announcing that Chris Christie would be managing his transition team. It’s fair to say that Christie probably had a bigger job in mind, but Trump hasn’t actually won the election yet. He also said he would be making announcements about his Supreme Court appointments very soon. Rick Perry, the former Texas governor and candidate for president — first out among the many — volunteered that he might be happy to be vice president.

This is what the great 2016 election cycle has come to. Nobody saw that coming. They saw the 17 other people coming like the running of the bulls and assumed that out of this cloud of dust a somewhat moderate candidate might emerge — a very conservative candidate who could reach out to all the voters who voted for Obama twice and snatch a few here and there, just enough to win. That would be Mr. Bush (Jeb), Mr. Rubio (Marcolito) and possibly Mr. Walker of Wisconsin, whose most notable accomplishments in the campaign were to quit early and to win Wisconsin for Ted Cruz. That would not be what’s-his-name, John Kasich, the governor of Ohio.

It turned out that the guy who could turn out the voters was Trump, former host of “The Apprentice,” who spent most of his life on the campaign trail and the rest of it on Twitter and Instagram, just like the rest of us.

Mr. Trump won in spite of the fact that he had little or no impulse control and said and did things that would have knocked out a candidate for alderman, dogcatcher and police chief any other time. He won in spite of the fact that his speeches were notably devoid of content, that he was fair-to-mediocre during debates (the ones he showed up for) and said most of the candidates were “nice” or “a disaster” or “low energy” (Jeb Bush) or untruthful (“Lyin’ Ted”).

This is not the space to talk about Trump’s policies. He seems to be willing to change them if they get him a win, and so cannot be relied upon to offer a clue as to what he actually may think.

It still seems strange that when there were only two and a half people left standing in the GOP race, one of them would be Ted Cruz, perhaps the least liked person on television apart from the girl who calls her car Brad, as in “and then I totaled Brad.”

One by one, 17 little Indians, dropped out, quit, evaporated or disappeared.

Welcome to the Age of Trump, 24/7. Not to worry. Late polls show Trump and Hillary Clinton in a close race. Let the games begin — or continue, as it were.

Gary Tischler •

Who knew? Indiana turned out to be the graveyard where Sen. Ted Cruz interred his presidential hopes.

Which is to say that our long national nightmare — call it the race for the Republican Party’s presidential nomination or “17 Little Indians” or “The Citizen Trump Reality Show” — is over. (Or may just have gone to a new level.)

The next one — the national race for the presidency — is about to begin in earnest. (Or at least on the day when Sen. Bernie Sanders calls it a day, which could take a while.)  And, yes, it’s official:  GOP chairman Reince Pribus  has declared Donald Trump the presumptive nominee of the party.

For now, however, we can be thankful for many things: Tuesday is now just the second day of the week, super no longer.  The second tier is gone, and so is the first tier, except for one. With no primary races to predict and maps to fill in, CNN immediately set about filling in a national map in which Donald Trump becomes president.  Please, guys. One nightmare at a time.

Here is the headline of the hour, in simple, Trumpian terms: “Donald Trump Won, Ted Cruz Quit.”

Did we forget John Kasich again?  So has everybody else.  Kasich — or as he has always called himself, the grown-up in the room — was still in the race last evening, on the track to nowhere.  He has become, for better or worse, the forgotten man.   Kasich stuck it out in Indiana long enough to get a taste of the back of Trump’s hand — metaphorically speaking — when Trump called him out on his “disgusting eating habits.” But wait — this just in — it’s official: Kasich has suspended his campaign.

Cruz, whose remaining chance of ending up with the nomination rested with the hope that Trump would not get the required number of delegates, insisted all along for the past two weeks that Indiana was shaping up to be make-or-break, hugely important and critical in the GOP race.  He was absolutely right. It buried him.

The Indiana portion of the GOP road show grew increasingly bizarre as it went along.  Cruz, in a weirdly desperate move, chose former business CEO and presidential candidate Carly Fiorina as his running mate, a move that’s usually saved for the general election.  She had supported Cruz after she dropped out of the race and at one point had been the target of one of Trump’s less classy criticisms and stood up to him.  There was no help there, other than a musical moment in which Fiorina, who also literally managed to stumble and fall at one point, sang to Cruz’s children.

It got worse for Cruz. Former House Speaker John Boehner awoke from a long political slumber to attack Cruz, calling him, among other things, “Lucifer in the flesh” and an SOB, for reasons that remain obscure, an occasion which took away from whatever Cruz was hoping to accomplish.  Trump called him “desperate and demented” and then made mention of a National Enquirer article that hinted that Cruz’s father was connected to the Kennedy assassination.  This was done almost casually, like throwing a grenade in an empty parking lot.

Cruz on the last day erupted or imploded, right before the voting began, calling Trump a “serial philanderer” and a “narcissist.” (Tell us something we don’t know.)

Nothing much helped.  Trump got over 50 percent of the vote and all the delegates. Cruz got to make a sorrowful speech in which he did not get behind Trump or say anything warm and fuzzy about him.  He exited clumsily, even managing to elbow his wife in the face as they headed for a hug. The video is streaming endlessly online.

Trump, surrounded by wife and children, stayed calmed and seemed a little amazed that what had started out with such strange drama was becoming a reality.  He was nice to Cruz, the man he had continually called “Lying Ted” just, oh, minutes ago.  He called Cruz “one hell of a competitor. He’s one tough guy, and he’s got an amazing future.”

Trump was not so kind to Hillary Clinton. “We’re going after Hillary Clinton,” he said. “She will not be a great president. She will not be a good president. She will be a poor president.”

That remains to be seen. First, Clinton has to  win out over that pesky Bernie Sanders who beat her convincingly in Indiana by a 53 to 47 percentile margin — once again buoying his hopes that where there’s a win, there’s a way.  Clinton, talking to coal miners in West Virginia, ignored Sanders and continued to focus on the fight ahead against Trump.

It turned out, in the end once again, that this particular Tuesday, was super indeed.  Tuesday and Indiana decided who the GOP nominee would be, even if it did not quite yet determined the fate of the Democrats.

Tuesday and Indiana guaranteed that in spite of all the efforts of the mysterious GOP establishment Donald Trump would be the Republican nominee for president.  If the New York Daily News is to be taken seriously, it also signaled the end of the Grand Old Party, as we or they know it.  It may be that, for the Republican Party, the only worse thing that could happen than Trump winning the nomination is Trump winning the election.

All of this is no small thing in the scheme of things and the way of the world.  Trump is no longer just a celebrity, a mogul, a reality show host.  And if he is only these things, then the race for president will turn into his very own reality show.

But for now, Trump is as real as it gets: Donald J. Trump, the Republican nominee for President of the United States.

Gary Tischler • April 22, 2016

When news came April 21 of the death of Prince, the 57-year-old  rock-funk-jazz-soul ageless music dynamo through the course of the day and night, the response here in Washington, D.C., seemed especially electric and full of shock.

A Hispanic bank teller looked unbelieving and asked, “How, when, what happened?”  A black woman, pacing back and forth, replied, “Today, this morning . . . We’re losing our icons. He was an icon. I mean whom do we have left?”

As his name, given to him by his father, another Prince and musician, indicated, he performed from the get-go as some kind of special royalty — not in any kiss-the-ring fashion, but in a way that set him and his multitude of gifts apart. He was an original, who could play all the instruments that any sort of music required. He was a gem and something of a genius, a songwriter, a movie star in his own movie based on his life, a live performer who was brazen, colorful and full of color, a thin, small African American who cast a large shadow on America’s music.  He was a chameleon of independence. He changed bands, identities and clothes, styles and ways of walking and talking and writing.  

To America’s black funkadelics and soul-searchers, this was a hurtful loss because it seemed to come out of nowhere. The cause of his death — he was found unresponsive in his Minneapolis compound — has yet to be determined, although there have been rumors and speculations swirling that he had several days ago perhaps overdosed on the highly addictive pain killer drug Percocet and that he had been in serious pain for some time due to hip problems and the fact that religion forbids the blood transmissions required for such surgery.   Whatever the cause, the end result will be only sadder for all the loss.

To youthful and also memory- and music-driven African Americans, his death is a heavy blow, every bit as painful as the deaths of the legendary Whitney Houston — and perhaps more to the point, Michael Jackson. 

Prince embraced — and then often improved upon, and  certainly embellished just about every form of American pop music that he encountered.  He jumped into those waters gleefully, confidently, even arrogantly early on and just stirred and muddied the waters, singing with a certain rawness about sex and love, and also a adding a considerable amount of soul-searching content, especially in “Purple Rain,” which was the title of his best known album and a movie about himself in which he starred. The film grossed around $80 million — not a bad outing for the times and for what it was, plus an Oscar for musical score.

The youthful generations of the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s embraced him, including young white people, while others were baffled by him and underappreciated him. That could include many of us who didn’t bother to explore the depth and range of the body of work which placed him — and continues to — in the top ranks of rock, pop, soul and jazz musicians.  Some folks scoffed at his attempts to put almost every kind of music into one album, or one song—but he did it anyway. Duke Ellington’s phrase “beyond category” appears created for him.

He pressed issues of his identity — including his much speculated-upon sexual identity. On stage, he managed to project a kind of direct, male sexuality that could also be at turn androgynous, driven by a feel for costume and style, and his forays into high-pitched vocals.  Girls — and boys — loved him. Boy George claimed he had an affair with him, but then so did some high-profile female sex symbols like Kim Basinger and Madonna. 

His appeal seemed to defy category, gender, ethnicity and race, while embracing all their aspects.

His younger self party-inducers were explicit. In his later years, Prince became a Jehovah’s Witness and toned himself down a little.  He seemed always to be searching: so much so that for a time he dropped the name Prince and instead went by his own love symbol symbols or as “the artist formerly known as Prince,” partly in a fight with his record company.

The musical beat this year has been darkened by sadness. The world has lost David Bowie, Glenn Frey of the Eagles and recently one of country music’s most authentic voices, Merle Haggard. And now, Prince, and doves cried.

Gary Tischler • April 21, 2016

It looks as if we’re going to be in for another round of non-stop political noodling, Trump-o-mania, Hillary-Bernie battles, and who will clinch the Republican and Democratic presidential nominations.

It will be presidential politics 24-7, right up to the California primary in June which ought to settle things — if they haven’t been settled by then.

The roller coaster ride, which once used to feature a whole slew of candidates, but now contains only three Republicans and two Democrats, begins, well, yesterday.

As far as Donald Trump is concerned, he’s won already, which is maybe why his victory speech sounded a little like a national victory speech.   In the big New York primary for both parties, Trump won 60 percent of the vote in the Republican race, leading him to claim that Ted Cruz was technically eliminated.  This isn’t quite true, but let’s face, when you finish third in a race to John Kasich (I know, we forgot again) as Cruz did, your chances are on life support. 

Hillary Clinton also did well, stopping the onrush of victories that Bernie Sanders brought to New York . She won convincingly, with 57 percent of the vote. Sanders had 42 percent, which, while not entirely crush-worthy, was impressive for her and disheartening for the Bern, who had thought — as did the polls and the media, which dashed out a 52-48 exit poll — that he would do better here, what with the proximity to his home state and such.  But New York is Clinton’s home state, too.  The more Sanders won, the more he seemed to lose.  This was also the case with New York.  If you look at a map of the counties in New York, he won almost the entire state — except for the big urban areas, except for New York City jurisdictions.

Now, we’re off and running — five major primaries will be held next week in Rhode Island, Delaware, Pennsylvania, Maryland and Connecticut.   This will spark — as it already has — another round of speculation, predictions and the meaning-of-it-all articles like this one.  The media — and this is especially true of the television media of all stripes — and objective non-objective persuasions have been reduced to cheerfully congratulating themselves on being wrong every time out when it comes to the fate and progress of Donald Trump.  Some weeks past, when Cruz won an unlikely victory in Wisconsin as well as Colorado — victories which sparked a Trump cheating tirade which he’s never entirely abandoned — the media had Trump finally stopped, wounded, all but derailed and predicted that soon enough the mysterious GOP establishment would rally around Cruz or the other guy, whomever that might be.

Didn’t happen.   Trump did a showy reshuffling of his staff, added some veteran strategists, a mixed bags of effective pros, old-timers going back to the Dole campaign, foreign policy advisers that included Cold War warriors and so on.   He made some policy speeches that did include complete sentences and were read from prompters.  Gone were all but a few rallies and clashes with demonstrators and free-wheeling claims about history and events that did not happen.  True, he whined about the delegate system, saying it was rigged. This was like a guy cleaning up all the chips, and claiming that the other guys had cheated.

Of course, the danger of an ur-Trump who doesn’t behave like Trump is that he may become boring.  His victory speech was something like that: Trump light.  “Huuuge” has been replaced by “amazing.” Gone was “lying  Ted,” replaced by Senator Cruz who, of course, doesn’t stand a chance any more.  Trump will still get rid of Obama-care. He’s still going to make “amazing” deals, with the help of other dealmakers like him. “The economy, we’re going to fix it. It will be amazing, you watch.”

The idea that Trump — and less so Clinton — might sweep the next batch of states is not as viable as it might sound, especially since that’s what media types are positing.  They have been known to be wrong.  Pennsylvania is not New York, and neither is Maryland, for that matter. Trump’s message to the forgotten working class will resonate in troubled mid-sized cities like Scranton, where for a time “City in Crisis” seemed like a permanent headline in the local newspaper.

The thing of it is we’ll be talking Trump morning, noon and night again.  Trump said the media was wrong about his chances, but added, “I don’t mind. As long as they keep on talking. Just keep on talking.”

Maybe Washington, D.C. — the center of the world, not necessarily Trump’s world, at least not yet — will escape the political immersion that will visit other states and cities. 

This time of year, there are other things happening here that reminded you that there is a life after primaries and elections.  This time of year, we’re invested in modest and celebratory things like house tours, and the not so modest operatic extravaganza of Wagner’s Ring Cycle at the Kennedy Center, which begins the same night of the also im-modest and out-of-touch-with-the-reality-of-daily-life White House Correspondents Dinner. This dinner and parties before and after are where elected officials, the Washington establishment of politicians and media go kiss-kiss without trying to bite each other.  That other surreal world showing up at those parties will be the denizens of Hollywood — at the tables and on the red carpet.

Daily life here is different in the city and in the neighborhoods removed from Trump and Clinton land.  Here, we have neighborhood parties and neighborhood issues — liquor licenses in Georgetown, a homeless shelter plan for all the wards still being chewed over, a June 14 election which may see the return of  Vincent Gray to the District Council at some point, no matter what the Washington Post may opine.   We live in a city that is still defined by the people who live in it, although we live in a rapidly changing city that is also redefining its demographic identity.    We have a mayor who is faced with the unusual task of making prosperity work for everyone.  We live in  a city that still has little or not enough say in some of its critical concerns — such as its budget, guns and civil rights.

But we live in a city of people, nonetheless, a city that, besides its monuments, has some unique qualities that are common to small towns and the great wide world all at once.  I was present at a celebration, a Sunday afternoon party in Adams Morgan attended by a group of people that fought long and hard and won a zoning battle on the issue of pop-up housing projects.  There was music by a rock band headed by a veteran diplomat, playing “Mr. Tambourine Man.” There was beer, paella, strudel and conversation about dogs and neighbors and schools and crime and news of an impending grandchild. There were, as it were, dogs and children present, and the realization of neighbors and neighborhood.

More recently, on the evening of the New York primary, there was a musical offering with the aid of the Embassy Series of Chopin and Jewish prayers at the Embassy of Poland, commemorating the 1943 uprising of Jews against the Nazis in the Warsaw Ghetto, fought bravely by Jewish resistance fighters. The uprising failed militarily but triumphed morally in history.  There were Holocaust survivors in attendance along with the writers and diplomats. There was a lighting of menorah candles, and the music was as sweet as spring incense.

Now, that afternoon and that evening were amazing.