It’s about time. San Francisco’s Outside Lands canceled this year. Greed denied.

The malicious corporate greed of Greg Perloff and his Another Planet Entertainment money grubbing juggernaut has been laid low for a year in San Francisco.

Thank goodness.

It’s incredible and is indicative of their self-absorption thatAnother Planet did not acknowledge the Pandemic months ago. Instead, these avaricious entertainment promoters held off on doing the right thing in the name of public health until the last moment.

Thankfully Golden Gate Park will be spared the trauma inflicted upon its precious lands this year. The entire event should be cancelled. Forever.

Outside Lands was, is and always will be greed personified.

San Francisco Chronicle 6.24.2020

Outside Lands Music and Arts Festival, the banner three-day concert scheduled to take place in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park on Aug. 7-9, is officially canceled for the year due to the coronavirus pandemic.

https://datebook.sfchronicle.com/music/outside-lands-canceled-this-year-but-looks-ahead-to-2021-with-headliners-the-strokes-lizzo-and-tame-impala

America’s ‘Reign of Terror’ Jacobin Moment. Cultural putsch in America

Jacobin noun. (in the French Revolution) a member of a radical society or club of revolutionaries that promoted the Reign of Terror and other extreme measures, active chiefly from 1789 to 1794: so called from the Dominican convent in Paris, where they originally met. an extreme radical, especially in politics.

Overt political correctness is toxic.

Obviously, there are times when speech is so inflammatory that it endangers individuals, groups and institutions.

Nazis, white supremacists, venomous bigots need to be called out and harshly put down.

But there are limits to which one should go to limit free speech.

Wall Street Journal editorial – 6.23.2020

Anger at the killing of George Floyd has spurred useful reflection about race and perhaps some important police reform. But the political and cultural forces have transformed in recent weeks into something far less healthy—a ferocious campaign of political conformity sweeping across American artistic, educational, business and entertainment institutions.

This coercive cultural turn threatens to devour what remains of America’s civic comity and push durable social progress on race and politics out of reach.

We describe this as a Jacobin moment because it has the fervor and indiscriminate judgment of the revolutionary mind. The guillotine isn’t in use, but the impulse is the same to destroy careers, livelihoods and reputations. The wave of resignations, firings, disavowals and forced apologies at institutions large and small is moving so fast it is difficult to keep track.

This month editors at the New York Times and Philadelphia Inquirer lost their jobs after staff revolts over an op-ed and headline, respectively. Now the editor of Philadelphia Magazine, Tom McGrath, is resigning after the staff made racial demands. Critics pointed to stories they disliked from 2013 and 2015.

Economists have often been more resistant to ideological orthodoxy than other intellectuals. No longer. University of Chicago economist Harald Uhlig lost his contract with the Chicago Federal Reserve after tweets in which he argued that the Black Lives Matter movement “just torpedoed itself, with its full-fledged support of #defundthepolice.” Mr. Uhlig said he favored the Democratic Party’s more moderate reform proposals. Chicago Fed President Charles Evans, 13 years at the helm, rolled over without a peep.

Economists now want Mr. Uhlig stripped of his editorship of the Journal of Political Economy. New York Times political enforcer Paul Krugman tweeted that Mr. Uhlig is a “privileged white man” and he doubted his “objectivity” to edit the journal. Justin Wolfers of the University of Michigan combed through Mr. Uhlig’s old blog posts and claimed to be outraged that Mr. Uhlig in 2017 criticized left-wing violence.

The purge is being felt across academia. One lecturer was suspended by UCLA’s business school for a blunt email rejecting a student request to make different rules for final exams for black students. Another is facing investigation after reading in class Martin Luther King Jr.’s “Letter from a Birmingham Jail.” It contains the n-word, so professors may now deny students a classic American document on moral opposition to unjust state power.

At MIT, a chaplain was forced out over an email that condemned George Floyd’s death but also noted his criminal record and said, “Many people have claimed that racism is major problem in police forces. I don’t think we know that.”

The purges have reached into left-wing circles beyond the media. David Shor, an analyst at progressive consultancy Civis Analytics, was pushed out soon after tweeting research from Princeton calling into question the efficacy of riots. The leadership of the Poetry Foundation resigned this month after an open letter denounced the foundation’s statement denouncing systemic racism for being too vague.

In the world of sports, the NBA’s Sacramento Kings cut ties with announcer Grant Napear after he was asked on Twitter his views on Black Lives Matter and replied that “ALL LIVES MATTER…EVERY SINGLE ONE!!!” The coach of Oklahoma State University had to publicly apologize after he was photographed on a fishing trip wearing a shirt bearing the logo of “One America News,” a pro-Trump network.

Entertainment is also being subject to new forms of regulation on artistic expression. HBO announced this month that it is temporarily scrubbing “Gone With the Wind,” the classic Civil War novel-turned-movie, from its video library. Mobs are pulling down statues of Confederate generals, but in San Francisco they also pulled down Junipero Serra, an 18th-century missionary and Catholic saint, and U.S. Presidents are targets (see nearby).

The purges also reach into local schools and governments. A Vermont principal was removed after posting on Facebook “I firmly believe that Black Lives Matter,” but “Just because I don’t walk around with a BLM sign should not mean I am a racist.” The mayor of the northern California town of Healdsburg resigned after doubting police reform was necessary in that community. She was excoriated and told local press that “my intention was to follow through with my term, but basically at what personal price?”

Some of the targets of these campaigns may have spoken or acted clumsily, but apologists for cancel culture can find reasons to stigmatize or banish anyone. For some, the destruction of social goods like academic freedom and political pluralism is merely collateral damage if the goal is seen as just. We doubt most Americans agree with this unforgiving and punitive approach to cultural change, but the revolutionaries are now in charge with a vengeance.

They won’t stop by themselves because their campaign is essentially about power and control, and they need new villains. But as they march through liberal institutions, they are also laying waste to liberal values of free speech, democratic debate and cultural tolerance.

Someone has to stop this, and first and foremost that means the liberal establishment. The leaders of universities, foundations, museums, the media and corporations need to draw on their remaining moral authority to make the case for a liberal society. There is a risk that anyone who speaks up, however reasonably, will become a mob target. But if one or two lead, perhaps others will follow.

Social comity in a polarized society will not be achieved through coercion and struggle sessions. If liberals won’t stop the Jacobin left, expect a political backlash and social fracture that will make Donald Trump’s Presidency look like a tea party.

How Germany deals with racist adverts in the Black Lives Matter world.

American food products with racial connotations are about to get a name change. This problem of racial labeling is not limited to the USA.

Germany, too, is seeing an increased awareness in how product labels stereotype and stigmatize people of various ethnicities.

The Stollwerck confectionery company’s Sarotti Mohr figure, a logo showing a turbaned black figure, was designed in 1918. For decades one of the most famous German trademarks, it has long since disappeared. (shown above)

Deutsche Welle 6.21.2020

Aunt Jemima’s syrup and Uncle Ben’s rice have long been part of pop culture, but the logos will now be changed to tune into Black Lives Matter awareness. In Germany, a turbaned black man was turned into a magician.

Just a few shelves further down the supermarket aisle, shoppers can find Aunt Jemima baking and breakfast products. Here, the brand logo shows a black woman with a radiant smile — a logo that was created 131 years ago.

“Uncle and Aunt,” that’s what they used to call black people in the South. Soon Uncle Ben and Aunt Jemima will be history, the US corporations behind the brands say. They acknowledge that they have served racist stereotypes, according to Kristin Kroepfl, vice president and brand director of the PepsiCo subsidiary Quaker Foods North America, owner of the Jemima brand.

It remains to be seen how long Uncle Ben and Aunt Jemima will continue to smile at consumers from the shelves. “We do not yet know exactly what the changes will look like, and we do not have a timetable yet, but we are examining all the possibilities,” a Mars Inc spokeswoman says. Marketing expert Pascal Lauscher has a solution: “Why can’t Uncle Ben just be a white guy?”

For many critics, the logos should have been changed long ago.

On their websites, the US corporations have long presented themselves as politically correct: “The world we want tomorrow starts with how we do business today,” is the marketing slogan of Mars inc, Uncle Ben’s parent company. The food giant speaks out against “modern slave labor,” child labor and other ethically unacceptable standards in its supply chains.

Logos tell a story

The fact that the controversial rice packets with the Uncle Ben’s logo can still be found on supermarket shelves around the world has a reason, according to Pascal Lauscher, head of the Munich-based mmntm brand strategists.

“When I see many brands next to each other on a supermarket shelf, I pick the one I like and am familiar with,” he says, adding that is why companies spend a lot of money to build a brand history. “That’s why companies followed the old marketing rule: “Don’t touch the logo.” It’s “one of the most important identifying marks of a brand — it tells a story,” Lauscher told DW.

In this case, it is unfortunately the wrong one, he adds. “And that is why, logically, in view of the political situation, the companies are forced to change the logo and thus also change the story.”

From Pasca Lauscher’s view, the US corporations come too late; they should have made changes long before George Floyd’s death and the massive protests against racism that followed. “Changing the logo now is akin to saying, until now racism was not important to me and I didn’t want to sacrifice the logo because of discrimination against people with a different skin color,” he argues. But people will notice and they will wonder about the corporations’ practices, he adds.

Stollwerck turned the figure into a similarly-clad but golden-skinned magician character in 2004. A popular chocolate-covered marshmallow-type candy called a “Mohrenkopf” (Moor’s head) and similar sweets called “Negerkuss” (Negro kiss) have long since become “chocolate kisses.”

Politically incorrect names: German cookies and sweets

The pastry, now known as “Schokokuss” (Chocolate Kiss) is popular in Germany, particularly during Carnival every February.

Formerly known as “Mohrenkopf” (“Moorish head”), the name of the pastry was altered because of its racialized reference to Muslim inhabitants across what is now Europe and North Africa during the Middle Ages.

Photo – Lübeck, Germany. May 2017 – Lee Heidhues

German companies have already tried to deflect damage to their brands. The Bahlsen group recently reacted to accusations of racism for crispy chocolate-covered wafers it sold under the name “Africa.” “We launched this product 60 years ago and then, as now, racism was not part of our thinking,” the biscuit manufacturer explained in March 2020, “In order to avoid our product evoking associations with racism, we are already working on renaming it”

https://www.dw.com/en/uncle-bens-and-aunt-jemima-logos-how-germany-dealt-with-a-similar-problem/a-53862646

Police murder. LA cops kill security guard: ‘He ran because he was scared’

Juneteenth matters little to American law enforcement. The unmitigated violence perpetrated by American cops is unending and unrelenting.

The cops have no boundaries or limits on their right to commit legal murder.

This latest incident in Los Angeles won’t even get major play in the media. Why? It is just business as usual with the cops. Kill first and ask questions later.

The Guardian 6.19.2020

Sheriff’s deputies chased and shot dead Andres Guardado, 18, a security guard at an auto repairs shop.

Guardado’s sister told reporters: “I lost a part of me, it’s empty, and I’m never gonna have him back. I’m never gonna see him, he’s never gonna talk to me, I’m just, I can’t, I just can’t believe this happened to my brother. It really hurts me.”

After sheriff’s deputies chased and shot dead a security guard at an auto repairs shop in Los Angeles on Thursday evening, family members have identified the dead man to local media as Andres Guardado, 18.

The killing came amid national protest and unrest over the deaths of African Americans, and other people of color, at the hands of law enforcement.

Describing the Thursday shooting of Guardado at the auto shop, a police department spokesman told reporters deputies saw the man produce a handgun before running away.

“Deputies engaged in a short foot pursuit between the two businesses, at some point the deputies contacted the suspect and that’s when the deputy-involved shooting occurred,” the spokesman said, adding that it was not immediately clear how many officers were fired.

Andrew Heney, owner of the Freeway autoshop, told a local CBS affiliate: “We had a security guard that was out front, because we had just had certain issues with people tagging and stuff like that.”

“And then the police came up, and they pulled their guns on him and he ran because he was scared, and they shot and killed him. He’s got a clean background and everything. There’s no reason.”

The sheriff’s department said a handgun was found where the man, who died at the scene, was shot. Family members disputed that Guardado was armed. It was not clear if he had been wearing a uniform.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/jun/19/police-officers-shoot-and-kill-los-angeles-security-guard

Klobuchar drops out of VP contention says he should choose a woman of color

Amy Klobuchar has shown a lot of class in stepping aside.

Should Joe Biden be elected President in November Senator Klobuchar could be the next Attorney General.

Washington (CNN) 6.18.2020

Sen. Amy Klobuchar on Thursday night removed herself from consideration to be Joe Biden’s running mate, citing the ongoing national discussion about racial injustice and police brutality to suggest the former vice president should choose a woman of color.

“This is a historic moment, and America must seize on this moment. And I truly believe as, I actually told the vice president last night when I called him, that I think this is a moment to put a woman of color on that ticket,” Klobuchar, a Minnesota Democrat, told MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell.

“And there are so many incredibly qualified women, but if you want to heal this nation right now, my party … this is sure a hell of a way to do it.”

Biden offered warm words for Klobuchar shortly after her comments to MSNBC.

“Amy — from the moment you announced you were running for president in a snowstorm, it wasn’t hard to see you had the grit and determination to do anything you set your mind to,” Biden tweeted. “You know how to get things done. With your help, we’re going to beat Donald Trump.”

Klobuchar was touted for months as a promising vice presidential candidate due to her centrist appeal and name recognition following her own White House bid. But her prospects had waned in recent weeks as Biden faces increasing pressure to choose a woman of color as his running mate in the aftermath of George Floyd’s death at the hands of police officers.

Floyd’s death in Minneapolis reignited long festering Democratic concerns about Klobuchar’s criminal justice record and the seven years she spent as the top prosecutor in Minnesota’s most populous county, a position she secured by promising to be tough on crime.

The resurgence of questions about her criminal justice record — along with what many saw as her inability to address long-running accusations of racism inside the Minneapolis police force and her failure to bring charges against multiple officers involved in shootings during her time as a top prosecutor — had led some inside the Democratic Party to outright say they would question Biden’s judgment and commitment to Black voters if he picked Klobuchar as his running mate.

After suspending her own presidential bid in early March, Klobuchar was the first 2020 primary candidate with a number of delegates to announce she would endorse Biden.

She insisted that Biden could bring the country together and build a coalition of Democrats, independents and Republicans “because we do not in our party want to just eke by a victory. We want to win big.” In her concession speech, Klobuchar replaced her own name with Biden’s.”I think you know you have a home with Joe Biden,” she said, altering a popular stump line.

Biden himself has not committed to picking a black woman, telling CNN’s Dana Bash last month: “There are women of color under consideration and there are women from every part of the country under consideration because there are a lot of really qualified women that are ready to be president.”

“But I’m not making that commitment. I’m going to make that judgment after in fact this group goes through interviewing all these people,” he said.

Biden has said he hopes to pick his running mate around August 1.

https://www.cnn.com/2020/06/18/politics/biden-vice-president-amy-klobuchar/index.html

Pandemic over? No way. California sets Covid-19 one day record: Over 4,000 cases

Californians are under the false belief, buttressed by the happy talk false political Make America Great Again narrative, that the Pandemic is winding down.

Here is a stark and sobering reminder for all those who want to return to work and party on down.

The Pandemic is nowhere near to being a historical footnote.

It’s here and now.

San Francisco Chronicle 6.17.2020

California reported a record number of new coronavirus cases Wednesday, eclipsing 4,000 new cases in a single day for the first time, according to county data compiled by The Chronicle.

County health departments reported 4,134 new cases as of Wednesday evening, with four counties still yet to report. The state’s previous single-day high was 3,683 cases last Friday.

The rise in new virus cases comes as many areas of the state ease social restrictions and reopen sectors of the economy. All but five counties – including four in the Bay Area – have received state approval to advance into Stage 3 of California’s reopening plan, where services like indoor dining, fitness centers and hotels can begin to reopen and gatherings can involve more people.

California eclipsed 3,000 new cases in a day for the first time on May 30. The state has reached that mark eight times in June, including six of the last seven days.

The nine Bay Area counties were reporting 283 new cases Wednesday with Sonoma County yet to update its total. The area recorded its highest single-day total of 309 new cases last Friday.

https://www.sfchronicle.com/news/article/California-sets-new-record-for-most-new-15348122.php

Trump uses the Courts to stifle brutal expose of his chaotic presidency

Yesterday I posted that Trump was going to sue John Bolton to stop publication of his book. The book “The Room Where It Happened: A White House Memoir,” will make a mockery of this inept, incompetent charlatan and his soon to be former administration.

The attempt to stop publication runs counter to First Amendment rights of free speech. Trump is using the specious argument of “Security” to keep the book from being read by the public. The only “security” at issue is Trump’s total incompetence and the chaos he has brought upon the US and the world.

Now, with the help of his servile and sycophant Attorney General, Trump is asking a Federal Judge to halt publication scheduled for June 23. It’s called Prior Restraint.

Try as Trump might the book will be published.

Deutsche Welle 6.16.2020

The Trump administration has sued formerNational Security Adviser John Bolton over a book it says contains classified information. However, released excerpts reveal a portrait of “chaotic” decision making in the White House.

Bolton’s lawyer Chuck Cooper said that his client had painstakingly worked with classification specialists at the White House National Security Council to ensure classified material is not published.

“This is a transparent attempt to use national security as a pretext to censor Mr. Bolton, in violation of his constitutional right to speak on matters of the utmost public importance,” according to Cooper.

The administration of US President Donald Trump sued the president’s former national security adviser, John Bolton, on Tuesday to delay the publication of a book that the White House claims contains classified information on US foreign policy. The book, titled “The Room Where It Happened: A White House Memoir,” is expected to paint a picture of discord and chaos in the Trump Administration during Bolton’s tenure.

Publisher Simon & Schuster, called the lawsuit “nothing more than the latest in a longrunning series of efforts by the administration to quash publication of a book it deems unflattering to the president.”

In the lawsuit, the US Justice Department requests that a federal court order Bolton to “instruct or request” that the publisher delay publication of the book to allow for acompletion of the national security reviewprocess. The book was supposed to be released in March. Its release date was twice delayed and it is now set for release on June 23.

According to publishers, the book describes Trump as “a President addicted to chaos, who embraced our enemies and spurned our friends, and was deeply suspicious of his own government.”

The lawsuit follows threats by Trump on Monday that Bolton would face legal action. “I will consider every conversation with me as president highly classified. So that would mean that if he wrote a book and if the book gets out he’s broken the law,” Trump said. “That’s called criminal liability. That’s a big thing.”

Security concerns

Trump has accused Bolton of not completing the clearance process required for a book by former government officials who had access to sensitive information. The book contains “significant quantities of classified information that it asked defendant to remove,” the lawsuit said.

While Trump admitted he had not read the book, he said the problem of revealing conversations with the president “becomes even worse if he lies about the conversation, which I understand he might have in some cases.”

US Attorney General William Barr also raised concerns over the pre-publication review process, and added that the Trump administration was “trying to get them to go through the process and make the necessary deletions of classified information.”

https://www.dw.com/en/ex-trump-adviser-bolton-sued-to-delay-publication-of-tell-all-book/a-53837022

Trump administration to file lawsuit blocking John Bolton’s book

Trump is once again showing his total disdain and disregard for an open, free and independent media.

The latest attack on the free press by insidious con artist Trump will be to stop publication of the tell all memoir by ex National Security Adviser, the mustachioed John Bolton. In legal terms it’s called “prior restraint.”

The irony of all this is not lost on the political class. For years John Bolton was the darling of the hard core right wing political establishment.

Now he is being feted by everyone including many who previously scorned him. He may become a beacon of the right to free speech.

The Hill 6.15.2020

The Trump administration plans to file a lawsuit blocking next week’s release of a book authored by former national security adviser John Bolton, ABC News reported Monday.

Sources familiar with the matter told the network that the lawsuit seeking an injunction from publication in its current form is expected to be filed in federal court in the coming days. The book, published by Simon & Schuster, is slated for release on June 23.

The White House, National Security Council and Justice Department did not immediately return requests for comment.

The former Trump adviser left the administration in September and initially planned to publish his memoir, “The Room Where It Happened,” earlier this year. But the book underwent a standard review for classified information by the NSC, delaying its release.

Last week, the White House told Bolton his manuscript draft contained classified material. The White House said it would give Bolton a redacted copy of his book by June 19.

The NSC team and Bolton’s representatives have disputed throughout the year whether the information in the manuscript covers classified information.

The White House informed Bolton in January that the book had “significant amounts of classification.” White House deputy counsel John Eisenberg cautioned in a letter to Bolton’s attorney Charles Cooper this month that the book’s release could pose a national security threat.

Bolton’s book is expected to detail “Trump misconduct with other countries” beyond Ukraine, Axios first reported last week. The president’s previous interactions with Ukraine led to his impeachment last year.

The first interview with Bolton since he finished his memoir will air Sunday on ABC News.

https://thehill.com/regulation/court-battles/502773-trump-administration-to-file-lawsuit-blocking-john-boltons-book

Intolerance in Chill progressive San Francisco? You bet there is. Lots of it.

San Francisco prides itself on being the showcase of progressive thought and tolerance.

No way. Trust me there is a segment, albiet small, of the population which fits in quite nicely with the Trumpian Make America Great Again know nothings.

This incident, gone world wide, happened on Clay Street in the toney Pacific Heights Swells neighborhood. It is illustrative of the San Francisco intolerant underbelly.

San Francisco Chronicle 6.15.2020

James Juanillo hoped to inspire others when he started stenciling “Black Lives Matter” on the retaining wall of his Pacific Heights home in San Francisco.

But as the 50-year-old finished adding the chalk letters on Tuesday afternoon, June 9, a man and woman approached him to ask if the property belonged to him before accusing him of defacing private property. Juanillo recorded the incident and shared it with his 33 Twitter followers.

By Monday morning, the video had collected 16.1 million views, added more than 17,000 followers to Juanillo’s account and resulted in a financial services company reportedly firing one of the two people who wrongly accused Juanillo of breaking the law.

The incident also spurred the latest conversation about racism and a presumption of guilt being unfairly applied to people of color in a nation still reeling from the Minneapolis police killing of George Floyd and numerous other instances in which law enforcement have killed or beaten people under questionable or illegal circumstances.

Juanillo told The Chronicle in an interview Monday morning that he felt ambivalent about everything that happened over the past week.

“On one hand, I want them to learn a lesson from this,” he said. “On the other hand, I am the first person to say that this was not as egregious as what Derek Chauvin did to George Floyd. It was never my intent, or my intention for them to lose their livelihoods.

“I think it is sad. But they could have just kept on walking.”

The nearly two-minute video starts with a woman in a white shirt and short shorts asking Juanillo if he was stenciling on his own property. He asks the woman and man why they were asking.

“Because it’s private property, sir,” says the woman, who identifies herself as Lisa.

Subsequent reports have identified the woman as Lisa Alexander, CEO of skin care line LaFace.

“If I did live here and it was my property, this would be absolutely fine,” Juanillo asks her in the video.

“Totally,” says a man with Alexander, who was later identified as Robert Larkin.

James Juanillo waves to the public

“We actually do know, that’s why we are asking,” Alexander responds.

Juanillo tells them they can call the police or the owners because they were accusing him of defacing private property. He refuses to answer their questions and encourages them to call the police.

“I’ll be right here,” he says.

The pair then walks away, but they did apparently call the police.

Officers arrived within two minutes and recognized him, Juanillo told The Chronicle, adding that he’s lived in the same home since 2002. Without blaring their sirens or exiting their vehicles, the officers complimented him on the stencil work and soon left, he said.

Juanillo said he waited by a window overlooking his chalk work and the couple returned. He waved at them, he said, but again they walked away.

“They can come up to the front of the house, apologize, tell me it was a misunderstanding or what not, and this would have never happened,” Juanillo said. “I would have never posted the video. But instead they walked away.”

The Chronicle’s attempts to reach Alexander and Larkin for comment, as well as obtain an apology she reportedly issued Sunday, were unsuccessful.

Juanillo said most of the people who saw him stenciling expressed some kind of solidarity — from telling him, “Good job, bro,” to smiling and gesturing.

“I thought it was a shame that these two people couldn’t just ignore what I was doing,” he said.

Raymond James, the company where Larkin reportedly worked, issued a statement early Monday saying an unnamed employee no longer worked with the company following a probe into a “video alleging racism by one of our associates.”

“We have concluded that the actions of he and his partner were inconsistent with our values, and the associate is no longer employed with Raymond James,” the statement said.

He hopes the two who confronted him can realize they are part of a problem, even if they thought they had good intentions.

“Our country is being torn apart right now,” Juanillo said. “I think a lot of people need to examine how this is going to be resolved. And I think we all need to work forward and toward forgiveness and empathy.”

https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/SF-man-who-stenciled-Black-Lives-Matter-on-15341503.php#photo-19553666

The Confidence Man. Netflix Dirty Money documentary lays bare con man Trump

I just watched the devastating documentary on Trump’s financial and entertainment history. In 80 minutes the makers of this sharply honed take down have created a primer on the complete con artist who foisted himself on a gullible American public.

The program, originally aired over two years ago, is part of Netflix two season Dirty Money documentary series.

The writer James Poniewozik is author of the 2019 book “Audience of One. Donald Trump, Television and the Fracturing of America.” I am currently reading this absorbing account of how Trump and television came of age simultaneously. The result has been disastrous.

Feature photo: A slimmed down Trump with his parents

James Poniewozik New York Times 1.25.2018

Donald J. Trump’s boardroom in “The Apprentice” was like something out of a movie. Specifically, “Network.”

In the Netflix documentary “The Confidence Man,” two “Apprentice” producers say they found the actual Trump Organization offices too dated and dowdy for TV. So they built a set in Trump Tower, modeled on the darkened lair where the mogul, Arthur Jensen (Ned Beatty), dresses down the rebellious newsman Howard Beale (Peter Finch), howling, “The world is a business!”

That’s what reality TV does: It set-designs locations (a “Survivor” island, a “Bachelor” love nest) to look more convincing, more in line with our mental cartoons than the real thing.

“The Confidence Man,” a swift, brutal overview of Mr. Trump’s business career, argues that he had been doing the same thing with his image for decades: He wasn’t a business titan so much as he played one on TV.

The film, directed by Fisher Stevens (“Bright Lights”), is the last episode of a six-part anthology, “Dirty Money,” from the filmmaker Alex Gibney (“Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room”), arriving Friday. The installments range from an infuriating look at payday lending to an offbeat story about Canadian maple syrup cartels.

The common thread is the abuse of trust. And “The Confidence Man” argues that the problem goes all the way to the top.

Mr. Stevens’s narrative starts with Trump Tower, the gleaming metonym Mr. Trump hung his name on in brass letters. The splashy project landed him on talk shows and magazine covers as the photogenic shorthand for Reagan-age materialism.

That served his other big 1980s construction effort — his media image, for which he poured the foundation in the New York tabloids. The gossip columnist A. J. Benza recalls Mr. Trump as a regular source, offering juicy tips with only one condition: that he be referred to in print as a billionaire.

TV reports picked up on the description and embellished it, and Mr. Trump smiled and let them.

Dirty Money I 6.14.2020.png

“The Confidence Man” interviews old friends, like the music mogul Russell Simmons, and associates like Barbara Res, the executive in charge of the Trump Tower construction, who remember his mythmaking bemusedly. Compared with real estate families like the Zeckendorfs, Ms. Res says, “Who was Trump? He was nobody.”

Maybe Mr. Trump wasn’t the biggest developer. But he was the most visible, and he banked on people taking one for the other. (A later ad for Trump University declared, “Donald Trump is, without question, the world’s most famous businessman” — trusting the audience to read that as “most successful.”)

Banks threw money at his celebrity, and he spent it on high-visibility purchases: an airline, the Plaza Hotel, a football team, casinos.

When it all went bad by the early ’90s, fame was his guarantor. His creditors, who needed the Trump brand to survive in order to get paid back, put him on an allowance to keep up a glitzy front.

Mr. Trump, the film argues, has thrived by finding partners — in finance, reality TV, politics — who were as invested as he was in propping up his image.

Mr. Trump’s self-inflation has been covered before. In the 2005 book “TrumpNation” the former New York Times reporter Tim O’Brien, who figures heavily in this documentary, concluded that Mr. Trump was worth mere hundreds of millions, not billions. (Mr. Trump sued him for libel, unsuccessfully.) But “The Confidence Man” is useful for how it separates out the business thread from the recent tangle of “How we got Trump” analyses.

When Mr. Trump’s business became licensing his name to others, he essentially turned into a mascot. He showed up on sitcoms and did fast-food ads with his ex-wife Ivana and Grimace from McDonald’s. He was his own Col. Sanders, personifying the herbs and spices — glitter, ambition — that “TRUMP” in big brass letters stood for.

That made him a perfect host for “The Apprentice,” whose premise was that Mr. Trump was a legendary businessman and desirable boss.

TV fame opened up other opportunities, and the last half of “The Confidence Man” detours into dark intimations about Mr. Trump’s partnerships with businessmen from former Soviet republics and his alleged self-enrichment as president. It also re-examines the fraud case, later settled, against Trump University that his opponents tried to make stick to him in the 2016 campaign.

But the film’s larger case is against the reasoning that helped elect him: He was the most famous businessman, therefore he was the best businessman, therefore — following the logic of Mitt Romney and H. Ross Perot before him — he would be the best president. “He’s managed businesses,” one voter quoted in the film says, “and I think he can manage this country.”

You could, of course, argue that branding and the ability to leverage illusions are valuable skills themselves. You could agree with Arthur Jensen that the world is a business. But the forceful conclusion of “The Confidence Man” is that Mr. Trump’s world is, and has always been, a stage.

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“Because it’s private property, sir,” says the woman, who identifies herself as Lisa.

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