Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2017/12/05/dan-rather-many-things-abou.html
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“Many things about the Age of Trump will make the stomach sicker than bad oysters”
“Age of Trump.” An age. That appears to imply what would be experienced by people of the far future, and because what’s being experienced here and now is something worse than bad oysters.
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“Age” isn’t necessarily chronological. It depends on the number of events. As Tennyson wrote in Locksley Hall, “Better fifty years of Europe than a cycle of Cathay.” (Of course, that was when everything seemed to be getting better and better, and later Tennyson changed his mind when he was famous, rich and part of the Establishment.)
So if we are lucky the Trump era will be a short, sharp shower of shit rather than millions of years evolving ever bigger rapacious politicians, followed by an asteroid strike.
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All things in the Age of trump
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I think the most obviously sickening thing about “The Age of Trump” isn’t even Trump himself, it’s how so many people are so eager to defend his bullshit.
The same people who saw evidence of dictatorship in the most minuscule Obama action, who launched investigation upon investigation (all of which found nothing), and who wanted to impeach him over anything, even health care reform, bend over backwards to justify Trump.
It’s why we simply can’t have any reasonable political debate in the US anymore. How do you discuss politics with someone living in an alternate reality?
Edited to add: I really would be interested in seeing Trump shoot someone in the middle of 5th avenue, just to see if Fox News or talk radio would spring to his defense.
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He’s been in the business almost 70 years. Per his Wikipedia page he started working for the AP in 1950. He is 86 years old.
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Time to have the Fox News entertainment channel eliminated as a threat to national security.
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Other Dan Ratherisms:
“She ran away with it like a hobo with a sweet potato pie.”
Antsy “like a bird dog in a duck blind.”
“I’d be all over that like a hawk on a rabbit.”
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This is true. I would like to know whether he thinks, like I do, that the current era looks like a change from a painfully slow lessening of those problems towards a painfully quick worsening?
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I don’t know about anyone else, but the past year of Trump has felt like eons.
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I’ve no idea what he thinks, but in my view: either we have a new American revolution in the near future, or America kills the world.
Major wars are not far away, and climate cannot wait.
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I wish I could share my favorite photo of Mr. Rather, but I can’t find it online.
It was taken by Annie Leibovitz on the morning of the day in August, 1974 when Nixon resigned.
Rather is sitting on an apple crate (if I recall correctly – wooden boxes called that are commonly used in production work) with a mic in one hand, waiting to go. A few things are going on:
One – he looks like he’s totally ready to do his job. Probably the biggest gig of his career, and he’s waiting for his cue.
Two – he looks pretty wiped out. Like (literally) he hasn’t slept for 48-72 hours.
Three – this is the core of the memory, and the part that left the biggest impression on me – he looks absolutely sick at heart.
It’s kind of hard to express. For years at this point, he’d been part of the forces legitimately and responsibly on Nixon’s case, calling him out on his abuses of power and violations of the law.
But there was no joy here; no victory. It looked like he had a role to play in a war, and the last thing he wanted to do was pull the trigger. He was witnessing a tragedy, and had the duty to report it objectively.
It made an impression on me, and that was way back when they weren’t hiring models to babble the … “news.”
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I can’t thank you enough. I haven’t actually seen it in decades, but my memory was pretty close.
Looks like I imagined the apple crate – mea culpa.
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Glad I could help. Your memory was excellent given the duration since you had seen it.
You sure that’s not an apple crate? Perhaps a bit big for one but it could be. Or it could be a block of marble.
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High school paper, maybe? Also, don’t you know old people get to exaggerate a little bit? 
Cudos to the stomach; the autonomic nervous system. This wretched (GET IT??) feeling is the quake that ejects the poison. The acid burns on the way up, but we’ll feel better after, if we survive.
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