Category Archives: commentary

Poof! It’s Gone. Maybe.

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We think Donald Trump‘s name has been removed from the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. At least, that what Trump’s handpicked board of directors told the District Court for the District of Columbia in a filing on Saturday. The removal had been ordered by the court two weeks earlier in a decision enforcing the Center’s original statutory name.

Trump’s name was added in December 2025 after he replaced the Kennedy Center’s leadership and the new board voted to rename the institution. The court found this action illegal, ruling that the board cannot unilaterally change the name of a national memorial.

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Trump Meets the Press

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This goes on my list of most memorable television interviews. And I have seen many.

Donald Trump sat for an interview with Kristen Welker, host of NBC’s Meet the Press. I have no idea why. Welker announced that she and her crew had been invited to follow Trump to a rally in Wisconsin, where Trump addressed farmers, one of his most supportive constituent groups. Why they continue to overwhelmingly support him is something else I don’t understand. His policies have crippled their export markets and put them on government subsidies, welfare, and threatened their livelihood. Still, he found himself addressing a friendly crowd. Then he sat down with Welker in a barn in the midst of a pouring rainstorm. As the interviewed progressed, the storm moved inside.

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If It Ain’t Broke…

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The maxim reads, “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.” Advice which generally means don’t try to fix something that works. The odds are you’ll mess it up. In the context of the CBS blockbuster newsmagazine Sixty Minutes, it seems to apply. Unless of course, fixing something broken is not the goal of the new owners of CBS.

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Memorial Day

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Memorial Day is a day for reflection. The day honors the men and women who died while serving in the U.S. military. Observed every year on the last Monday of May, Memorial Day was originally called Decoration Day in a nod to the tradition of placing flowers or other decorative displays at gravesites.

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Funerals at CBS

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There are two funerals on tap this week at CBS, Inc., the company where I spent the first decade of my professional career. When I joined it in 1974, it had recently changed its name from the Columbia Broadcasting System to better reflect its position as a major media company, not just a broadcaster. Its four core lines of business were Broadcasting (TV and radio), Records (music), Publishing (books and magazines), and Musical Instruments/Toys.

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R.I.P. V.R.A.

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John Roberts, Chief Justice of the United States, has achieved his life goal. With the Court’s ruling in Louisiana v. Callais, he has killed the Voting Rights Act. Roberts made the destruction of the VRA of 1965 his lifelong crusade. His opposition to the Act dates back to his days as a law clerk for then Associate Justice William Rehnquist. Rehnquist notoriously wrote a memo in 1952 stating, “I think Plessy v. Ferguson was right and should be re-affirmed.” Plessy was the infamous “separate but equal” case institutionalizing racism in public schools. It was overturned by Brown v. Board of Education in 1954.

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What Would Tom Say?

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What Would Tom Say? That’s the question running through my mind as I watched Charles III, King of Great Britain and Ireland and lots of other places, address a joint session of the Congress of the United States of America.

Tom is Thomas Jefferson, founding father, first Secretary of State, third President, and principal author of the Declaration of Independence from Great Britain by the thirteen colonies henceforth to be known as the United States of America.

In the Declaration, written 250 years ago, Jefferson accuses Britain’s then King George III of being a tyrant, “unfit to be the ruler of a free people.”

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