Tag Archives: Stephen Colbert

“Does He Know We Can Hear Him?”

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Public rhetoric is minefield of unintended meanings. It needs to be tempered by alert self-monitoring.

With his usual flair for irony Stephen Colbert tossed out the question that heads this piece during his CBS show that included a video clip of President Trump. The President predictably decided to go off script at a gathering of his formal Board of Peace. With dignitaries from 20 nations in the room, he decided to remind them and those watching how much he liked young women. This thought escaped into this formal setting on February 19th, the very moment that most of the world was fixated on the unfolding Epstein/Prince Andrew saga of trafficking of girls and young women.

To say the thought was ill-timed is obvious. It fell out of his mouth after he veered into the weeds by complimenting one young diplomat on his good looks. One can imagine that after he made this strange observation it would be wise to chase the thought further down a rabbit hole, making it clear that this was not a homoerotic point. So he quickly added his own misfired punchline: but “women—I like.”

The leaders in the room sat in stunned silence. And so Colbert’s question was both a joke and a pertinent inquiry about Trump’s ill-timed self-own.

Is there any consistent situational awareness evident in his comments? Does he know what he should be saying at a formal event? This instance is another reason why presidential staffs like their bosses to work from carefully prepared manuscripts. Yet Trump fashions himself as a natural wit and raconteur. He is neither.

Public rhetoric is tricky. It needs to be tempered by a careful degree of self-monitoring. A person needs to anticipate how comments made to others will be heard and understood. Failing at this vital social skill is like driving a car with a gas pedal stuck to the floor. More specifically, Presidents can’t use formal gatherings to deliver asides or rants more common to a social media troll. If not for him, the regrets of his staff must pile up faster than cars on an icy road. And the biggest risk is to be the last person in the room to notice the calamity of a verbal impulse not captured in time. Trump’s persistent tendency to want to chase after his randy reputation in comments about the appearance of women journalists only adds to the increasing association of him with the womanizing Jeffrey Epstein.

As I noted a decade ago, the concept is central enough to be at the center of measures of social intelligence. The idea is meant to identify those traits of character that allow for the tempering of one’s own impulses to successfully mesh with the needs and feelings of others. This is another way to describe a person’s “rhetorical sensitivity:” an ability defined by Rod Hart and his colleagues to imagine “how one views the self during communication, how one views the other, and how willing one is to adapt self to the other.” Worded in a questionnaire where agreement affirms this general awareness, some of the items include the following:

  • One should keep quiet rather than say something which will alienate others.
  • The first thing that comes to mind is [not always] the best thing to say.
  • When talking to your friends, you should adjust your remarks to suit them.
  • A person who speaks his or her gut feelings is [not always] to be admired.
  • We should have a kind word for the people we meet in life.

A thought often misattributed to Cicero is still a good one: “As man speaks, so is he.” It is probably too much to expect that Trump with ever acquire the social intelligence necessary to lead with empathy and compassion. In the meantime more of us respond by adopting versions of his rough rhetoric of personalization in our own counter-responses. In the end, the morality of human decency gets slighted in the very settings where it is needed most.

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The Legacy Networks are Now Supplicants

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The constant churn of media mergers now keeps these companies indebted to the largesse of Trump, who abuses federal agencies by using them as tools to enhance his power.

With American authoritarianism in ascendency, we are witnessing the decline of independence in traditional outlets of American broadcast news. The three original networks have all taken actions to placate the President, who is on a continuous retribution crusade. The weapons of choice to unsheathe the power of the federal government is the approval of major corporate mergers by the Federal Trade Commision or the Department Of Justice, and regulation of airwave use through the Federal Communications Commission. The issue often arises because mergers and transfers of ownership have been common in the mass media for decades.

For a time in the middle of the last century the three original networks were content with espousing the position that they existed for the public good. The best owners thought of broadcasting as something like a civil necessity: a logical extension of the view, since they owned many of their affiliates. Owners were willing to accept modest profits in favor of being good corporate citizens.  Though the first form of the Federal Communications Commission was initially set up to bring order to the rush of broadcasters to use various frequencies, it would also seek guarantees from station owners that the public airwaves would be used to contribute to the public good.  (But to be clear, network affiliates with access to the airwaves need to be licensed. But as with other American media outlets, networks themselves do not need government licenses to operate.)

By the 1980s, the networks were rapidly turning into banks for investors, while divesting many of their entertainment and publishing assets. Key managers are now more likely to come with a financial rather than production background. Mergers are second nature to them.

Corrupting the FCC

Until now no one understood that the FCC should have any claims on an affiliate because the Chair of the agency did not like their network’s politics. The agency was never meant to censor broadcast content, as Brendan Carr did last month in forcing Disney/ABC to silence Jimmy Kimmel Live!  A better and different tradition was set by FCC Chair Newton Minow in the early 60s when he urged broadcasters to be less timid by producing nationally significant programming.

As we know, late night host Jimmy Kimmel made fun of the President, and more recently made brief comments about the assassination of Republican Charlie Kirk. That was enough for Carr to have Kimmel silenced, lest ABC’s affiliates have their licenses revoked.

The Chinese cannot offer negative comments about President Xi in their broadcasts. Nor can Russian entertainers freely challenge President Vladimir Putin. These leaders maintain power on their own artificial islands of enforced adoration. In his own way Trump has joined them in seeking to crush oppositional speech, abusing the role of the FCC and other federal agencies, and in defiance of the right of Americans to exercise their First Amendment rights.

The heat of political retribution also lays behind the decision of CBS—once a network with impressive independence—to cancel the popular Late Show with Stephen Colbert. Colbert has the best ratings of all the competing shows in the evening daypart. It also remains to be seen if the Comcast-owned NBC, with its own late-night hosts and a Trump accusation that they peddle “fake news,” will resist. David Ellison, the new head of Paramount Skydance, including CBS, is reportedly working with his multibillionaire father to also gain control of Paramount, Warner Brothers, and CNN. The Ellisons’ wealth comes from the Oracle empire, illustrating how American tech companies pile up media assets, making billions to spend on even more federally approved mergers.

The founder of CBS in the 1920s was also the son of a rich father who happened to be in the cigar business. But the constant churn in media companies has taken an ominous turn in how they now actively seek the largesse of the current President, who uses federal agencies as personal tools to enhance his power. It is hard to overestimate the breach of the traditional American separation–imperfect, to be sure–between media owners and specific administrations.

In what is a dangerous and new trend, our tech industries increasingly seem to have capitulated specifically to the President’s efforts to reign in programming that he might find offensive. We could extend the analysis to Apple Computer, Google, and a number of “big tech” companies. There are accusations, for example, that Google is resisting A.I. summaries of news reports speculating on the President’s health.

No nation completely escapes tensions between their powerful media businesses and governments that would like to have more content control. But the protection of freedom of speech and of the press is guaranteed by the Constitution. Right now, this bedrock idea gets only lip service from the White House, and seems to have no vocal defenders even among the digital giants.