Mountain Views News, Combined Edition Saturday, November 9, 2019

11

OPINION: 

Mountain View News Saturday, November 9, 2019 

STUART TOLCHIN


BLAME THE PARTIES

MOUNTAIN 
VIEWS

NEWS

PUBLISHER/ EDITOR

Susan Henderson

PASADENA CITY 
EDITOR

Dean Lee 

PRODUCTION

SALES

Patricia Colonello

626-355-2737 

626-818-2698

WEBMASTER

John Aveny 

DISTRIBUTION

CONTRIBUTORS

Mary Lou Caldwell

Kevin McGuire

Chris Leclerc

Bob Eklund

Howard Hays

Paul Carpenter

Kim Clymer-Kelley

Christopher Nyerges

Peter Dills 

Rich Johnson

Lori Ann Harris

Rev. James Snyder

Dr. Tina Paul

Katie Hopkins

Deanne Davis

Despina Arouzman

Jeff Brown

Marc Garlett

Keely Toten

Dan Golden

Rebecca Wright

Hail Hamilton

Joan Schmidt

LaQuetta Shamblee

 You 
see them 
jumping 
around on 
TV every 
day. Seventy 
and eighty 
year olds 
like Bernie 
Sanders, 
Joe Biden, 
Elizabeth 
Warren, 
Diane 
Feinstein, 
even the unmentionable one with 
the long red tie and the orange face; 
notwithstanding cancer or heart attacks 
they’re in there giving their all for some 
goal. I’m the same age—so how come 
I’m having trouble walking down the 
stairs.

 It’s not only the politicians. 
Think of the recently deceased but 
very, very old sportscasters like Vin 
Scully, Chick Hearn, or Harry Caray. 
I cannot even watch a Dodger game, 
or a Laker game, or even a Cub game 
without unfavorably comparing the 
present broadcasters to the wonderful 
broadcasters who recently left us. I 
know it’s not really these young guys 
fault that they generally completely fail 
to describe what’s going on. They were 
not trained as radio broadcasters who 
sat with their great mentors like Red 
Barber and learned to make the games 
visible to listeners and then to viewers 
who trusted their impressions and their 
honesty, and their integrity. Now the 
flow of all these sports have been ruined 
by instant replays which are often eternal 
delays when nothing is happening and 
the announcers are as befuddled as we 
are. Have you heard; there is talk of 
prohibiting the home plate umpires from 
calling balls and strikes and replacing 
them with robots! I’m not kidding. 
Pretty soon probably the players will 
be eliminated and replaced by avatars. 
Now won’t that be thrilling?

 It’s the same in the news 
business. In my youth the newscasters 
were war-time correspondents like 
Edward R. Murrow and Walter Cronkite 
who had been through it all and were 
seemingly incorruptible. Walter 
Cronkite was called the most trusted 
man in America and when he teared up 
announcing JFK’s death or rejoicing over 
the moon landing we felt the experience 
with him. Did you happen to go to 
the simulation of the Apollo Landing 
expensively presented at the Rose Bowl? 
It was very much like an amateurish 
high school play with special effects. I 
found it kind of blasphemous.

 Speaking of newsmen my 
favorite was Charlie Rose. He was, 
and probably still is, extremely 
knowledgeable, had interviewed 
everybody, and gave his guests time to 
talk. Compare him to Chris Mathews or 
Bill Maher, who despite their experience, 
talk over their guests responses and 
tolerate nothing but agreement. I believe 
they and all the other news readers 
are more like entertainers seeking 
ratings rather than responsible people 
presenting their mannered views to the 
public. By the way, of course I know 
that Charlie Rose had other problems 
but, nevertheless, I wish he was still on 
the air even if he had to broadcast in his 
bathrobe. (HUMOR)

 I don’t think the difference in 
quality can be explained just by reliance 
on technology or even by the idea that 
newscasts are presented not to educate 
but instead to obtain high ratings and 
make money. I suggest that the difference 
in quality stems from the different 
kinds of lives lived today as opposed to 
previous generations. The young lawyers 
today that I hear talking are substantially 
different than the lawyers who were 
around fifty some years ago when I 
started in the Law (not the business). 
It’s funny but right on Colorado there’s 
giant picture of this guy who was in my 
Law School Class who really didn’t seem 
any smarter than anyone else. His fame 
and fortune come from the fact that he 
and another classmate got the idea that 
Lawyers should be able to “advertise”. 
Lawyering should be a “business” and 
not a “profession” and should be made 
more available to everyone, not just the 
rich.

 It sounded good and I was all 
for it and some of my Legal Aid Buddies 
started working with them and I think 
made big bucks which lead to expensive 
vacations and different kinds of lifestyles. 
This happened not to a few lawyers but 
to a whole profession which no longer 
focused on Civil Rights and overall 
fairness but instead became interested in 
mergers and acquisitions and lucrative 
personal injury practices. Maybe those 
kinds of changes are inevitable and 
maybe I’ve just been left behind but my 
life has been fine just doing the same 
stuff I have always done. When I read 
about the lives of politicians and their 
boats and affairs and lies I wonder if 
things would have been different if my 
Law School Mates had never gotten the 
idea to make the Law and lawyers into 
businessmen rather than professionals. 
Certainly what I am talking about is 
reflected in the present Presidential 
Administration. Did these lawyers 
ever care about anything more than 
making money and staying acceptable 
to prestigious firms by closing their eyes 
to indisputably despicable behavior? 
If Walter Cronkite and Edward R. 
Murrow were still around would these 
accomplished men have been at parties 
on Jeffrey Epstein’s yacht while ignoring 
the likely destruction of the entire 
planet?

 Maybe none of these conditions 
are connected but I like to think things 
could have been different if wealth and 
amusement and permanent adolescence 
had not become the goal of most 
Americans who are manipulated so that 
the rich folk can become even richer. I 
wonder if Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth 
Warren go to parties. 


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LEFT TURN/RIGHT TURN

MICHAEL REAGAN

REPUBLICANS REMAIN 
TETHERED TO TOXIC TRUMP

DICK POLMAN

ADOPTING CHRISTIAN 
FOSTER CARE

 
If you’re a young child trapped in our infamous foster care system, 
your future is bleak.

It’s likely that you’ll bounce around to more than a dozen foster 
homes until you “age out” at 18 and are allowed to live on your 
own.

Then, within two years, there’s a six in 10 chance you’ll be living 
on the street, in jail or involved in sex trafficking.

Being adopted by a loving family is the miracle any foster child 
hopes and prays for.

But chances of that happening are tragically low.

Only about 110,000 of the 400,000 children in government foster care are even eligible 
to be adopted.

And now, thanks to a federal rule change proposed last week by the Trump administration, 
even fewer kids are likely to get the chance to escape from the cruel prison of 
foster care.

The rule change would remove language in funding grants from the Department of 
Health and Human Services that protect LGBTQ and other prospective parents from 
discrimination when they seek to adopt or foster children.

The rule is being pushed by evangelical Christians, who in their exalted opinion don’t 
think gay or lesbian couples should be allowed to foster or adopt children. 

It’s very sad. It used to be that Christian churches were in the forefront on adoption.

According to the research, compared to the general population practicing Christians 
are more than twice as likely to adopt. Catholics are three times as likely and evangelicals 
five times as likely.

Maybe that eagerness to open their hearts and homes to unloved children has something 
to do with James 1:27 – “Religion that is pure and undefiled before God, the 
Father, is this: take care of orphans and widows in their affliction, and keep oneself 
unstained from the world.”

If evangelical Christian churches are so gung ho about wanting their political hero 
President Trump to write laws making it impossible or more difficult for LGBTQ families 
to adopt children from our foster care system, I have some advice for their pastors.

It’s incumbent on you and your congregations to pick up the slack and start adopting as 
many of those 110,000 foster children as fast as you can.

If you’re not willing to put your professed love for the children of God into practice in 
the real world, then don’t prevent others from doing a good thing.

Any foster child is much better off being adopted by Rosie O’Donnell and her partner, 
or any other loving gay or lesbian couple, than remaining in a system infamous for fostering 
the physical and mental abuse of children.

The churches like to say they really care about the children and that Jesus really cares 
about the children. Well, if they really believed that, they wouldn’t let 110,000 children 
languish in foster care.

If they really cared about Jesus’ children, they’d push for laws to make sure as many 
people as possible can adopt them.

This issue is particularly sad for me. I never had to experience the abuses of the foster 
care system because I was adopted by a loving couple from Hollywood.

But as I say in my book “Twice Adopted,” until you stop looking at abuse through the 
eyes of an adult and start looking at it through the eyes of a child you can never understand 
it.

Which of us adult Christians would go up to a foster child of 8 and say, “There’s a nice 
couple who would like to adopt you and take you home, love you, raise you well, see 
that you are well educated and prepare you for a successful life.

“But the problem is, they are gay, so we’re going to keep you here.”

What would that child choose if it were up to him – ten more years of cold foster 
care or being adopted by a loving gay couple? 


I know what the kid would say. And all good Christians should agree with him.

The lesson of the 
2019 state elections 
confirmed 
the lesson of the 
2018 congressional 
midterms: 
Donald Trump 
can stage all the 
demagogic rallies 
he wants, 
but he’s powerless 
to reverse the 
GOP’s hemorrhaging in the populous 
suburbs.

Let’s borrow one of his favorite metaphors. 
On Tuesday night, his captive 
Republicans died like dogs. Or, as 
party strategist Alex Conant told the 
Associated Press, “Republican support 
in the suburbs has basically collapsed 
under Trump.” 

Today’s suburbs, once typically lily 
white, are racially and ethnically diverse, 
and bursting with people (especially 
women) who have college 
educations. This means they’re bright 
enough to read the news, see Trump 
for what he is, and be rightly repulsed 
by a craven Republican party that 
abets and excuses his serial abuses of 
power.

And now we’re seeing the payoff. 
One year ago, Democrats recaptured 
the House in an historic blue wave 
that subsumed Republican suburban 
seats even in red redoubts like South 
Carolina, Kansas, Iowa, Oklahoma, 
Georgia, and Utah. And in this week’s 
2019 elections, Virginia Democrats 
snatched both legislative chambers 
for the first time in a generation, wiping 
out every last Republican (including 
a state House GOP leader) in the 
Washington D.C. suburbs. A Muslim 
woman even won in the Richmond 
suburbs, ousting a Republican state 
senator who’d long sought to weaken 
Obamacare.

Most of Virginia’s Republican candidates 
tried to distance themselves 
from Trump, but the voters punished 
them anyway. Down in ruby-red Kentucky, 
incumbent Republican Gov. 
Matt Bevins tried the opposite tack, 
embracing Trump and stumping with 
an anti-impeachment banner, but 
voters in the Louisville and Lexington 
suburbs punished him anyway. Most 
notably, in the vote-rich suburbs 
across the river from Cincinnati – the 
same suburbs he’d won easily back in 
2015 – he was wiped out.

Kentucky will surely vote for Trump 
in 2020, but it’s far less certain that 
pivotal Pennsylvania will do so for 
the second time. Republicans have 
long been losing clout in the Philadelphia 
suburbs, but Trump’s toxicity 
has greatly accelerated that trend, 
especially at the grassroots level. In 
the 2019 elections, Democrats took 
control of suburban Delaware County 
for the first time since the Civil War, 
captured a governing majority in suburban 
Chester County, and did the 
same in suburban Bucks County for 
the first time in 36 years. Those results 
may well foreshadow a titanic blue 
turnout when Trump is (presumably) 
back on the ballot, where his rural and 
small-town fans may not be numerous 
enough to hold back the wave.

And that’s the Trump team’s core 
quandary. It aims to maximize rural 
and small-town turnout (especially 
among non-college white men) in 
the handful of states that will sway 
the Electoral College, in order to offset 
massive losses in suburbia and, of 
course, in the cities. But that math 
may not work, because suburbia is 
where the most votes are. Tom Davis, 
a former national Republican leader, 
warns: “What’s happening is that the 
fast-growing areas (are) where the 
Democrats are doing better. There 
aren’t enough white rural voters to 
make up the difference.”

Dennis Bonnen, the speaker of the 
Texas House of Representatives, recently 
put it more bluntly. In an audio 
recording obtained by The Washington 
Post, Bonnen was heard whining 
to an ally: “I just think we’ve got to 
get through 2020… With all due respect 
to Trump, who I love by the way, 
he’s killing us in the urban-suburban 
districts.” 

True that. Spiking Democratic turnout 
in the Texas suburbs – and the defeat 
of two GOP House incumbents in 
the 2018 midterms – have prompted 
at least five House Republicans to announce 
their “retirements.”

Reality-based Republicans are well 
aware that they need to reconnect 
with educated white-collar suburban 
voters, especially women. But, alas, 
they’re tethered to a font of intolerance 
who becomes more toxic with 
each Orwellian lie. And they’re tragically 
too timid to revolt.

Twice now, in successive years, the 
suburbs have sent Trump a message, 
but he’s too pig-headed to hear it. 
And I’m reminded of a scene in Citizen 
Kane, when a political boss warns 
the megalomaniacal mogul: “If it was 
anybody else, I’d say what’s going to 
happen to you would be a lesson to 
you. Only you’re going to need more 
than one lesson. And you’re going to 
get more than one lesson.”

Mountain Views News

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Mountain Views News 80 W Sierra Madre Blvd. No. 327 Sierra Madre, Ca. 91024 Office: 626.355.2737 Fax: 626.609.3285 Email: editor@mtnviewsnews.com Website: www.mtnviewsnews.com