I used the spelling “Noble” above, as that’s what Trump apparently thought of the late Mr. Nobel when he still had Twitter privileges. The Herald used for illustration here is highlighted by the story of the Orlando night club shooting of June 13, 2013 when 49 were killed and 53 were wounded. It is used here as a sample of the mainstream media seldom seen by most, periodically quoted by the intelligentsia and off-handedly dismissed vaguely as part of the “MSM” by those who are unsure about the use of “medium” or “media” and whether “mainstream" is one word or two (or should be hyphenated).

The Miami Herald is a daily newspaper headquartered in Doral, Florida, a city in western Miami-Dade County and the Miami metropolitan area. Founded in 1903, it is the fifth largest newspaper in Florida, serving Miami-Dade, Broward, and Monroe Counties. It once circulated throughout all of Florida, Latin America and the Caribbean. At last report, the newspaper employed more than 800 people in Miami and across several bureaus, including Bogotá, Managua, Tallahassee, Vero Beach, Key West, another shared space in McClatchy's Washington bureau. Its newsroom staff of about 450 has included well-known Pulitzer Prize-winning political commentator Leonard Pitts Jr., Pulitzer-winning reporter Mirta Ojito, and humorist Dave Barry among others.

I have occasional postcards from Barry during our younger years and still read Pitts regularly on line or via the Seattle Times. Pitts, 63, is a commentator, journalist, novelist and syndicated columnist who has been associated with the Herald for some 40 years. He has won awards for his writing from the Society of Professional Journalists, the American Society of Newspaper Editors, and the National Association of Black Journalists, and he was first nominated for the Pulitzer Prize in 1993, eventually claiming the honor in 2004.

Pitts writes a great deal about racial inequality, and those spouting out foolishly about such things as the Critical Race Theory would do well to read him once in a while. He does know what he’s talking about.

About a week after I had spoofed the straw-grasping by dim-witted Republicans of CRT, Pitts had a column in the Seattle Times (July 11) headlined “How did critical race theory become sudden four-alarm fire?” As he said, “I have forgotten more about race than most people have ever known.” And as I said, “He knows what he’s talking about.” Look him up on the Internet.

Can you imagine Donald Trump being awarded a world-wide Nobel Peace Prize? Or his Twitter comments qualifying as “real news?” Do you actually read much at all? Or is your level of intelligence titillated basically by the endless repetition of meaningless slogans and two-syllable words bellowed at a self-oriented crowd? Likely as not a “red state” crowd gathered where masks have never been required, despite pandemic reality?

U.S. deaths alone from COVID-19 now have exceeded 600,000.

On Trump: “He is deranged . . . The guy can’t get from the beginning of the sentence to the end of a sentence. Everybody knows there was no election fraud, except Trump and his lawyer Rudy Giuliani. It’s like they’re on some other planet.”—author Michael Wolff

“Trump Admits He Calls Polls ‘Fake’ When They Don’t Favor Him.” Former president Donald Trump copped on Sunday to his long-held strategy for polling and headlines: “If it’s bad, I just say it’s fake! . . . You know they do that straw poll, right? If it’s bad, I just say it’s fake. If it’s good, I say, ‘That’s the most accurate poll, perhaps, ever,'” he told the audience at the Conservative Political Action Conference.

They cheered. (See brief story in “The Wrap” July 12 by Lindsey Ellefson.)

“Fake” has long been Trump’s go-to description of news outlets, headlines and polling he doesn’t like. Recent statements from the one-term president — sent by email since he has been banned from the major social media networks for half a year, for which he is now suing Twitter, Facebook and Google — include references to “the fake Russia Russia Russia hoax,” a “fake interview” on CNN and “the fake news media.”

During Sunday’s CPAC speech, Trump also touched on “caravans” of immigrants, warning his fans to “get ready” for their arrival in America, and referred again to the 2020 election, saying he “won anyway.” He lost to President Joe Biden and dozens of cases brought to court contesting the results have been dismissed.

The Wrap is an American online news website covering the business of entertainment and media via digital, print and live events — founded by journalist Sharon Waxman in
2009.