For those of you new to this blog: A mushroom soup day means that I may be too busy to post much today. What does that have to do with mushroom soup? I may also be too busy today to figure that out.
So what's up with the Trump News? He and his staff continue to throw reporters out of campaign rallies and Trump continues to make promises about controlling the media. All of this is loudly cheered by that certain section of the population that doesn't like it when the press — as it occasionally does — points out that people are believing things that may not be true.
As Fred Kaplan notes, Hillary Clinton is starting to show that when Trump slams her, she can slam him back pretty well. I smell a battle ahead when it comes time for these two folks to debate and Trump tries to control the format and moderators to his advantage. He'll do that, you know.
A lot of Mr. Trump's business practices remind me of a TV producer I worked for who viewed every business relationship as a negotiation…and every negotiation as a battle which he had to "win" in some way. If he was prepared to pay me $5000 to write a script and my agent called up and said, "Mark wants $5000," that wouldn't do. Any other producer would have said "Fine" but this guy wouldn't because he had to control the negotiation. He had to dominate it some way and make certain that I was giving in to his offer. So in that case, if we thought he was prepared to pay me $5000, my agent would say, "Mark demands $6000 or he won't do the show" and the producer or his rep would say "$5000 and not a penny more" and we'd give in. He'd be happy because he'd be able to pretend he beat me. He'd even be happy if we'd demanded $7000 and his guy got us to come down to $5500.
It was all about who's the boss and that's how Trump rolls. Watch. When they begin to plan the debates, he'll try to play things so that he can tell his supporters, "She was so desperate to debate me that she gave in to my demands."
Meanwhile, one of the things occupying me at the moment is planning the panels I'll be hosting at Comic-Con this year. The schedule seems to be pretty much set — a fact I mention because people always contact me in June and even early July to ask if I can help them arrange a panel or event they want to do at the con. That's wrong two ways, the first being that the convention has a whole, expert Programming Department and I'm not part of it. I'm just a guy who does a lot of panels there. Also, the schedule gets set around two months before the con and there's very little chance of events being added after that. I have to now figure out who's going to be on my panels but the times, room assignments and such are all pretty much locked.
The schedule and event descriptions will be released about two weeks before the convention. We're not supposed to announce things before that but I think it's okay if I tell you that I'm hosting all the same panels I usually host — at the same times and in the same rooms — plus some others.
Lastly before I get outta here: Some jokes just write themselves. This is a true item…
The National ENQUIRER today announced that renowned Author and Political Commentator Dick Morris would be joining the magazine in the role of Chief Political Commentator & Correspondent. The appointment of Morris to the editorial team further establishes The ENQUIRER as one of the leading voices of this political season.
It's a match made in heaven: A newspaper and a reporter, both of whom are constantly defended with the cry, "Hey, they're not always wrong." Except, of course, that Dick Morris is. See you later.