(See Last Month’s First Twin Issue of Two Twin Articles)
The Soft Power of Seasame Street And Homework Needs
Victor Blackwell, The Mingle Movie, (And Sir Gareth Southgate’s Dimbleby Lecture On Resilience)
The New Netflix Drama ‘Adolescence’ Was Released This Month OnThursday March 13th 2025. It Features A Working Class Mother And Father Dealing With The Fact That Their Schoolboy Son Has Been Dramatically Arrested For The Murder of A Schoolgirl Classmate. The Parents Themselves Also Have A Girl. The Killer’s Young Sister. The Drama Looks At The Role Social (More Accurately ‘Anti’) Social Media Has To Play In Negatively Efecting Children And Society
The Four Part Netflix Drama ‘Adolesence’ Has Taken The World By Storm Despite Only Been Released Mid-Month This March. It’s Because The Subject Matter Is So Real And So Stark And Highlights The Ever Present Problem of How To Protect Our Children From The Horrors of The Dark Web And Destructive Online Influences. Writers And Producers of This No Holds Barred Teenage Homocide Tell This Tragic, But Sadly Very Contemporary Story Using Single-Shot Filming Techniques To Help Maximise The Authenticity And Intensity Associated With The Modern Day Problem of Toxic Masculinity, Misogyny, Digital Device Dependency, Overuse And Abuse, And Its Impact On Young Men In Particular And Society In General.
Just Days After It Release On March 13th 2025 Sir Gareth Southgate Delivered The Annual Dimbleby Lecture On The Same Subject. His Talk (Delivered March 19th 2025 And Available On BBC iPlayer) Was Centred Around The Personal Attribute of ‘Resilience’ .
Around This Time On His Weekly Saturday Show Michael Smerconish Was Urging His Viewers To Watch ‘The Mingle Movie’ On His YouTube Channel. So We Did (Having Been Recently Impressed By His Takedown Last Month of A Re-Trumplican Encouraging American Citizens To Report On Other American Citizens Under The Guise of Helping Musk And DOGE In Their Quest To Dismantle The Federal Government And Eliminate Waste).
The General Consensus Between ‘Adolesence’ ‘Sir Southgate’ And ‘Smerconish’ Is That Too Much Time Is Being Spent In The Online World And Not Enough Genuine Connection In Being Made In The Real World, Which Is Making People, Especially Young Boys, More Desperate, Desparing And Destructive. And Something Needs To Be Done About It.
Smerconish References Over 30 Years In Journalism And Witnessing The Polorisation of Politics And Media Organisations, Whilst Southgate References His Transformative Work With The England Football Squad During His Time As England Manager And His Eventual Recovery After Missing That Euro 96 Penalty. ‘Adolesence’ References A School Boy Killing A School Girl Influenced By Toxic Online Influencers.
Ultimately Both Men Are To Be Commended And The Drama Highly Recommended For Their Efforts In This Area Which Will No Doubt Help Make A Big Difference With Regard To The Problem of Toxic Technology. This Is The Misuse of Technology And The Manipulation of The Vulnerable If They Are Left To Their Own Devices (No Pun Inteneded).
The So-Called ‘DOGE Dividend’ Appears To Be As Genuine As ‘Non-Existent Apple Pie’. Smerconish Stands His Ground And Breaks The Numbers Down Giving A Masterclass In Dealing With Extreme Politics And False Narratives.
“There’s No Pie To Cut Up”
“There’s No Slice of Pizza To Give Back”
“There’s No Money In The Till”
“It’s A Fraud!”
James Fishback Claims ‘The DOGE Dividend’ Came To Him In A Dream. He Had A Dream? That Sounds Like Barefaced Appropriation From Martin Luther King As Though ‘The Dodgey DOGE Dividend’ Is A Good Thing. But Smerconish Sees Through It And Says “There’s No Pie To Cut Up.” “There’s No Slice of Pizza I Can Give Back To You”.
The Concept of A Plan: ‘The Dodgey DOGE Dividend’
“There Is No Money In The Till.” “It’s Not Like President Trump’s Doing Us A Favour By Giving Us 20%”
Illustration: A Ponzi Scheme/Pyramid
“What We Save We Already Owe.”
“This Is Madoff Like.”
“This Is A Ponzi Scheme.”
“It’s A Fallacy.”
“It’s A Fraud.”
Credit Where Credit’s Due. Michael Smerconish Boldy Delivered One of His Best Interviews Ever Last Month On Saturday February 22nd 2025 Displaying A Bravery That Too Many Others Lack And The Abscence of Which Elsewhere Helped Put MAGA Back In The White House.
Mr Smerconish Is A Brash, Bearded, Fast-Talking, Shaven-Headed, Sixty-Something, American Lawyer, Political Commentator, Radio Host And TV Presenter With His Own CNN Saturday Afternoon Show (Currently Broadcast 1pm – 2pm Here In London). Not Withstanding He’s Been In The Game For Over 30 Years The Question Is Now, How Long Can He Maintain This New Found Courage?
Well SufficeTo Say In The Weeks That Followed He Was Back To His Usual MO (Modus Operandi). @smerconish
He Doesn’t Like Being Called A Trump Sympathizer But Regularly Appears To Do Trump’s Bidding By Couching Weekly Poll Questions From What Appears To Be A MAGA Re-Trumplican Perspective Or Conveniently Couched Language To Their Advantage. Despite Repeatedly Displaying The Same Behaviour Patterns Each Week, Particularly Being Dismissive of Those Who Point Out His Re-Trumplican Pandering, He However Claims That He’s Neutral. Maybe That’s Because He Grew Up In Biden’s Home State of Philadelphia And He Thinks That Somehow Provides Him With An Inherent Political Security Blanket.
His Past Historical Behaviour As Displayed On His CNN Programme On A Weekly Basis Is Why The Saturday February 22nd 2025 Show Was Such A Shocker. In A Refreshingly Good Way. Even If That Particular Momentum Did Not Last Long!
At Least We Witnessed And Captured His All Powerful Moment Whilst It Lasted (As Per The Video Below).
On Point And On Form He Pointed Out That The Peterson Foundation Calculates That Even If DOGE Makes The Savings DOGE Claims To Be Seeking, With The Current Level of American National Debt Being What It Is, Each American Citzen Would Still Owe $106,000 Towards That National Debt. There Would Still Be Huge National Debt That Needs To Be Dealt With And Nobody Can Give What They Don’t Have. So As He Put It “There’s No Pie To Cut up.” “There’s No Slice of The Pizza I Can Give Back.”
We Love The Simplicity But Clarity of The Smerconish Pizza & Pie Analogy. It Brings The Point Home! Meanwhile Many Are Struggling To Bring Home The Bacon (…And Eggs!)
[The Peter G Peterson Foundation Is A Think Tank Focused On Austerity Issues And The National Debt: pgpf.org]
Despite Largely Always Being Mouthy Smerconish Not Normally So Straight-Forward In His Criticism of The MAGA Re-Trumplican Party So This Robust Exchange Was Actually Jaw-Dropping Despite Being Long Overdue And Most Welcome.
To Be Fair He Does Sometimes Have A Person From The Other Side of The Aisle On His Show In Terms of Political Perspective, Social Comment Or Cartoonists. However It Doesn’t Stop Him Posing Similar Polling Questions Each Week In The Aforementioned Way That He Does. The Excellent Cartoon Below By Rob Rogers Was Highlighted By Smerconish In This Particular Episode of His Show.
But Even On This Occassion He Couldn’t Quite Wholly Help Himself At The Start of His Introduction As He Casually Excused Musk’s Fact-Checked False Claim of £8bn Instead £8m In So-Called DOGE Savings As “A Clerical Error”.
Pulling The Ladder Up. It’s A Shakedown. Both Trump And Musk Received Help From Government & Government Contracts. Now They Don’t Want To Share That Pathway With Anyone Else!
Very Impressively Perseptive Work From Cartoonist RobRogers.Com As Highlighted By Smerconish.com
But This Is Very Clearly Not Clerical Error Nor An Effort At Government Efficiency Savings This Is Ridding America of Watchdogs And Accountability Agencies Within The Federal Government As Trump Erodes The American Dream And Democracy Replacing It With The American Nightmare of Toxic Masculinity, Racism, Revenge, Retribution And Autocracy.
This Explains Why Former DOGE Re-Trumplican Turkey Vivek Ramaswamy Is Now Nowhere To Be Seen In The New MAGA Cabinet (Just Like The Other Fellow Black And Brown Re-Trumplican Turkeys Such As Sen. Tim Scott, Sen. Ben Carson, Sen. Mark Robinson And Sen. Byron Donalds).
Muppets! Puppets! Re-Trumplican Turkeys!
And That’s Why There Have Been Wholly ‘Inefficient’ Firings And Re-Hirings, Conflicts of Interest, And Attempted Erasure of Black And Brown People In The Federal Space. Musk Is After All An Apartheid Era South African. And Trump Has Already Invited “White” South Africans To Take Refugee In American (Despite Expousing His Desire To Protects The Border And Showing Nothing But Contempt For Refugees Of Other Hues).
Named After The Notorious Conman And Fraudster Charles Ponzi A Ponzi Scheme Is Like A Financial Chain Letter Made Up of Monetary Deposits Used To Pay Clients Unsustainably High (But Ultimately Tempting) High Rates of Interst On Their Financial Investments. Once The Deposit Chain Letter Breaksdown The Whole Investment Scheme Collapes And The Operator Has Alredy Made Their Money And Left Town.
In 2009 American Stockbroker Bernie Madoff Was Sentenced To 150 Years In Prison After Confessing The Year Before That His Investment Business Was “One Big Lie” And “A Massive Ponzi Scheme”. Many Lives Were Ruined When His Big Lie Came Tumbling Down. Some Seemingly Rich People Who Were Now Ruined People Even Committed Suicide.
In 2022 Former Chief White House Advisor In Trump’s First White House, Steve Bannon Was Arrested On Fraud Charges, Jailed And Convicted, After Allegation That He Diverted Funds From An Organisation Called “We Build The Wall” Which Received Over $20m From Trump Supporters.
Particularly Awful About ‘The Dodgey DOGE Dividend’ Is The Attempt To Cultivate of A “Snitch” Culture Amongst American Citizens (Rather Like The Former Nazi Germany And The Macarthy Era In America) Based On Them Being Incentivized By The Hope of Receiving Money For Their Clandestine Behaviour. But It’s Mone That’s Never Coming Coming As It’s Based On False Promises That Don’t Add Up As Demonstrated By His Performance On The Smerconish Show Outlined Above.
“They American People Were Defrauded, They Were Lied To They Now Deserve Restitution” Says Dodgey DOGE Dividend Guy, CEO of The Company Azoria.
Fact Check These Fishback Claims Please Mr Dale:
$20m Iraqi Sesame Street And A transgender Opera In Colombia?
$350bn Sent To Ukraine “To Be Wasted” (Macron Already Corrected Trump In Person In Front of The Whole Wide World Recently Within The White House In The Oval Office During Last Month’s Visit).
America Is Losing 900 Americans Daily “To Deaths of Despair, Alcoholism and Suicide?
8 Out of 10 Black American Fourth Graders “Are Not Even Reading At That Level”
The Soft Power of Seasame Street @seasamestreet Is Disputed By The Dodgey DOGE Dividend Devisor James Fishback. We All Need To Do Our Homework And Factcheck His DOGE Dodgey Numbers (Especially Regarding “Black Fourth Graders”)
Fishback Also Demonstrates What So Many Re-Trumplicans Have Demonstrated In Their Cowardly Soul-Selling Snivelling To Trump, Which Is That They don’t Understand The Protective Power of “Soft-Power”.
He States That “There Was An Attack In Iraq Last Month That Killed 40 People” And So “Soft Power Is Clearly not Working. We Need To Kill The Terrorists We Don’t Need To Fund Big Bird And Elmo”.
However If America Continues To Alienate The Rest of World Barr Putin And North Korea And China (As Well As The Three Quarters of The Country That Did Not Vote For Trump But Failed To Vote Enough For Kamala Harris or At All) He Will No Doubt Inevitably Learn The Hard Way Just Exactly Why The Soft Power of USAID Existed.
He And His Fellow Re-Trumplicans Seem So Arrogantly And Ignorantly Undiplomatically Unaware That Rich White Male Nationalists Are Not The Only People In The World Committed To Their Cause. And That It Was Not Nor Never Was Zelensky Who Was Playing With World War III or Security And Safety of American Citizens, The Protection of Whom Has Been Recognised As The First Duty of Any American President By Every Other Modern Day American President In History. But Not It Seems, This One.
International Diplomacy Exists For A Reason!
Victor Blackwell, Michael Smerconish And Sir Gareth Southgate
@victorblackwell @smerconish linkedin.com/garethsouthgate
The Annoying Thing Is That Compared To So Many Dull, Anodyne, Flat Presenters At One End of The Spectrum or Aggressive, Plainly Dishonest And Extreme Presenters At The Other End, Smerconish Is Pretty Reasonable, Intelligent And Engaging In His Presentation Style Despite The Fast-Talking Brashness And Clear Bias. We’ve Been Trying To Give Him Up For Quite A While Now But Failed. Although We Have Cut Down Significantly And Are Now Much Less Addicted.
It’s The Ancient Warrior Philosophy (Embraced By The Godfather). Keep Friends Close. Enemies Close!. Someone Needs To Keep An Eye On What Rivals Are Up To. And of The All The Re-Trumplican Acolytes And Excuse Makers Out There Smerconish Is Amongst The Few That Are Bearable.
Smooth News Reporter And Presenter Victor Blackwell Has Alot To Do With It Too. He’s Arguably Physically The Black Version of Smerconish But With Opposite Politics And About Thirty Years Younger. We Always Watch His Programme As Often As Possible As A Great Media Leader Covering Black Culture. Smerconish Is On Afterwards. Go Figure!
So All of A Sudden We Found Ourselves Watching Smerconish’s “Movie” As He Calls It. He Tells His Audience They’re Experiencing ‘Live Entertainment’ (As it’s Being Recorded). It’s ‘A Talk’ Actually. A Lecture Style Presentation On The State of Modern Day Extreme Media And Politics And How A Lack of “Cross-Class Communication” And “Mingling” Impacts A Person’s “Social Capital” Which In Turn Impacts Society. Which In Turn Impacts Toxic Male Behaviours Which Are All To Prevelant In The Modern World.
This Is Demonstrative of His Trump Bias As He Delivers This Whole Talk Without Acknowledging The Importance of ‘Diversity, Equity And Inclusion’. ‘Mingle Opportunities’ ‘Social Capital’ ‘Common Experience’ ‘Social Fitness’ Are Words He Prefers.
Nonetheless His Presentation Is Good. Intelligent. Engaging. Well Paced. Well Worth The Watch. He Provides A Moving Example In Telling Us About George Murray And The Establishment of The Boys Brigade of Which His School Bus Driver, Who Drove Bus No.5, And Eventually Died Aged 85, Was A Member As Well As Belonging To Other Social And Community Groups That Served Him (And His Late Wife) Well. They Kept Him Out of Trouble And Kept Him Sociable.
Notwithstanding The New Powerful Netflix Drama ‘Adolesence’ Was Released This Month, Smerconish Made His Mingle Movie Film Presentation Commentary Back In September 2024. Some Six Months Ago. We Only Watched It This Month (Inspired By His ‘Dodgey DOGE Dividend’ Takedown Last Month).
But He’s Saying The Same Thing ‘Adolesence’ Is Saying And That Sir Southgate Said This Month In His Dimbleby Lecture (Delivered This Month).
The Overall Point Is We All Need To Get Out More. Reduce Device Screen Time. And Make Good Connections Within Our Communities.
Like We Used To In The Good Old Days!
For Smerconish It’s Almost A Hop And A Skip Away Saying Make America Great Again.
But In The Good Old Days The American President And By Default The Leader of The Freeworld Did Not Openly Mock The Disabled On The World Stage, Push Other Diplomats Around On The World Stage, Abandon The Decorum of National And International Diplomacy, Be Openly Known For Grabbing Women By The P^ss^, Be A Convicted Sex Felon, Incite Riots, Celebrate Cop Killers, And Indeed Pardon Criminals At Large, Disrespect Members of The Military Who Died In Service, Nor Have A Reputation For Being Both A Bully, A Draft Dodger And A Profligate Liar With Mutlipe Bankruptcies. Nor More Interested In Serving Self Rather Than The American Citizens. Nor Facilitatiing Commerical Deals From The Public Infrastructure.
This Is The Example That Has Been Set For Today’s Young, Citizens And Opponents Domestically And Internationally. And It Is Not Good. Standards And Normality Have Plummeted.
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