American cable newscasters, told repeatedly by guests these past few weeks that candidate favorability polls at this time are meaningless, revert to almost pleading for predictions and wisdom applied to what the pointless numbers nevertheless mean.
     In a poll of (some) New Hampshire voters, Hillary Clinton came out ahead, not surprisingly, of Bernie Sanders, who nonetheless has been gaining on her--in these same polls, which, political historians and other experts insist, are unreliable if a news organization doesn't want to indulge in fantastic speculation.  Too late for that.
     Cable news networks, operating around what Millennials don't recognize as the clock, use hours of their time each day wondering about shit instead of practicing real journalism.  Opinion-based anchors are common now.  The sober tones of Roger Mudd or David Brinkley don't exist anymore, replaced by Shepard Smith wandering around his "Fox News Deck," a room filled with giant computer screens and information-gatherers researching stories for him to comment on.  It looks like J.J. Abrams' bizarre concept of the bridge of the Starship Enterprise, brightly lit and lacking the centralized space commanded by Kirk's swivel chair in the original TV series.
     Smith makes no secret of what he thinks--a journalistic taboo in the past--and neither do Carol Costello and Erin Burnett of CNN.
     Costello said to a guest who's focused on the Bernie Sanders Campaign, "But do you really think he can get the nomination away from Hillary?"  Her scoffing tone revealed two things: she supports Hillary Clinton, and, like most cable news journalists and pundits, doesn't want to admit yet that Sanders has a real chance of securing the Democratic nomination.
     The "Socialist" Vermont Senator, his unembarrassed Socialist beliefs emphasized by some pundits as if they're implying he's a Commie, was dismissed with polite ridicule by cable news geniuses as recently as two months ago.  He draws the biggest crowds of any candidate so far, Democrat or Republican, indicating to me at least his popular (if not poll-taking) favorability over the duller Clinton.
     "Of course," the refrain in opinion-based news goes, "Bernie Sanders won't be getting the nomination..."
     They've said the same about Donald Trump, assuming he would've flamed out by now.  They
apparently need to have pundits explain to them over and over again that the post-Citizens United electoral process is a madhouse on wheels.  Someone as indecent and politically foolish as Ted Cruz can get a billionaire who'd rather donate money to his campaign than help war refugees in Africa, and then proceed to last well beyond the point when shitty candidates in the past would've been unable to continue.
     This election cycle has left behind politics as a short season entertainment, and become a long-running spectacle that's an end in itself.  Who in corporate-run cable news high echelons is sorry that Trump, in his presidential run, is so prominently ahead in the polls; is such an attention-drawing prom queen?  While his petty and sexist remarks about Megyn Kelly brought support for her and helped boost Fox's ratings, journalists on other networks shook their heads and laughed about his entertainment value.  They don't say that Trump has become America's political butthole.  He's useful to cable news with its lazy practices--he occupies broadcasting time.  Finding guests to discuss his newest jumble of idiotic claims and presidential promises is easy.  Very few pundits and journalists, though, speak bluntly about him.  Jon Stewart on The Daily Show did, but he's retired.
     I heard people on MSNBC talk about the following Trump moment, but I heard no in-depth remarks.  I'll recount the story and offer my view, which demonstrates what I think cable news people should be doing when they talk about this blob of self-inflated, inaccurate and vague information calling himself Donald Trump.
     In Michigan two days ago he gave a speech during which someone in the audience held up a copy of his 1987 bestselling book, The Art of the Deal.  Trump declared it to be "my second favorite book."  Look up the book's cover and you'll see it was written by Donald J. Trump with Tony Schwartz.  The word with, as opposed to and, means that Trump didn't write it, but rather Tony Schwartz did.  I remember shelving this ghost-written book when I worked in my hometown public library in the 1980s.  Because it was a bestseller, the library ordered tens of copies for the various branches.  After a year or so had gone by, I'd see six or seven copies of a no longer checked out The Art of the Deal occupying too much space on one of the shelves at the small branch I worked at.  I wonder if Americans will get the same feeling eventually of being gorged on that man's words, face, and whining voice?
     After promoting his "great" "second favorite" book, Trump asked the Michigan audience, "What's my favorite book?"
     I answered out loud, "The Bible," and then he said, "The Bible."
     What else, but the go-to book for phony politicians trying to get ahead, and simultaneously pretending they care about their voters' values.
     Do you read the Bible, Donald?  Can you quote one verse?  What's your favorite book in the Bible?  Who's your favorite prophet?  Can you name, in order, the four Gospels?  Why was Moses not allowed to enter the Promised Land?  Who offered Jesus dominion over the entire world, an offer Jesus refused, but you would be unable to?
     I'm not a Christian, though I've read the entire Bible.  I can answer all of the above questions and I suspect that Trump can't.  His favorite verse, though, might be the one from Genesis, including the line, "God created the heaven and the earth..."  Just spell God using five letters.
     Presidential candidate polls so soon before primaries may not mean anything, but images do.  Journalists, office workers, "the Republican base," seem to enjoy looking at a hideous egotist proud of his Dorian Gray face, saying preposterous things like, "Mexico will be happy to be pay for the wall [built along the U.S. border during a future Trump administration, dreamed at this time from his butt]."
     Have I, like the cable news people, been pulled in to the Trump vortex?  I've written several pieces starring him in recent months.  I haven't turned the Vic Neptunian disdain towards Rand Paul or Scott Walker, yet.  Trump is easy to talk and write about, but I think it's important to call him the manipulator he really is--that this country, and the world, need him as a leader like Michael Jackson needed his last doctor.

                                                                               Vic Neptune