New Amsterdam Explores Our Health Care Fantasies

Disclaimer: I don't love modern television shows that much because even the reality shows get overly infused with drama just to keep US watching. I do love conversations, and I often sense the potential for one to arise.  Thanks to topic and timing (when is that election?),  NBC's newest hospital drama New Amsterdam is a conversation waiting to happen.

Ryan Eggold as Dr. Max Goodwin in New Amsterdam.(Francisco Roman/NBC)

The flood of commercial promos preceding the debut of New Amsterdam a  few weeks ago laid bare the apparent subject matter, and allowed critics an opportunity to pre-plan whether or not we wanted to like this show.

Reviews I read immediately following the debut convince me that the earliest critics planned to be cynical and somewhat smug about the cookie cutter appearance of yet another hospital show and another handsome white male hero as the shows lead character. 

 Dr. Eric Manheimer

The critics are not totally off target. As it relates to the conversation on healthcare, this repetitious white male savior theme does feel disregarding of all the smart and dedicated folks who've been engaged, but buried, by the bureaucratic nonsense that only handsome white guys get to fix on television. 

This criticism against the show rings especially true when you discover that the show is inspired by "Twelve Patients", the memoir of an average white man named Dr. Eric Manheimer, journaling his time as the Medical Director of Bellvue Hospital in New York .

The quicker critics are also spot on in their general impression that way too many post work beers could cause you to mistake this show for one you've seen before. 

Quick critics missed the fact that Dr. Max Goodwin (played by Ryan Eggold) is a handsome white male but a supremely flawed hero. His bleeding heart desire to help so many has turned him into an awful husband with a pregnant wife whose high-risk pregnancy has her suddenly bed-stricken at- you guessed it- New Amsterdam hospital. 

Despite the quick revelation of family issues, Dr. Max has taken on the job at New Amsterdam (the Dam for short) mainly because it is the Mt. Everest of hospitals, as he describes. And who can resist the call of Everest? Again, his words.

If the naked to the world flaws are not redeeming enough to humanize the lead character and to soften critics on the show, Dr. Max  appears to be a highly flawed hospital director given his knee jerk nature to agree to changes without researching the problem or the impact of the proposed changes.  From a script writing perspective, what better than  flawed, good looking, successful white guys to make lots of regular Americans watch and feel better about themselves?

Viewers soon discover Dr. Max to be an awful patient too when he is diagnosed with throat cancer half-way into the fast-paced opening episode. As he races all over the hospital, he repeatedly chooses to ignore his pregnant wife and his own health in his quest to figure out "how he can help" change the world one dramatic story at a time.

Dr. Max serves as the fractured lens this show uses to shine light upon all the good people who currently run hospitals like The Dam. He is the obstacle remover that reveals what smart, caring people could do for healthcare if they only were allowed.

"How can I help?", quickly becomes an oft repeated 

Dr. Floyd Reynolds, played by Jocko Sims, has
deep confrontations with interracial dating and
Faith in healing in NBC's New Amsterdam.

salvo of Dr. Max to all the good people under his direction, but it starts to seem directed at the viewing audience indirectly. It comes off as a recognition mantra of what's needed in every hospital as well as a fantasized mission statement for wellness and servitude in healthcare. 

Dr. Max asks this very question of the entire staff right before he proceeds to fire all of the dead weight, including all but one central character in the cardiology department- Dr. Floyd Reynolds, played by Jocko Sims- who he rushes to retain just before he walks out the door after the mass firing.

From creator David Schulner, New Amsterdam is a character and theme driven show rich with opportunities to chase the vast possibilities connected to our current healthcare passions. By the second episode, the shows producers stamp "How can I help?" as a driving concept of the show and of its altruistic leading man.

I'll admit that I pre-planned to appreciate this show just for its audacity and for those aforementioned conversations.

I'll also admit that I was just as jaded as other critics were by the predictable opening scene. It depicts the hospital scrub wearing Medical Director lost in the staff locker room while a group of Hispanic janitorial workers discuss- in Spanish of course- the rumors they've heard about the new Medical  Director. In perfect cliché form, Dr. Max stands up from a bench in the locker room and speaks- in Spanish of course- to the unsuspecting group of workers, comforting them that he will be the savior they need. 

Did I mention he speaks perfect Spanish?

That opening of this show has the kind of predictability prime time television lovers might reject, but it ends with an unexpected twist when Dr. Max hands a $100 bill to the worker in the group who joked- in Spanish- that he bets the new Director won't last one year. It was a moment of mockery of that cynical employee, as well as a challenge to cynical viewers who might decide to pre-judge this show on the predictability alone. New Amsterdam is actually an old healthcare conversation but in new ways. Dramatic new ways- excluding the handsome white hero of course.

Cynical viewers will have to survive the first scene to get a quick sense of where the shows value lies. From a cynical, "show me something I've never seen" perspective, don't bother watching this show. It is another "fall in love with the characters" prime time drama, much like the rest.

The acting and dramatic, near fantasy situations are highly infectious, but there are only so many hours of love and devotion any of us can give to our television viewing addictions. For reasons of short attention span and repetitious modeling, this show may not find enough prime-time oxygen to be removed from the life support stage every new show endures.

As a hopeful  believer in the sheer audacity of the show's name, much less the show itself, I am willing to bet alongside Dr. Max that New Amsterdam will be around simply because so many of US currently have a chronic illness, or WE take care of someone with an illness. For people who have health insurance coverage and are forced to use it a lot, this show dares to chase after our greatest, most proactive dreams for ourselves and the people we love. 

Like John McCain did during that late night ObamaCare vote, New Amsterdam acknowledges the genuine importance and growing acceptance for universal healthcare in America. The timely creation of a show like this is a recognition that people who need tumor removal surgery on their eye socket still don't care what political party their doctor belongs to even if doctors are still forced to care how some of US intend to pay. 

Senator John McCain made a conscious choice to save universal healthcare as WE know it while he was personally in the middle of receiving the best cancer treatment and medical attention America's universal healthcare could afford him and his family. Unafraid of the politics of this moment, New Amsterdam imagines the socialized dream that McCain heroically saved for US all as he was humbled into appreciating it more himself. 

I'll admit that I consider most things to be politics, however, if New Amsterdam were my show, I would explore this fantasy ride by reenacting the John McCain healthcare story as one of the upcoming episodes. You could air that show in roughly a month when politics will  drown out every television show that isn't smart enough to get on top of the impending wave.

If you think about it, bipartisan America finally embraced a near decade old program- the driving concept behind this show- on one thumb blessed night. In my mind, our recent amazing embrace of Obama's 2009 healthcare law is as crazy and drama filled as New Amsterdam. This new show.  and our slow embrace of ObamaCare, begs a really important question.

Did ObamaCare need a handsome white guy to be it's lead advocate for it to succeed faster? Would the right white man have helped to avoid the tumultuous start, or were white guys afraid or unable to get it done, try as they might? 

Our current premium focused healthcare law worked fairly well back when Governor Mitt Romney was the leading white guy representing the universal healthcare pathway forward  in Massachusetts, although Massachusetts, and America, are starting to wonder if single payer healthcare for all will make more sense in the end. 

Would the Affordable Care Act have grown  in acceptance more quickly if it wasn't black listed (so to speak) and re-branded as ObamaCare, and if a handsome white guy assumed the original leading role? Were health insurance providers fighting like hell to make the ACA fall apart simply because of the color of the man who dared to get it done? In some ways, John McCain- a white man- assumed the leading role over ObamaCare that night he saved our healthcare fantasies before they were dismantled forever. If this show takes off, the creators of New Amsterdam owe McCain a huge thanks.

I wish I wasn't hard wired to care about the bigger picture of a television show willing to have this conversation at this moment. I wish I was blessed enough to watch this show strictly as a critic and not as a transformed champion for wellness and a caregiver for someone with a chronic illness. Sadly, I no longer get to paint myself as impartial because I have spent far too many days sitting in hospital rooms listening to doctors function like money driven robots, and not caregivers.

As it relates to medical procedure pricing, 45 states in America fail when it comes to medical procedure price transparency.  And only one, New Hampshire, received an A grade.  In between repeated stories full of happy endings in healthcare, New Amsterdam has the courage to talk about issues like this and to tell the truth about intractable political problems hurting healthcare.

As much as I am rooting for the underlying cause of this show, fair criticisms are why I waited for a second episode to season and share my own views, hopeful it would give me a deeper perspective from which to assess. 

It did not. 

The show is fully formed in today's television mold- sappy and hope driven. It would teeter on the edge of being insulting to the status quo if the status quo in healthcare wasn't so worthy of whatever insults they get.  It's fast-paced if you make yourself watch, but if you a looking for a show that makes you pay attention, this show may not have enough sex or murder to get it done.

People who are totally paying attention and interested in a water cooler conversation show- especially on the vital topic of healthcare generally and the future of universal healthcare specifically- should watch this show. Anyone who understands sickness, the tenuous nature of American healthcare, and dares to imagine what might be when wellness is truly OUR mission, will likely enjoy the journey this show intends to take. 

Avoiding Impeachment Talks Is Helping Donald Trump While Hurting Democrats And America

Concerns about Michael Flynn came early, yet Trump chose to

ignore them along with other FBI warnings about Russia.

The question of the hour is not whether Trump has done things much worse than Roseanne Barr, and surely worthy of impeachment proceedings. The question of the hour is whether or not WE should ignore Democrat lawmakers concerned that impeachment talks would give Trump the same popularity boost they gave Bill Clinton when he was impeached as president, or should we sit by silently and hope that this lying president of ours will create too many fires for himself and burn up before his branding and marketing efforts can put all the fires out?

The question of last hour was whether or not Trump could remain silent about the "Roseanne" matter, or at least say something that wasn't on Twitter and attempted to offer unity and solace towards something beyond his Trumpian base. He is trying dearly to take the cameras off of Russian collusion and the obstruction efforts to hide it by fast tracking negotiations with a dictator he castigated a few weeks ago.

As we wait to learn what is in that North Korea letter Trump is so excited to be reading soon, keep in mind the letter Trump sent and the person he sent it to. Is there a chance that Kim Jong Un didn't read it or did he not understand? Do you think North Korea doesn't realize the shady deal maker Trump is known to be? Might Kim Jong Un be oblivious to the American election cycle and the dwindling amount of time left to worry about Trump? If Trump is unable to achieve the unreasonable denuclearization dream he is chasing, is Kim Jong Un not prepared for him to send another angry letter, or worse?

Why Give Up Your Leverage?

Despite his attempts to behave otherwise, Donald J. Trump was not raised by dictators nor is he hell bent on fulfilling the legacy of dictators like Kim Jong Un is. Giving up his nuclear weapons would contradict his family legacy and compromise the only leverage that has him potentially meeting with Trump soon.

When you consider what motivates him, Trump is but a seedy, greedy Obama hater and a volatile tea kettle. He runs from hot to not and back again, and he screams all of his fears and insecurities on Twitter for North Korea and everybody else to analyze daily. The tea kettle we call Trump is quite heated over whatever he fears Special Counsel Lead Investigator, Bob Mueller will find against him, and he will likely continue howling loudly from now until Congress says enough already.

The challenge with a president who is a heated kettle full of hot water is the intensity of noise hot kettles are intended to make. For a functional reason, they are designed to be a noise that drowns out most other sounds. It's not that screaming hot kettles are necessarily dangerous, but they can easily become a hazard if ignored and left to blow steam for too long.

Donald J. Trump is a blatant liar, but kind people don't say such things to other people. Calling someone a cunt (something most are fond of despite the vulgarity of the word) or a liar (something we generally agree to despise) is not quite as disgusting as calling people animals, however, calling someone a liar assumes certain truths about a person without the benefit of being inside of their lying ass head.

Kind people have resisted the urge to be so direct and presumptuous, or to call this man a liar without equivocation. Similarly, the media and elected public servants have resisted the urge to talk about impeachment or to make leaping assumptions about provable facts in fear of calling a sitting a president a non-truth telling criminal without giving him the benefit of innocence until proven guilty and general decorum.

I haven't asked him personally, but I'm am fairly certain that Donald J. Trump considers every one of you who prescribes to the shut up about impeachment theory as branding and marketing idiots. While he might not be great at finishing taxes, selling steaks, running casinos, silencing porn stars or being a president thus far, he is obviously good at branding and marketing.

If Trump were responsible for characterizing Trump, it would look a lot like the character assassinations he did to every political opponent he has faced in route to the presidency. Yet, Nancy Pelosi's insistence on keeping the Democrats focused on politics as normal proves that she still can not understand how or why he became president and that some political norms don't apply to Trump.

Because we've attempted to ignore impeachment, we've ignored the direct conversation that would invite a more detailed discussions about all of the reasons he deserves it. In essence, we've functionally ignored the noisy tea kettle by focusing on his intentional distractions instead of simply removing him. At this point in his presidency, WE are in danger of burning ourselves down, including our trust of our own intelligence community if WE can't save ourselves from the noisy kettle that keeps crying wolf.

CAN THE FBI BE TRUSTED?

Let's be clear about the real news versus the fake since Trump has branded and marketed an FBI informant as a campaign spy. In reality, Trump and Clinton and Congress were warned of Russia's meddling, and that so-called spy was an FBI informant who was doing the exact job America paid him or her to do in conjunction with the warning.

Does that remove the need for questions of the FBI?

No.

Through a history of intentional misdeeds, the FBI has earned whatever doubt WE have of them. Add to that our general expectation of government corruption and you start to understand the methods and mechanisms (Inspector General) enacted for oversight and for internally investigating high levels of government when needed.

Congress used to be one of those methods of oversight before the tea kettle burned down the House Intelligence Committee via Chair Devin Nunes (CA) and Speaker of the House, Paul Ryan (WI), who empowered the arsonist Nunes. Ryan is set to leave Congress right after the November elections and right before non-political junkies start to discover the role he played in allowing Nunes to aid and abet Trump's efforts against the Mueller investigation into his campaign. History will remember Ryan for his role in all of this.

Meanwhile, the Senate Intelligence Committee has attempted to maintain its oversight duties, its impartial posture and the rule of law, but even they have recently been used as a political tool for a president willing to sacrifice the confidentiality of FBI informants and the future of our nation as he openly obstructs the investigation into his conspiracy to defraud America (aka., collusion).

By presidential edict, Trump hereby demanded that the FBI unmask the person assigned to confront the same Russians he was warned about during the campaign. In the court of law, that Twitter demand for unmasking that informant will someday read as textbook obstruction. In the halls of Congress, its another laughable case of Trump being Trump, nothing to see here. From the mouth of the branding marketer we call president, the FBI should have informed him he was colluding, so its their fault.

Lets call it "SpyGate"

Even House Oversight Chairman, Trey Gowdy (Ark), has debunked the claims that Donald Trump keeps making about "SpyGate", but not before the very word "SpyGate" was branded and attached to the Mueller investigation and marketed for public consumption.

Donald J. Trump, our president, is a liar and a deceiver and a despicable human who refers to other humans as animals to justify treating them inhumanely. He is also very good at branding and marketing and lying in the face of crisis with the use of marketing and branding. What politicians once called spin has become a Charlotte's web of lies and confusion through the lips of this president. Now, with his presidency struggling for legitimacy amidst an investigation that keeps uncovering colluders, liars and witches (oh my), Trump is back on the campaign trail selling the public snake oil from an ancient serpent infamous for division and strife.

When his attorney general, Jeff Sessions, announced the decision to take toddlers and infants away from migrant parents in the hopes of discouraging refugees and asylum seekers, Trump chose to market the decision as a Democrat law while painting its detractors as MS-13 supporters.

Thanks to this imploding president, lovers of the Second Amendment have taken arms against gun control and against the First Amendment which is also under fire as Trump chisels at the credibility of the press, diminishing their distinct purpose within our dying dream of a Democracy.

Meanwhile, Trump appears to be taking full advantage of whatever time he has left to put an accent on racial division while stuffing his pockets with as much legally extorted money as he can muster for he and his children who all have legal problems now. All of these things could fall under the pervue of  "high crimes and misdemeanors" if anyone on earth knew what the hell all that means or what became of our system of checks and balances?

What WE now know is that a Congress that is missing its spine can not be co-equal to anything. What WE don't know is whether or not the Founding Fathers knew that their system of checks and balances could potentially get distorted by a Congress complicit to a pay-for-play president.

Trump has yet to fire Bob Mueller from investigating his campaign and its connection to Russia before, during and after the 2016 election even though he continues to call an investigation that has rendered multiple convictions, indictments and guilty pleas, a witch hunt.

While he hasn't fired Mueller, he has successfully misbranded his efforts so that 59% of Americans think Mueller has yet to render ANY convictions, indictments or guilty pleas (aka., witches) in this witch hunt.

Because the Democrats have intentionally chosen to avoid talking about impeachment, America has no clue about the amount of confirmed witches in the Donald Trump orbit or that Trump could very well be one himself. A successful investigation that is assumed to be a failure is successful marketing and branding by the opposition anyway you look at it.

This is Alex Van Der Zwann. He is

the first witch to go to jail for his

crime in the Mueller investigation. 

Whether witch, ogre or warlock, Donald Trump rears his big ugly wart-filled face on enough occasions to make everyone of US aware of exactly who he is even if 40% (and climbing) have decided they don't care. Thus, the question remains.

Has avoiding talks of impeachment helped Donald Trump but hurt Democrats and America?

Did a Michael Avenatti Storm appear and stir up so much discovery in the collusion case that we can no longer piece together all of the things we've found?

Mid-term elections are likely to be the place in which these questions get answered, however, it is unsettling to think that the same guy who pussy grabbed and disability mocked his way to the White House could now be stealing from the Vladimir Putin playbook and running a propaganda campaign against his own intelligence community.

Aside from acting more innocent and ending the kind of nepotism that might force Congress to create better laws against it, Trump also needs to stop saving Chinese cell phone companies that harm Americans, especially days before we discover several new patents given to Ivanka Trump by the same Chinese government that asked you to save their cell phone company.

The seeds of impeachment are spread all over that previous paragraph. But, until the American public can digest it clearly enough to be enraged, the media will need to explain it more slowly by watering one topic at a time and giving it all a chance to take root.

Bob Mueller is a capable farmer and way too focused on simultaneously watering several seeds of suspicion to explain to us what to expect from just one. The harvest from his endeavor will inevitably speak for itself, nonetheless, under-watering or prematurely forcing too many under-developed seedlings of information into the light of day could jeopardize the profitability of the harvest.

Stated a bit more clearly, people won't buy it if Mueller's harvest doesn't look appealing enough to warrant the very high price WE are expending on all of this. If the American public fails to see the success that Mueller is achieving, they may fail to continue to support the pursuit. At the very least, that's what Trump wants, rule of law be damned. 

Donald J. Trump is the most important law enforcement official in the nation but the least interested in what happened to our election or in stopping it from happening again. It is becoming more and more accepted that nothing could be more destructive to the fiber of American exceptionalism than Trump, and nothing could be more important to Putin and other world dictators than the destruction of American exceptionalism.

Will the American people look back on 2018 and worry that WE just didn't realize how bad things were under Trump until it was too late to stop him? Will the anticipated Big Blue wave of Democrats in Congress save US from Trump or will 2018 represent the year Trump branded the American identity with divisiveness and marketed it alongside his commemorative coin from the North Korean nuclear negotiations? 

WE can no longer hide from the international embarrassment our constitution enabled without addressing the Constitution, the Two-party/Electoral college enablement and the disinterested voter enablers.....or a combination of all three.

Women Like Sex Too: A Simple Defense Of Facebook.

Like many of you, I have had to do my own reckoning with the Cambridge Analytica reality that Facebook has so rudely slapped us with, forcing us to reexamine the things we see and read on The Book, even to the extent of wondering how Russia used our desperate love of Facebook against us in the 2016 election....

....and then I lost my damn self on this whole conversation because I always lose me and every other progressive who thinks from time to time that Russia made somebody who was previously interested in Hillary, more interested in Trump or any other candidate that they eventually voted for. I also lose myself on this Russian bot nonsense when I think they were able to make all the people who hate getting involved in politics less interested through keenly targeted Facebook memes.

Don't misunderstand my concern with what happened. I believe Putin deserves a serious geopolitical punch in the mouth with collective actions by the world as a message and a prelude to something worse if he doesn't stop the nonsense.

What I am tired of is progressive angst in the notion that human beings would get their lazy butts off of their couches to go stand in line for any candidate by inspiration from social media when we can barely decide who is going to pick up pizza when that cheesy pickup promo peaks our interest.

I am, admittedly, the same guy who was complaining about Google telling me that standing in line at O'Reilly auto parts is somehow a (insert curse word of choice here) photo opportunity, even when I'm actually across the street at Grease Monkey and the GPS is just a little off in its tracking of my every (insert another expletive) footstep.

The truth is they ALL are trying to GPS track and content analyze us to the benefit of the public square. In their defense, THEY are typically giving us something for FREE (social media page, email, web based market site) in exchange for the right to sell who we are to a third party. It is a relationship that we are made aware of going in so that we have the option and opportunity to steer clear of the free internet if we so choose. By now, there should be a solid understanding that you still get what you pay for in this world.

But the conversation of this orange man we are enduring in our White House is not something quite as trivial as the Sunday ads we've rejected that come through the so-called free internet now. Who knew enough strategic content could be used towards gaining an Electoral advantage, and that you could actually lose an election by 3 million votes yet, somehow still win the White House just as Donald Trump did?

Al Gore, that's who knew. He already gave us that civics lesson years ago. If Hillary didn't understand the electoral challenge from the Al Gore example alone, I question if she was prepared for the challenge that would have followed primarily being the first female president against a congress of GOP wolves. When you start to analyze things that happen in our world, sex, gender and sexuality are always underlying elements of consideration.

For example, I have resolved in my mind that sex is the oldest known industry to mankind because of things much more simplistic than pimps or patriarchy. In reality, there have always been women just as interested in sex as men think they are, some even more so quietly as it's kept.

The problem is, we do keep it quiet and we don't often open up about the reality that some women enjoy sex quite a bit. Prostitution is, in part, a byproduct of the truth that women love sex too.

While pimps are probably really cool guys with really gifted vocabularies, most of them are smart enough to find the women who want to hear what they are saying. I'm not talking about the sex slave crap or trying to overdo this sex analogy any more than necessary to make a point and keep the modern day attention span long enough for that point to sink in

My point?  People know what they like and listen to what they want to hear.

Putin, pimps and advertisers are only able to target the vulnerable, not produce them out of thin air. In reality, people do what they want to do or something pretty damn close to what they were thinking about in the first place.

Friends and family didn't start to fall distant on Facebook before during and after the electing of Trump because the Russian bots incited their discord. Some folks really loved them some Donald Trump, and they didn't want to be as open and honest about it because of the same reason our teenage daughters won't talk about banging someone like our boys tend to do on the regular.

Even with the downtrend in teen pregnancy, some babies happen because women like sex too. Women like sex, some of your friends and family voted for and still like Trump (and might do it again) and advertisers need to send you a coupon for that stuff you like, want or simply need based upon their strategic compilation of your social media life. As much as we'd like to blame the world for things we'd like to change, there is no way to change anything when you can't accept it for what it is.

If you don't want to be sold a product or told to go out and vote for that person you already like anyway, shut yourself off of the internet and social media in particular. Also disconnect the data on your phone as well as your wifi-signal while you are driving and I am pretty sure you will only see targeted mail and campaign flyers every two years or so.


Of course, they are asking more details about us in the upcoming census, so it might be prudent for anyone too concerned with a world trying to decide what we want to just live off the grid and keep up with everyone you know and love on Facebook- with a fake profile- and no likes or comments of course.

Nuggets Need Next Level Coach. (Aka., Not Malone)

James Johnson?

The Clippers traded to get the
coach they wanted.
Should the Nuggets do it too?

Ain't that JJ from Good Times? His last name was Evans you say? The other J was for Junior?

Well who is this JJ that ripped the Denver Nuggets to shreds in the double overtime loss in Miami last night?

I could be considerate of the Nuggets fight on the road against an actual playoff team, including enough effort to get a couple of extra periods out of the game, but they were on game two of a seven game road trip designed to make or break a team that was in the hunt before last night. Extra periods was the last thing the Nuggets' road trip needed.

Actually, the previous loss to the struggling Memphis Grizzlies was likely the death nail to our season, but we were still stuck on the road and stuck in the midst of a western conference log jam before we started pulling ourselves from the fray with back to back losses of winnable games.

If it wasn't clear what the problem is, last night made it fairly clear. Mike Malone is not a playoff coach. He probably isn't even a head coach really, however, teams in transition need disposable coaches to get them through the process.

Or, they need an established one like the Miami Heat's Erik Spoelstra who somehow rebuilt the Heat and now has JJ a bunch of other guys I can't recall (Dwayne Wade was injured) looking like a team on the upswing of transition should look. In fact, they look quite un-Nugget like if you are asking me.

Malone seems too content with the progress to fulfill this process. He is slow to sit his youthful starting group but quick to pat them on the back for the kind of effort that professionals get paid for. The players who give the effort (please come back soon Gary Harris) are rarely the guys who get post game love while the coach either oozes over guys who get hot here and there, or complains about players he rarely sits.

Malone seems focused on building the next Golden State Warriors and not the Detroit Pistons or some other team famous for grit.

What many fans of the Warriors and of the run-and-gun style Nuggets forget is that our best teams defended and controlled the boards in moments that matter. Golden State is also fabulous on the boards in moments that matter.

Aside from a couple of backups who don't play enough, I'm hurting my head trying to recall the last second chance point the Nuggets starters have scored. No trouble at all recalling the ones we gave up.

Perhaps Malone doesn't trust his transition defense enough to crash the glass for second looks. And perhaps he is so focused on playing fast that guys leak out before the defensive rebound is secured.

Whatever the truth is, end game execution is stifled when fast break buckets are your main diet. The book on the Nuggets is to force their scorers to beat the double or triple team late in games and watch them actually try.

Jamaal Murray, Nikola Jokic and maybe even Gary Harris have bright futures as players who can carry a team and close out games as needed. Key word? Future.

That future is not now, and every attempt by coach Malone to force it into being is pushing this team further and further back in the standings while Malone falls further and further out of favor with the more experienced players who are forced to watch Murray and Will Barton piss away wins trying to score on a double team.

I am only reading body language, and the message from our only all-star, Paul Milsap, is not good. Either he will need to be like Andre Iguodala and find a team that is best able to use the last years of his career or the Nuggets will need a new coach so they can use Milsap themselves.

Under the current path, the Nuggets will be under major reconstruction again soon, or they will fire the coach and make it look like he was the problem so that terminations don't extend beyond coaching.

Is Black Panther's Message Bigger Than The Hype?

Diversity in film and television is a conversation that predates

"Black Panther" (Marvel Studios). Click here to see what

Hollywood has to say about itself relative to diversity. 

Despite "Black Panther" being a very difficult film to fully digest after one viewing, I will spit out my half chewed cud and share my feelings about a film many had to view more than once, just for digestive purposes.

Although it could take a couple more viewings to give you the cinematic evaluation of the films artistry, complete with metaphoric comparisons and fancy superlatives , I intentionally waited to watch Black Panther because I did not care about the films artistry when it came out in ads, or when I sat down to see it myself. For me, there was a strong and obvious message in the casting alone, so the artistic brilliance of the actual production was an absolute bonus.

Black Panther is extremely artistic in its fashion and form with an engaging plot and visuals to match. It is a Marvel origin film (of sorts), but it is also jam packed with scientific geeky stuff that any Marvel movie lover anticipates as a lifeblood of the genre. Although we are meeting an ancient civilization as we watch Black Panther, we are not traveling back in time to do it, which makes this film a lot more about the origin of life and all of us and less about the origin of the hero whose name is on the banner.

You could say that this was a film about a super hero, but there's an entire cast of heroes that serve a vital role in understanding and forming the central character, including a few highly relatable villains. You will probably leave this film either affirmed, or reaffirmed that women are the true super heroes in the real world just as they clearly are in this films unfettered world of humanities origin.

You could  say that this film was about gender, race, colorism, politics, religion and a few other social issues that derive from the animus of humans on this planet, but you would be narrowing the movie into a central message and there are too many messages intentionally laced within this film to bog down on one or another.

The strongest message I saw for black people and women is one of a life and a world without stigma. Despite a black cast full of powerful male and female characters, you will only make significant notice of those things if you are one of those things and unaccustomed to seeing yourself free from a world of stigma: a world like Wakanda (the fictitious land of Black Panther's origin).

In recent anthropological discoveries, women and black people are actually just people who would love for their race or gender to be ignored like it usually is with white men. For a couple of hours in the comforting movie theaters of Wakanda, stigmatized people get to take a break. I quietly suspect that some of the multiple return visits to see this movie are more about mental health and relaxation than searching to find that plot nugget you missed, because the plot isn't that deep, even if some of the messages are. For a few hours in a movie theatre, certain people in the audience will get to shed their inferiority.

From that perspective alone,  Black Panther achieves a first. It is not the first black cast or the first subject to need one, but it is a first for reasons perfectly obvious to the stigmatized- slightly unclear to "the rest".

In fact, some of "the rest" will not appreciate the degenerate stigma towards white men as thieves and colonizers on the edge of societal ruin if not for the intervention of Black Panther and the nation of Wakanda. While it's not uncommon to call white men colonizers that are ruining their own world, it is uncommon to see a nation of black people (not just Will Smith) as the hope to fix a problem that we, the original people, probably created.

This is likely where the actually stigmatized among us will depart from Black Panther, as few blacks seem willing to accept our distinction as the original people as well as being the probable cause for our wayward, melanin deficient offspring.

Black Panther goes in on this and several other aspects of the challenges of race without making any of its less-than-subtle digs bigger than the cinematic achievement. Some people will make a fuss about one touchy dig or another, but those people typically make a fuss about every touchy subject, and lies rarely bring out the fuss in us, so those people are not really a fair measuring stick.

That is my review of the film as a film, because, as a film alone, Black Panther deserves to be reviewed and evaluated on the merits. The phenomena is real mostly because this film is great.

As a statement of social impact, the phenomena makes much more sense to me because this movie is transformative.

I wasn't personally anxious to see the film for the review aspects because modern films are what they are; stuck in a space between technological ability and the long-standing demands of good film making. In reality, humans have never needed all the tricks of cinematography that filmmakers think we need. When done well, movie tricks are amazingly cool but they always require time, money and a reason for being in the film in the first damn place to not become a waste. Getting to know people, characters and why humans do the things we do has never needed technology beyond what cameras, actors and film already provide.

It will always be hard for me to have a favorite movie like "Citizen Kane" and still fully love everything about "Black Panther" or any modern movie. I didn't hurry out to see the film because I wanted to do a review without fear of spoilers, but mostly, I just don't hurry to see movies anymore.  They all come out on DVD too soon for me to wonder if I would have preferred seeing it for $25 with my wife amidst an obnoxious crowd of people instead of $4.99 plus whatever we find in the fridge. Stovetop popcorn is better anyway.

That last paragraph is important to understand because I will go back a few more times to see Black Panther before I can get it cheap and watch it at least as many times as I've seen Coming to America or all of Tyler Perry's stuff. I always knew I would watch it again and again even before it came out. I never knew I would watch Good Times over and over and over, especially when I think about how obnoxious JJ (Jimmy Walker) was at a time when I hated the stigma he seemed to perpetuate against us black boys. Nonetheless, I will watch me some Good Times every chance I get because I now embrace it for everything it stood for at the time, including being  a black first like Amos and Andy, and for being something white people needed as much as me, just like Black Panther.

Some things in this world are bigger than themselves, and Black Panther joined those ranks long before the film was even released. Fortunately, the filmmakers of Black Panther knew the gravity of this project and did their job with full recognition of what they would be adding to the social construct of society. Black Panther makes no apologies for addressing the matters of blackness while, at the same time, making blackness hardly matter somehow.

Black Panther offers the kind of pride some of my people have never seen in themselves. I specify some of us because I  left Aurora, Colorado at 18 and found myself at Morehouse College in the heart of the Atlanta University Center which encompassed Morris Brown, Clark College, Atlanta University (Clark and AU merged), Morehouse and Spelman. Watching the Morris Brown marching band or my first fashion show event on the campus of Spelman felt much like Wakanda to me. Every time I return to visit that beautiful city and campus, I see Wakandan roots through and through even though no one has shown me their secret mark yet. I thoroughly enjoyed Black Panther, but I did not view the film with my spirit in utter amazement as did my immediate family who did not attend an HBCU for college.

One of my 5 daughters did attend an HBCU. She enjoyed Black Panther enough to see it three times already simply for the connection it gave her to college life in Atlanta .  The rest of  my family left the film with salty tears dried on their face. All of us made plans to see it again even though our reasons were different.

In fact, a 7 year old white male family friend shared his review of the movie saying that "the Panther was cool and the women were really awesome". Whether he didn't notice the black part or had been taught to refrain from saying the words 'black people', he could not refrain from recognizing the elevated view depicted of women in this movie. Women will embrace this film as if it was made by them and for them, even though the central character is a man they all serve.

If I had to decide on the movies greatest achievement, it is that Black Panther truly allows you to enjoy an epic Marvel film experience and ignore the issue of race even while race is thoroughly in your face. As I reflected on this article it came to me that the entire production could be symbolic of the name of the main character.

You see, a panther is not really a thing at all. It is a description of a leopard (or jaguar) with a black (melanin rich) outer coat that hides the exact same spot pattern that you would see in their sister or brother leopards.

Whenever they cut open Black Panther in this movie, he always bleeds red.

Did U know? Two spotted leopards

can't produce a black leopard (panther)

Furthermore, the word black is used to attempt to describe a color, when in essence blackness is the absence of color. If you peel back the layers on Black Panther- and maybe even the layers of Stan Lee's vision when creating the comic hero- they are majestic,
regal and misunderstood creatures that encompass every color even as they appear to represent just one.

Normal Voters Really Want Normalcy To Return

Apparently, denying something happened
is all that matters to Donald Trump.

It used to be normal that we defend the actual victims of domestic violence.

Not the accusers! Those liars remain exactly what they were ten years before the #metoo movement decided to be. I know we would like to pretend that WE are a new America poised to give a damn when women insist we should, but this is Real Talk...For People Who Need It (SquareBiz), and I'm not convinced that enough abusers or women are ready to vote for a woman or believe her claim of abuse.

This matter of America's foremost leader being an unrepentant misogynist works because plenty of men remain just like him and plenty of women voted for this man with complete knowledge of his history with women. Those women- who shall primarily remain anonymous, for obvious reasons- are excused for their support of president Trump because the bulk of the evangelical community has also joined him and are clearly going to vote for him again if given the chance to do so.

It used to be normal that we'd fight against the efforts of the Soviet Union.

That nation is now simply called Russia because they fought the United States beyond their ability to afford the war, and it cost them an entire union. Yes, that Russia is the same Russia that is now happily fighting us in other ways, including automated bots that disseminate spoon fed information to the same list of people that I mentioned above:  my oldest brother, women who question #metoo and other women but not Trump, prominent evangelicals and the Trump base, aka, the Trumpians.

It used to be normal that certain standards of operation like having a presidential staff with security clearances or obvious obstruction efforts of an ongoing investigation would draw the ire of a Congress that most of us were raised as children to understand had an equal balance of power within the three branches of government. It used to be normal that Congress eagerly jumped upon opportunities to show the president their equal level of power like they did when overwhemingly voting in favor of sanctions against Vladimir Putin and Russia.

This Congress wont even force Trump to enact those sanctions that were voted upon with a veto proof majority, further conceding their equal level of power to a president that wants our military to give him a parade.

If you've seen this meme, maybe normal is just an illusion
Click here to compare the actual 1956 platform to this meme

It used to be normal that going through background checks, vetting, bonding or anything of the sort was considered "due process".

Now we have presidents- and supporters of the president- willingly defending a man who can't get permanent security clearance due to domestic violence issues. Instead of questioning why he remained in that job and who gave the call to keep him there every time his interim clearance lapsed over the past year (they last for 180 days with an option for another 180 days), this conversation has devolved into a question of due process with no trial under way and no reason to invoke the idea of due process unless you are confusing Rob Porter's issues with your own, Mr. President.


Even with acknowledgement for the sharing of platforms planks when politics demand, it used to be normal that Republicans behaved like Republicans and Democrats like Democrats.

Now, we have  a president that has control over both houses of Congress and is embroiled in a debate with his own party over immigration and increasing the deficit. If the signs of the death of political normalcy aren't clear enough, what more do you need?

I am personally a bit weary of those who keep seeing the obvious but continuously ask themselves the most obvious, thus rhetorical questions imagined. Yes, there are plenty of people that continue to support this man despite all the reasons "you" think they shouldn't. His issues with style, delivery, focus, empathy and a history twice as bad as his present gaffs are not enough to run off prominent preachers who either see something beyond the ability of the rest of us, or they see a puppet who they can get stuff from. Either way, they are with him and by default against you, Bob Mueller and normalcy.

They are also not against Russians because they are not dumb. What most of you people wishing for your normal back don't quite get is that smart people don't discount the fact that Donald Trump probably did benefit from the Russian intrusion into our election. They also don't automatically look at the polling numbers and tell themselves that he could win again without Russian involvement.

What you people who need your normal back also don't quite realize is that these are the same people who willingly gerrymander as well as obstruct voters for the sake of keeping their slipping grip on power, so why not Russians?

I still think exiling the spiritual understanding of forgiveness and Grace away from our schools because it offended people while letting everything else in was stupid. But that's the conservative me talking. Mostly, I am too proudly Socialist and too against the two-party hustle to care that the Democrats could be begging for a problem if they keeping frowning in disbelief over the notion that people support Trump.

Get over it and get over your wish for normalcy. If our lazy voters had a chance to do it all over again, they would have voted Bernie Sanders into office. I would be dancing, but we would all be trying to figure out how a Socialist will govern without any Socialist driven legislation coming out of either branch of Congress. While people like @RachelMaddow try to keep a calibration of what normal used to be so that we don't allow this administration to confuse us when normal finally returns, I say she and everyone else is dazed and confused and probably won't see things clearly until their concussions symptoms clear.

Our old normal only involved the participation of less than half of the country, and that was at the best of times, not mid-terms when turnout is significantly less. Several citizens have to watch, listen or actively ignore our embarrassment of a president while they rethink their previous belief that their vote didn't matter, but many citizens turn on this circus and feel more than justified of their decision to wash their hands of all of it. Whether we have an electorate more motivated to do their civic duty is still a wait and see proposition that has apathy, gerrymandering and suppression efforts it still must overcome.

Mitch McConnell looked flabbergasted as he stared into the camera and tried to explain to a section of Trump's current support how Barack Hussein Obama became our 44th president. His only recourse was to promise them that he would block Obama at every turn and make his effort to preside over this country as difficult as one human being possibly could. Now, all of that energy is being recalled and renewed against Trump, except Republicans have a political majority so the parallel isn't quite the same even if the sentiment is.

The new normal is likely being evidenced at anti-Trump protest rallies and with recent special election results. Governor Scott Walker, in Wisconsin, is refusing to hold a special election because the last one he allowed went for the Democrats. Right now, the generally motivated as well as the generally interested but hardly motivated voters are running off of the same energy, and that is a good thing. Whether it shall be an enduring thing is something to worry about when you realize that our president- who loves his freedom and Russia way more than your sense of normalcy- has decided that the best way to protect himself and Putin is to flood the waters with more press than the average person can endure and hope it makes them downright weary when it comes time to vote.

His plan seems worthwhile given the fact that the media is stuck in a paradigm of unprecedented ratings and interest in the latest news while simultaneously being disgusted by the person they are giving so much shine to each day. Trump's presidency may be saving a few dying newspapers across the country as we speak. Although his rhetoric continuously drives those he disgusts towards further hatred of him, it gets spin'd and retold by FOX news and by those Russian bots that keep generating half-truth memes to keep Trumpians motivated and fully on board.

If Russia is still as against America as it was when it was a union too, they have NOT only reignited the Cold-War that we declared victory over, they are winning the damn thing from the inside out with Donald Trump in office.

I write to you today because our president is also a Russian bot who refuses to denounce or fight back against Putin and quite possibly colluded with him to win the job. Our Congress is loathe in their responsibilities because they are unsure of how to do their job and keep their power at the same time. Meanwhile, WAY too many of you are looking for normal again while the war for our ability to still be called a union rages on.

What many of us see- including Facebook, finally- is that the necessity for nuclear war has been usurped by the simplicity of a digital one. WE are currently engaged in a war that WE don't understand so we can not be winning it. By the time we fully discover the extent of this war we will have endured internal damage that will never allow us to return to whatever normal used to be. In fact, when you think of it, old normal is probably to blame for this mess.

So please, stop looking for it.