The Art of "You're Fired", The Sequel

As a means to distract the American public from alleged extramarital affairs, high school students marching for the right to not get shot at and trade wars that might unnecessarily wreck the economy, President Donald Trump continues to make news by remaking the White House in his own image.  The latest:

• H.R. McMaster has been replaced as national security advisor by John Bolton, who used to be President George W. Bush's United Nations ambassador.  Bolton sounds like the kind of guy who'd rather pour gasoline on a fire during a world crisis instead of putting them out, if his past statements on Fox News and elsewhere are any indication.  Rip up the Iran nuclear deal?  Sure.  Bomb North Korea before they bomb America?  Why not?  By the way, what's Dick Cheney doing these days?
• Deputy FBI director Andrew McCabe was just two days away from retiring with a pension after 21 years on the job before Attorney General Jeff Sessions canned him.  McCabe's crime, apparently, was for not being honest about the last-minute investigation into Hillary Clinton's e-mails, which ended up costing her the presidential election.  The fallout from the firing resulted in McCabe's old boss, former FBI director James Comey, having his soon-to-be released book zoom up the charts.
• One of Trump's remaining attorneys, John Dowd, quit when he realized that he can't help the President if he doesn't want to listen to his advice.  The last straw, apparently, was when Trump reportedly was willing to be interviewed by special prosecutor Robert Mueller about his role in the alleged Russian hacking of the 2016 presidential election.  No self-respecting lawyer would let his client do something like that.  But then, no self-respecting lawyer would be working for Trunp right now.  Oh, isn't Dowd the one who called for the Mueller investigation to conclude?

The number of former Trump employees at the White House keeps growing.  One wonders how long this shakedown period will last--if it ever does.

The Art of "You're Fired".

President Donald Trump's philosophy is rather simple:  Get the best people you can, and make sure everyone's on the same page as you.  It might have worked for him when he was running his own company, but when it comes to running a country he's had mixed results.  When you have people working for you who don't necessarily agree with you, that's when you wonder why they were hired in the first place.

Maybe that's why the White House has been like a revolving door for employees and Cabinet members ever since Trump took office.  Either he didn't like the person he hired, or his staff felt like rats fleeing a sinking ship.  With the number of scandals plaguing this administration (Russia, Stormy Daniels, etc.), who could blame then for getting the heck out while they've still got careers?

Secretary of State Rex Tillerson is the latest Trump figure to be shown the door.  A former oil company executive who used to run ExxonMobil, Tillerson wasn't anyone's first choice to head the State Department, much less having to be the one to explain to the rest of the world his boss' peculiar decision-making.

To say that Tillerson and Trump did not get along is an understatement.  They disagreed on such things as the Iran nuclear agreement, Trump's imposing tariffs on aluminum and steel, and on how to handle North Korea.  As a result, Tillerson was kept out of the loop by the President on important decisions.  Oh, and calling his boss a "moron" didn't help either.

Tillerson said his learned about his firing the same way everybody else did--through one of the President's many tweets.  His replacement, pending Senate approval, is Mike Pompeo.  He is currently CIA director, and is thought to have views that are more in line with Trump's than Tillerson's.  Gina Hempel would succeed Pompeo at CIA, once the Senate gets through questioning her about policies that allegedly endorse torture.

Diplomatically, this is an interesting time for Trump to change course.  The unexpected opportunity for a summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un has left the United States woefully unprepared.  There is currently no ambassador to South Korea, and the chief envoy to Pyongyang has chosen to retire.  The President only gets his intelligence via word of mouth.  If he thinks he can strike a deal with Kim that won't end in disaster, let's just say we'll be very surprised.

Here's who else in recent weeks is no longer serving at the pleasure of the President:

• Chief economic adviser Gary Cohn, who quit after questioning the wisdom of Trump's tariffs.  He is being replaced by Larry Kudlow, a CNBC financial analyst who used to work for President Ronald Reagan.
• White House communications director Hope Hicks, and her deputy director Josh Raffel.

Jared Kushner is still around, even though he lost his security clearance.  So is his wife, Ivanka Trump.  HUD secretary Ben Carson canceled a $31,000 order for office furniture.  Education secretary Betsy DeVos gets vilified every time she opens her mouth. 

Confidence in this administration is at an all-time low, but that's the way it's been ever since Trump took office.  The only ones who still seem to believe in him are Republicans in Congress, and the cheering crowds at Trump's rallies embracing his 2020 re-election slogan of "Keeping America Great".

Meanwhile, those who continue to work for President Trump would be well advised to update their resumes.  They're going to need it.

The Shape of Oscar Night

The 90th Academy Awards on Sunday was, given everything that's happened to Hollywood and the rest of America over the past year, a do-over.  White males were reduced to spectators by women who spent parts of the evening echoing the sentiments of the MeToo and Time's Up campaigns against sexual harassment in the entertainment industry, and by African-Americans and LGTBQs for being mostly ignored on their own merits all these years.

To that end, we got to hear host Jimmy Kimmel tiptoe through a minefield of a monologue, Ryan Seacrest being routinely snubbed on the red carpet due to sexual harassment allegations, the first transgender awards presenter and Jordan Peele becoming the first African-American to win an Oscar for Best Original Screenplay ("Get Out").

On the other hand, the Academy chose to reward two men whose time should have been up, but the statute of limitations must have expired:  Kobe Bryant, who won Best Animated Short for "Dear Basketball", was accused of raping a woman back in 2004.  And Gary Oldman, whose impersonation of Winston Churchill in "Darkest Hour" won him a Best Actor nod, allegedly assaulted his wife in 2001.

Frances McDormand, whose role in "Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri" earned her her second Best Actress Oscar (the other was for "Fargo"), inadvertently revealed an inconvenient truth about this year's awards when she asked all the female winners in the audience (including Allison Janney, who won Best Supporting Actress for her role in "I, Tonya") to stand up during her acceptance speech.  In spite of all the love for director Greta Gerwig (whose "Lady Bird" garnered zero Oscars), and for Rachel Morrison as the first female to be nominated for cinematography, there were fewer women Oscar winners than in the previous six years.

McDormand also introduced a new phrase to the entertainment lexicon during her acceptance speech:  inclusive rider.  It's inserted into actors' contracts to promote gender and racial balance in hiring on movie sets.  It may not be as remembered as "plastics", but McDormand deserves credit for taking the time to read the fine print, which is what most actors usually leave to their agents or attorneys.

Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway got another chance to announce this year's Best Picture, which went to "The Shape of Water"--this time without a hitch.  As for the movie itself, its love story between a mute woman and a top-secret sea creature sounds kind of retro in a year of female empowerment, does it not?

The shape of the Oscar telecast was . . . flabby.  Despite a three-hour prime time window with an earlier starting time, and Kimmel's promise of a jet ski to the winner with the shortest acceptance speech, the show still managed to clock in at nearly four hours.   Around 26.5 million of you watched the proceedings live on ABC, which is 6.5 million less than last year's Gaffe Heard Round The World.

That's another challenge in the post-Harvey Weinstein world of the Academy Awards--or any other awards show, for that matter.  How do you change the world without viewers changing the channel?