The headline stopping me in my tracks…
Donald Trump says, IF ELECTED HE’LL GET RID OF SOCIAL SECURITY.
So I did what I always do when I’m about to go into cardiac arrest, I called my pal Ed.
“Can he really do that if he’s elected?”
“If he wants to start a fucking revolution he can,” said Ed.
Then I emailed the wise and powerful Hal who writes back, “Are you nuts?”
Yes, but that’s beside the point.
“Why do they print such a thing like that Ed if it’s really not true,” asked Alice, before diving back down the rabbit hole.
“To scare the shit outta people like you.”
Don’t hold back Ed, give it to me straight.
It made me think of newspaper owners, Joseph Pulitzer and William Randolph Hearst, who competed with one another over producing the most scandalous headlines coining the term, Yellow Journalism. Journalism that’s based upon sensationalism and crude exaggeration. Murder, suicide, graft and adultery, oozed like pus, plumping up sales.
Who said, never underestimate the taste of the American public? Apparently it hasn’t changed much since the era of both these men from 1895 to around 1898 when sensationalism was at its highest. 
I happen to be a fan of Joseph Pulitzer 
(1847-1911) who bought the New York World in 1883, only charging two cents per issue so every New Yorker could afford it, in two years, becoming the most popular paper of its day.
My favorite Pulitzer story involves the Statue of Liberty. A gift of friendship from the citizens of France, we agreed to pay for her erection, so to speak, meaning her stand she so proudly perches upon in New York Harbor, but Grover Cleveland, our president at the time, 
refused to ask Congress for funding.
So Liberty sat in pieces
until Mr. Pulitzer placed an ad in his paper stating, anyone who contributes even a penny to the Lady, will get their name in The New York World. Besides that, he said, the people who she represents, he being one of them sailing here from Hungry at the age of 17, should be the ones to come to her aid. And we did. Her stand was paid for by New Yorkers thumbing their nose at Mr. Cleveland, who had the nerve to come for her unveiling on October 28, 1886.
At the height of his speech, her scrim flew off to great applause drowning him out, not to mention upstaging our cheap, 24th President, and the only one to serve two non-consecutive terms.
Wonder what Mr. Pulitzer, a diehard Democrat, would think of Donald Trump?
Five words come to mind…
AY-YI-YI-YI YI
SB
