1957 Dim and DImmer

(Photo: Dennis Rodman/Getty Images)

Are you getting all warm and fuzzy about the NoKo thing?  You are not alone.  It turned out OK-ish. If you don’t count the part about how trump got nothing in return for a vague and empty promise to denuclearize.  Oh, and the war won’t start tomorrow. But before the Two Old Friends sat down for trump’s Asian medicine treatment -- leeching -- there was chaos.  Here’s a look at what happened before Singapore.

Dim and Dimmer’s summit hadn’t started as this post was put together.  And it doesn’t matter what happened or didn’t happen at the Summit of the Century, at least as far as we’re concerned here, because everyone has now reported on it and you are chock full o’data about what everyone has and had to say.

No, this is about the runup to the unlikely meeting between Kim Jong-un of North Korea and donald trump president of what used to be the United States of America but now is some third world wannabe striving for legitimacy in the eyes of the rest of the world and doing so by throwing stink bombs.

The news story up until the first moment of the meeting was “there’s a meetin’ here tonight.”  But that wouldn’t have satisfied those of us who must speculate and analyze and read tea leaves.  After all, how could Wolf Blitzer and Rachel Maddow and the Grudge Report survive on a mere few words when they have all that time and space to fill.

So we do endless previews, based on guesswork, sometimes educated guesswork.  Else ACN Newsnight would have to would have to put up a slide that says “There is no news of the Summit in Singapore.  Stay tuned for seven minutes of Percy Faith records, three minutes of commercials and then Will McAvoy will be here to tell you about cats rescued from trees in East Mongoose, Indiana and a ham pot pie dinner in Fognozzle, Nebraska.”

Well, there is no ACN and there is no Will McAvoy and CNN and the rest of the mob still have to fill the time, so they get panels of people to discuss such holiness as what can and can’t be accomplished at the meeting.

And then there’ll be a panel on the political implications, where “experts” on every side of every issue will pontificate about the effect of the summit on the 2018 elections and the 2020 elections. Bloomberg TV and CNBC will put on panel discussions about the effects on the markets, with some side tracks about the impending trade war and its likely doom of world trade.

ShrinkTV, the psychology channel, will put on some interesting speculation, featuring panels of psychiatrists, psychologists, swamis, psychics, self help gurus and the intellectual descendants of such luminaries as Dale Carnegie, Napoleon Hill, Art Bell and other important cultural figures.

Print media was right up there with its more widely circulated broadcast pals.  The New York Times, Washington Post, MAD Magazine, Forbes, Fortune, the Wall St. Journal and every other huxter with a website and an ax to grind... ground.

Bottom line: No one knew nuttin’.  But they had to fill the time and space.  Because they know you don’t like Percy Faith records all that much. Plus nobody ever shouts during one of those, except maybe to shut off the Victrola.

SHRAPNEL:

--Give ‘em the benefit of the doubt.  The stopped clock president and frozen in time supreme leader may actually have accomplished a great leap forward, to quote Mao. And we still can flip a nuclear missile into Pyongyang faster than Kim can hit Sacramento.

GRAPESHOT:

-Yeah, who needs Canada and Britain and Germany for trade when we have NoKo and Russia?

-ATT to buy Time Warner after a judge says anticompetitive M&A is good for you. (We may have more about this on Friday or next week unless something uglier comes along.

-Tesla is reducing its workforce and Elon says he’ll run the whole shebang by himself, which he has been all along, anyway.

I’m Wes Richards. My opinions are my own but you’re welcome to them. ®

Please address comments to wesrichards@gmail.com

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