FRIDAY: There the president seems to have gone again!

FRIDAY, APRIL 25, 2025

Time magazine chose not to notice: What do we mean when we say that mainstream news orgs are refusing to ask the obvious question about the sitting president? 

When we say that such orgs are refusing to turn that obvious question into a basic news hook?

In fairness, many of these major orgs also took a pass on the possibility that President Biden might be experiencing cognitive loss during his term in the White House. 

We may have more on that next week. For today, we'll start with this:

It's one of the best books we came across in our years as a Baltimore fifth grade teacher. We once saw a room full of "black" kids sit transfixed as Mrs. Young, a reading resource teacher, read the book out loud.

It was a book about Wanda Petronski, a Polish-American kid who lived in a fictional town in Connecticut. Her parents didn't have a lot of money, and her father spoke with a Polish accent. Some of the other girls in her grade school class teased her about her lack of finery on a daily basis. 

The book in question is a time-honored, Newberry Award winning book. Here's the start of a basic synopsis:

The Hundred Dresses

The Hundred Dresses is a children's book by Eleanor Estes, illustrated by Louis Slobodkin, published in 1944. In the book, a Polish girl named Wanda Petronski attends a Connecticut school where the other children see her as "different" and mock her.

The book centers on Wanda, a poor and friendless Polish-American girl. Although her grades are very good, she sits in the worst seat in the classroom and does not say anything when her schoolmates tease her. One day, after Wanda's classmates laugh at her Polish last name and the faded blue dress she wears to school every day, Wanda claims to own one hundred dresses, all lined up in her closet in her worn-down house. This outrageous and obvious lie becomes a game, and the group of girls in her class, headed by Maddie and Peggy, mock and corner her every day before school demanding that she describe all of her dresses for them. Her father, Jan Petronski, reveals that due to the constant discrimination directed at his family they must leave town.

The story goes on from there. It may be the best book about moral experience we have ever read.

Eventually, the other girls learn that Wanda does have a hundred dresses at home. She has a hundred beautiful crayon drawings of the hundred beautiful dresses she wishes she could own. 

After Wanda's family has moved away, one of the girls is lucky enough to be wracked by remorse. Here's Amazon's shorter synopsis:

The Hundred Dresses

This Newbery Honor classic, illustrated by a Caldecott Medalist, is a beautifully written tribute to the power of kindness, acceptance, and standing up for what's right.

Wanda Petronski is ridiculed by her classmates for wearing the same faded blue dress every day. She claims she has one hundred dresses at home, but everyone knows she doesn’t. When Wanda is pulled out of school one day, the class feels terrible, and classmate Maddie decides that she is "never going to stand by and say nothing again."

A timeless, gentle tale about bullies, bystanders, and having the courage to speak up.

We watched thirty "black" kids on the edge of their seats, captured by the tale of the injustice being absorbed by this "Polish" girl. Those Baltimore kids were very good kids. They learned something from the Eleanor Estes book. We ourselves learned something that day as we sat there watching them.

Wanda Petronski told the other kids that she had "a hundred dresses in her closet, all lined up." In a newly released interview, President Trump seems to have told Time magazine that he has two hundred tariff deals, with two hundred different countries, which are already in place.

What was the president talking about? At Mediaite, Tommy Christopher reports this puzzling claim under this headline:

Trump Stuns Time Magazine With Outlandish Claim When They Confront Him on Zero Trade Deals

Easy to be hard! 

To read the full exchange in the transcript published by Time, you can just click this. Here's the start of the lengthy exchange, with Time's questions in italics:

Read the Full Transcript of Donald Trump’s ‘100 Days’ Interview With TIME

[...]

Your trade adviser, Peter Navarro, says 90 deals in 90 days is possible. We're now 13 days into the point from when you lifted the reciprocal, the discounted reciprocal tariffs. There's zero deals so far. Why is that? 

No, there’s many deals. 

When are they going to be announced? 

You have to understand, I'm dealing with all the companies, very friendly countries. We're meeting with China. We're doing fine with everybody. But ultimately, I've made all the deals.

Not one has been announced yet. When are you going to announce them?

I’ve made 200 deals. 

You’ve made 200 deals?

100 percent.

Can you share with whom?

Because the deal is a deal that I choose. View it differently: We are a department store, and we set the price. I meet with the companies, and then I set a fair price, what I consider to be a fair price, and they can pay it, or they don't have to pay it...

The puzzling exchange continues at length from there.

Wanda Petronski said she had a hundred dresses. President Trump seems to have said that he has two hundred tariff deals, apparently all lined up.

What do we mean when we say that this sort of thing has been normalized? When we say that major news orgs keep saying and signaling this:

 Nothing to look at! Just move along!

What do we mean when we say such things? You can click here for Time magazine's lengthy report about this lengthy interview. Not a single word is said about the possible oddness of this lengthy, peculiar exchange.

Eleanor Estes wrote a deeply insightful book. Here in Baltimore, long ago, we watched thirty kids as they hung on every word. 

Those good kids cared about Wanda Petronski. Knowing how to pity the child, they very badly needed to know how the story turned out.