Have we lost our minds about gender? The Serena Williams Story

A lot has happened in the world since my last piece for Cautious Optimism.  The Supreme Court temporarily backed Trump’s travel ban, with all indications pointing to a permanent smack-down of the dopes in the 4th and 9th circuit courts later this year.

Elmo went to Jordan, and is back to report that Syrian refugee kids are just like other kids.  (Even Jewish and Christian kids, whose lives are routinely threatened by at least some of the parents of the Syrian kids.)

Trump posted a juvenile but hilarious wrestling video of him pummeling a CNN figure, after which CNN pulled its collective dress over its head and stomped around in a room full of rakes – “This video constitutes a threat to journalists’ lives!  We must find the meme-maker and give him the Otto Warmbier treatment!” — making themselves look much worse than Trump.

Jamie Galioto captured a much-deserved CO Follower of the Month award, to the acclaim of a grateful nation.

But one story captured my attention, not because it was the most politically significant, but because it might offer one of the most painfully indicative “sign of the times” in terms of our society’s growing insanity when it comes to issues of gender and sexism.

This was the mind-numbingly stupid controversy over John McEnroe’s comments about Serena Williams’ hypothetical competitiveness against the top male tennis players in the world.  There were three parts to the story:

Act 1: The Interview.

In the course of an NPR interview with someone called Lulu Garcia-Navarro, McEnroe praised Williams as probably “the greatest female tennis player of all time.”  Ever vigilant for sexist thought, the interviewer said, “Some wouldn’t qualify it, some would say she’s the best player in the world.  Why qualify it?”

McEnroe was apparently too stunned by the weapons-grade obliviousness of the question. “Oh!” McEnroe replied. “Uh, she’s not, you mean, the best player in the world, period?”

“Yeah, the best tennis player in the world,” Garcia-Navarro said. “You know, why say female player?”

Luckily, McEnroe wasn’t drinking anything at that moment, or he could have done a classic spit take, drenching Lulu, as she so richly deserved.  He said that he thought she would be ranked around 700 if she played against men, which led to howls of outrage from those who are perpetually on the verge of howling with outrage.

By the way, you’re probably asking yourself if interviewer Lulu Garcia-Navarro is the same Garcia-Navarro who won dozens of professional women’s tennis tournaments, and for whom the oversized crystal trophy awarded to each year’s Wimbledon champ – “The Lulu” – is named.

No and no.

First, there is no Wimbledon trophy called “the Lulu” – I made that up.  You should be a little embarrassed if you believed me.

Second, my extensive research – by which I mean, two minutes of Googling Garcia-Navarro – shows that Lulu has never played professional tennis.  Or, as far as I could tell, college tennis or high school tennis.  She may never have picked up a tennis racket in her life.

Which might start to explain – although a room temperature IQ might also be a contributing factor – why she thinks that there is no reason (except sexism, of course) to say that a female tennis player might be better than any of the male tennis players in the world.

I’m going to mention a few biological facts now.  So, I guess… trigger warning for those of you who cannot tolerate reality?  For the rest of you, stand back while I blow your mind:

Males are physically larger, with more muscle and less body fat than females.  They are faster, and hit the ball harder than females do.  Extensive research (i.e. another 90 seconds on Google) shows that the top 20 male serve speeds range from 144-163 miles per hour, compared to the top female speeds from 124-131, and that the average male serve speed is around 30 kilometers per hour faster than the average female serve speed.  (I don’t know how much that is in miles per hour, because I’m not a commie who uses the metric system, except when buying a gun or tools.  But I’m guessing that it’s a significant difference.)

These aren’t insults; they’re facts.  And there’s no reason for a rational person to be offended by them.  But sadly, it’s the mark of a certain kind of feminist to not be able to acknowledge the most basic biological differences without being angered by them.   (Full disclosure: I consider myself a feminist, but not the “all men are horrible, and women are superior” kind.)

My wife is good at many things that I’m not.  Though I sometimes envy her for that, I can’t imagine getting angry about it.  And if I point out that I can do many more pushups than she can, I don’t have to worry that she’ll go off on a spittle-flecked rant insisting that I take that back or she’ll kill me.

That was an old girlfriend.  And things didn’t end well.

Anyway, it’s a very bad sign when our society can’t acknowledge the naturally differing abilities of both genders without being infuriated by them.   I hope that one day we’ll all meet at a big Cautious Optimism convention, and if we do, I expect that many people will say things to me like, “Wow, you smell nice.” Or “I noticed you doing many one-armed push-ups earlier. Impressive.”

But if one of you – say, Lulu Garcia-Navarro, if she somehow snuck past CO’s security – were to say something like, “Simpson, you think you’re so great, with your Nobel prize in ornithology and your fashionable tuxedo.”  (I picture all of us at a Cautious Optimism convention in formal wear.) “But you, sir, are horrible at lactating.  In fact, I bet I could lactate circles around you!”

I might respond in several ways, including wondering who this crazy woman was, and how she got in here, and what circular lactating would look like.

But do you know how I would NOT respond in a million years?

I would not get defensive and say, “Oh yeah?!  Them’s fightin’ words!” And then I would NOT ball up my fists and flex like Hans and Franz, grunting loudly while I tried to force myself to lactate on cue.

Because men don’t lactate nearly as well as women.  (Cue the NBC “The more you know” theme music.)  We also don’t tend to listen as well as women.  Or have as much emotional intelligence as women do.  Or exercise basic common sense when it comes to things with motors in them.

And that doesn’t make us less worthy as human beings.  Any more than the fact that the best male tennis players in the world would dominate the best female tennis players in the world.

 

Act 2: The Coerced Apology

Well, that’s it, you’re thinking.  Garcia-Navarro is a dim bulb, but an idiosyncratic one.  Surely no one else could be stupid enough to–  Wait.  This just in from an Inside Edition interview with McEnroe a few days after the controversy broke.

Co-host Gayle King complains, “I think it belittles what women do on the tennis court, that’s why people are upset,” she said.

Because stating an undeniable truth is seen as “belittling.”  Duh.

McEnroe tries to explain himself – that is, tries to explain the obvious – when Norah O’Donnell chimes in with, “I’m just waiting… would you like to apologize?”

When McEnroe says, “No,” Charlie Rose says, “Why was it necessary to say that?” and the three hosts badger him for several more painfully comedic minutes.

In recent years everybody seems to be getting awfully sensitive on various topics, but it seems like we’ve really lost our mind when it comes to gender (and race, too).  I can’t imagine, for example, similar comments being made about someone on the Senior PGA tour, which is a league in which famous pro golfers over 55 compete against each other.  But if a commentator mentioned that he thought that some old guy was the best golfer on the senior tour, no “journalist” would be goofy enough to say, “Why do you qualify that?  Why best ‘senior’ golfer?  Why not just say that he’s the best golfer in the world?”

If anyone WAS dopey enough to say that, the commentator would say something like, “Because he’s 86!  His drives go as far as Dustin Johnson’s 7 irons!  Are you nuts?  Hold on, let me take a long drink, so you can ask that question again, and I can spit it on you in disgust.”

 

Act 3: In Which the Poor Victim Proves to be a Hypocrite

So after McEnroe initially refuses to apologize for saying something that is obviously true, the empty heads work on him for a few minutes until he cracks, mumbling about not wanting to upset Serena while she’s pregnant.

But as part of the Inside Edition piece, they quote a tweet from Serena herself: “Dear John, I adore and respect you, but please, please keep me out of your statements that are not factually based.  Respect me and my privacy as I am trying to have a baby.”

By the way, my favorite part of the Inside Edition piece was that the story cut immediately from Serena’s plea for respecting her privacy as she has her baby to – wait for it – “Speaking of her baby, look at this provocative new Vanity Fair cover: a very pregnant Serena!” Sure enough, they plaster a big nude photo of Serena in what has to be the fourth trimester, at least.

Because nothing says, “Why won’t anyone give me my privacy?!” like a nude cover photo on Vanity Fair.

Anyway, look at her tweet one more time: she objects to McEnroe’s “statements that are not factually based.”  Does that mean that she agrees with Lulu that she could beat the best male players?  It sounds like it.

But then, Serena’s appearance on Letterman from four years ago surfaced.  Letterman talked about the Billie Jean King/ Bobby Riggs match, and asked Serena, “What would happen if something like that happened today?”

Williams said essentially what earned McEnroe such scorn.  Her answer, which I’m not making up, was, “Andy Murray [at that time, the 3rd ranked men’s player in the world] has been joking about myself and him playing a match… For me, men’s and women’s tennis are completely almost two separate sports. If I were to play Andy Murray, I would lose 6-0 6-0 in five to six minutes, maybe ten minutes…. The men are a lot faster, they serve harder, they hit harder.  It’s a different game.  I love to play women’s tennis, and I only want to play girls because I don’t want to be embarrassed.  I would not do the tour or Billie Jean King any justice, so Andy stop it, I’m not going to let you kill me.”

Hypocrisy, thy name is Serena.

So what have we learned from this?  Maybe that men and women are different?

If you still needed to learn that, you should sue the Gender Studies program from which you received your degree.

Ossoff-Mania 6-26

The Jon Ossoff schadenfreude-palooza is the gift that keeps on giving.  Less than a week later, I could write an entire column on the sweet, sweet aftermath of just that one story, and what we can learn from it.

So I will.

A couple of weeks before the election, when several polls showed Ossoff up around 7 points, one lefty blog commenter crowed that June 20th was going to be like Sherman marching through Georgia again.

Yes.  Exactly like that.

Except if this time, when Sherman sat astride his horse at the head of the Union column and gave the command to begin the march, his horse immediately slipped in the mud and broke a leg, pitching Sherman into a puddle.  And in the puddle was a deadly snake, which then bit Sherman in the face, causing him to flail about in death throes that then spooked all of the other horses, causing them to charge off in all directions, throwing their riders and trampling infantrymen.  And sending an ammo wagon full of black powder careening into a mess tent, where a cooking fire set off a gigantic explosion which killed all the Union soldiers.

And then Robert E. Lee marched on Washington unopposed, conquered it, and renamed it Jefferson Davis-ville, and the Democrats won the Civil War, and so we’d still have slavery, which they were quite fond of.

Because for the Dems, June 20th was just like that.  Only much, MUCH funnier.

Or maybe the lefty blogger was talking about Sherman from the cartoon featuring a smart dog named Mr. Peabody and a nerdy guy (who looks a lot like Jon Ossoff) who was coincidentally named Sherman.  (If you’re under 40 and never saw those cartoons, google them and see how we learned history back when there was less of it to learn.)

Ossoff’s election night was a lot like what would have happened if THAT Sherman had marched around in Georgia.  Only funnier.

Anyway, after I thought I’d milked all of the enjoyment out of 6/20 that I could, I saw a link to a Maureen Dowd column in the New York Times – usually a quick double “nope” in my book.  But the title sounded good – “Donald Skunks the Democrats” – so I took a chance, and clicked on it.

And it was like a brilliant chemist had somehow combined laughing gas, morphine and the little blue pill into one magical elixir, and then poured it into my coffee.  Which I was drinking out of my new Mad Dog Mattis mug.  (By the way, my world-champion wife tells me that she found that mug at fullpatriot.com, for those of who you asked.)

At the top of the story is a picture of five presumably liberal women (and one guy in the background) – different ages, races, etc.  But they have one thing in common: they look like they just sat down to dinner, where they were told that their cat was run over by Donald Trump driving a Hummer with a MAGA bumper sticker, and their teenage son just came out as straight, and their daughter announced that she’s converting to Christianity, and both of them have started following the Cautious Optimism Facebook page.

They look very, very sad, is my point.

The text is pretty enjoyable, too.  My favorite line comes from Chicago mayor Rahm Emanuel.  Emanuel has done so well – Chicago is so peaceful and prosperous and well-run – that he now counts as a Wise Elder among Democrats.

Quoth the Rahmbo:  “We congenitally believe that our motives are pure and our goals are right….Therefore, we should win by default.”

Yes, we’ve noticed that you congenitally believe that.  And how’s that congenital smugness working out for you?

 

Maybe even more fun—if that’s possible — has been watching the professional pollsters maintain their Pelosi-like record of incompetence.  Just Google “Hillary predicted to win election,” and bask in the laughable wrongness back in November.  The Moody Analytics “highly reliable election model” predicted a Hillary landslide.   The Rothenberg & Gonzales Electoral Map (whatever that is) said Hillary would win 332 electoral votes.  The LA Times’ final poll gave her even more, at 352 electoral votes.  The Huffington Post (I know, but still) gave Trump a 2% chance.

The Dean of Pollsters Nate Silver and his vaunted 538 Blog gave her 2-1 odds on the day of the election, and in the early evening the NY Times was still giving her a 90+% chance of winning.

I could do a better job of predicting election outcomes by slaughtering a goat and reading the entrails.

Or using a Oujia board.

Or reading tarot cards.

Or by spreading tarot cards on a Oujia board and pouring goat entrails over them.

Of course, the trend of delusional Dem predictions continued – hilariously! – in the Georgia race.  In words that should go down in infamy, Nate Silver proclaimed that, “…there’s a 70% chance Ossoff wins and a 30% chance that MATH IS DEAD AND DATA IS BROKEN.”

You’d have to try pretty hard to come up with a better example of a determined obliviousness than that.

Which makes it that much more delicious to poke fun at the “experts’” wrong predictions in the aftermath.   The day after the election, Politico ran a story with this headline: “GOP turnout confounds pollsters in Georgia election.”

For those of you keeping score at home, here’s a partial list of more things that confound pollsters:

  1. Where babies come from.
  2. Where the sun goes at night.
  3. The “I before e, except after c” rule.
  4. Cause and effect.
  5. Supply and demand.
  6. Most other things.

 

Perhaps my favorite election day theory came from Rachel Maddow.  As early returns started to suggest that Handel might win, Maddow asked a fellow commentator, “If there was a turnout effect from the bad weather today in the district, does that have any partisan implications…?”

Because it rained in the 6th District on election day.  And, I guess, Democrat voters are made of sugar, and can’t go out in the rain to vote?

I’m going to quote something that I’m pretty sure Rachel hasn’t read, because it wasn’t written by Saul Alinsky, Howard Zinn or Noam Chomsky.

“…your Father which is in heaven… maketh his sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust.”

So no, Rachel, it wasn’t the rain that did smite the Pajama Boy, and brought a plague upon the land.  And it wasn’t the orange-headed Anti-Christ.  And I’m pretty sure that you don’t know the difference between the just and the unjust.

 

Okay, I know what you’re thinking:  Simpson, you’re funny, and brilliant, and the world would be a better place if there were more people like you in it.  But what makes you think that you’d do any better than Nate Silver or Rachel Maddow at predicting elections?

First, thank you for your insightful observations.

Second, let me point you to part of the entry I posted back in April, after Ossoff fell just short of 50% in the general election:

“4. Ossoff doesn’t quite win. Pajama Boy is all grown up – or as grown up as he’s going to get, anyway — and he’s running for congress. The Dems pony up over $8 million, a bunch of celebrities throw in their support – because that always works! – but the empty suit wunderkind comes up short of the majority he needed, which means that he’ll likely lose to the GOP nominee in June.”

Did you get that?  “He’ll likely lose,” said Mr. Non-Expert, Non-Professional Pollster me (along with a lot of other people, of course.)  To discern that, I didn’t have to go to Georgia, or talk to any Georgians.  The sum total of my Georgia-related knowledge is pretty thin: “Sweet Georgia Brown,” is a catchy tune, as is “Georgia on My Mind;” peaches are tasty; the Falcons had a good year, and trying to take I-75 through downtown Atlanta anytime other than between midnight and 4 a.m. is a mistake.  That’s it.

So how was I able to see what brainiacs like Nate Silver and savants like Rachel Maddow couldn’t?  I’ve been pondering that question for almost a week now, and I’ve come up with an answer, in the form of The Simpson Face Punchability Index (SFPI) (copyright right now, by me).

Human faces can elicit strong reactions.  We’ve all known some guy who gets in a lot of fights, not because of his actions, but because people just don’t like his natural expression.  And we’ve all known unfortunate women who have been stricken with the heartbreak of resting b**ch face.

I’ve taken those facts, and through a proprietary process of rigorous thought and research, arrived at the conclusion that all human faces can be assigned a punchability value on a scale of 1 (a face that even a sociopathically violent person would be disinclined to punch) to 10 (a face that even a Buddhist monk so committed to nonviolence that he goes out of his way to avoid stepping on a bug can barely restrain himself from punching.)

For example, I have a pretty low SFPI.  I’m not very attractive, but small children and animals are drawn to me, I always got along well with my girlfriends’ parents, and strangers regularly ask me for directions, even though I am never the least bit helpful with directions.  On the other hand, thin-skinned, humorless leftists really REALLY want to punch me, so I can’t be a 1 or 2.  Thus, my SFPI is 2.5.

This is not a partisan issue, either.  Rush Limbaugh and Ted Cruz both have SFPIs of 8, while Trey Gowdy is an 8.5 – and I like all of them!  By contrast, NY Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, North Dakota Senator Heidi Heitkamp and actor John Cusack all are 2s, even though they all could objectively use a good pummeling.  Trump and Hillary are both 7.5s, which is what made the November contest so close.

Because I know you’re curious: the highest SFPI ever recorded was Harry Reid, with a 9.9.  If Gandhi and St. Francis were walking down a hallway and Dingy Harry were walking the other way, Gandhi would set him up with a left jab, and Francis would put him down with a right cross.  And Harry’s mom, if she were inexplicably still alive at age 125, would high five both of them. (I think that that mysterious eye injury that Harry had during his last year in office came from his own fist, when he saw himself in the mirror and couldn’t avoid the sudden instinct to punch himself.)

Anyway, I know that you see where this is going.  Karen Handel is the PTA mom or sweet, quietly competent lady who does your taxes; her SFPI is 1.5.  Jon Ossoff is the Eddie Haskel kid that annoys everybody, and even his girlfriend won’t let him drive when they are going anywhere; his SFPI is 8.5.

Thus, $30 million thrown into a small district on his behalf could only get him to within 4 points.

Now I sit back and wait for the nation’s pollsters to come to me, offering millions of dollars for access to the Unified Field Theory of politics that is the Simpson Face Punchability Index©.  Bring your checkbook, Nate Silver, or continue to embarrass yourself.

 

 

 

 

Feel Good Stories of mid-June

 

I come to you today bearing only good news.  I’m back from Illinois, I had a great Father’s Day, and I’m in a great mood.  So today we’re going to stay on the sunny side.

In political news, Democrats nationwide scrape together $24 million, and then take a vote on what to do with it.  While many of them voted for

Option A – Put it in a big pile, light it on fire, and dance around it wearing Guy Fawkes masks and Antifa hoodies while screaming obscenities aimed at Trump – the narrow winner was

Option B.  Which was to donate it to the Georgia House campaign of 15-year-old Jon “Pajama Boy” Ossoff, a ne’er-do-well from two counties over.

And he wisely used it to win… (trumpet fanfare)… a moral victory… (sad trombone fanfare).

By which I mean, he lost.  In the most expensive House campaign ever.  In a bellwether contest to demonstrate that Trump is done for.  In a harbinger of the glorious leftist victories to come.

He lost.

I know, the lefties are already counter-spinning.  This was a red district, and the GOP spent a lot too, and Handel under-performed the previous GOP seat holder.  And the sun got in our eyes, and the dog ate our homework, and the Russians did it.

You’re probably right.  You just need to double-down on the Trump hatred, and things are bound to turn around for you.  But there have been 4 congressional elections since November, and you guys are 4-0 in moral victories.  And 0-4 in actual victories.

That gigantic cash bonfire idea is looking pret-ty good about now, isn’t it?

 

In happy international news, an ISIS chief cleric who called himself “the Grand Mufti” – probably because “Grand Kleagle” and “Exalted Cyclops” were already taken, and his real name was Turki al-Bin’ali – caught an air strike in the face on May 31st.

I would like to renew my call that instead of a respectful moment of silence, we greet this kind of news with a few moments of raucous and celebratory noise.  I’m recommending a garage band playing the first 45 seconds of the Beastie Boy’s Sabotage, followed by the open to Stranglehold, followed by my dad’s 1972 Gran Torino with the pedal floored, and then a wood chipper working through a cedar tree.

(“Hey Martin,” I can almost hear you asking, “What dad joke did you tell your 15-year-old-daughter about this international incident that made her roll her eyes and slap her forehead and mimic the dry heaves?”  Since you asked so nicely: That’s one Turki who didn’t make it until Thanksgiving.  Boom!)

One news source called al-Bin’Kaboom “one of the most visible ISIS preachers.”  Am I the only one who sees the irony in a group who forces their women to wear tarps in public being done in because their Grand Mufti was too visible?

I am?  Fine.  I get it.  Everyone’s sooooo much more mature than me.  Moving on…

Crime stories don’t usually make me happy, but this week two of them did.  The first took place in Tennessee, where two felons and alleged (HA!) murderers who escaped from prison had exchanged gunfire with cops and were engaged in a high speed chase.  A local guy who lives in the area with his wife and daughter got a warning phone call from a neighbor.  He did several wise things: he “prayed like I had never prayed before,” and he “load[ed] every weapon I could,” and shortly afterwards he saw the criminals climb over a barbed wire fence onto his property.

They saw him, and before he could even show them the shotgun that he had with him, they both laid down on his driveway and surrendered.  One possible reason for their action can be gleaned from the statement of a local resident: “When you mess around out here in the county, most of us here have carry permits and carry (weapons).  And it’s our job to protect our families and our homes.”  If that statement doesn’t warm your heart, there’s something wrong with you.

(For comparison, consider a typical quote from a Chicago or New York resident in similar circumstances: “We huddled in our living room defenseless, because the leftists who run our lives have decided that we shouldn’t be able to defend ourselves.  Thanks, Mayors Emanuel and De Blasio!”)

When I read the story online, everybody in it was straight out of central casting: young Jimmy Stewart-esque gun owning father, pretty wife, adorable 3-year old daughter.  The convicts were what you’d expect: an older, mopey looking one who doesn’t have “Born to Lose” tattooed on his forehead but looks like he should, and a younger one who does in fact have prominent facial tattoos – including a sweet set of devil horns that just screams out, “Gainful employment? No thank you!”

I love every bit of this story, but my two favorite details are:

  1. The dad loaded “every weapon he could.” Does that imply that of course he has more than one weapon available to him?  You’re damn right it does.
  2. His name, which I’m not making up, is Patrick Hale. Obviously the bloodlines of Patrick Henry and Nathan Hale have merged to produce… this badass guy.

In the second good news criminal story, two model citizens had broken into a woman’s home in Georgia, and were in the process of stealing her tv, when she surprised them by being home, and by yelling at them.  They fled the scene, but while doing so, Genius #1, who was in the lead, fired back in the direction of the house.  Genius #2 was following him, and graciously stopped the bullet. With his head.

You’ll be shocked to learn that he was a 41-year old career criminal who was out on parole.  Maybe he’d been inside for so long that he didn’t realize that you can buy a tv now for $27 at Wal-Mart.  Any tv worth stealing would be so big you’d need a forklift to move it.

Also, if you were driving the tv away with a forklift, the bullet that your Mensa-member buddy fired your way might have struck the forklift.  Instead of your defective forehead.

Quote of the story goes to the local lawman, Sheriff Buford T. Obvious: “I’d much rather see one burglar shoot another burglar than an innocent homeowner.”

 

In a media story that threatened to intrude on my good mood, I heard that Reza Aslan was fired by CNN.  The headline that I saw said, “Aslan fired by CNN over vulgar anti-Trump tweet.”

Of course, my first thought was, “Why would a magnificent lion/Christ figure be writing vulgar anti-Trump tweets?”

My second thought was, “Why would a magnificent lion/Christ figure work for CNN?”

Then I read the story, and found out that it was Reza Aslan, and that he is an angry, angry little man.  The story is still amazing though: would you have believed that CNN would fire someone over vulgarity directed at Trump?  How is there still anyone on the air over there?

On a final, personal note, my wife got me a present for Father’s Day.

Before you can ask if it was a man romper, or a little scrunchy thing I could use to give myself a man bun, or a “Now You’ve Pi**ed Ossoff” bumper sticker, I rhetorically slap you.  (Though the bumper sticker would have been cool.  I thought of it weeks ago as a slogan for the Dems who were supporting Pajama Boy.  And I kept it to myself.  HA!)

No, my wife gave me… drumroll…a mug with a picture of Mad Dog Mattis on it, with the question, “What keeps you awake at night?” at the top, and his answer below: “Nothing.  I keep other people awake at night.”  I love looking at that mug first thing every morning.

It’s true that being a good spouse is not a competition.  But somehow, my wife is winning anyway.

Father’s Day 2017

As this Father’s Day approaches, I’ve been thinking a lot about my dad.  He died in December of  2014, and time has been doing its work, to the point that thoughts of him have shifted to a mix of many happy memories, to go along with the pain of his loss.  I’m a father to two daughters, and have known hundreds of other fathers as friends, relatives, co-workers and acquaintances, and off the top of my head, I can’t think of anyone who carried out that role any better than my dad.

He was born into a family of four boys and four girls to working class parents in Illinois in the late 1930s.   He married my mom not long after high school, and had me and my younger sister, and raised us while working at the Northern Illinois Gas Company, until he was forced into an early retirement at the age of 57 by injuries.   He operated a variety of heavy equipment, and he took great pride in his work.   When I was little, I can remember him pointing out subdivisions or houses that he’d run services to, and whenever we’d pass a parking lot with heavy machinery, he’d claim that he could operate anything on that lot.  My mom had to explain to an excited young me (at maybe age 5 or 6?) that no, she was not going to let dad scratch my back with a backhoe.  (He’d assured me that he could do so, no problem.)

He was not perfect, as none of us are.  He could be short-tempered and impatient, for example.  But even then, he was the most unusual of people: he was a short-tempered man whom I never heard swear.  Not once in my life.  Not when he bounced a hammer off his thumb.  Not when the Bears or the Cubs went O-for-a-month.  Not when a Democrat got elected.  He used ridiculous euphemisms to avoid cursing – “son of a buck,” “dirty rip,” and the like – but as a grown man who rarely makes it across town in heavy traffic without dropping at least one trenchant Anglo-Saxonism at one of my many brain-dead fellow citizens who cannot seem to master a turn signal or figure out which lane is for passing, that’s almost more than I can comprehend.  People are freaking idiots all the time — I am too — and my dad was surrounded by them his entire life, but he never swore in front of his son!

In the summer of 2014 dad had cancer surgery that we initially thought had been successful.  But a month or so later we found out that it has metastasized, and a month after that we learned that it would be fatal.  I spent much of the fall of that year with my mom and dad in Tennessee, and I’ll always be grateful for that time.  I recorded dad sharing a lot of memories from his life, and I saw the evidence of how many lives he had touched in the form of a steady stream of visitors who came to see him, and to see what they could do for him and for my mom.

He kept his sense of humor throughout his final illness.  One of my cousins was visiting not too long before dad died.  That cousin is known for sarcasm and smart-assery – even by Simpson standards – and he has some Scottish background on one side.  Dad was sitting in a recliner and drifting in and out of the conversation, and the cousin was joking that he was going to try to learn the bagpipes.  He promised (tongue-in-cheek) to play them at dad’s funeral.  Dad delivered his line with a perfectly dry tone: “That’s it.  I’ve changed my mind.  I’m not dying.”

Dad died on a Sunday evening, and he told me his last joke two days earlier.   He and I had both been Chicago Bears fans for life, and the Bears really stunk in 2014.  (Not just then, I know.  Knock it off!)  In the last couple of months in that season, they were on tv unusually often for a team that bad.  On the final Thursday of dad’s life they were on Thursday Night Football, and dad and I watched from our dueling recliners.  He was pretty heavily medicated and drowsed on and off; each time he woke up a bit, he’d ask me the score, and I’d report that the Bears were down by another touchdown or so, and he’d roll his eyes and make some comment before sliding back to sleep.

The next day, he asked me for a favor.  He had been unable to make it to church for a while by then, but his church made each week’s services available on DVD for members who had been unable to make it on Sunday.  Dad had several of those stored up to watch, and on that Friday, he asked if I could put a DVD in for him.  He seemed a little drowsy, but I put in the DVD and handed him the remote, asking if he thought he could stay awake for the sermon.

“I’m not sure,” he said, “But I don’t want the last tv I ever watch to be that stinking Bears’ game last night.”

To end his good life, he died a good death.   He had hospice care in his home, and my mom, my sister and brother-in-law and I spent some time with him every day in his final months.   He had the chance to tell everyone he knew how much he loved them, and that he was ready to go, and he was solicitous of others at a time when most of us can focus only on ourselves.  Because of great hospice workers and morphine, he was able to die at home.

He slept for most of his final day.  In the evening, mom and I arranged a schedule; I would stay up with him, and give him morphine twice, and then she would get up early and administer the morphine while I was sleeping in.  She spoke to him the last time, kissing him and telling him that he had been a great father and husband, and that he could go.  Then she went to bed, and he died before she could fall asleep.

Ronald Lee Simpson was born on January 22, 1938, and died on December 14th, 2014.  In between he lived a loving and generous life.  I think it is hard for some people to come to faith in a loving heavenly Father if they have an abusive, or neglectful, or absent earthly father.  I am a Christian because of both of my parents, but my path to God was made much easier by the example of a father’s love that I witnessed all my life.  I can’t wait to see him again.

I wish for you all that you have had a father like mine, or that you marry a father like mine, or that you are a father like mine.  Happy Father’s Day!

What I missed on my Vacation

I was on a trip this past week back to Illinois to see family and friends, and so only caught a few minutes per day of news on either the internet or tv. And oddly enough, by the time I got home my blood pressure was lower, I slept better, the acid indigestion was gone, and my hair had a silky, lustrous sheen. Men wanted to be me, and women wanted to be with me.

But being the wonky doofus that I am, I couldn’t help spending the last couple of days going through my DVR and the internet, trying to catch up on all things political. Which was a terrible idea. Now I’ve got insomnia, acid reflux, blurred vision, my Tourette’s Syndrome is acting up, and my hair is coming out in big clumps like I just finished a third round of chemo.

So read quickly, because after this I might have to take a month off.

The Comey hearings have been talked to death, so I’ll just mention a couple of issues that struck me:

1. Rubio had the quote of the week, when he pointed out (and Comey had to admit) the only fact that hadn’t been leaked during the whole pseudo-collusion farce: Trump was never under investigation for any Russian collusion. What else do you need to know about MSM corruption? They’ve floated 854 sleazy rumors, and somehow managed to NOT report the central fact of the story.

2. Comey admitted that he was one of the leakers, which violates the prime directive for intelligence officials. For the rest of his life, he should be forced to wear a scarlet “L,” and be shunned by decent people everywhere.

3. The only public official discussed in the testimony who likely obstructed justice and deserved a proctological-level investigation was Obama’s AG Loretta Lynch. In fact, Comey said that she directly told him to lie – to call the “investigation” of Clinton a “matter.” Comey said that he felt queasy after that request, because he knew how wrong it was. But look at what he did next: he started referring to it as a “matter,” and he did NOT leak Lynch’s order to anyone. That alone proves that Comey is a partisan hack.
(Also, I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: How bad is Obama’s judgment, when Eric “Steadman” Holder may arguably NOT have been his worst AG appointee?!)

4. Trump needs to give his enemies less ammunition in their scorched-earth battle against him. He’s his own worst enemy. (And considering the mangy menagerie of sociopathic leftist loons who are out to get him, that’s saying something!)

Et tu, Lefties? In other news, how about those arts lovers staging performances of Julius Caesar in Central Park with a Trump look-alike as Caesar? The obvious move is the “shoe on the other foot” question: Can you imagine how the MSM and the Dems (but I repeat myself) would react if someone put on a production like this with a leftist pol being killed? Would an Obama look-alike not make a serviceable Judas in Jesus Christ Superstar, or Hillary a great wicked witch in the Wizard of Oz? (Or one of the witches in MacBeth? Or Cruella De Vil in 101 Dalmations? Or Nurse Ratchet in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest? I could go on and on.). Would Joe Biden not make a great Lenny in Of Mice and Men?

I’m kidding, of course. (Not about Biden though. Was that guy born to play Lenny, or what?) We wouldn’t stoop that low, and we’d expect to be raked over the coals if some conservative staged such a performance. Not so with the other side, though.

Three quick thoughts:

1. The only way you can get a lefty crowd to celebrate a classic Western work authored by a dead white male is if you can turn it into political propaganda appealing to base instincts.

2. Predictably, the sweet-tempered, pacifistic, morally superior lefties in the crowd cheer the murder like… well, like a barbaric Roman crowd cheering on a murder.

3. And they made the citizens of NYC pay for at least part of the costs of their little bread-and-circuses performance. Some big corporate sponsors, in a fit of sanity, have backed out of their sponsorship, but last I heard, the city and the “arts community” is hanging in.

Some of my friends on the right want us to boycott, protest or otherwise try to stop such distasteful shenanigans, and while I understand, I disagree.

This is who they are: they shout “’F’ Trump” in front of their children, they use homophobic slurs about the prez and Putin, they fantasize about beheading the president, or stabbing him to death.

Let the country see them for who they are. And let the decent Democrats in the country rise up and disassociate themselves from this repulsive behavior, and the extremist goons who have taken over their party.

Or not. That will be instructive, too.

On a potentially related note, an angry leftist John Goodman-figure from The Big Lebowski shows up at a GOP softball practice. (Google that hateful shooter in his tinted shades, then pull up a picture of Goodman in the movie, and tell me they’re not angry, long-lost twins.) But instead of hollering at Donny and ranting about Nam, this guy’s all hopped up on political outrage, and he starts shooting. Thankfully, that story ends the way many such stories do: the bad guy with the gun gets stopped by good guys with guns. I hope that the victim recovers, and I’m not too torn up that the shooter won’t.
But I won’t do what the other side does, and claim that the hateful rhetoric of Bernie and the other Dems is responsible for this jerk’s actions. Bernie rightfully condemned him, and even though the MSM consistently tries to blame the actions of killers on conservatives, even when those killers are in no way connected to conservatives, I think they’re wrong to do so.

It doesn’t help when the leaders of a political party paint their opponents in hateful terms – and the GOP isn’t totally innocent of this, though I think they do it MUCH less than do the national Democrats. But this guy’s actions are his responsibility, and he has paid the just consequences.

Wow. I was going to end this piece there, but that was too much of a downer. So I’ll close with a happy ending instead.

Google the name Charles Zachary Howard, and you’ll learn that he is a sad little man who called a Republican congressman and left a vile message. He cited many of the popular lefty talking points – Nazis, the Klan – in addition to a few unusual ones. (The Freemasons? Hey Charlie, Nic Cage has his next National Treasure movie in pre-production, and his people will be issuing you a cease-and-desist order shortly.)
Did he close his little love note with a pledge to disagree without being disagreeable, you ask? He did not. He promised to, and I quote, “hunt your a– down, wrap a rope around your neck and hang you from a lamppost.”

Why do I mention this? Because that man is going to be on the 2020 ballot as the Democratic candidate for president.

HA! I kid. (I hope.) I actually mentioned Mr. Howard so that you will go onto YouTube, and watch a short video of him in action. A local reporter confronts him with a transcript of his phone call, and he starts bullying and taunting the reporter, saying, “Is there a warrant for my arrest? Show me the warrant for my arrest! Where is the warrant?!”

Then, because God exists, and He loves us, the police show up. And one of them says, “We have a warrant for your arrest.”

And, as a sad trombone plays (in my head if not on the video), they put the creep in cuffs.

Watch that video – it’s the feel-good hit of the summer!

June Meltdowns

Today’s theme is entertaining media meltdowns.

Exhibit A.  The Covfefe Conundrum.  (Not surprisingly, the poorest selling Bourne sequel to date.)  Okay, Trump is up tweeting in the middle of the night (and yes, it’s not the end of the world, but please stop doing that!), and he makes an odd typo, “covfefe.”  And the lefty media goes nuts, with 94,382 stories on it (my rough estimate) in the next 48 hours.

It’s the perfect storm: a nonsense word, with no significance of any kind, and no impact on any issue, foreign or domestic.   So let’s bloviate about it for days on end.

My favorite part of the resulting wall-to-wall coverage?  A bunch of empty heads — Did I mean “talking heads,” you ask? I did not. — were sitting on a panel discussing this on CNN.  Because you can’t deal with a story of THIS magnitude with one presenter.  You need a panel.

Anyway, one member of this brain trust was Gloria Borger, who passes for a Chief Political Analyst at CNN.  Only the chyron that appeared on the bottom of the screen identified her as “CNN Cheif Political Analyst.”

That’s right.   The best minds at CNN discussed the ominous, world-endangering implications of a typo, as they appeared… above a typo.

I like to fantasize that there is one closeted conservative saboteur running the chyrons at CNN.  If so, I salute you.  And I have a suggestion: the next time Gloria is on tv, try this one:  “Gloreeah Bourgeois, CNN Cheef Political Anal-yst.”  And the beers are on me.

 

Exhibit B:  Kathy Griffin, Part Deux.  After her bloody beheading stunt received (ahem) mixed reviews, Griffin actually apologized pretty convincingly.  Rather than going with the usual pseudo mea culpa – “If anyone misunderstood and was offended…” – she gave what seemed like a heartfelt apology.

Then, when that didn’t immediately stop the blow back, she ruined it by calling a press conference, during which she embodied every obnoxious leftist trope of the last 20 years.  She played the victim, invoked sexism and racism (“Old white men are persecuting me”), claimed that the Trumps were bullying her, that it’s not right to ruin her career, that she’s not afraid of Trump, that it’s not her fault that ISIS is running wild, and that the Russians cost her the election.

Wait.  The second-to-last whine was from Obama, and the last one was from Hillary.  It’s getting difficult to tell the delusional jeremiads apart.

Anyway, good news for the authors of abnormal psychology textbooks: you don’t have to write any more!  Just transcribe Griffin’s press conference, and label the respective dysfunctions as they rear their ugly heads.   They’re all there:

persecution complex — “He broke me.”

projection – “I’m not afraid of Donald Trump.  He’s a mean bully.”

delusions of grandeur – “For the first time ever, a President of the United states is trying to ruin a private citizen’s life.”   (What’s that?  Juanita Broaddrick is on line one?  And Paula Jones is on line two?  And James Rosen is on line three?  And – oops, the switchboard has been overwhelmed.)

delusions of comedic talent —  “I’m a comedian, and I’m not going to stop making fun of anyone.”

Okay, that last one is not technically a recognized psychological malady.   But c’mon.

Kathy, you enacted a simulated bloody beheading of the President.  You broke yourself.

 

Exhibit C —  Hillary Agonistes.  Not to be outdone, the former future leader of the free world – and oh, the joy I get from knowing that she will never be president! – sat down with yet more sycophantic interviewers.    Many commentators have noted that by now Hillary has blamed nearly every person or group on earth for her sweet, sweet loss.  (Piggish men, insufficiently feminist women, Russians and Comey and Bernie, etc.)  But this time she added a new culprit: Macedonians.  Let’s savor her schadenfreude-tastic quote:

“So this was different because [the Russians] went public, and they were conveying this weaponized information and the content of it, and they were running, y’know there’s all these stories, about y’know, guys over in Macedonia who are running these fake news sites, and you know I’ve seen them now, and you sit there and it looks like you know sort of low level CNN operation, or a fake newspaper.”

First, there’s no such thing as a “low level CNN operation.”  You cannot get lower than CNN without being subterranean.  CNN is a low level CNN operation.

Second, “weaponized information?”  You mean, facts and things that you and your creepy circle of co-conspirators wrote and said, right?  They released things that you said and did, and you’re calling that “weaponized information?”  Ohhh-kay.

Third, something goes horribly wrong, and you look around for scapegoats.  I get it.  Blaming others is always tempting, and often entertaining.  For example, when my oldest daughter was toddling around at about age 2, I taught her a verbal trick.  In the middle of any conversation, I could point to her and ask, “Who do we blame for that?”  And she’d look at me with her enormous brown eyes and say, “The Democrats.”  That’s the kind of Norman Rockwell moment that makes the diaper changing and future college expenses all worthwhile.   And my lefty in-laws were mortified.  So, win-win.

Anyway, enough about my fantastic parenting tips.  We were discussing Hillary’s blame game.

There’s hilarious, well-adjusted Simpson-style blaming, and then there’s grim, sociopathic Hillary-style blaming.  But she outdoes even herself when she uncovers the sinister Macedonian cabal.

Move over, Jews and Global Warming, because there’s a new scapegoat in town.  And it’s the Macedonian Menace.  (If this were an old timey radio show, I’d insert a scary organ sting here.) (That reminds me: Anthony Weiner.  Boom!) (Admit it: you read “insert scary organ sting” and you beat me to the Weiner reference.  You’ve officially sunk to my level, God help you.)

By now, it’s easier to identify groups whom Hillary HASN’T blamed for her loss.   By my count, that list comes to:  the ancient Etruscans, the Hapsburg Empire, the Hottentots, and Hillary Clinton.

One other note: Did you hear what kind of conference she was speaking to?  A tech conference.   Hillary Clinton, who set up a server in her back bedroom — using open-source software, with a hardline strung out her window and across country to the Russian embassy, installed by Boris and Natasha Badanov — was invited to speak at a tech conference.

Were there no Amish people available?

 

Exhibit D.  Trump out of Paris.  In his fourth-best action as president (after Gorsuch, Nikki Haley, and Maddog), the president pulled the US out of a meaningless non-treaty, and the world’s elite melted down.   Big brains like Fareed Zakaria, Jerry Brown, John Kerry and Moe Howard (just seeing if you are paying attention) all agreed that the world is going to end now, and fell to arguing only about which of the Biblical plagues that Trump has rashly unleashed will provide the coup de grace.  The early money was on rivers of blood, but the consensus now is evenly split among frogs, locusts and shadowy Macedonians.

The Paris accord might be the most blatant example of empty, leftist virtue signaling of this century.  It’s an agreement that has no enforcement mechanism, based on goals that each country came up with on their own, and paid for just about solely by the United States.

What was the vote in the Senate to confirm this treaty, you ask?  There wasn’t one.  Obama knew that he wouldn’t be able to get enough votes to ratify this feel-good do-nothing boondoggle, so he didn’t even try.  He just unilaterally said that we’re in.

So now, Trump can just unilaterally say that we’re out.  And he did.  So good on him.

 

Finally, Exhibit E.   As in, “Egad, what a moron.”  California Representative Barbara Lee – from guess which party? — in a heroic effort to take the heat off of the Macedonians, is blaming global warming for something.  But that something isn’t one of the usual somethings, like droughts or melting ice caps or Al Gore’s increasing fortune.

It’s prostitution.

I am not making that up.   She says that as the world gets increasingly hot, food will get scarce.  And then – yada yada yada — women will naturally have to start with the hooking.   Or something.  I can’t really follow her “reasoning,” but Google the topic and see if you can make sense of it.  (I was going to say “make heads or tails of it,” but considering the topic, I am way too mature for that.)

I guess the voters in her district find this kind of reasoning persuasive, but I can’t believe that the husbands of California are buying it.   I picture a typical guy waiting up to catch his wife sneaking back into the house at 3 a.m., wearing heavy makeup and her old college cheerleading uniform.

He snaps the light on, and stands there with folded arms.  And the wife says, “Honey, it was 90 degrees out for three days in a row!  What else was I supposed to do?”

If he accepts that explanation, he deserves to be represented by Barbara Lee in Washington.

Best of Late May 2017

I took a very pleasant trip to Maine last week, but now I’m experiencing the downside of leaving the confines of Cautious Optimism for even a short time – the great and powerful CO has linked to and commented on some of the noteworthy stories that I wanted to comment on. Will I let that either daunt or deter me?

Consider me both undaunted and undeterred. So here goes…

1.Oh, Kathy Griffin, until now I thought we’d all remember you for… that show you were on. Or that thing that you did. Or that time you were with Anderson Cooper on that holiday extravaganza.

Who am I kidding? I barely know who you are. Dr. Krauthammer called you a D-list celebrity, but with an alphabet that goes all the way to Z, that seems overly generous.

But wow, I guess we all know who you are now.

So… congratulations?

I know, it probably seemed like a great idea at the time: “What could I do to get some attention for my alleged career? I’ve got it! I’ll imitate the worst jihadi scum in the world, by posing with what looks like the bloodied, severed head of my country’s president! How could that possibly go wrong?”

The best thing about that hideous display is how perfectly it sums up the attitude of much of the self-dramatizing, furious left. If the cliché that a picture is worth a thousand words is true, that photo of a dead-eyed Griffin holding a gruesome symbol of the left’s hatred should be the 2020 Democratic party platform.

One more thing. I am nothing if not a chivalrous gentleman, and as such, I am generally loath to criticize a woman’s appearance. (Also, I’m not exactly movie-star handsome myself, so I don’t want to throw any disembodied heads from within my own glass house.) Therefore, I will not lower myself to point out that in Ms. Griffin’s photo, the bloodied, disfigured Trump mask was not the least attractive visage in the frame.

In fact, the same would be true if she held Tiger Wood’s unflattering mugshot in her other hand.

2. A couple of weeks ago I mocked the geniuses at Planned Parenthood for picking Mother’s Day as a perfect occasion to promote their campaign to eradicate motherhood. And you probably thought to yourself, “Simpson is right.“ (“Again!” you really should have added. “It’s uncanny how right he is. I should sell all that I have, and follow him.”) “No creepy leftist organization could ever pick a less appropriate holiday to spout their particular brand of offensiveness.”

But you would have been wrong. Because the super-geniuses at Vox picked Memorial Day as the perfect time to publish an article entitled, “The Marine Corps has a toxic masculinity problem.” The article discusses the recent scandal in which Marines have distributed nude pictures of females, both Marines and civilians. (And by the way, in the last two weeks I’ve seen angry leftist publications refer to both whiteness and masculinity as “toxic.” I’m beginning to think they really don’t like some of us.)

I do not condone those Marines’ behavior, and what they did is undeniably wrong. But talk about missing the point! It’s Memorial Day, when a lot of us weirdos who love our country and appreciate what our military has done to protect everything and everyone we have and love (and to save the world a few times over the last century), are feeling grateful to our soldiers.

And that’s the day you choose to excoriate them? Can you not take off one day a year – make that two, if Veteran’s Day isn’t too big of an ask – from your spiteful insistence on focusing on the flaws of our country and those who defend it?

Can you imagine if these idiots had been in charge during World War II? Instead of flying bombing runs over Germany, half of our B-17s would be in the shop, being re-painted. (Google “World War II Airplane Nose Art” and behold the saucy art that would launch a thousand court martials in today’s military.)

If the left had its way, we’d have either no military at all, or the tiniest p.c. force possible. If we ever were attacked (spoiler alert, drawn from the entirety of human history: we would be attacked), we’d end up fielding an army of metrosexuals and pajama boys, led by Brigadier General Chelsea Manning. And a clever enemy would send an elite platoon of Victoria’s Secret Models wearing nothing but stripper heels and g-strings and carrying pistols to capture our capitol, safe in the knowledge that our troops would not even notice them.

3. At the risk of giving you topic-change-induced whiplash, Mad Dog Mattis produced the quote of the year, so far. Toward the end of an interview on all things military, he was asked a familiar question: “What keeps you awake at night?”

In the old days, the commander in question was supposed to answer something like, “The Nazis’ development of the V2 rocket.” Or “The kamikaze attacks on our navy.” Or “IEDs and suicide bombers around Fallujah.” If the commander was an Obama appointee, s/he was supposed to say, “Climate change.” Or “Islamophobia.” Or “The evil 1%.” Or “The idea that some of our troops like thinking about naked women.”

Mad Dog went full Heisenberg, saying, “Nothing. I keep other people awake.”

I’m not ashamed to say it: I love that man. And if you think that Hillary Clinton would have appointed someone like him in a million years, you’re out of your mind.

4. The day before a Montana house seat election, Republican candidate Greg Gianforte body slams a leftist reporter, punches him, and breaks his glasses. And wins the race by 6 points.

I’ll admit that this story gives me mixed emotions. Emotions like glee. Then satisfaction. Then big guffaws that make me run out of breath, and then wipe tears from my eyes. Then more glee.

Then, finally, consternation.

Okay, it’s not funny that that GOP dope showed so little self-control. And violence isn’t justified in that context. The reporter wasn’t even being obnoxious, as reporters go, and that incident does not bode well for the new congressman’s behavior in office.

And, seriously, we can’t go around justifying violence against our political opponents just because we find them irritating. (That would make us no better than all of the Democrats on all of the college campuses in the entire country. And if that comparison doesn’t make us ashamed, it should.)

However, I do enjoy knowing that one contributing factor to Gianforte’s win was that Montana has voting rules that allow people to vote very early, so that by the time the body slam happened, about 2/3 of the votes had already been cast.

I’m old school on this question. As much as I enjoy the convenience of voting early, I don’t think it’s a good idea. I’d like to see us tighten voting rules: more stringent voter ID requirements, more vigorous prosecution of those who cheat, and no absentee or early voting, except for those on active duty in the military.

The Dems are opposed to all of that. They like motor voter and stupid “vote or die” campaigns, they resist voter id laws and wink at illegals voting, and they have a huge advantage in dead voters. So it’s a little funny to see them reap what they sow when a GOP goofball acts the fool on election eve… but too late!

5. Finally, Anthony Weiner put his old apartment up for rent, at the bargain price of $12K a month. The listing disappeared after only 1 day, which either means that someone snapped it up (in which case, ewwww), or else someone had second thoughts and pulled the listing. (And I’m noticing how hard it is – oops – to write anything about that Dem without it sounding dirty. My first draft of the previous sentence: “Weiner may have pulled the listing on his unit.” I know.  But you try it, if you think this is so easy.)

I’m not sure what to think, except that that is one ambitious real estate agent. I’ve heard that houses where something bad has happened often carry a stigma, and must be discounted in order to sell.

And if I could put myself in the position of someone who wanted to live in NYC (no thank you), and who had $12K a month to spend on rent (nope), I still can’t picture moving in to Chez Weiner. (Worst restaurant in the tri-state area, by the way.)

Once the real estate agent told me what went on there, I’d be asking questions such as, “Don’t you have any places where a guy went nuts and killed his whole family and then himself to show me?” or “Did the Manson family ever live in a midtown 3-bedroom that I could take a look at?”

But in a deep blue state, someone is probably out there who would pay a premium for the place last called home by Carlos Danger. (By the way, say what you will about the guy, but a 12-year-old me, trying to think of a cool pseudonym to use when I grew up and became a spy, would have KILLED to have arrived at “Carlos Danger.” “Danger,” I’d say to one of the Jr. High cheerleaders whose cigarette I would be suavely lighting, “Carlos Danger.” Or maybe, “Carlos is the name, and Danger is my game.” And then I’d brace myself, so I could catch all of the sophisticated 14-year-old girls who would be throwing themselves at me. But, to give me some credit, I would not be texting them when I was 38.)

Anyway, there’s just no way to explain the way leftists think: Huma is reportedly taking Carlos back, for example.

So, to sum up what we’ve learned about leftist thought today: You shouldn’t punch a reporter, but pretending to behead a president is fine, if you think he’s really icky. Also, Ted Kennedy leaves his date to drown, Bill Clinton uses his intern as a humidor, and Anthony Weiner spends his adult life being Anthony Weiner.

But the Marines are the ones who have a problem with toxic masculinity.

Got that?

Best of May 2017 II: The Second One

1. Finally, a social protest movement that I can get behind. Venezuelan socialism is working out as well as Vietnamese socialism did, and Cambodian socialism, and Cuban socialism, and Russian and East German and other socialisms. Which is to say, not at all.

In case you’ve just woken up from a century-long nap, Rip Van Sanders, socialism keeps producing poverty and famine and environmental destruction and drum circles and gulags, and lo, it has now done so in formerly prosperous (by Latin American standards) Venezuela.

Enter Liborio Guarulla, the governor of an inland region in Venezuela, and a man with a plan. He’s cursing the socialists who are running the country into the ground. And not in the way that I’ve been doing the same thing here in the USA for the last 20 years. No, instead of my Anglo-Saxon-based anatomically-tricky-suggestion-involving curses, Liborio has invoked the very cool-sounding “curse of Dabukuri.” (And yes, how is that NOT a movie featured on Mystery Science Theater 3000?)

In a press conference on May 9th — during which he wore a funky headpiece that is far more attractive than certain reproductive organ headgear that I could mention – Liborio let fly thusly: “I am going to call upon our ancestors, our shamans, so that the curse of Dabukurí will fall upon those that have tried to do us harm. I can assure you that they will not die without torment. I can assure you that, before they die, they will suffer and their souls will haunt the darkest and most pestilent places before they can close their eyes.”

That sounds about right to me. You go, Liborio. (If Venezuelans had any spending money, I would immediately copyright that slogan and slap it on thousands of t-shirts. But they don’t have any spending money. Because socialists have been running Venezuela.)

Anyway, google the “march of the shamans,” and take a good look at what protests should look like: angry gourd rattling, cool puka shell ornamentation, big ol’ spears being carried theatrically, and a whole lot of cursing at socialists. I wish every Tom, Dick and Loborio around here could take a page out of their book.

2. No matter what kind of new trouble Trump or the GOP can get themselves into, and no matter what kinds of wild exaggerations the MSM can bring to bear on said trouble, there is one political constant that we can all count on: the Democrat party (new slogan: “When they go low, we go much, much lower.”) is behaving horribly. If it’s not Carlos Danger sexting the toddlers at a local daycare, or Nancy Pelosi losing her place three times per cue card, or DNC lead vulgarian Tom Perez swearing like he’s just got the lead in a Tarantino movie, it’s the California Democrat state convention.

On Saturday, 20 May, some of the sophisticated convention attendees began a rousing chant of “F**k Donald Trump.” And because those sweet-tempered lefties are always sensitive about not excluding the differently abled, they accompanied the chant with a visual aid for the hearing impaired, in the form of upraised arms and extended middle fingers.

(By the way, do you know the most calorie-burning and yet easiest gig ever for a sign language interpreter? Translating for the CA Democratic convention. You start out with the gestures for, “Hello, Sacramento!” Then you paste a wild-eyed look on your face and flip the bird maniacally for 13 minutes. Then you sign, “Here’s Maxine Waters,” and circle your temple with one forefinger in the universal symbol for “cuckoo” for 11 minutes. Then you introduce Tom Perez, and alternate between bird flipping and pelvic thrusting and grabbing your crotch like vintage Michael Jackson and sneering like Sid Vicious at a meeting with the Pope. Then you hammer your check and go home and take a long, hot shower. But you can never wash off the shame.)

I know what you’re thinking: well, you can’t blame the state party if a tiny group of trouble-makers in the back of the room gets picked up on a hot mike, and inadvertently exposes what they’d meant to express only privately.

Au contraire, mon frere. This wasn’t a handful of stoners on the fringes. This was a huge group of attendees front and center, during the convention in their most important state, being lead in the chant by outgoing CA Democrat chairman John Burton, with elected officials on the stage laughing along with the high-brow hilarity.

And how did the AP write up the story of the profane chant, you are probably not wondering, because you already know? That’s right: “In a sign of the vigor of the party’s distaste for the president….” Ah yes. “Vigor” and “distaste.” The report does manage to admit that Burton is “known for his blunt and profane manner.” You don’t say.

Stay classy, Sacramento.

3. In a reversal of every Polish joke you’ve ever heard – and you should all be ashamed of yourselves – the Poles are showing a great deal of common sense in their foreign policy. And as you know, the best way to demonstrate common sense, if you are European, is by resisting the snooty, busybody poke-noses in the EU, who (after all) know much more about how you should run your life and your country than you do. In this case, the EU elites have decided that the Polish have not taken in their fair share of angry young Muslim males who don’t want to be Polish.

The Polish foreign minister – who seems to like being Polish, despite the overabundance of “W”s and “Z”s and the corresponding dearth of vowels in his last name – expressed the crazy, offensive opinion that “no state has the duty to accept immigrants.”

In public polling (call it “Pole polling,” if you insist on being less mature than me), most Polish women were not thrilled with the idea of importing rape gangs, and were decidedly cool on the prospect of being forced into wearing bee keeper outfits in public.

When California Democrats heard about the Polish position, they tried for several minutes to come up with a chant that included the Polish Foreign Minister’s name, before giving up and settling on “F*** that guy!”

4. As a well-rounded citizen of the world, I cannot start my day without a quick look at the font of all hilarity that is Everyday Feminism.com.

(For the record, I consider myself an equity feminist. See Christina Hoff Sommer’s work for a definition, or consider the short version: equity feminist – noun, “not the crazy kind in you-know-what kind of hats.”) I challenge you to randomly scroll down the page there and stop and read the first thing you see, and not be entertained.

This morning’s experiment landed me on the following gem. Under the category heading of “Compassionate Activism,” we find an article entitled, “Healing from Toxic Whiteness.” I don’t want to ruin the article for you, but I don’t think I’ll need a spoiler alert to suggest that being any color other than white would be a huge step up, you racist.

But I did have two thoughts to share: 1. “Toxic” is a pretty strong word. Could they not have softened the blow a bit – “Irksome whiteness?” “Not completely optimal whiteness?” 2. If a screed telling me that my racial identity is toxic is in the “Compassionate Activism” category, I’d hate to see the “Non-compassionate Activism” category.

5. Finally, Monica Lewinsky has written an editorial in the New York Times, in which she bemoans a “culture of exploitation.” But she’s not talking about the creepy sex offender who exploited her – or his creepy wife who organized the bullying and intimidation of Bill’s victims — but Fox News and the late Roger Ailes.

Honestly, my heart goes out to Lewinsky. She was taken advantage of by one of the most powerful men in the world, and even though she’s now in her mid 40s, she is obviously still dealing with the ramifications of that exploitation. And though I agree with her that all of the media behaved badly – as they always do with a scandal from which they can profit – she still hasn’t come to terms with the proper object of her anger.

Have I mentioned lately how glad I am that Hillary is not the president?

Best of May 2017, Part 1

I can’t add anything to all that has been said about the latest political turmoil, other than that I’m by turns nauseated and amused by the hypocritical dishonesty of the Dems (“Comey must go, Comey must go! Wait, what? Trump fired him? That’s an outrage! Bring Comey back, bring Comey back!”) and frustrated by Trump’s lack of discipline, and the GOP’s general incompetence.

I’m all over the map on this stuff. I’m thrilled that illegal border crossings are down by 70%. No wait, I’m appalled that the GOP weasels can’t find a way to put a stake through the heart of the collapsing dumpster fire that is Obamacare. But I’m giddy that pretty much all of Obama’s executive orders have been reversed. Except that I’m disgusted that the GOP might not take up tax reform until next year.

Mostly I’m dizzy. But amidst the chaos, I’ve still found things to amuse me, even if the humor is of the darker variety.

1.Planned Parenthood tried to do a little PR work recently, as they are wont to do. But they picked an odd holiday to make their appeal: Mother’s Day. The fine folks at PP are oblivious to many things – basic biology, ethics, maternal instinct, irony – but does no one down there realize the value of timing? Would they suggest wishing all of your British friends a Happy Independence Day? Or all of your friends who are struggling with alcoholism a Happy St. Patrick’s Day? Or all of your ISIS friends a joyous Yom Kippur?

The head of PP sent out a tweet that began, “Nothing says, ‘I love you, Mom!” like…” And I stopped reading. Because all I could think of was “…a child.” Oops.

2. In a development that surprised no one who has ever read comic books in his or her life, the new Marvel “social justice themed” comics are not doing well. In fact, a Black Lives Matter-themed comic touted by Ta-Nehisi (gesundheit) Coates was canceled after only two issues. Shocker.

I remember the days of my idyllic Midwestern childhood, when I would eagerly await the new issue of my favorites: Captain America (fighting Nazis), Sgt. Rock and his Howling Commandos (killing Nazis), Spiderman (taking on the Green Goblin).

You know what I didn’t look forward to? The newest issue of Social Justice Warrior (calling conservatives Nazis), Chomsky-man (calling Americans Nazis) and Superman/woman, Spiderman/woman or Wonder Woman/man (all taking on the oppressive system that had somehow tricked me into liking girls and sports).

The colleges might be lost to us, but at least comic books are hanging in there.

3. In a previous piece, I mentioned a terrible video that appeared on Bill Nye’s bizarre Netflix series. I can’t mention the name of the video sketch, because it seems to trigger FB’s list of verboten expressions. But I’m pretty sure that if you google “hideous Bill Nye video,” “junk,” and “crimes against humanity,” you’ll find it. Then watch it at your own risk. *(Since this column appears on my own website, I can tell you the title: “My Sex Junk.”  But still, watch it at your own risk.)

It deals with biology and gender, and if I understand it correctly, argues that neither exists. What does exist, apparently, is a singer who can’t carry a tune, dancers who can’t dance, a woman in a sea horse costume playing keyboards, and lyrics that will make you seriously reconsider the whole idea of reproduction. After watching that, I’d thought that Bill Nye had gone as low as a non-scientific political hack could go.

But of course I was wrong. What could top that video, you ask? (And don’t ask what could bottom it, because although it’s actually a more accurate question, nope.) How about a little old fashioned lefty trick that I call “the disappearing commie.”

If you’ve seen any old group photos of Soviet leaders, you’ll often notice what looks like a blur or distortion in the picture. After one apparatchik or another fell out of favor, he’d be killed or sent to Siberia, and all official photos would be doctored to remove his image. It was the photoshop of the 1930s, except that instead of adding a larger bottom to an empty-headed woman or bigger biceps to an insecure man, it removed a socialist who’d done wrong.

What does this have to do with Bill Nye? Well, it turns out that someone discovered that on one of Nye’s tv shows in the 1990s, an episode discussed gender in a way that made sense. The presenter mentioned that XX and XY chromosomes are actually things, and they determine a person’s sex. She even mentioned that everyone has a 50/50 chance of being a boy or a girl, and that “there are only two possibilities.”

That scene was effective, logical, concise and told the truth. So of course it has been edited out of the Netflix version of the series. I am not making that up. Someone – Netflix, Bill Nye, the DNC? – went back through a series that ran in the 1990s, and “updated” it by removing basic biological facts. They didn’t update it by incorporating new information that has come to light, but by deleting information that makes some of them feel uncomfortable. They disappeared the inconvenient communist, scientifically speaking.

For a party that prides themselves on how much they love science, they don’t seem to love science very much.

3. Finally, I read a New Yorker article written by Adam Gopnik, called ”We Could Have Been Canada.” It’s actually an intermittently smart piece, with some individually worthwhile thoughts on what went right and wrong with the development of America and (as the title suggests) Canada.

But it’s wrong about the big things, because Gopnik’s view epitomizes the disdain with which the academic left views America. Consider his title: it could be easily read as the open for a light-hearted “there but for the grace of God” piece, with a subtitle like “Whew! We dodged a bullet.” But that’s not how he means it, as his subtitle makes clear: “Was the American Revolution such a good idea?”

To which the only reasonable response is, “YES!” I’m no jingoist, and I don’t think our history is perfect. And I don’t have anything against Canada. But stack our virtues and vices next to each other, and then show me another country that has done more
good in the world.

Here are Gopnik’s first two sentences:

“And what if it was a mistake from the start? The Declaration of Independence, the American Revolution, the creation of the United States of America—what if all this was a terrible idea, and what if the injustices and madness of American life since then have occurred not in spite of the virtues of the Founding Fathers but because of them?”

Only a leftist could ask those questions with a straight face. What if the Declaration of Independence was a terrible idea?! It wasn’t. Full stop. Res ipsa loquitur. Get out of here with that.

I’d like to think that this line of thinking was a put on, or Gopnik being absurd to illustrate absurdity: “What if up was down? What if day was night? What if Trump was humble and reticent? What if Bill Nye was actually a scientist? What if Pelosi was trustworthy, and Schumer was sincere, and Maxine Waters was sane?”

But he’s serious, and a lot of people agree with him. And that’s more sobering than any of the current shenanigans going on in D.C.

Best of the End of April

1.Yale grad students go on a hunger strike. After earlier efforts to get Yale to start collective bargaining proved unsuccessful, eight hardy souls took the brave step of going on a hunger strike. But this isn’t just a regular hunger strike — it’s a “symbolic” hunger strike! Do you know what that means, outside of the cloistered walls of Yale?

It means that they can eat. Yes, they’re on a hunger strike that doesn’t actually involve getting hungry. Because they can freaking eat! During a hunger strike!!

In a slick video – it’s in black and white, and is underlaid with a poignant piano accompaniment, so you know that these noble folks are SERIOUS – one English major (can you believe it?) named Lukas Moe says, “I hope that the fast will convey the urgency of the situation.” Oh, I’m sure it will, Moe. (And feel free to insert your own Curly and Larry jokes here.) Because nothing conveys earth-shaking urgency like near martyrs standing up for what they believe in, By Any Means Necessary… until they get slightly peckish.

I know that we live in a cynical age, but my hat’s off to those Ivy League Nelson Mandelas; they’ve learned that simply by sticking the word “symbolic” in front of another word, you can accrue all of the moral rewards with absolutely no sacrifice. I picture a bunch of undergrads on the quad, one-upping each other:

“I’ve taken a vow of symbolic poverty, you know.”
“But don’t you have a trust fund?”
“Yes, I’m rolling in dough. But I’m symbolically poor.”

“Did I mention that I’ve take a vow of symbolic chastity?”
“You’ve really sworn off women?”
“What? No! I mean, most women won’t have anything to do with me, because I’ve got less testosterone than a post-surgery Caitlyn Jenner. But whenever I can find one who isn’t totally repulsed by the sight of me, I’m all over her like a cheap suit.”
“But you’re still symbolically chaste, right? Sweet!”

“Guys, did I mention I’m a symbolic vegetarian?”
“Isn’t that barbecue sauce on your chin?”
“Yes it is. Why?”

It’s true what they say: those Yale kids are smart!
But you know who’s even smarter? That’s right: me.

Because I am a free market capitalist, and all of this has given me a brilliant idea for a new business. I’m going to buy a fleet of food trucks, and I’m going to dispatch them from Stately Simpson Manor to every Ivy League campus in the nation, where they’ll earn me millions of dollars… wait for it… catering all-you-can-eat hunger strikes!

I’ve already got my corporate logo: it’s a raised fist, holding a hot dog, over the motto, “Have a little relish with your Resistance!”

2. Speaking of precious, morally preening goofballs, you’ve probably read that ex-President Obama – and oh, the joy that that tiny prefix “ex-“ gives me – is going to take $400K to give a speech. Now some might accuse the famous class warrior of hypocrisy, citing his off-teleprompter gaffe (i.e. a time when he accidentally told the truth about his world view), “I mean, I do think at a certain point, you’ve made enough money.” But to be fair to him, he did say that at some point YOU’VE made enough money – he didn’t say that HE’S made enough money. Because he obviously hasn’t, yet.

But let’s give the guy a break. I mean, if he wants to take a ton of cash for speaking to some morally admirable group, like the Shriners, or St. Jude’s, or–

What’s that, you say? He’s not speaking to one of those groups, but to a Wall Street group?

Well, that must be one of those selfless, non-profit Wall Street groups that funds old folks’ homes and orphanages, right?

What? Cantor Fitzgerald? Huh. I’ll bet he’s really going to give those fat cats hell. And then he’s going to hammer than $400K check. He’s symbolically morally consistent, isn’t he?

3. The feel-good story of the spring, which CO in his wisdom has
already linked to: murderous ISIS scumbags are preparing to ambush more innocent people. For their hiding place, they’ve chosen a reedy area in Iraq. Also sharing that reedy area: a small herd of wild boars.

Now apparently the word had gotten around in the porcine community about how jihadis believe that all pigs and pig-adjacent animals are filthy, unclean creatures. Anyway, the smelly animals are surprised by the stampeding wild boars (HA!), who kill 3 jihadis and badly injure 5 others.

Would you think less of me if I admitted that I like to imagine the boars catching the jihadis from behind in a full gallop, their sharp tusks leading the way into what I like to call a “Mesopotamian Deliverance” move? (In the video, which I imagine in black and white, a lonesome banjo begins to play in the distance, as Uday and Qusay look back over their shoulders, then at each other in confusion, and then terror.)

4. In a bid for “Worst Broadcast Presentation Ever” – move over, Amy Schumer’s“Let Me Tell You How Physically Repulsive I Am” comedy special, and Rachel Maddow’s “Donald Trump’s Non-Scandalous Tax Returns” comedy special — Bill Nye, the alleged science guy, inexplicably has a new series on Netflix. And that series is gouge-your-eyes-out awful.

Is it rude of me to point out that Bill Nye is not actually a scientist? He got a BA in mechanical engineering decades ago, and he wore a lab coat and handled beakers on a kid’s show. So that makes him a scientist.

By comparison, I don’t like to brag, but I took eighth grade science twice, and thus I can go on and on about how nanoplankton and phytoplankton are mortal enemies. And if you’ll look at the second page of my CV, you’ll see that I spent a lot of lab time in high school working on inventing either an invisibility formula or X-ray glasses. And yet no one ever called me “Martin, the Science Guy.” They just said, “Get away from the girls’ locker room, you Clinton-esque creep.”

Anyway, if you can watch just one segment of Bill Nye’s horrible program – and believe me, if you value your sanity, that is the MOST you can watch of it – google a little ditty called, “My Sex Junk.” And prepare to be dazzled by what we can only pray is meant to be funny.

The “song” starts out with the immortal line, “This one goes out to all my bipeds who identify as ladies,” and then – in a feat of lyrical gymnastics that I would not have believed possible – goes downhill from there.

You’ve got to see it to believe it, because no description can do it justice. Would it help if I told you that it has an Asian lady dressed like a seahorse playing keyboards? Or lyrics that mention French dirigible Gerard Depardieu? Or suggestive imagery that will make you want to Caitlyn yourself? It’s all of that and more. But don’t say that you weren’t warned.

On the other hand, for those of you who remember when rap music was all “n” words and misogyny, this video will make you pine for those golden days of yore.

And on behalf of modern Western culture, let me address the emperors of Rome’s late decadent period: You remember when we used to condemn you for your decadence – for the drunken orgies, and having relations with your siblings, and making your horse the Pope? Never mind.

5. Finally, new DNC head Tom Perez is turning out to be quite the little slice of sweetness and light, isn’t he? Winning his position mostly because his main competition was a Farrakhan-loving anti-semite loon, getting booed by those who should be his base in favor of a 128-year old socialist, constantly swearing in public.

Then comes his latest “big tent” masterstroke of telling all pro-life Democrats that they’re not welcome in the party.

Because nothing will help the Dems reach out to those God-fearing blue collar types in the middle of the country – where Hillary got stomped like a fat guy at Altamonte (hat tip to Dennis Miller) – like excommunicating everyone who’s not down with the Gosnell approach to population control.

The best thing he has going for him is that almost no one in the country other than politics geeks know who he is. So I would like to be the first to make a contribution to the “Perez for Prez in 2020” campaign. Sure, it’s going to be a symbolic contribution – you know, the kind that doesn’t involve giving him any actual money. But I will humbly offer him two potential slogans, both of which are definitely better than “I’m with Her!”:

“We hate you, rest of the Country.” Or “Vote for us, you deplorable bigots!”