I’m back from our trip to New England, and a good time was had by all. We got to spend some time in Providence and Newport, RI, then in Cape Cod, and then in Amherst for my daughter’s graduation with a Master’s in Nursing.
The latter was a strange experience for an oldster like me, because she earned most of the degree online while working as a pediatric nurse in Denver, which doesn’t make sense to me. (The last semester involved a practicum at another Denver hospital which has a relationship with U Mass.) So when we got to town on Thursday afternoon, we all saw the campus for the first time.
We took some pics of my daughter and her husband in front of the College of Nursing building (which she’d never been in), and in front of other scenic spots on campus (which she’d never been to).
The next morning, as we arrived for the ceremony, I summoned up a fake tear and hugged my daughter, saying, “Where has the time gone? It seems like just yesterday when we drove you to campus for the first time.”
Because I’m a dad, and we tell dad jokes.
I had hoped that while we were in Massachusetts we might run into Grandma Squanto Warren, so I could do the tomahawk chop and hop around in a circle in an extremely authentic rain dance that I’ve been working on, but no such luck. (#wemustneverstopmockingher)
However, we did witness the next best thing, when the liberal white lady Dean of something or other started the graduation ceremony with a land acknowledgment.
If you’re lucky enough to not have experienced this leftist ritual, it’s when a very righteous liberal begins an event by paying lip service to the various indigenous people who once “owned” the land beneath the venue where the event is taking place.
It’s a quintessential lefty gesture, allowing them to stroke themselves and signal their virtue without actually doing anything substantive. Because I’ve noticed that these “acknowledgements” never end with, “…and so, we’re hereby donating the campus, its multi-billion-dollar endowment, and my own personal mansion to the Hekawi tribe.
“We hope this gesture makes up for the fact that our ancestors had smallpox and repeating rifles, while your ancestors were standing around with stone weapons and no immunity, like idiots.”
This particular lady said, “We are gathered here today on land that has been taken from the Pequot, the Wampanoag, the Pinta and the Santa Maria.” Or words to that effect. I wasn’t paying very close attention after I realized what she was doing.
I must have had a certain look on my face though, because my wife put her hand on my knee and inflicted a five-fingernail death-grip that would have brought a lesser man to tears. The look in her eyes said, “Don’t you dare boo, or make an arse of yourself. Our in-laws are here.”
So I leaned toward her, turned my head toward the big shot on stage, and so softly that only my wife could hear, said, “Boo! Boo, you hypocritical white lady phony land-acknowledging beeyotch! Boo!”
Because sometimes a man’s got to do what a man’s got to do. But I still need two functioning legs.
Anyway, it was a good trip, but it’s also good to be home. And while I was gone, I missed most of the news.
Except that Joe Biden shocked me by offering to debate Trump twice. I had been sure that he would never agree to a debate, on account of him presiding over an indefensibly terrible presidency, and also being deceased.
Pundits said that his taking the risky step – especially since Trump had given him an easy out by refusing to debate in the primaries – is a sign that the Biden team recognizes that he is losing. Which sounds plausible.
But his embalmers were smart to insist on a set of conditions that will help him: debating on one of the corrupt, in-the-bag MSM outlets that will do everything they can to protect him; allowing no live audience who would cheer or laugh at Trump’s jokes, and gasp and flee when Biden trips over a sandbag or loses control of his bowels; keeping RFK Jr. out so that there will be no non-senile Democrat alternative on stage.
I think Trump had boxed himself into a corner by saying that he’d debate Biden anytime and anywhere, so he couldn’t then negotiate any conditions without looking hesitant. But I hate to see us once again granting the ridiculously biased MSM control over yet another round of debates.
But the thing I’m most annoyed by is letting Biden pick an unprecedentedly early debate in June, two months before the Dem convention. I’ve said it before: having Biden on the ticket is our best chance to win, and we need to do whatever we can to keep him there. But if he does terribly in June, I expect the Dems to try to push him aside and sub in another candidate at their convention.
My favorite political event of the week is the left’s outrage at Harrison Butker’s speech at Benedictine College’s graduation, because of what it tells us about them.
Over the last decade or more, the NFL’s top brass and woke media commentators have shown us that it takes a lot to make them mad. NFL players can beat their girlfriends and be deadbeat fathers to children by baby-mamas all over the country, and the NFL can’t be bothered. Mediocre, racist QBs like Kapernick can slander America, white folks and football fans, and he’s beloved on the left.
A sapphic soccer “star” can denigrate the country, straight folks and God – then play terribly and tear an ACL in a light breeze – and she’s still a media darling. Obnoxious male narcissists can beat the tar out of female athletes and break female records, and the normally male-hating leftist establishment gushes over what brave “women” they are.
But Butker said a bunch of commonsense things – abortion is abortion, Pride Month is ridiculous, covid lockdowns were a mistake, DEI stinks – and a bunch of Catholic talk, at a Catholic school, to Catholics.
And THAT is what finally made the left furious.
As a wise man once said, on his daughter’s first (and last) day at her alma mater, “Boo! Boo, you hypocritical, phony beeyotches! Boo!”
Hamas delenda est!
Martin Simpson 