That’s Not Funny! Why Humor Matters…

Humor is one of the wonders of the Homo sapiens world. It has the potential to bridge social gaps, heal personal wounds, expand rigid minds, and open shut hearts by showing us what is essential in life – in our common humanity – through alternative perspectives.

But just as biological creatures need oxygen to breathe, humor needs freedom to stay alive. Unfortunately, we are quickly moving into a social environment where humor is being shackled by ideological ideas of right and wrong. Late-night hosts are being sued by politicians they lampoon. And stand-up comedians are being barred from appearing on college campuses.

Even on a pedestrian level, humor is being threatened by big-tech censorship and cancel culture on social media platforms. The test of a good joke is no longer whether it makes you laugh. It must do so without breaking any rules of political/ideological correctness. And heaven forbid it offend the feelings of even the most sensitive of souls.

I had a conversation last week about this with a little salon I belong to called Whiskey Wednesdays. We were talking about comedians – the really great comedians, like Richard Pryor and Lenny Bruce, George Carlin and Bill Hicks. We agreed that most of their best routines would be verboten today.  (Click here for a rant from Bill Hicks that would almost certainly be prohibited or canceled.)

That’s a shame. Great comedy – the kind that does all the things mentioned above – cannot exist in autocracies and tyrannies. (As one of its first acts upon taking over Afghanistan, the Taliban outlawed comedy. I fear that we near that point now.)

Those that favor censorship of comedy make the argument that the humor should be treated like other forms of public speech. It should be allowed so long as it doesn’t defame individuals, including public individuals, as well as groups of individuals or even, in some cases, corporate entities.

Indeed, there is protection from harmful speech that is established in our legal system. It is called defamation law. But there is a difference between satire – humor that is meant to criticize and insult – and defamation.

What is defamation? 

Defamation is the act of making written or oral remarks about someone or some legal entity (like a corporation) that are both intentionally derisive and also provably false.

 There is nothing illegal with saying something pejorative that is demonstrably true. And there is nothing illegal about making a false statement that is not negative. But most countries have laws against defamation.

According to The Business Litigators website, the tort of defamation (sometimes referred to as defamation of character) can be divided into claims involving two distinct types of statements: defamatory per se statements and defamatory per quod statements.

“Statements that are defamatory per se (sometimes referred to generically by courts as libel per se) are so obviously and naturally harmful to one’s reputation on their face that proof of injury is not required.”

For example:

* Imputing that a person committed a crime;

* Imputing that a person is infected with a loathsome communicable disease;

* Imputing that a person is unable or lacks the integrity to perform their employment duties;

* Imputing that a person lacks ability or otherwise prejudices them in their profession; and

* Imputing that a person has engaged in adultery or fornication.

“Importantly, a statement can only be considered defamatory per se if the harmful effect is apparent on the face of the statement itself. If extrinsic facts or additional information about the person being defamed is required to understand the harmful effect of the statement, then it cannot be defamatory per se. That is not to say the statement is not defamatory if extrinsic facts are required; it just cannot be defamatory per se.

“If a defamatory statement does not fall into one of the defamatory per se categories or requires extrinsic facts, then it is considered defamatory per quod.

“Unlike in cases involving defamation per se, defamation per quod claims require the plaintiff to allege and prove special damages (also called ‘special harm’ by some courts). The term ‘special damages’ or ‘special harm’ is a legal term in defamation law that means the loss of something with actual economic or pecuniary value… such as the commission from a lost sale or the salary from a lost job.”

If you have any interest in knowing more than this about the legal ramifications of defamation (which I doubt), you can find it here.

What is satire?

The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines satire as “a literary work holding up human vices and follies to ridicule or scorn.”

Satire can appear in every possible medium – in books, essays, newspapers, pamphlets, and in movies, TV, on the stage, and even in drawings. And it has many, many manifestations, including irony, parody, buffoonery, burlesque, caricature, lampoon, mockery, and ridicule.

Satire is the effort to expose serious flaws or peccadilloes of well-known or powerful people or institutions. Its range can be narrow or broad. And its treatment of its subject can be gentle or harsh.

This is important: Satire doesn’t have to be fair. It doesn’t have to be balanced. As Garry Trudeau said, speaking to the American Newspaper Publishers Association in 1988: “Satire is supposed to be unbalanced. It’s supposed to be unfair. Criticizing a political satirist for being unfair is like criticizing a nose guard for being physical.”

At a time when political and ideological ideas are so divided, humor – satire in particular – is not just a social balm. It’s an existential necessity.

The next time you hear someone tell you why some bit of satire is not funny – or worse, a microaggression – make use of one of these brilliant quips about satire (from Dr. Mardy’s website)…

* From G.K. Chesterton: “A man is angry at a libel because it is false, but at a satire because it is true.”

* From Peter De Vries: “The difference between satire and humor is that the satirist shoots to kill while the humorist brings his prey back alive, often to release him again for another chance.”

* From Barbara Tuchman: “Satire is a wrapping of exaggeration around a core of reality.”

*  From E.L. Doctorow: “Satire’s nature is to be one-sided, contemptuous of ambiguity, and so unfairly selective as to find in the purity of ridicule an inarguable moral truth.”

* From Jonathan Swift:  “Satire is a sort of glass, wherein beholders do generally discover everybody’s face but their own.”

The Good, the Bad, the Uncertain

Making Sense of Recent News Stories. Big and Small 

GOOD: Good for China 

One of the advantages of having unchallenged central authority is that you can make big decisions quickly. And as I’ve mentioned in previous posts, that sort of power is something that China has that we in the US lack.

I take no position on that subject for the moment.

I believe the US is doing a great job of emulating China in many areas of control. But I don’t think the US is likely to do what China has done recently: It’s now illegal for China’s hundreds of millions of young people to spend more than a modest amount of time with online videogames.

The rules are strict: zero games during the school week, and only one hour a day on Fridays, weekends, and public holidays. Those are pretty much the rules that K applied for TV 30 years ago when our kids were little. It worked. They are all literate.

Prediction: Twenty years from now, China will not only have the world’s largest economy, it will have the world’s most literate population.

BAD: More Signs of Inflation 

The Fed’s inflation gauge, the so-called core PCE (personal consumption expenditures) price index, vaulted in the 12 months through July to levels not seen in 30 years. The Commerce Department said last week that the core PCE rose by 3.6% over the year in July, matching June’s level, which was an increase from 3.5% in May and 3.1% in April.

In a speech on Aug. 27, Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell addressed inflationary pressures, acknowledging a “sharp run-up in inflation” driven by the rapid reopening of the economy, while reiterating his oft-repeated view that price pressures would moderate once supply-side shortages and bottlenecks further abate.

Click here.

UNCERTAIN: Vaccination Cards for Green Cards 

Foreign immigrants living in the US will now have to provide proof of vaccination against COVID-19 if they want a green card, the CDC announced.

According to US federal law, foreigners who apply for a green card are required to be vaccinated against other diseases, including mumps, measles, rubella, hepatitis B, polio, and pertussis. “COVID-19 vaccination now meets the criteria for required vaccinations and is a requirement for applicants eligible for the vaccine,” the CDC stated on its website.

Negative screening for COVID-19 doesn’t guarantee that “green card applicants won’t have the disease when they become permanent residents,” the CDC added.

Of course, getting a vaccine doesn’t either, as we all now know.

In any case, people can apply for exemptions, including seeking a waiver on religious or moral grounds. And the requirement doesn’t include children under 12 years old.

Click here.

GOOD: Moratorium Extension Overturned 

On Aug. 26, the US Supreme Court rejected a Biden-administration-supported, CDC-issued extension of its previous eviction moratorium. The justices sided with a group of realtors that brought the case to them, noting that without authorization from Congress, the CDC doesn’t have the authority to pass such rules in the first place.

“It would be one thing if Congress had specifically authorized the action that the CDC has taken. But that has not happened,” the court wrote. “Instead, the CDC has imposed a nationwide moratorium on evictions in reliance on a decades-old statute that authorizes it to implement measures like fumigation and pest extermination. It strains credulity to believe that this statute grants the CDC the sweeping authority that it asserts. If a federally imposed eviction moratorium is to continue, Congress must specifically authorize it.”

According to Census Bureau data from early August, about 3.5 million people in the country said they faced eviction in the next two months.

Click here.

BAD: Bernie Sanders Is Running Out of Billionaires 

Bernie Sanders has been holding rallies to promote his spending bill, suggesting that it would be paid for by increasing taxes on the super-rich. “We are living in a nation where the people on the top are doing phenomenally well,” he told a crowd in Iowa. “They have so much money they don’t know what to do with it.”

He does. He will tax them more to pay for his bill.

Two problems with this plan:

According to the 2021 Forbes billionaire list, there are only 724 of them in the US. Their combined net worth at the time the list was compiled was $4.4 trillion. Add the just-passed $1 trillion “infrastructure bill” to Bernie’s $3.5 trillion bill (which some estimate will cost $5.5 trillion) and what you have is arithmetic that doesn’t work – even if you raise billionaires’ taxes to 99%.

UNCERTAIN: The Escape Continues 

Americans continue to flee big cities. Many are going to the suburbs that surround them, but many, too, are going further, to the more rural, more bucolic counties beyond suburbia.

The Brooking Institute tracks 240 of the so-called “exurbs.” In 2020, according to US Postal Service permanent-change-of-address data, net migration to these areas rose 37% in 2020.

Click here.

GOOD: Police Chief Gets Suspended for Throwing a Pissyfit 

I am impatient on lines. I get upset when someone in front of me seems to be dithering away his time, unconscious of those behind him. And so, I can very much understand why this sheriff got upset. But his reaction was inexcusable. When you have a gun on your hip, and a virtual license to kill, you have to practice temperance. IMHO, he got what he deserved.

What do you think? Click here.

BAD: Twitter Suspends Alex Berenson Over Viral COVID-19 Tweets

Twitter “permanently” suspended former New York Times journalist and author Alex Berenson for “repeated violations” of its COVID-19 misinformation rules, a Twitter spokesperson told news outlets on Aug. 28.

Before his suspension, Berenson had often cited the results of an Israeli study that found that previous COVID-19 infection provides better protection against the Delta variant than any of the COVID-19 vaccines. In one such tweet, he quoted the study:

SARS-CoV-2-naive vaccines had a 13.06-fold increased risk for breakthrough infection with the Delta variant compared to those previously infected, when the first event (infection or vaccination) occurred during January and February of 2021.

“Information has never been more plentiful or easier to distribute,” he wrote in a Wall Street Journal op-ed. “Yet we are sliding into a new age of censorship and suppression, encouraged by technology giants and traditional media companies. As someone who’s been falsely characterized as a coronavirus ‘denier,’ I have seen this crisis firsthand.”

UNCERTAIN: Video Channel Restored, but Not Completely 

After closing a bestselling author/journalist’s video channel on Aug. 24, YouTube restored it less than a week later.

Naomi Wolf is the author of such books as The Beauty Myth: How Images of Beauty Are Used Against Women. She’s also a former advisor to Bill Clinton and Al Gore. But when she published evidence in DailyClout, her video channel, showing that gain-of-function research had been funded by the US government, YouTube shut her down.

In closing her channel, YouTube sent an email saying, “YouTube doesn’t allow claims about COVID-19 vaccinations that contradict expert consensus from local health authorities or the World Health Organization (WHO).”

Wolf countered that the video was not filled with contentious material. It included information already disseminated by Public Citizen, Axios, and Vanity Fair.

In an email time-stamped Aug. 26 at 7:47 p.m. Eastern Time, YouTube advised Wolf’s website that it had made a mistake and resurrected the video channel. But when it was restored, more than 300,000 views were removed from the view counter and thousands of subscribers disappeared, Wolf said.

Wolf said she is concerned that a big tech company like YouTube can silence “any small business owner, or any news outlet, or any reporter… and damage can be done to their business or their reputation at any time…. It’s not American to police speech in this way.”

Click here.

GOOD: Language Master Tests His Yoruba on Nigerian Shopkeeper 

One of the benefits of speaking a second language is that it gives you access to people you would otherwise never get to know. Even in this small exchange, you can see how this White kid’s elementary efforts in speaking Yoruba light up the Nigerians he is speaking to.

Click here.

Values and Aspirations

SS, a very successful investment analyst, once told me that certain things we cherish in our adolescence become valuable collectible assets when we hit our peak earning years. For my generation, this was true for baseball cards and Barbie dolls. For his generation, it was tru for surfboards and guitars. For every generation since the Great Generation, it’s been true for automobiles.
 
That was true for me. In fact, when I was in my 50s, I bought three vintage cars – a 1955 Thunderbird, a 1956 Belaire, a 1962 Corvette – all of which appreciated nicely.
 
I think something similar can be said about cultural fads. The books and movies that are cool in one’s early adolescence shape not just one’s early thoughts and feelings, but also have unconscious psychological imprints that influence our value systems later in life.

I was born in 1950. Thus, the 1960s was the decade that should have had that effect on me. And I think it did. In ways that are obvious and some that are not, my values and aspirations were in part formed by the books and movies that captured my interest back then.

More About the F-Word… 

Responding to the issue in which I agreed with a reader that the F-Word doesn’t suit us as we get older, AS wrote:

I don’t disagree that people our age shouldn’t use the word fuck, even though I do. I don’t feel good about it and will try to stop.

I was hoping – even excited – to read your examples of substitute words. I expected creativity. But “Fudge!” Come on! How disappointing!

Fair enough, AS. I did some research, and discovered that fuck can be used in almost unlimited ways. As a noun, a verb, an adjective, an adverb, and (most commonly, perhaps) as an exclamation.

As someone once said: “It’s the only fucking word you can use in any fucking situation and still make sense.”

Substitutes for Fuck Used as an Exclamation, an Expression of Frustration 

Focusing on fuck as an exclamation, I found dozens of possibilities. Some of them I rejected as wimpy or puerile. (Shoot! Darn! Shucks! Sugar! Fiddlesticks!)

That left plenty more – most of which, interestingly, begin with three consonants: D, B, or F.

 * D-Words: damn, dammit, damnation, drat, dashit, dagnabit, doggonit

* B-Words: bugger, bullocks, blast, blastit, bloody hell, blinking hell, botheration

* F-Words: feck, fook, frik, fricking hell, flipping hell, frig

My favorites of the above are mostly B-Words. These I will do my best to work into future conversations:

* Bullocks!

* Blinking Hell!

* Botheration!

Substitutes for Fuck Used as a Noun, as an Epithet of Denigration

I eliminated many words that were perhaps not quite as vulgar as fuck, but vulgar enough to be inexcusable at my age, including asshole, animal, scumbag, and shithead. I also eliminated many that were less vulgar but also less forceful, such as rogue, rascal, skunk, cad, villain, brute, beast, bastard, rat, jerk, and louse.

Again, among the worthy candidates, four initial letters predominate:

* B-Words: blackguard, bugger, butthole, blighter, bleeder, boor, buzzard, bounder

* C-Words: cur, churl, chuff, creep, cretin, crud clown

* S-Words: snake, sod, scrote, scrotum, schmuck, sleveen, spalpeen

* R-Words: reprobate, ratbag, rat fink, rotter, toe rag, rapscallion

My favorites of these, in order of preference:

* blighter

* bounder

* ratbag

* rapscallion

Having pontificated, I admit that there are many instances in literature and in the movies where the F-Word has been suitably put. The test is whether it feels vulgar. (It should not.) And whether one of the above-listed substitutes would do as well. (Again, it should not.)

Acceptable Uses of the F-Word in Literature 

A few examples:

* From Trainspotting, by Irvine Welsh (1993) – “Choose us. Choose life. Choose mortgage payments; choose washing machines; choose cars; choose sitting on a couch watching mind-numbing and spirit-crushing game shows, stuffing fuckin junk food intae yir mooth. Choose rotting away, pishing and shiteing yersel in a home, a total fuckin embarrassment tae the selfish, fucked-up brats ye’ve produced. Choose life.”

* From How Late It Was, How Late, by James Kelman (1994) – “Ach it was hopeless. That was what ye felt. These bastards. What can ye do but. Except start again so he started again. That was what he did he started again… ye just plough on, ye plough on, ye just fucking plough on… ye just fucking push ahead, ye get fucking on with it.”

* From This Be the Verse, by Philip Larkin (1971) – “They fuck you up, your mum and dad. / They may not mean to, but they do. / They fill you up with the faults they had / And add some extra, just for you.”

Interestingly, the F-Word has not only survived in literature, it has become a suitable word for book titles. A quick search of Amazon top sellers resulted in 25 matches. Last year, The Wall Street Journal reported that profane titles were “flooding bookstores” and causing dilemmas for booksellers and marketers.

For example:

* Self-improvement Books – The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck (A good book. I read it.)… I Used to Be a Miserable Fuck: An Everyman’s Guide to a Meaningful Life (I intend to read it.)… F*ck Feeling; Unf*ck Your Brain

* Adult Coloring Books – Calm the F*ck Down. I’m Coloring… Go F*ck Yourself, I’m Coloring

* Cookbooks – What the F*ck Should I Make for Dinner?… 50 Ways to Eat Cock

* Children’s Books – Go the F*ck to Sleep (a 2011 best seller)

* Diet Books – The F*ck It Diet

* Etiquette Guides – Good Manners for Nice People Who Sometimes Say F*ck

* Celebrity Memoirs – Kelly Osbourne’s There Is No F*cking Secret: Letters From a Badass Bitch

This trend can partly be attributed to the rise in online sales for such titles. (The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck has spent 105 weeks on the NYT bestseller list for advice and how-to books. The title is represented as The Subtle Art of Not Giving a —————.)

Acceptable Uses of the F-Word in Movies and TV 

In the movie and TV industry, the F-word has been a staple for decades.

Click here to read a good essay by Paul Byrnes on the history of profanity in the movies.

And from Jeremy Cassar, writing in Junkee, here are some great examples:

* Dog Day Afternoon (1975)

Sonny: Kiss me.
Det. Sgt. Eugene Moretti: What?
Sonny: Kiss me. When I’m being fucked, I like to get kissed a lot.

Watch it here.

* Glengarry Glen Ross (1992)

Ricky Roma: You stupid fucking cunt. You, Williamson, I’m talking to you, shithead. You just cost me $6,000. Six thousand dollars, and one Cadillac. That’s right. What are you going to do about it? What are you going to do about it, asshole? You’re fucking shit. Where did you learn your trade, you stupid fucking cunt, you idiot? Who ever told you that you could work with men? Oh, I’m gonna have your job, shithead. 

Watch it here.

* Pulp Fiction (1994)

Jules: You sendin’ The Wolf?
Marsellus: You feel better, motherfucker?
Jules: Shit negro, that’s all you had to say!

Watch it here.

* The Usual Suspects (1995)

Fred Fenster: Hand me the keys, you cocksucker.
Cop: In English, please.
Fred Fenster: Excuse me?
Cop: In English.
Fred Fenster: Hand me the fucking keys, you cocksucker, what the fuck?

Watch it here.

Click here for a final beauty from the HBO series Deadwood (Season 2).

Remember – it was just 18 months ago – when Trump suggested that COVID-19 might have come from a lab in Wuhan?

Every major “news” outlet – including The New York Times, The Washington Post, and all 3 major broadcast channels (ABC, CBS, and NBC), not to mention CNN and MSNBC – “fact-checked” Trump’s charge and said it was baseless. A conspiracy theory!

And it wasn’t just the news media. Fauci and every other government health hack agreed.

Well, there’s been a fair amount of looking into it since then. And the new story from all of them – which they insist they’ve been saying all along – is that, yes, it is possible that the virus came from the lab. Some still believe it’s not likely. Some believe it’s highly likely. And some are in between.

The facts, at this stage are incomplete. The truth is not yet known. But what is certain is that the only conspiracy, if there was one, was the (perhaps unspoken) agreement among leftist media and politicians to attach the term “conspiracy” to what is now acknowledged to be a perfectly legitimate theory.

Russell Brand – a very smart and funny person – does a nice, energetic job of summing it all up here.

The Good, the Bad, the Uncertain

Making Sense of Recent News Stories. Big and Small 

GOOD: “Mussolini” School Board Smack-Down

The COVID pandemic and the lockdowns imposed in response to it has given politicians and regulators all over the world a taste of real power. Nowhere is this more obvious than with local school boards that have been not only dictating COVID response measures, but also introducing values-based ideology into school curricula without parents’ permission.

There are dozens of videos you can watch on YouTube that show parents fighting back. This one is a special pleasure: An unbelievably arrogant school board administrator gets what’s coming to him. Click here.

BAD: Old Style Racism in America Is Real

Critical Race Theory postulates that America is systemically racist. Systemic means “of or relating to systems, such as laws and regulations.” There is no doubt that the Ivy League colleges are systemically racist against Asian-Americans, because they have actual regulations that limit the number of Asian-Americans they will accept. And there’s no question that the provision of the recently enacted American Rescue Plan relief program that gave preference to “farmers of color” over white farmers was systemically racist. Click here.

But I’ve yet to discover an example of a US law or regulation that is prejudicial against African-Americans or other people of color.

The problem with the systemic racism argument is not only that its logic is faulty. Or even that it perpetuates the problems it inveighs against. Like equating catcalling with rape, it directs the political debate and focus away from a real issue – actual, old-fashioned anti-Black racism, which exists in plenitude across the country.

Three examples:

 * A bank called the police on a man trying to cash his paycheck. Click here.

* A man at Walmart got questioned by the police about whether his children are really his. Click here.

* And here’s a guy that got arrested for being Black while taking out his trash. Click here.

UNCERTAIN: New World’s Record

Shortly after Veronica Ivy (born Rachel McKinnon), a Canadian philosophy professor and cyclist, won a world cycling championship, a British rapper named Zuby posted a video of himself casually breaking the British women’s dead lift record during a workout at his local gym.

Along with an image of his lift, he wrote:

I keep hearing how biological men don’t have any physical advantage over women. So watch me destroy the British Women’s dead lift record without even trying!

PS: (I identified as a woman whilst lifting the weight. Don’t be a bigot!)

Fair? Unfair? Is gender just a social construct? You decide. Click here.

GOOD: 12-Year-Old Girl Astounds Experts With Her Art

This is the sort of story that usually turns out to be a fraud, but it’s so much fun you want to believe it. Click here.

BAD: The Worst of the Worst in Baltimore 

I’ve been going to Baltimore regularly for 25 years. In that time, I’ve seen it go from not-so-bad to one of America’s top 10 Shithole Cities. (Along with Chicago, San Francisco, and Atlanta.)

The streets are potholed. The infrastructure is disintegrating. Crime – especially violent crime – has skyrocketed. Real estate values are down. Way down. And wealthy taxpayers and successful businesses are fleeing.

But that’s not the worst thing that’s happening in Baltimore. The worst thing is this: 41% of Baltimore’s high school students earn below a 1.0 GPA. Click here.

SCARY: FBI Urges Americans to Report Peers and Family Members  

On July 11, the FBI posted a tweet suggesting that Americans should monitor family members and peers for sinister “signs.”

The tweet read:

Family members and peers are often best positioned to witness signs of mobilization to violence. Help prevent homegrown violent extremism.

Then it provided a website for reporting people exhibiting “such signs.”

Introducing: Mr. Doodle

I want to introduce you to someone I’ve been following lately.

Sam Cox is only 23, but he’s fast becoming the new Keith Haring among contemporary art collectors in England. That’s in part because of his distinctive doodle-styled illustrations, but it’s also because of the self-deprecating persona he employs to promote his work.

Over the years, Cox has built an A-List of corporate clients, including MTV, Adidas, and Cass Art.

He’s not breaking new ground. He comes from a line of graffiti and street-art creators. And there’s no denying that he steals a lot from the legendary Haring, who died, at age 31, in 1990.

Like Haring, Cox’s illustrations are hieroglyphics comprised of personal symbols – repeated patterns that include shapes and squiggles, numbers and letters, forms and scribbling, and cartoons. His art draws from a social consciousness, but it is not dogmatic. The bulk of it is a lighthearted take on popular images, like this one:

Some is innocent, even juvenile or downright puerile, like this self-portrait:

But I have to say, my favorites have an edgy, ominous quality, with what seems to be a bit of social messaging, like this one:

I also like his doodle interpretations of iconic works of art, like this:

And this:

Cox began his career very recently, in 2017, by posting his doodles online. His rise to fame since then has been meteoric, as have the prices of some of his work. (One of his pieces, a large one, sold for $1.02 million at the Tokyo Chuo Auction.)

His installations are designed to give the viewer the feeling of walking into a shop and being assaulted by a thousand products lined up from floor to ceiling. He says he doesn’t care if people take his work seriously, since much of it isn’t serious, or even understand it. “I just want people to spend time looking at it,” he says.

You can watch him at work here.

It’s been a frantic week for K and me at Rancho Santana.

With 45 family members here to enjoy all this wonderful resort community has to offer, we’ve been busy day and night managing and participating in all the activities. Besides visiting the five beaches and 2,700 acres of walking, biking, and horseback riding trails, we’ve eaten in a different restaurant every night, held a family Olympics, and displayed our questionable dramatic and artistic talents at a karaoke competition.

Tomorrow morning, most will be leaving, back to their homes in Florida, California, New York, Paris, and Rome. This evening, we had a farewell party that included traditional folkloric dancing, a piñata for the kids, and fireworks.

If you are thinking about a destination for a wedding, business trip, or family reunion, you have to check out Rancho Santana. For more information, go HERE.

Despite the challenge of getting here via Liberia, Costa Rica, the 45 Cousin Camp attendees were graciously welcomed by the staff at Rancho Santana, quickly helped into their beautiful rooms and suites overlooking the ocean, and then treated to a fantastic, family-styled dinner masterminded by Brian Block and Erik Wetz. Thanks in large part to Brian and Erik, Rancho Santana competes with the best resorts in the world in terms of guest experience. (Travel & Leisure consistently rates us in the top 100. Last time I checked, we were 38.)

There are four places to eat at Rancho Santana: La Finca y el Mar, a full-service restaurant attached to the hotel; La Boquita, a tapas restaurant at the edge of a beautiful cove; La Taqueria, a taco and tequila eatery on Playa Los Perros, one of our five beaches – the one where some of our party will be taking surfing lessons throughout the week – and El Café for a quick bite.

The Good, the Bad, the Uncertain

Making Sense of Recent News Stories 

GOOD: Illinois Bans Lying to Juveniles During Interrogations 

Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker signed a bill prohibiting police from using deception during interrogations of minors, the first law of its kind in the US. The new law bans commonly used deceptive interrogation tactics, including making false promises of leniency and false claims about the existence of incriminating evidence. According to The Innocence Project, such tactics have long been used to induce false confessions, which have played a role in about 30% of all wrongful convictions overturned by DNA evidence.

 Click here.

BAD: Killings Continue in Chicago 

Despite Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s insistence that crime is going down in the Windy City, shootings and killings continue to soar – especially on weekends and almost exclusively in Black neighborhoods.

She’s blaming the mayhem on weak gun control regulations, and promising that things will get better soon. So far, things are only getting worse. For example:

Mass shooting on the west side…

Click here.

This mother is fed up and leaving…

Click here.

Two mass killings in the same neighborhood…

Click here.

DISTURBING: The UN’s Idea of Sex Education for Children 

It’s Perfectly Normal, a US government-funded, UN-produced sex-education curriculum for grammar school children, contains “graphic depictions of children engaging in masturbation and various sexual acts,” according to Sharon Slater, co-founder and president of advocacy group Family Watch International.

For slightly older children, ages 12 to 14, the curriculum encourages children to “share their sexual feelings” through activities including oral and anal sex, masturbation, or touching each other’s genitals while saying “I like you.”

In addition, the curriculum encourages children to label themselves with sexual identities and needs. Example: I am a “polyamorous queer teen who needs to know how to have safe sex and relationships with multiple partners.”

“We’re seeing it in almost all the schools,” Slater said. “And now under President Biden, they’ve even increased the budget to $130 million.”

 Click here.

GOOD: Teenage Americans Are Having Less Sex 

Notwithstanding the above, American high schoolers are having less sex today than they’ve been having since the early 1990s.

According to the most recent (2019) biannual edition of Youth Risk Behavior Survey, administered by the CDC, 38.4% of high schoolers reported having had intercourse. This is down from 46% in 2009 and 54% in 1991.

What’s perhaps most encouraging is the decline in Black teens having sex. It’s down to 42.3% from 81.5% in 1991.

BAD: Twitter Is At It Again… 

Twitter recently suspended several accounts dedicated to reporting on 2020 election audits.

One, the Audit War Room, had 40,000 followers. Another, the Maricopa County Audit, had 100,000.

Twitter’s actions came just a week after Ken Bennett, the liaison and a former Republican Arizona Secretary of State, announced that he had been blocked from entering the audit.

Want to know more about Twitter’s campaign against news and views it disagrees with? Click here.

Or here.

Or here.

IRONIC: Violence Prevention Chief Gets Robbed 

And it happens on air!

Click here.

GOOD: Michigan Legislature Repeals Governor’s Emergency Powers Act 

Michigan has repealed the Emergency Powers Act used by Governor Whitmer to implement COVID-19 restrictions in the state. (The governor had agreed to end the lockdown several times early last year, but reneged, citing her authority under the Act.)

The Senate vote came two days after the state Board of Canvassers certified that Unlock Michigan, a coalition of state residents, had obtained more than the required 340,000 valid signatures to put a repeal proposition before the voters at the next general election.

Click here.

BAD: Cop Tasers Kid in Girlfriend’s Yard 

This Florida Highway patrolman tases a kid in the backyard of his girlfriend’s house because he “looked suspicious.” As the commentator says, teenage boys have been at the backdoors of their paramours since Romeo and Juliet. What made this particular kid look suspicious? Could it be that he was biracial?

You decide. Click here.

HYPOCRITICAL: Defund-the-Police Advocate Cori Bush Spends Campaign Funds for Personal Security 

Here’s the story.

And here she is defending herself.