I miss the TV dads – and my own too

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You know them. They were in your living room and part of your family conversations every night, especially during those 60-second breaks. 

Before America was siloed into warring tribes by ratings-hungry cable TV and, later, by click-hungry internet sites, these men defined fatherhood for two generations. They were uncool before uncool was cool.

I’m aware this isn’t Fathers Day, other than in a specific religious sense. But Christmas always brings back family memories for me, particularly of my dad, which gets me thinking about the role of dads everywhere.

You’ll have your own favorite dads, but here are mine, in no particular order. Feel free to add and subtract.

Ben Cartwright, of Bonanza

Ben came west, and founded the Ponderosa Ranch. He married and buried three women who gave him three sons. He was a strong and kind man back in the days when we thought that was a good thing.

Each episode of the show was a morality play, as much of television was back in the days when we had morality. A recurrent theme was the need for men to man-up. Ben taught that lesson many times, usually by example. And sometimes it meant something different than viewers initially assumed.

Frasier Crane, in Frasier

I suppose experts in comedy would say that a fussy, pretentious, good-hearted psychiatrist is easy material (Bob Newhart, anyone?) but Kelsey Grammer is so darned good as an over-actor (and also as a just-right actor on the Shakesperean stage) that he pulls it off. Best. TV Comedy. Ever.

Andy Taylor, of The Andy Griffith Show

I always wanted to dislike Sheriff Taylor (played by Andy Griffith) because the show was just so hokey. But Griffith was an accomplished actor, the writing was pretty good, and so I mostly failed.

I succeeded much better with Barney Fife. Bumbling incompetence with handguns does not amuse me.

Ward Cleaver, of Leave it to Beaver

Not really. Just seeing if you’re paying attention. I couldn’t – and still can’t – get past the fact that this dude calls his young son “The Beaver.” What’s up with that?

Tony Soprano, of The Sopranos

This show was pretty edgy. Tony led a life of crime, but, out of love, he desperately wanted to guide his family into something legitimate. He ever got a therapist!

If only Joe Biden had been watching. 

Jed Clampett, of The Beverly Hillbillies

The hat. This one is all about the hat. I wanted the hat. Well, the hat and the jalopy. Well, the hat, the jalopy and Elly May.

Ricki Ricardo, in I Love Lucy

I never liked Lucille Ball, but to this day it’s remarkable that her husband Ricki was presented as a charismatic Latin immigrant bandleader married to red-headed Lucille.

You couldn’t do that today, because Ricki was the bad kind of immigrant – legal, Cuban and probably Republican.   

Jim Anderson, in Father Knows Best

This is another one that could not be presented today. Maybe you could get away with “Birthing Parent Has a Truth That Works For Them.”

Atticus Finch, in To Kill a Mockingbird

OK, this was a movie, not a TV show. And, OK, I offer it up mainly to show off my movie chops. But Atticus Finch (played by Gregory Peck in his finest role) sets the standard for strength and courage in explaining and exemplifying the nuances of both to his young daughter. Ben Cartwright would be proud. The writing isn’t bad either.

That’s my list from the past. Today, I look for the next generation of fathers in the entertainment media. Two come to mind.

One is Joe Biden, who is not an entertainer strictly speaking but that’s about all he’s good for anymore.

Joe does not make my list of fathers I admire most.

Another is Deion Sanders. I don’t know Prime, and don’t pretend to understand him or relate to him. But one thing is clear: He holds his sons to very high standards of professional (yes, professional) achievement.

But where’s Ben Cartwright, for God’s sake? Where’s Sheriff Taylor? We can’t even get our hands on a good-father mobster like Tony Soprano.

When I was young, I had a father who was quirky (OK, that’s an understatement) but full of decency. Sure, there were things he simply was not capable of. But maybe that had something to do with his own father dying in the depths of the Great Depression when Dad was five. Maybe it had to do with flunking the 6th grade twice due to dyslexia (which went under the medical term “stupidity” at the time). Maybe it had to do with dropping out of school in the 8th grade to support his widowed mother, the turmoil of joining the army underaged, earning his GED, and somehow working his way into the middle class to support a family of six in an 800 square foot house.

I never heard the man say “I love you” to anyone, including my mother. But I was certain this unusual person did love me, just as Sheriff Taylor loved lovable Opie and Ben loved unlovable Adam. That’s how dads were. Television said so.

In today’s world, there isn’t enough of that certainty. The more our world of global information fragments, the less our moral compasses point in the same direction. 

AI “thinks” hospital gowns make sense

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Marc Andreessen is a very successful Silicon Valley venture capitalist. In picking and investing in early-stage tech companies such as Twitter and Facebook years ago, you could say he swims with the sharks, and swims very well. His firm has over $45 billion under management. He was recently the subject of a wide-ranging interview by Bari Weise, the intrepid founder of The Free Press.

The hottest thing in Silicon Valley these days is AI – the acronym for Artificial Intelligence. In its true definition, AI is much more than the next generation of powerful computers. If you ask Google Assistant or Apple Siri a question, it will search the internet for data pertaining to your question, aggregate that data, synthesize an answer, and write it up in understandable language.

It has what computer scientists call a heuristic ability. It learns. If it were playing chess with you, it would quickly learn your tendencies – and thoroughly kick your ass.

Andreessen remarked among other things that AI has been “a censorship machine . . . right from the very beginning.” That statement made in passing made headlines as an indictment of AI.

But that’s not exactly how Andreessen intended it. He actually thinks AI is a good thing and will make for a better world, and I tend to agree. But there’s a danger.

The danger is the oldest danger in computing: it’s GIGO, or “Garbage In Garbage Out.” AI is not in contact with the real world. What it knows about the real world is what it gathers on the internet. Its answers are only as good as you yourself could get on the internet if you took the time to do so. And it does not have the rich context of a human’s lifetime of experience in interpreting casual language, particular circumstances and unreliable sources.

AI has infinite knowledge and zero judgment.

I saw this recently when I was in the hospital for some minor open-heart surgery. As hospitals do, they insisted that I wear one of those “gown” contraptions that are open in the back so that your buns hang out.

I find this piece of apparel quite annoying and embarrassing, and I know you do too. I’m guessing the hospital employees do as well, since an average hospital patient is not someone whose buns you would want to ogle.

So, I asked Google Assistant why hospital gowns tie in the back – where they cannot be tied at all. Here’s the answer I got back:

Hospital gowns tie in back for a variety of reasons:

Translation: There’s no good reason, but there’s a “variety” of them. Google Assistant listed them:

*Easy access: The open back design allows medical technicians to quickly and easily access any part of the patient’s body for examinations, treatments, or procedures without the need to fully undress the patient.

It allows easy access alright. But there’s a big but. The big but is that it allows access to only the patient’s big butt. In my personal experience, that part of the patient is not the focus of many medical procedures. And, contrary to what Google implies, the patient in a gown is completely undressed apart from the gown.

There’s more.

* Patient Comfort: The loose fit and open back design can help prevent overheating and discomfort, especially for bedridden patients.

Patient comfort? So, will patient gowns catch on outside hospitals? Will they be the next big thing in fashion, replacing jeans and hoodies? Because they’re just . . . so, darned, comfortable?

And overheating? I find hospitals to be cold, if anything. I cannot remember a time when my buns were so hot – in any sense of the word – that I wanted to whip them out.

* Modesty: While the open back design might seem counterintuitive, it can actually provide a sense of modesty. The ties can be adjusted to ensure the gown stays securely in place, covering the patient’s back and providing a sense of privacy.

That’s not just “counterintuitive.” It’s a bald-faced, butt-on lie. The ties are not long enough to extend around to the front in order to cover the patient’s back, as AI admits in its very next bullet point:

* Efficiency: Tying the gown in the back is a quick and simple process, saving time for both the patient and the medical staff.

How on earth is tying a string behind your back “quick and efficient”? Try it sometime, Google Assistant.

Overall, the design of hospital gowns is a balance between practicality, comfort, and modesty. The open back with ties is a design that has been found to be effective in meeting the needs of both patients and healthcare providers.

That’s all a big fat lie. But don’t blame AI. AI thinks it’s true because . . . Garbage In, Garbage Out.

This is a trivial example to prove Marc Andreessen’s point. AI is only as good – and is just as bad – as the information it receives. AI thinks hospital gowns are efficient, convenient and modest because the internet says so. If I were to say something contrary to that, AI would say I’m wrong.

This extends to everything – global warming, Jan. 6, Russian collusion, the Kennedy assassination, election rigging, and drones over Jersey.

That’s the sort of censorship we’re looking at. It’s a pervasive, insidious thing. We cannot put AI back in the genie bottle, nor should we. But we should carefully monitor and dispute the information it relies on for its pronouncements, and take those pronouncements with a large grain of salt. That won’t be easy.

Trump’s powerful America will produce a safer world

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Henry Kissinger argued that geopolitical negotiations are successful only if they are backed by an implicit or explicit threat of force. In that argument, he echoed Teddy
Roosevelt’s quip a century earlier that America should “speak softly and carry a big stick.”

The contention that adversarial negotiations are successful only if you have some leverage to exert is an obvious truism. But American leaders need to re-learn this truism every so often. They naively – and sometimes malevolently – come to believe that the way to get along with the bad guys is to kowtow to them.

Our latest example began with Barack Obama. He was asked whether he believed in American exceptionalism – a basic American tenet which goes back to Thomas Jefferson’s empire of liberty, Abraham Lincoln’s almost-chosen people, and Ronald Reagan’s shining city on a hill. Obama answered,

“Yes, there’s American exceptionalism, but I suspect the Brits also believe in British exceptionalism and the Greeks believe in Greek exceptionalism.”

In other words, Americans are exceptional in the same way that everybody else is – which is to say they are not exceptional at all. Moreover, implicit in his answer is that the only true exceptionalism in American is their conceit in believing in it.

Poisoned by his distaste for American civilization, Obama went about his stated task of “fundamentally transforming” it. His first act in this transforming was to go around the world apologizing for American misdeeds of the preceding two centuries.

Forget about America winning the Cold War; helping to win two World Wars; delivering billions in gifts to countries around the world; taking the world’s tired, poor, huddled masses yearning to breathe free; rebuilding Japan and Germany from totalitarian ashes; putting a man on the moon; spending a trillion dollars to create a well-intentioned but failed Great Society to pull up its underclass; and inventing Silicon Valley.

Forget all that. It is time, Obama preached, for America to apologize to the world.

And so, he did. For eight years, he did what he could – and that was a lot – to reduce American power and prestige in the world. He thought a smaller, weaker, apologetic America would result in world peace.

Barack Obama is nothing if not insincere. I suspect his peace-through-weakness approach was not designed so much to achieve peace, but to achieve his fundamental transformation of America. His vision had less to do with Liberty Gleaming, and more to do with Workers Uniting.

Obama’s reign of pusillanimity – his war on America – continued for eight years before briefly yielding to a four-year interruption. But the interruption was too brief, too chaotic and too sabotaged. Obama then returned in the form of his hand-picked puppet and eff-up in chief, Joe Biden.

Joe was too shallow to grasp Obama’s scheme of fundamental transformation, but he certainly knew what side his bread was buttered on, and he knew who knew about the skeletons in his closet.

Joe did what he was told, willingly and even eagerly. By golly, the man from Scranton was determined to outdo his teacher. With that eagerness, combined with a degree of plain incompetence that bordered on its own kind of exceptionalism, Joe took another step toward the fundamental transformation of America.

And the world. From Afghanistan to Ukraine to Gaza to the Mexican border and to everywhere else, Joe succeeded in projecting American pusillanimity and incompetence to produce worldwide chaos, violence and death.

Joe was the anti-Midas; everything he touched turned to shit. Sometimes, as in the border, it was on purpose.

Now there’s a new boss in town who’s not the same as the old boss. He was elected a month ago, and won’t assume office for another month, but already he’s making waves, and not the pusillanimous kind.

In response to his threat to impose steep tariffs that would decimate their economies, Mexico and Canada have already promised to clamp down on illegal immigration from their borders into the United States.

In response to his candid support of Israel and his no-nonsense threats against barbaric terrorists, a fragile truce has emerged in that forever conflict. Jefferson, who forcibly subdued the Barbary pirates, would nod.

Nearby, in response to his tough stance against Russian imperialism, rebels in Syria were emboldened to reclaim their country from years of a Russian-sponsored dictatorship.

In response to his muscular defense posture but unwillingness to write blank checks forever in an unwinnable war of attrition, Ukraine and Russia are quietly negotiating peace. Kissinger would approve.

In response to his indefatigable populism, the people of France are once again inspired by the people of America. Those people yearning to be free are demanding a government that represents . . .  wait for it . . . people yearning to be free.

Those people of France begged him to attend the re-opening of their Lady of Paris – the Notre Dame – while Joe Biden mumbles and stumbles around in the swamps of Brazil.

His enemies in America say this guy who supports the Jewish nation of Israel is just like Hitler. Other enemies say he’s too volatile to be in charge. Still others say he has surrounded himself with stupid yes-men (like Elon Musk?). But his American enemies mostly disbelieve their own rhetoric – they’re just bad sports and sore losers.

In the rest of the world, his enemies are lying low like rats in the basement. They’ll stay there – but only for so long as they see America as an unabashed empire of liberty, a strong and chosen people, a shining city on a hill.

Donald Trump and his progeny have an opportunity unseen in two generations. They’re off to a good start.

“Transgender Miners at the Supreme Court . . .”

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. . . Is how a headline reads in today’s Wall Street Journal. To which my reaction was, what next?

First, the trannies were in the closet. Then they came out, apparently just to go to the bathroom. The one for girls.

Then they were in the Cabinet of the future former President and current organized crime boss who both commits and pardons family criminal acts. (One stop shopping, is he.)

The next thing we knew, they were competing in athletic contests against real women – or, as much of the media dubs them, “birthing persons” or “menstruating persons” or “persons with a bonus hole” or (my personal favorite) “non-transgender women.”

Now, no less than the Wall Street Journal informs us that we have transgender miners. Yep, they’re in the mines. Those would be the mines on federal land, no doubt.

“Glory Hole” takes on a whole new meaning.

Not only that, but these transgender miners have a case today before the Supreme Court – a Court that is not especially sympathetic to identity politics (though they did rule a few years ago – centuries ago in terms of the cultural climate – that businesses cannot discriminate against tranny employees).

Given the composition of the Supreme Court, one might expect a miner of all people to know that the first thing to do when you’re stuck in a ditch is to stop digging.

What’s that you say? The WSJ headline refers to “minors” and not “miners”? And the Supreme Court case is about transgender children, not transgender miners?

Nehva mind . . .

In that case, let me put on my legal hat.

The claim being heard by the Supreme Court is that state laws prohibiting hormone manipulation and gender mutilation (er, “affirmation”) of children having some growing pains are a violation of the Equal Protection clause of the Constitution.

The gist of the argument is: If a boy who thinks he’s a boy can get certain hormones to affirm his boyhood, then why can’t a boy who thinks he’s a girl get other hormones to affirm his girliness? If the second boy can’t get his hormones, then you’ve discriminated against him on the basis of sex. The boy got the hormones, and the boy who thinks he’s a girl was refused them.

The argument has a circular quality to it. The boy thinks he’s a girl, and so he’s entitled to receive hormones to make him one. To refuse him those hormones is to discriminate against a boy who thinks he is a girl but is not  because he hasn’t received the hormones, and so it’s sex discrimination.

If you can follow that, you should be a lawyer.

There’s another, more basic flaw to the argument that boys who think they’re girls have a Constitutional right to receive hormones to make them girls (sorta). Recent studies in Europe have shown that gender “affirmation” treatment generally has a poor outcome. To be sure, a boy who becomes a “girl” has his genitals mutilated. But also – as if the genital mutilation is not a bad enough outcome – gets nowhere in his psychological well-being. He’s just a prone to suicide, for example – an act that is tragically common among trannies.

Moreover, many “transitioned” children later regret their transition, and seek to “de-transition.” If you thought the transition surgery was dicey, imagine the de-transition surgery.

Countries in Europe have now stepped back from gender “affirmation” treatment for children, and several have outlawed it – just as many states here have.

So, the Supreme Court can dodge the Constitutional Equal Protection issue that even lawyers have a hard time articulating, and decide the case in a more basic way that even you and I can understand.

They can say: This treatment is controversial and unproven. The states can, in the exercise of the plenary powers reserved to them, make a reasonable judgment that it should not be performed on children.

This is anything but unprecedented. Note that most states prohibit children from getting tattoos. But now there’s supposed to be a Constitutional right for them to mutilate their genitals in the interest of a faddish identity group that is recruiting them?

This was predicted by me – at least twice

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The news tonight is that Worst President Ever (hereinafter “WPE”) has pardoned his son.

You know the one – the crack-smoking, drug-addicted, whore-mongering, influence-peddling, gun-toting, tax-evading, lie-teller.

After stating time and again – but that was in the past, so it doesn’t count – that he wouldn’t, WPE proved himself to be as big a liar as the miscreant son.

Don’t say I didn’t warn you. I explicitly warned that WPE would do this, but for obvious reasons he would wait till after the election.

I also proposed that the pardon would seal the judgment of historians on WPE – that he is indeed the WPE.

So there we are. WPE has been officially crowned . . . Worst . . . President . . . Ever.

May the whole decrepit family rot in hell. 

The Denver mayor is an illegal unrepentant insurrectionist

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Denver mayor Mike Johnston, as I imagine him in his insurrectionist get-up

Resistance 2.0 is upon us, and it’s getting ugly.

The latest is from the formerly-mediocre and now-failed city of Denver, of which I am an embarrassed alum. The mayor promises to forcibly thwart the United States government’s enforcement of the United States immigration laws. He says he’ll send Denver police and 50,000 moms to head the feds off at the pass.

This valiantly woke mayor even promises to personally break laws and go to prison if necessary.

Here’s the back story:

Denver declared itself a “sanctuary city” back when liberals could make such feel-good declarations without any adverse consequences. But over time, the adverse consequences came good and hard, as did the illegal immigrants.

Armed with the knowledge that in Denver they would receive a hearty Mile Hile welcome and armed with the knowledge that they would not be deported (and, in many cases, armed with drugs and guns, too), the illegal immigrants came by the thousands.

Over 40,000. Denver now hosts the highest illegal immigration population per-capita of any city. Denver might not be a great city, or a great place to live anymore, but, as the host with the most, it’s a great haven for illegal immigrants.

Providing services for these illegals has strained the city budget to the point that the city has cut back on police and other emergency protection as well as basic services like street repair and snow plowing.

In a splendid exercise in irony and hypocrisy, Denver has tried to foist some of its illegals onto neighboring towns and cities. The libs of Denver thus pat themselves on the back for “welcoming” illegals into the city while simultaneously re-shipping them to cities that don’t.

The mayor declares that the city should continue to welcome illegal immigrants because it puts the city on “the right side of history.” As if history proves that illegal acts by illegal immigrants typically produce good and legal outcomes, so long as you express that conclusion in a flowery cliché. 

I have a question for these “right side of history” Democrats. Now that history has recorded that Republicans have won control of the Presidency, the Senate, the House of Representatives, the Supreme Court, a majority of state governorships and a majority of state legislatures, how’s that “right side of history” argument working out for you?

Back to Denver. The mayor’s latest rhetoric goes a step beyond the “sanctuary city” status that is common in our Blue cities such as Los Angeles, San Francisco, Chicago, New York, Philadelphia and so on – you know, the toilet towns. Those so-called sanctuary cities had merely announced that they welcomed illegal immigrants, and would not help the feds enforce the federal immigration laws against them.

The Denver mayor now goes a step further than that. He promises war. He says he will send armed local Denver police to intercept the federal law enforcement personnel at the town limits, and will recruit moms from local Denver neighborhoods to help. He promises to personally go to jail if that’s necessary to stop the United States government from enforcing the United States immigration laws.

He boasted that his rebellion would be like Tiananmen Square where anti-communists were run over by tanks.

But wait! Democrats like communism – Karl Marx, Mao, Hugo Chavez, Fidel Castro, Pol Pot, the whole gang. The Democrats aren’t anti-communists, they’re anti-anti-communists. If the Democrats had been at Tiananmen Square, they would have been in the tanks, not under them.

And double but-wait! Didn’t the rebels lose in Tiananmen Square?

Ponder all this. The mayor of Denver says he personally will commit crimes for the purpose of preventing the United States government from enforcing United States laws; promised to enlist tens of thousands of armed local policemen and a citizens’ militia of 50,000 moms to join his rebellion; and promised to lose.

I wonder, will the mayor wear a buffalo horn hat?

I also wonder, won’t the mayor’s criminal interference with the United States government’s enforcement of the United States immigration laws within the United States (1) cause Denver’s the illegal immigrant problem to continue unabated and (2) worsen it by drawing even more illegal immigrants to Denver from other cities and towns?

The mayor later walked back his comparison to Tiananmen Square, perhaps because it dawned on him that the Democrats are on the side of the tank-riding communists, not the tank-crushed anti-communists. But he didn’t walk back his threat of secession or rebellion or insurrection.

Democrats, are you OK with this?

Aspen newspapers bury Aspen Skiing Company’s hateful diatribe against Trump

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Democracy dies when it gets buried

Right after the election, the CEO of Aspen Skiing Company, which runs Aspen and Snowmass resorts (known as “SkiCo” locally), was grieving. And he wanted everyone to know.

He sent a memo to all 1,500-some employees instructing them on “the gravity of what just occurred.” (This is all he knows about gravity, believe me – I’ve seen this guy ski.)

The memo CEO-splained that the election decision made by over half the nation was “openly at odds” with SkiCo’s values of:

“Equality, democracy, civility, compassion, tolerance, sustainability, open-mindedness, gratitude, freedom, integrity, and justice.”

When the biggest company in Aspen and the surrounding area, serving the public on public lands under favorable Forest Service leases, condemns over half of America – including many of its own employees and customers – for their purportedly undemocratic, uncivil, intolerant, unsustainable, close-minded, ungrateful, tyrannical and unjust election decision, that seems like news.

But the local newspapers didn’t report it. So I wrote a piece about it. My piece received significant attention.

I also sent a letter to the editor of one of those local newspapers that allegedly reports the news (in those few pages that are not devoted to real estate ads). It’s called the Aspen Daily News. My letter strictly observed their word limit and other rules.

They’ve been brimming with Trump-is-Hitler letters ever since the election, and before then too. I figured they might strike a bit of balance by publishing my letter calling out SkiCo for condemning as fascists half of America along with many of its own employees and customers.

I was wrong. The Aspen Daily News utterly ignored my letter.

 In their defense, their refusal might have been for reasons of money – it might have been because they’re whores to SkiCo as one if their biggest advertisers (apart from the ubiquitous real estate ads).

But it’s more likely that they’re just whores to the political left. Pitkin County went 71% for the Democrat, which is approximately 28% less than the political composition of the Aspen Daily News.

If it’s any consolation to me, and it is, the circulation of my piece far exceeded the circulation of the Aspen Daily News. But still, it rubs me wrong that a so-called newspaper is so blatantly biased in burying news.

And so, I’ll publish my letter here, where it will get substantially more readers than in the Aspen Daily News. (Now if I can just figure out how to accept real estate ads.) Here it is: 

In the wake of last week’s election, the CEO of the SkiCo companies circulated a “For Internal Distribution Only” memo to all 1,500-some of its employees bemoaning “the gravity of what just occurred.” He went on to complain that the election result was “openly at odds with some of the values [SkiCo] stands for.”

Those SkiCo values with which last week’s free and democratic election is at odds, the CEO said, are “equality, democracy, civility, compassion, tolerance, sustainability, open-mindedness, gratitude, freedom, integrity, and justice.”

SkiCo easily employs the largest number of people in the Roaring Fork Valley, its payroll is the largest in the Valley, and its customers are the Valley’s biggest source of revenue. Moreover, SkiCo enjoys leases of public lands at very favorable rates for the purpose of serving the public – all of them, regardless of race, color, sex, religion, or political beliefs.

Like anyone else, the CEO is entitled to his opinion that a majority of the country does not share his vaunted “values.” But foisting that opinion onto 1,500 employees that he has the power to fire, and onto hundreds of thousands of customers to whom he can deny lift tickets, is a tad heavy-handed. To use his own terminology, it’s not particularly tolerant.

I should mention that an esteemed friend who is prominent in the Aspen area also sent in a letter to the editor – to the other Aspen newspaper, the Aspen Times – objecting to the CEO’s coercive memo to his employees. (No, there’s not enough news in Aspen to support two daily newspapers, but there’s certainly enough real estate to advertise.) Her letter was similarly civil, and similarly unpublished.

Next time you drop $20k for a week in Aspen, consider where that money is going.

Why do American Jews vote against Israel?

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For a hundred years, American Jews have overwhelmingly voted for the Democrat candidate. Franklin Roosevelt received about 80% of the Jewish vote each time. This dramatic tilt toward the Democrats continued up through the turn of the century, when they gave Al Gore about 79%. They gave Obama 78% in his first election, and even gave him 69% in his second – after Obama’s antipathy toward Israel became impossible to overlook.

Some of this Jewish support for Democrats is understandable. Like most immigrants, the Jews suffered discrimination at the hands of silk-stocking Republicans. American intellectuals in the early- to mid-20th century took their cue from Europe, where antisemitism was rampant (and still is). Two generations ago in America, there were still Jewish country clubs because the ordinary Republican-dominated ones denied admittance to Jews.

All of that is shameful, and, I’m glad to say, nearly all of that is now behind us.

In this century, it’s the Democrats who exhibit an antisemitic undercurrent. It was evident in Barack Obama’s support for Iran – a Jew-hating terrorism state that denies there was a Holocaust in the past while openly urging one in the future.

Obama was willing to let Iran get nukes, ostensibly not for the purpose of making good on their Holocaust threat (wink, wink). He even sent them billions that they used to fund their nuke program.

In the Biden administration, the Democrats’ anti-Israel stance grew. They begged the Iranians to rejoin the one-sided deal that Obama gave them (and Trump revoked) and also stopped enforcing international sanctions. That allowed them to resume lucrative oil exports to fund their nukes again – and to fund terrorists attacking Israel.

After the October 7 pogrom, many Democrats equated Israel’s effort to defend itself, on the one hand, with Hamas’ invasion, rapes, beheadings, torture, random rocket attacks, and kidnapping and murder of men, women and children, on the other hand.

I assumed that these last four years of Democrat hostility toward Israel would finally tilt the Jewish vote toward Republicans in 2024.

I was wrong. Jews voted 68% for the Democrat in 2020, and this year they still voted somewhere between 66% and 79% for the Democrat (it’s difficult for exit polls to get a fix on the number). And this was for a Democrat who openly pandered to Muslim radicals.

So, what’s up with American Jews?

I have a theory.

But first, let me admit the ignorant and the speculative nature of my theory. I grew up in the wilds of Colorado, and literally had never met a Jew (at least not knowingly) until I went away to college. My current Jewish friends tend to be strong Israel supporters and, likewise, strong Republicans; my generalizations therefore do not apply to them specifically. I now have tremendous respect for both Judaism and Jewish culture (and have often written about it) but cannot claim any real expertise in the subject.

Subject to all that, here goes.

Somewhere around seven million Jews live in America – nearly as many as in Israel. Together, those two countries comprise 80% of the world’s Jewish population.

Israeli Jews are different than American Jews. Israeli Jews are mostly first- or second-generation immigrants to Israel. Jews who immigrate to the Jewish state of Israel tend to be practicing Jews, unsurprisingly. A disproportionate number are Orthodox Jews. They believe deeply in Judaism and they believe deeply in Israel. 

American Jews, not so much. While many are devout, at least a third are not observant of their religion at all. (This is not intended as a criticism. Most self-identifying Christians are not observant of their religion either.) Deeply religious Orthodox Jews are relatively rare in America.

The result is that American Jews are less invested emotionally in the Land of Abraham.

That’s hard to dispute. But I submit that it goes beyond that.

Many American Jews have not just failed to embrace Judaism, but have casually or consciously rejected it. People who reject long-standing family and religious traditions tend to feel some guilt and need some rationalizations. Rejection of one’s heritage typically morphs into hostility toward that heritage.  

In the case of the many non-observant American Jews, it’s possible that their ambivalence toward Israel – which seems to manifest in outright opposition every four years at election time – is rooted in a rejection of their ancestral faith which naturally morphs into hostility toward it.

In agnosticism, as in religion, there’s no zealot like a convert.

Among the election losers are men pretending to be men-pretending-to-be-women

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Last week’s election had a lot of losers, including Democrats in general; Generals who are Democrats to whom President Trump promises to offer mandatory early retirement; the formerly mainstream media which is now reduced to a dried-up side-stream that collectively cannot match the rapidly roaring ratings of the clickbait tabloid called Fox News; childless cat ladies; and the Pelosi/Obama Axis of Evil.

And men pretending to be women. More precisely, it’s men pretending to be men-pretending-to-be-women. Let me explain.

Men have pretended to be women for as long as there’s been men and women. Heck, I confess that I once dressed up as a woman for Halloween back in my college days before it was even fashionable. It was fun and funny, though it didn’t give me my jollies. 

Other men apparently do get their jollies by pretending to be women, and they do so 365 days a year, or maybe just 300, or maybe just 11 or 12.

There’s a technical/scientific/medical name for such men. They’re properly called “men-pretending-to-be-women.”

I have no problem with men-pretending-to-be-women. It all seems pretty harmless to me, up to a point.

I’m even OK with them discretely using the women’s bathrooms. I’m told that, for practical reasons, women’s bathrooms have no urinals for the women to stand in front of as they do their No. 1 business. Instead, they have only stalls, like the ones in the men’s bathrooms for use when a man does No. 2 business, or when he just wants a little privacy.

That means there are two automatic constraints on men-pretending-to-be-women in the women’s bathrooms. One, they are not able to see the privates of real women. Two, they are not able to display to women the privates of themselves.

It’s true that men-pretending-to-be-women in the women’s bathrooms can see real women using the bathroom mirror to tidy their makeup. But that’s a regular scene outside the women’s bathrooms, too. You can hardly pass a mirror in public without seeing that sight.

I assume, without any specialized knowledge, that men-pretending-to-be-women have been using women’s bathrooms for millennia. Nobody objected, because nobody knew. Even now, nobody would object, because nobody would know.

But here’s what’s different now. They want you to know. Not just abstractly, but concretely and in each and every instance.

Their jollies apparently hinge on not just being men in the women’s bathroom, and not even just on being men-pretending-to-be-women in the women’s bathroom. It goes beyond that. It’s all about being men-pretending-to-be-women in the women’s bathroom, and the women in the bathroom knowing it.

The way for men-pretending-to-be-women to ensure that women in the women’s bathroom are aware that they are really men, is to make sure their costume is unconvincing. They don’t truly make themselves look like women – if they did, they’d fail to convey that they’re not. Instead, they make themselves look like men pretending to be women, so that the women know they’re not.

They’re motivated by the same motivations as a public exhibitionist.

Another way to express the point is that they’re men pretending – deliberately badly – to be men-pretending-to-be-women. That’s the formula that apparently produces their women’s bathroom jollies – and the discomfiture of the women in the bathroom, which is evidently part of their jollies.

Jollies are fine. There’s a reason they’re called jollies, after all. But invading the privacy or comfort of other people to get your jollies is not fine, even when – especially when – that invasion is part of the jollies.

And when the women’s bathroom in question is a girl’s bathroom in a schoolhouse, it’s especially not fine.

Similar emotions are at work in the men-pretending-to-be-women in women’s sports. The discomfort and invasion of privacy they inflict on real women – and the stealing of their medals – is part of their jolly gig. Reports are rampant that these men-pretending-to-be-women are not shy in the women’s locker rooms, for example.

To them, all of that – the stealing of medals, the invasion of privacy, and the discomfort they inflict on their female victims – is not an unfortunate side effect of their routine; it’s their prime objective.

Americans are fed up with this new phenomenon of men pretending to be men-pretending-to-be-women in women’s bathrooms and women’s sports. Last week’s election was consistent with that.

It remains to be seen whether Democrats will get the message. It’s quite possible that many of the far-left ones share the emotions of the men pretending to be men-pretending-to-be-women. Namely, they get a certain satisfaction in inflicting discomfort and embarrassment on ordinary American women.

My message to them is: OK, have your jollies. But don’t expect us to vote for you.

Aspen Skiing Company joins “The Resistance”

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Your correspondent has reviewed a memo labelled “For Internal Distribution Only” from the CEO of the company that owns and operates the skiing operations at Aspen and Snowmass (referred to locally as “SkiCo”).  

It’s a doozy.

Everyone knows that Aspen is rich and liberal. The billionaires crowded out the millionaires decades ago. What passes for “thinking” by think-tanks like the Aspen Institute is the notion that “balance” means hard-leftists like Madeline Albright and Jonathan Capehart on one side and soft-leftists like David Brooks and Liz Cheney on the other.

Years ago, SkiCo decried Donald Trump’s enforcement of America’s immigration laws. Enforcement of those duly enacted American laws, they declared, was un-American. (Coincidentally, enforcement of the immigration laws also impacted SkiCo’s supply of low-paid workers.)

So maybe it shouldn’t be a surprise to see SkiCo’s reaction to the election. Still, it’s worth noting, especially if you happen to be one of their customers.

The memo from the CEO to employees begins by bemoaning “the gravity of what just occurred.” A majority of voters, he said, chose “a vision that can be viewed as openly at odds with some of the values [SkiCo] stands for.”

In case you don’t get the drift, the CEO helpfully spells it out. SkiCo’s self-declared “values” with which he contends over half of America is “openly at odds” are:

“Equality, democracy, civility, compassion, tolerance, sustainability, open-mindedness, gratitude, freedom, integrity, and justice.”

In short, in the public opinion of the CEO of SkiCo, the election represents a triumph of the opposite of all that. It represents a triumph of inequality, anti-democracy, incivility, unsustainability, close-mindedness, ingratitude, tyranny, and injustice.

He fails to explain how an open election, in which a candidate won a majority of both the people and the Electoral College, is anti-democratic. Perhaps he meant anti-Democrat.

Oh, and intolerance. With no sense of irony or self-awareness, the CEO of SkiCo – the leader of a prominent company offering services to the public with the power to fire employees – declares to those employees that half the country with whose votes he disagrees are intolerant.

In closing, he muses, “Clearly, the approach of trying to model, speak aggressively, and ‘teach’ others is not sufficient.” (The scare quotes around “teach” are his.)

That sounds slightly threatening. After failing in his effort to “teach” the deplorable, unteachable garbage that constitute half of America, is he perhaps considering limiting access to the gondolas to card-carrying Democrats?

I can see the gondola operators to the line of skiers:

“Papers? Papers? No, I don’t care about your lift ticket, I want your voter registration papers!”

The First Amendment probably does not protect the employees of SkiCo who happen to be Republicans (yes, there are some) and have received the CEO’s coercive political memo, since SkiCo is not an arm of the government. On the other hand, SkiCo does enjoy numerous leases of Forest Service lands owned by the government. Also, its gondola and chair-lift operations could make it a “common carrier.”

And some states offer state law protections that could be implicated. If SkiCo has any employees in California, for example, the memo could be in violation of California state law. (Talk about irony.)

But the legalisms are a column for another day. Today’s point is that the operator of Aspen and Snowmass considers you persona non grata if you’re in the half+ of the country that voted for Donald Trump. Maybe you should consider them resorta non grata.