A Bleak Future
Young people today are a deadly combination of arrogance and cowardice, they profess to be morally superior and tolerant, but they promote sexual perversion and late term abortions, while at the same time voicing contempt for the Constitution in general and the first two amendments in particular.
In 1934, my friend, pianist/composer/writer/ actor/professional wit/ Oscar Levant once write a song called “Blame It on My Youth.”
All these years later, there’s a lot to blame on America’s youth. Their ignorance bodes ill not only today but for the foreseeable future when, God help us, they will be the politicians, the judges, the professors, the schoolteachers, the reporters and the pop culture elitists.
Young people today are a deadly combination of arrogance and cowardice, they profess to be morally superior and tolerant, but they promote sexual perversion and late term abortions, while at the same time voicing contempt for the Constitution in general and the first two amendments in particular.
The ones who attend college or have graduated in the past decade display the gullibility of small children. But whereas we cherish the innocence of four-year-old’s who believe Easter bunnies actually lay chocolate eggs and that Santa Claus hands out sleds, tricycles and dolls, to nice, but never naughty, children, there is something horribly pathetic about 20-somethings so naïve they believe that something called climate change will put an end to life on earth by 2030.
How can their own parents not be nauseated when they see them forming mobs on college campuses for the purpose of silencing people from voicing an opposing point of view? Is that the America that their parents and grandparents were fighting to defend against when this nation was threatened by Nazism, Fascism and Communism, over the past 80 years?
Did some of their friends and loved ones make the ultimate sacrifice so that these young pinheads could line up behind Pied Pipers like Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, Pete Buttigieg and insist that Socialism, by which they mean free stuff, is the answer to their infantile prayers?
Like tiny tots, they even have their own personal boogeyman, the creature hiding under their beds or lurking in their dark closets, the monster with the mop of yellow hair.
I’m reminded that in one of his brighter moments, P.J. O'Rourke observed that “No drug, not even alcohol, causes the fundamental ills of society. If we’re looking for the source of our troubles, we shouldn’t test people for drugs, we should test them for stupidity, ignorance, greed, and love of power.”
Although I sometimes boast (complain, whine) about the things I do on your behalf, such as sitting through State of the Union addresses, primary debates and Richard Goodstein’s frequent appearances on Tucker Carlson’s show, even I drew a line when it came to the House hearings moderated by Adam Schiff, who could serve as the model for the weasels in Disney’s next “Lion King” sequel.
I assumed it would be boring and endless. Apparently it was so boring, Schiff cut it short after five hours. It was the equivalent of a stage musical closing in New Haven before even reaching Broadway because the out-of-town reviews are so bad.
Before the first witness was called, I was telling friends that the hearings not only won’t help the Democrats, they will cost them House and perhaps even Senate seats in 2020. The two years devoted to Mueller’s witch hunt was bad enough. But trying to turn a phone call into an impeachable offense is going to remind Independents and those Democrats who don’t march to A O-C’s broken drum that Pelosi’s House has done nothing in three years but try to stop the President from getting things done; and that, in spite of their best efforts, he’s still been able to create a record-busting economy and get us out of insanities like the Paris Accords and the Iran nuclear deal, while also fighting to defend religious freedoms and the Second Amendment.
Something else that the Democrats have managed to prove is that Donald Trump is so clean, he squeaks. What other president could have stood up to the other party ‘s prying into every nook and cranny of his political life and not be found to have done something criminal or, at the very least, questionable?
When a subscriber asked me if I intended to write something about the hearings, I said I planned to, but, just like the witnesses, my testimony would be second or even third-hand after watching segments on Bret Baier and Tucker Carlson’s shows.
The day after the hearings, Russ Mothershed sent me an 8-minute exchange that Wolf Blitzer had with Kellyanne Conway on CNN.
Because Conway’s husband, a D.C. lawyer, is a Never-Trumper who is always predisposed to go on TV and denounce his wife’s boss, Blitzer first ran a video of the man who, that very morning, had appeared on MSNBC calling for the President’s impeachment. Blitzer then asked Mrs. Conway to comment.
My own comment was that Mr. Conway’s head is nearly as fat as his body. But his wife refused to play Blitzer’s game, refusing to say anything against her husband, the father of their four children, who has the Constitutional right to voice his stupid opinions. However, in the past, when George Conway has insisted that Trump obviously suffers from mental disorders, Mrs. Conway has been quick to point out that her husband is a lawyer, not a psychiatrist.
Whatever Mrs. Conway is being paid, it’s not enough. Trying to be loyal to two men who, politically speaking, are polar opposites is a tightwire stunt that not even the Flying Wallendas would have attempted.
In any case, while Blitzer kept trying to get her to denounce her husband, she kept telling Blitzer to his face that he was acting unprofessionally. She went on to say that back during Desert Storm, she had admired Blitzer’s reporting and the job that CNN had done covering the war in Iraq. She basically faced Blitzer down and asked him how he could now lower himself to the point where he was nothing more than a lackey of CNN boss Jeff Zucker, devoting his life to repeating the same Trump insults as all the other parrots on the network.
Blitzer said in his lame defense that the disagreements between the Conways were newsworthy, just as they’d been in the past when Republican Mary Matalin and Clinton strategist James Carville had all of Washington buzzing about how long these two opposing partisans could remain married. Well, the answer is 26 years so far and counting. The Conways have somehow managed to survive 18 years of wedded life.
I admit I used to wonder how on earth Matalin and Carville could live under the same roof. I also wondered how she could bear to wake up every morning and see that skeletal face on the pillow next to hers.
But there’s a world of difference between the Carvels and the Conways. The Carvels turned their situation into a dog and pony show. They were an act, like Abbott & Costello or Martin & Lewis, and for my money, just as bad.
The Conways, on the other hand, do not appear together, except, I assume, when they go home and talk about something other than politics.
To his credit, Blitzer sat there and took it. Not since he last stood in Jerusalem, reporting the news while Saddam Hussein’s scud missiles landed nearby, has he ever had more reason to be proud of himself. Or, to be honest about it, any reason at all.
Terry Schuck sent me a batch of one-liners, some of which I wish I’d said, some of which I have said, and a few of which I will eventually take credit for.
To me, drinking responsibly means not spilling a drop.
Cop: “Please step out of the car. Driver: "I’m too drunk. You get in.”
I remember being able to get up without making sound effects.
If you’re sitting in public and a stranger sits down next to you, stare straight ahead and say: “Did you bring the money?”
The older I get, the earlier it gets late.
When I asked for directions, please don’t use words like “east” and “south.”
After I mentioned having attended Norman Lear’s 105th birthday celebration, someone asked me if I used to attend parties in order to network with people in the entertainment business in the hope of advancing my career. I said I hadn’t. Lest anyone jump to the wrong conclusion, I was rarely invited to parties where there was anyone in a position to advance my career. Who am I kidding? I was rarely invited to parties, period.
The question did remind me that there were Hollywood couples who were notorious for their party-going. I don’t know if it was in the hope of getting work, seeing their names mentioned in Hollywood gossip columns or whether they just liked the chance to drink free booze and dine on stuff that came served on toothpicks.
Right off the bat, I remembered that there were two couples about whom it was said they would show up for the opening of an envelope.
They were English actor Michael York and his wife Patricia, and Robert Stack and his actress wife Rosemarie Bowe.
What I discovered was that Michael York, who’s 77, has been married to Mrs. York for 51 years, and the Stacks had been married for 47 years until he died at the age of 84 in 2003.
So, just maybe there’s something to be said for Hollywood husbands and wives attending parties together. Or perhaps canapes are just a lot healthier than anyone has ever imagined.
We all know there are timelines that determine whether at noon in New York, it’s 11 a.m., 10 a.m. or 9 a.m. where you live. But what about those people whose house straddles one of those imaginary lines? Do they have to set the clock in the kitchen differently from the one in the bedroom or the den?
If they’re meeting a friend for lunch, how do they settle on a time?
How do they set the recording timers on their TVs?
Do they have to keep fiddling with their watches going to and from work?
If anyone lives in one of those places, please drop me a line and explain how you cope. Daylight savings time is already more than I can handle.
