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The Bitter Mirth of Today’s Headlines

The Bitter Mirth of Today’s Headlines

Most mornings I get up around dawn, pour some coffee, and look at the headlines. Those news reports nearly always range from the dire to the ridiculous. Sometimes I laugh, sometimes I want to cry, and lots of times I fall into a funk.

In this review of some headlines from the last two weeks, I’m picking laughter, or at least a bemused and sometimes bitter smile.

June is Gay Pride Month, more formally known as LGBTQIA+ Pride Month. Those letters stand for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, intersex, and asexual, and I guess the plus sign invites those who fall outside this big tribal tent to join the fun.

So I’m wondering: Are those who designated June for these festivities aware that this month is named for the Roman goddess Juno, the queen of the gods, the wife of Jupiter, and the patron of marriage and childbirth? Did those who chose June as Pride Month intend this as a joke, an ironic comment on wedlock and family, or were they just ignorant? Yes, yes, I understand the connection to the Stonewall Riots of 1969, but why consume the entire month?

And why Pride? I was under the impression that those identifying with one of the categories in this alphabet soup were members from birth. If so, taking pride in a quality bestowed by chance and by nature strikes me as humorous. My eyes are blue. Should I celebrate a Blue-Eyed Pride Month?

Another headline which struck my funny bone was Rachel Wolfe’s Wall Street Journal piece, “I Rented an Electric Car for a Four-Day Road Trip. I Spent More Time Charging It Than I Did Sleeping.” The author stopped for hours at charging stations, almost ran out of power several times, and missed numerous appointments. One electric car rider told Wolfe that on a trip to a wedding, she was twice forced to call a towing service when her vehicle died.

And this is the automotive wave of the future? Again, all I could do was shake my head and chuckle.

Meanwhile, in Asheville, North Carolina vandals under the cover of night damaged a pro-life pregnancy center, leaving behind broken windows and red graffiti on the building and the sidewalks. For 12 years, I lived in Asheville, which bills itself as the San Francisco of the South, and so was unsurprised to read about this attack in this “progressive” city, but I thought I’d see what the local paper had to say about this incident. After much digging online, I found a Tweet from the Asheville Citizen-Times showing the paint-splashed facility with this headline: “Mountain Area Pregnancy Services in West Asheville reportedly vandalized and had messages and threats painted on the building.”

Reportedly????? Okay, that one did bring a laugh.

Then came the news of the attempt by some California nutcase to assassinate Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh. No amusement there, not even a morose guffaw.

But here’s a prediction: News of that attempted assassination will quickly disappear down that sinkhole where stories unfavorable to the party in power go to die. Consider what happened to the leaked decision by the Supreme Court regarding Roe v. Wade. We know that someone at the Court released that document, breaking protocol and possibly the law, and apparently there are still efforts to nab the culprit, but that theft occurred well over a month ago. Surely by now the Department of Justice, the FBI, or some organization might have investigated this crime and netted the guilty party.

This one rates another bitter chuckle.

Our government-made shortages also bring sad laughter. A sheriff’s department in Michigan can no longer afford to fill the gas tanks of their police cars, some of the shelves in my grocery store are empty—who’s buying up all that tonic and soda water?—and now stores are evidently running out of tampons. Meanwhile, the trucks that bring goods to all our stores are shutting down for lack of diesel fuel.

The Encyclopedia Britannica defines slapstick comedy as “characterized by broad humor, absurd situations, and vigorous, usually violent actions.” If we omit the bit about broad humor, we see that some of the politicians and bureaucrats causing our country’s problems are experts at slapstick humor. They create absurd situations, which frequently lead to violent actions.

More and more Americans are getting wise to the clowns who purport to have charge of us, our laws, and our culture. With any luck, the elections in November will shut down this circus and restore some sense of reality and reason to the horrible comedy in which we now live.

Image Credit: Flickr-makelessnoise, CC BY 2.0

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Jeff Minick
Jeff Minick
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  • Avatar
    Kalikiano Kalei
    June 15, 2022, 12:08 am

    What’s that old saying? Oh yes, "Not my circus, not my monkeys!" Most regrettably, whether the monkeys in reference ARE blood relations or not, it’s still NOT my circus.

    Many moons ago, when I was born on my Celtic tribe’s adopted reservation (in the Disunited States of America), I took pride (NOTE: No association with that recently co-opted gay word) in having been born in the same month my pagan ancestors traditionally leaped around a huge Mid-Summer bonfire, somewhere in Europe’s Alpine vastness, to celebrate Summer Solstice, just two days before that ancient astronomical event. That was before, of course, our ‘people of gay colors’ (is that politically correct enough to satisfy the progressive censors?) took over ‘my month’. When I learned that my day was also America’s ‘Father’s Day’, I was disappointed to learn that I (never a ‘Dad’ myself) had to share ‘my’ day with fathers everywhere (who are now looked upon with disregard and disaffection by radical feminists for myriad political reasons). The final straw, I suppose, was when ‘people of black color’ decided to make ‘my day’ a national celebration they call Juneteenth. Holy Moly, Saint Padraigh! The final indignity, may be when the ‘people of gay colors’ also co-opted the rainbow as their very own shamanistic symbol, which up until that moment had admirably served since ancient times in the Hawai’ian Islands (another adopted home of mine) as THEIR symbol of Universal Aloha. [And then there’s the ‘Rainbow Bridge’ that all good doggies cross when their mortal lives end, but I can assure you there are absolutely NO LGBTQA+ canines! Dogs have always proven so much better than us humming beans in so many ways…]

    Is nothing sacred anymore? Are we to be robbed of every single nuance of our existence by these cultural interlopers? At least we Celts and Hawai’ians still have our lovely emerald green (and bloody woe to he who tries to challenge OUR franchise on it, begorrah!).

    Mallacht ar éinne a thógann a thuilleadh leis an drochscéal seo! Idir an dá linn, bíodh lá álainn agat!

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  • Avatar
    Jim Ruby
    June 15, 2022, 9:52 am

    I always thought the alphabet group mis-using the Pride thing was actually harmful to their cause. You can’t be proud of something you were born to, you can only truly take pride in something you accomplish. So them taking ‘pride’ in their gayness means they’ve chosen to accomplish gayness, thereby negating their claim that they were born that way.

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  • Avatar
    Richard
    June 17, 2022, 5:48 pm

    This began with accepting people as they are. It’s evolved into adoring people with obvious mental issues. Celebrate Madness!

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