“Meanwhile in Britain: Transwoman Uses ‘Her’ Penis to Play Keyboard on Live Television.”

That title for Peter Caddle’s Oct. 23rd article brought a storm of laughter, which I needed. Those few words not only display the rot in our culture, but they’re also just downright funny.

The story itself, which describes the antics of Jordan Gray, “a British biologically male comedian who identifies as a woman,” includes some of Gray’s abundant obscenities, commonly used by so many comedians these days. And the video footage, which I didn’t watch, comes with a stern warning that “Jordan Gray’s nude performance is NOT censored.”

Gray’s gig apparently gives a whole new meaning to “tickle the ivories.”

Once my laughter had subsided, I realized once and for all what I have long suspected: Many people in what passes today for Western civilization are mentally ill. I’m no psychologist, which gives me license to add a whole bunch of other synonyms describing them: out to lunch, short a few light bulbs, bats, looney, bonkers, brainsick, and a couple dozen other epithets.

Some who would qualify for my diagnosis are those who arrange or perform in drag queen shows for preschoolers, men and women who believe they can reverse their sex with drugs and surgeries, activists who contend that America is a hotbed of racism, politicians who assure us that inflation doesn’t exist, and “news” commentators who hold that a vast right-wing conspiracy stands poised to end the Republic. And that’s just the short list.

Caddle’s article also mentions that certain members of the media and the Left hailed Gray’s performance as “iconic” and “brave.” They too deserve a bed and a straitjacket in the cuckoo’s nest.

Now, I’ve just paused for a sip of coffee and reread the above words. I’m going to leave them untouched. But realizing that my sentiments are harsh, I perhaps need to take a route here other than scorn.

Let’s face it, these folks need compassion rather than condemnation. If I can summon up that requisite pity, I see that I might react differently.

The next time a man declares himself a woman and enters some female sports event, I could just put on a sad face and say, “Poor thing. Can you imagine being that confused?” When Congress or the president want to shovel trillions of dollars toward climate change or hand over more billions to Ukraine and then decry inflation, I could respond with a shrug: “Well, I guess they missed Economics 101 back in college.” When students yet again violently protest a campus speaker or circulate a petition to ditch some professor who, like me, can’t keep track of all the gender lingo, I could comment, “Bless their hearts. They’re just kids.” And when Joe Biden once more adds another nugget to his blizzard of gaffes, I could shake my head and note, “That wizened old duffer. Can you imagine how hard it is to be president when you’re ‘old and grey and full of sleep?’” (That’s from Yeats’ “When You Are Old,” a favorite poem of mine.)

Of course, the problem is that so many of the mad want to inflict their delusions, disorders, and psychoses on the rest of us. It’s one thing, for instance, to tinker with nuclear war in the privacy of your own skull. But when you bandy that idea about in public—as some of our politicians are doing in regard to Russia—in my book, you’ve crossed the line into la-la land.

So, I need to develop some sort of nuanced approach to this matter, lest I myself succumb to the craziness now passing for normality in our emotionally ragged age. Having given it a minute of thought, I think perhaps the old Christian injunction “Condemn the sin, not the sinner” might, with a slight twist, be a help: “Condemn the lunacy, not the lunatic.”

While my approach still needs some fine tuning, I must again express my gratitude to Mr. Caddle for his headline and the glee it provoked. Laughter’s as hard to come by these days as a cheap cut of beef at the grocery store or, for that matter, sanity among the woke.

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Image credit: Flickr-Matt Hecht, PDM 1.0

ITO