Maya Angelou once said: “When they show you what they are, believe them.” I always knew what he was but even I did not expect this. On day one, he pardoned January 6^th “hostages” who used to be called criminals.

Trump 2.0 is now a full court press. Scores of executive orders have been issued ranging from immigration to tariffs on goods from China, Mexico, and Canada to an abolition of DEI (diversity, equity and inclusion) efforts by the federal government, and forbidding transgender women from participating in women’s sports.

Then there is the attempt to reduce federal employees by a buyout and the purging of certain agencies (the Justice Department particularly) and the firing of any person (attorney or FBI agent) who was involved in prosecuting the various cases against Trump, all of which have been consigned to the dustbin.

And then there is the silly stuff: retaking the Panama Canal, taking Greenland from the Danes, renaming the Gulf of Mexico and making the Gaza strip into the new Riviera once the 2,000,000 Palestinians are removed. This silly stuff upsets foreign leaders, generates news and opinion pieces, but is likely going nowhere. Imagine the American military taking over Greenland, which is subject to Danish control. The Danes are NATO members and all NATO countries, including the U.S., would be required to come to the defense of Greenland. So Americans fighting Americans. Oops. Never mind.

The “Gaza Riviera” has been opposed by every ally, every enemy, and by normally obedient Republican senators, including Lindsey Graham. The message has been delivered in diplomatic terms but translates in everyday speak as “what drugs are they putting in your Diet Cokes.”

The president’s attempt to end “birthright citizenship” runs squarely into the wording of the 14th Amendment and will not be successful. Again, however, there is a great amount of news, articles and opinion pieces. A Ronald Reagan appointed judge has already indicated that it is the most unconstitutional provision he has ever seen in 40 years as a federal judge.

All of this activity has caught the Democrats on their back foot and, in the words of a friend of mine, they don’t know whether to “shit or go blind.” Some of this is of their own making as the Biden administration’s failure to secure the southern border put wind behind Trump’s sails and may have determined the election.

Has he done anything right? The answer is yes, but since Trump is a hammer, he views every problem as a nail; accordingly, there is only one way to proceed and that is to smash it until the nail is gone. Thus, on immigration he is not content to round up the criminal illegals but must round up “all” illegals. (Democrats want to call these people “undocumented” but if you ask to see their documents it would prove that they were “illegals”). He and his people will not pledge to leave public schools, nonprofits and churches working with illegals alone so hysteria and fear increases daily as well it should.

The “Hammer” announces that that he is preparing Guantánamo Bay for 30,000 illegal prisoners. What is the criminal and civil penalty for being an illegal? A jail sentence of up to six months and a fine of $50 assuming that you are a first-time offender. Sending these first-time offenders to Guantánamo for 6 months or less seems stupid. At the time of the writing of this blog, apparently nine “violent” illegals have been sent to Guantánamo. I am not aware of any court case which determined that these illegals were “violent” so I think the ACLU may have a field day on this.

Elon Musk, who is now heading the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) has just recently come up with the idea, endorsed by Trump, that the US agency responsible for foreign aid (USAID) should be abolished since it is staffed by Democrats and spends about $70 billion a year and getting rid of it will save about $21 billion as the rest will be administered by the State Department .

I will believe in Musk as soon as he turns his sights on the Department of Defense budget which comes in at $900 billion a year. Let’s see if he has the wherewithal to take on the military industrial complex instead of a foreign aid agency that most people don’t care about or understand. And how about the $11 billion a year that his companies receive from NASA for Space X. Does it really make sense to send rockets into space when there are so many other necessary needs here?

Cutting off foreign aid that provides AID medicines and combats famines only affects “foreigners” and not US citizens who vote in a congressional district and work in the local Lockheed plant. The defense budget has some serious money and, God knows, there is an incredible amount of duplication, waste and unnecessary procurements.

One thing I think that he has gotten right is to require federal workers to return to their workplace rather than working from home. My experience with full-time workers who are “working from home” is that, in many cases, they are not working at all but running personal errands. A paralegal at a prominent Baltimore law firm decided that “working from home” meant that she could work from the beach in Ocean City Maryland.

The other thing I think he has gotten right is to abolish DEI in federal agencies. Numerous corporations have decided to do the same. There is one significant problem with DEI programs, and it concerns the E which stands for equality. In too many instances, the way to determine whether E has been reached is to see the percentages of various groups in various employment categories. So, too often, the DEI coordinator sets quotas. There are any number of laws which forbid discrimination for multiple reasons (race, sex, age, religion, etc.). We don’t need DEI coordinators throughout the federal agencies and, for that matter, embedded in universities and corporations. Equality needs to mean equal opportunity not equal result for each identity group.

Already the DEI ban has resulted in a federal lawsuit against the Trump Administration filed in the United States District Court for the District of Maryland. The suit is brought by the City of Baltimore and joined by the National Association of Diversity Officers in Education as well as others. The fact that there is a national association is testament that the DEI infrastructure is prodigious. The DEI officers throughout the American economy can see what is coming and, you can bet, these diversity officers are very well paid and have much to lose.

Disallowing transgender women from participating in girl sports seems sensible, but, in typical Trump fashion, it was announced in a grand press conference peopled by young girls in ponytails wearing their gym clothes and it probably affects maybe 10 people in the country.

Readers of this blog will know that I am no fan of Trump (see “No Sympathy for the Devil” blog dated January 18, 2024). Nevertheless, even a blind squirrel occasionally finds a nut. The problem is that Trump is not blind and there are many nuts which the “Hammer” wants to crush even though those “nuts” are valuable. One of the most recent nuts was dismantling USAID. George W. Bush’s tenure had many misfires, but one notable success was his AIDS initiative carried out by USAID.  It saved millions of lives and demonstrated both America’s good intentions and its “soft power” to the rest of the world and particularly Africa.

It’s not as if the United States has not seen “disruptors” as presidents. There’s Andrew Jackson, Theodore Roosevelt and Franklin Roosevelt. I think we will survive Trump as the loyal opposition is starting to form and the federal courts will likely do their job.

A friend of mine told me this week that her 13-year-old grandson, Justin, called her absolutely irate about the suspension of TikTok, which he frequently used to make videos of things that he was doing. “MaMa, Cheeto Head just shut down TikTok.”  Actually, Cheeto Head had given TikTok a 75-day lease on life.

Justin was irate about Cheeto Head for the wrong reasons but I thought it best to leave him that way so the rest of his sixth-grade class, his school and his community would soon feel the same.

In the late 1980s and early 1990s there was a very popular television show set in a bar called “Cheers.” It starred Ted Danson as Sam “Mayday” Malone, a former major league pitcher and a world class womanizer, who owned the joint and was the bartender. Significant roles were played by Shelley Long, Rhea Perlman, George Wendt, Woody Harrelson and Kelsey Grammer. Cheers was a Boston bar where “everybody knows your name.”

All of us, in our younger days, had places whether it would be a bar, a gym, a class, a sports team or any other grouping where “everyone knew our name.” As we grow older, most of those type of places tend to recede in our lives.

Given my current ambulatory challenges, my usual default position is a recliner. There are not a lot of things that you could do in a recliner, but reading is one of them. One of my daily reads is the local newspaper. I used to read only the written obituaries but now I have graduated to reading the death notices. Obviously, that is a function of my age and, as Carl Reiner once said he did the same, and if he wasn’t in them, he would then have breakfast.

There are also other portions of the newspaper that are fun to read. One of my favorites is the list of people having birthdays on that particular day. Typically, the people are actors, musicians, and other celebrity types. Don’t laugh. Where else could you find out that Joey the CowPolka King is 76? Sometimes, I don’t know any of the people but, usually, I know two or three but, if they are under 40, “forget about it.”

But for every rule there is an exception. For example, the birthdays of December 27, 2024 were the following: guitarist Mick Jones was 80; drummer T. S. Monk was 75; actor Tovah Feldshuh was 71; actor, Maryam D’Abo was 64; actor. Ian Gomez was 60; guitarist Matt Slocum was 52; actor Wilson Cruz was 51; actor Masim Oka was 50; actor Jay Ellis was 43; singer Haley Williams was 36; singer Shay Mooney was 33; and finally, actor Timothee Chalamet was 29.

So, I don’t know about you, but I knew no one except the youngest who is now starring in the Bob Dylan movie “A Complete Unknown” which, according to my son, is a must see. I recognize the name of Monk but the Monk I knew was his father Thelonious who was an American jazz pianist.

The business of getting old and realizing that your “sell by date” is approaching is very sobering. There are any number of unwelcome physical changes. Someone once said that we start to resemble what we eat which may explain why my neck now resembles that of a chicken and, by the way, what is happening to my belly which keeps growing; and then the mental change because your brain atrophies just like your muscles. Things like pickleball, movies, friends, good books, Netflix, Prime and crossword puzzles divert our attention from what’s coming but coming it is.

The comedian Dave Barry recently wrote that pickleball courts now occupy approximately 43% of the land mass of the United States and there are legions of pickleball boomers who are trying to get all others to join. Stores cannot keep knee braces in stock as they are flying off the shelves. I guess the notion is that, if everybody starts playing, the noise complaints will go away as we will all be deaf.

I recently saw a television show where two retired detectives were going back-and-forth about their current status. One said that “We are gone but not forgotten.” The other replied “No we are forgotten but not gone.” 

Time has a way of erasing memory. There are 188 members of the Maryland General Assembly which meets in Annapolis, Maryland. Approximately a third of those individuals reach Annapolis by driving on I-97 which is the road from Baltimore and points north. A sign on a portion of I-97 indicates it is dedicated to Senator Jack Cade; it was so dedicated by a formal Legislative Resolution in 1996. I will wager that only one elected official of the sixty has any idea who Senator Cade was. In less than 30 years, an individual who was once worthy of a formal Resolution is now virtually unknown.

The same thing happens over and over. The older generation is on its way out; the next generation is in a place where everybody knows your name; the youngest generation, whether it knows it or not, it is on its way to that place. Sons and daughters replace fathers and mothers and their children, in turn, replace them. It’s as if there’s only so much room on the planet. 

So, what to do? The answer is pretty easy. Carry on unless you’re inclined to disable the airbag and drive your car at a very high speed into a tree.

The Book of Ecclesiastes appears as one of the Writings of the Hebrew Bible and is in the Wisdom Literature of what Christians call the Old Testament. In many ways, it is one of the most quoted portions of the Bible. The most quoted phrase is “there is nothing new under the sun.” In other words, what we are now experiencing has been experienced by all others since time immemorial.

A well-known section starts as follows:

To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven: A time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which is planted; A time to kill, and a time to heal; a time to break down, and a time to build up; A time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance;

The message of Ecclesiastes can be considered pessimistic or, more likely, realistic for some scholars say it instructs us to enjoy the gifts of living which God has given us.

Apparently, those “gifts” include a chicken neck and a distended belly. Bear up because it will be over soon and, maybe, we will be “gone but not forgotten.” And before it’s over, there are spouses, significant others, friends, neighbors, children and grandchildren to enjoy and, of course, pickleball games to play. All of these things help us to get through the evils in the world that arrive on our doorstep every day. In the end we all want the light to conquer the darkness.

In the meantime, follow the admonition in numerous billboards featuring cows, with one slight change: “Eat less chikin ”

I have a blog which is about 90% complete but not yet ready for prime time for my 1,000,000+ readers (maybe an exaggeration; still 150 is not awful although pretty close).

Today is the Feast of the Epiphany which commemorates the arrival of the three Maji or Kings from the East who had followed a star to Bethlehem, seeking to do homage to the newly born King of the Jews. There they found Jesus, his mother Mary and her husband Joseph.

In South America, this is known as “Little Christmas” and children receive gifts. It is also known as “The Feast of the Three Kings.”

In any event, as the Christmas season winds to an end, I thought that the appropriate blog for today would be Jordan Smith’s rendition of” Mary Did You Know.” It actually came to me in a dream last night .Jordan was the winner of the Voice competition with this song.

So please listen to Mary Did You Know

80 years ago on June 6, 1944, 225 Army Rangers scaled the hundred-foot cliff of Point du Hoc to take out the German guns trained downward on Omaha Beach. Before it was over, 77 of the 225 Rangers died while most were wounded and only a handful were able to continue fighting; 2,400 died on Omaha Beach that day and most are buried in the Normandy American Cemetery. That cemetery holds just shy of 10,000 Americans who died in the Normandy invasion. Additionally, 1,557 soldiers classified as “Missing in Action” are commemorated there.

On the 40th anniversary of D-Day, President Reagan stood on that promontory and recalled “The Boys of Pointe du Hoc” comparing their efforts to begin the end of the Nazi tyranny to the then current need to end the Soviet Union’s stranglehold over Eastern Europe. A few years later, the Berlin Wall would come down and Poland, East Germany, Estonia, Lithuania, Latvia and Czechoslovakia would finally enjoy freedom. As the Wall was coming down, a young KGB agent named Vladimir Putin was busy destroying incriminating records of the East German Stasi before he scurried back to Moscow.

On the 80th anniversary of D-Day, just weeks ago at the Normandy American Cemetery, President Biden invoked “The Ghosts of Pointe du Hoc” to compare their sacrifice to the sacrifice now needed to repel Putin’s invasion of Ukraine.”

William Faulkner once wrote: “The past is never dead. It is not even past.” The past is never past because what happened in the past is repeated time and again. So, on the political level, the forces of authoritarian tyranny will always vie with the forces of personal freedom.

Tom Brokaw coined the name “The Greatest Generation” referring to the American men and women who came through the Depression and then faced up to the Nazi threat and were responsible for ending it. They then returned home. When they returned home, they did not talk too much about their war exploits but they did do one thing: they formed and joined numerous civic and social clubs devoted to improving their communities. For example, when you drive into the city of Annapolis, Maryland, you will see a sign bearing the emblems of numerous social and civic organizations. (Lions, Optimists, Kiwanis, Rotary, etc.). I think the Annapolis sign carries perhaps 10 to 12 emblems.

These groups contributed a variety of ways to their local communities. The Optimists in the 1950s were the “Friends of the Boy and activities included athletic leagues and essay and oratorical contests. Today, Optimists run programs for all kids. The Lions concentrated on medical assistance to those in need and have a special interest in helping the blind. The Kiwanis Club in each community decides how to best serve that community with a particular interest in children. Anyone who follows baseball knows that the American Legion sponsors the best teams in the community. The common concern of each of these groups: bettering the communities where they operate.

My father was a member of “The Greatest Generation.” A World War II veteran, he was injured in a training exercise at Fort Benning, Georgia shortly before his unit was to depart for Europe. That unit ended up in the Battle of the Bulge in the Ardennes Forest and only a few returned. He never forgot that.

Like many of that generation, he was active in his community. He was the charter president of the Hyattsville Optimist Club and became “Mr. Optimist” with his record of 37 years of perfect attendance. He was also a member of the American Legion, the Rotary, and the Knights of Columbus.

Unlike him, I have never joined any civic group and my only contribution to my community has been coaching Little League baseball, being on the PTA at my children’s school and being on the Parish Council of my local church, all of which is something but far less than that contributed by my father. Of course, my father did these things as well.

It is probably incorrect to say that the explosion of membership in service clubs in the 1950s was the result of the “shared service” experience of The Greatest Generation. But that experience certainly helped. Of course, everything was not hunky-dory with The Greatest Generation. My third base coach was convicted of killing his first wife after the same hitman he hired to kill his third wife spilled the beans about the first murder.

In almost all instances, the membership of these clubs has plummeted dramatically since the 1970s. Indeed, the spirit of service seems to be evaporating with every passing year. World War II had one positive effect on American citizens: the notion of shared sacrifice, one for all and all for one. It was the same sense of shared sacrifice that Winston Churchill engendered in the British people. The American men and women serving in the military were matched at home by “Rosie the Riveter” preparing armaments. (click here to see Norman Rockwell’s iconic painting of Rosie the Riveter)

If World War II effectively created “shared service” and that was a positive development for the American people, perhaps we should dust off the notion that all citizens should be enlisted into some type of service for others. We could require that all citizens, upon reaching the age of 18, should spend two years in a service role before they reached the age of 26. For example, some could enlist in the military; some could spend two years in the Peace Corps or two years in Vista (Volunteers in Service to America) or working on a project to save the environment similar to the Civilian Conservation Corps which existed in the 1930s and was the most popular of the New Deal programs. Others could spend two years serving in nonprofit organizations.

Participants would be paid the equivalent of a military salary with appropriate adjustments. Israel requires the citizens to spend two years in the military. This would be our equivalent, but the military would only be one place where one could serve and there would be multiple other options.

A proposal for mandatory service will be opposed by many. The principal objection will be that America relies upon voluntary activities by its citizens and, with the exception of the draft in times of war, there is no precedent for such an imposition. Moreover, the goal of bringing people together is a form of government social engineering one might expect in authoritarian countries but is surely not proper in the “land of the free.” The more popular expression of this feeling is contained in the Gadsen flag showing a rattlesnake about to strike with the words “don’t tread on me.” That flag was created during the American Revolutionary War and has come to symbolize the notion that individual rights are superior to government demands.

One potential compromise would be to make the two-year service voluntary but reward it with substantial benefits, such as the government providing educational assistance as it did after World War II with the G.I. Bill of Rights. There could be public service ads directed at high school and college students extolling the virtues of joining similar to what the military uses now.

A voluntary program would avoid one significant problem of mandatory programs. The Bill Clintons and Donald Trumps of the world will always find a way to avoid their duty while the average person will not flinch.

One additional bonus of such a program is that it will encourage a sense of community togetherness. The tribal politics of today will be diminished. Many of us will have served and, in that service, met each other.

The whole thing has spread like wildfire. The student protest at Columbia University in favor of the Palestinians in Gaza has resulted in solidarity efforts from fellow students at Southern Cal, the University of Texas, Princeton and countless other universities. Tent encampments are the order of the day as is the chanted slogan “from the river to the sea” which is “Hamas speak” and means that Israel must be eradicated.

Efforts to remove the tent encampments have resulted in howls of protest as the students demand that their university withdraw all support from companies that support or do business with Israel. Many arrests have occurred for violation of criminal trespass laws.

Some will not be surprised that Representative Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez (AOC) was the first to dive headfirst, without looking, into the shallow end of the pool. She criticized the Columbia administration for the “horrific decision” two weeks ago to call on the New York Police Department to deal with their “own” students and further said that the particular NYPD units involved had a reputation for being some of the most violent units on the force. Of course, she was speaking from hundreds of miles away and there is no credible report that the arrests of the trespassing students were violent.

If there is a tweet war between AOC and the police department, my money is on the NYPD which tweeted this response: “I encourage you @AOC to visit Columbia and do a walk-through. Good SAT scores and self-entitlement do not supersede the law. I’m sure that you will agree that we have to teach them these valuable life lessons.” AOC was not done but it would take two weeks for her to make a reappearance and, once again, made one question if her opinions comport with reality.

The situation in Gaza is difficult to witness. A war is being waged where a civilian population stands firmly in the middle and tens of thousands of innocent people have already died. A cease-fire is necessary, but it probably means that Hamas survives although, unfortunately, I think that it survives anyway as the death of each civilian probably results in the recruitment of another Hamas fighter.

Hamas is recognized as a terrorist organization by the European Union and the United States. It has ruled the Gaza for the last 20 years on strict Islamic principles. Having a protest in Gaza on behalf of women or gay rights, like any similar protest in Iran, would and has resulted in extremely harsh sanctions including death and prison sentences. Being a protester in these places requires great intestinal fortitude and a willingness to suffer the worst for your beliefs. The Columbia protesters are not cut out of the same piece of cloth; they have demanded amnesty and an erasure of their criminal records so their future life is not imperiled. There is no such thing as amnesty in Gaza or Iran.

Hamas ignited the current war when it invaded Israel and killed over 1,200 people and took 250 hostages, including the elderly and children. It is well documented that its invasion involved the beheading of people, multiple rapes, setting people on fire and the murdering of children. The current student protesters conveniently forget the precipitating cause of the war. Some are even supportive of Hamas. However, one can be very concerned about the war in Gaza and not be a supporter of Hamas, anti-Semitic or an enemy of Israel.

After the initial arrest of Columbia students two weeks ago, the protesters returned and set up their tents again. The Columbia Administration, relying on hope rather than experience, tried to negotiate its way out of the mess. That did not work as it only seemed to energize the protesters into believing they would win and, hey, why not run out the string. They then occupied Hamilton Hall and began to trash it and set up barricades. Finally, the Administration woke up, realizing there was no pleasing the protesters, and called in the cops again and order was restored. The grounds have been cleaned and now the Commencement can proceed as originally planned.

One of the more humorous demands of the Columbia students occupying Hamilton Hall was that the University provide them with food and water. One of the leaders of the protest told the assembled media that the students occupying the building might otherwise die of “dehydration and starvation or get severely ill. It is basic humanitarian aid that we are looking for” said Johannah King-Slutzky, a 33-year-old PhD student in English and Comparative Literature (her picture above). When a reporter questioned her logic, she noted that, after all, many of the Hamilton Hall protesters had a “meal plan” at Columbia.

You really can’t make this stuff up.

Now that they have been dispersed, they will have to find their own food and drink and have to explain why they have been suspended or expelled from Columbia and, in many cases, have a police record for criminal trespass or destruction of property. There are probably any number of employers who will raise an arched eyebrow when the applicant tries to explain.

If the allegations in a case (Virginia Case) just filed in a federal court in Virginia are true, the so-called student movement at Columbia and the other schools has been financially aided and abetted by network of organizations devoted to spreading the Hamas message calling for the destruction of Israel.

Israel is losing the battle in the court of public opinion because of the civilian deaths in Gaza. There is no easy answer. The destruction of Hamas would benefit not only Israel but the world. Getting there is the problem. Already 30,000 have died and, while many were Hamas fighters, most were not. Israel’s current government seems to have a bad war plan and no sensible plan to resolve the conflict. Hopefully, someone with common sense will convince the Israelis to stop killing innocent civilians.

In a few weeks, this will all die down as the universities shut down for the summer. I am pretty sure we have pretty much seen the end of it. The Democratic National Convention will probably see Gaza protesters, but not at the level that the anti-Vietnam protesters who showed up in 1968 for the simple reason that the 1968 protesters were arguing for themselves, i.e., not to be drafted for a war in Vietnam. The 1968 protesters were right about a war which could not be won and was not won. The1968 protesters, unlike many in the current crowd, did not try to disguise themselves by wearing masks. It’s hard to suspend (or respect) someone who disguises their face behind a keffiyeh.

So, I’ll leave it to the celebrity politician (e.g., when her lipstick shade was publicly revealed, it sold out in a matter of hours) to end this blog. A few days ago, after Columbia had been restored to normal, AOC complimented the Columbia protesters and others for their “peaceful” protests. Apparently, her newspaper did not report on (1) the vandalism at Hamilton Hall (2) the pitched battles at UCLA which resulted in police intervention and a clearing of the encampment to restore UCLA to normalcy or (3) the cancellation of the Southern California commencement due to security concerns.

Sometimes, people only see what they want to see.

Hollywood’s annual night of self-congratulations – the Oscars – occurred a few Sundays ago. Most of you know that Oppenheimer beat Barbie and Killers of the Flower Moon for best picture.

However, I suspect that few of you know that, in order to be considered for Best Picture (starting in 2024), the nominee must comply with at least 2 of 4 Diversity, Inclusion and Equity Standards (DEI) identified as Standards A, B, C and D. Standard A is for on-screen (actors and plot); Standard B is for off-screen leadership (support personnel); Standard C is for training and Standard D for marketing. See Oscars Standards.

But Hollywood being Hollywood, the Standards are more fantasy than real. The best picture nominee must meet 2 of the 4 standards and it’s virtually impossible not to meet at least two.

Group A Standards include the following:

1. One actor in a major role must be from an underrepresented group (all such groups listed below).
2. At least 30% of the actors in minor roles must be from underrepresented groups.
3. The main story line, theme or narrative of the film is centered on an underrepresented group(s).

A movie must comply with only one of the 3 and complying with Number 1 is perhaps the easiest.  Number 2 and Number 3 would really change things a lot but the go to loophole is Number 1. Remember, however, that there are three more standards to go and you only have to hit two of them so, if you fail here, you are not out of the running.

Group B Standards provide for the following:

1. Two or more department heads must be from underrepresented groups and at least one of these positions must belong to an underrepresented racial or ethnic group.
2. At least six other crew members must come from underrepresented groups.
3. At least 30% of film crew members must be from underrepresented groups.

Again, Standard B only requires that one of the three must be met. So having a female Casting Director and a Samoan Cinematographer makes everything good. One down, one to go.

So how did “lily white” Oppenheimer make the cut? Well, it blew through Standard B since at least a dozen women were department heads and the head hairstylist was Hispanic.

And since Oppenheimer was a Universal film, it also satisfied both Standard C (training programs) and D (marketing) since Universal has extensive training programs for underrepresented ethnic and racial groups and, in addition, it has a Black Director of Domestic Marketing.

In other words, Universal films will always make the cut, even if they cannot comply with Standards A and B.

The bottom line: these DEI standards are a farce but allow the Hollywood elite to “signify” their commitment to inclusion (as long as it doesn’t hurt).

What is an underrepresented group? Here’s the list of the current racial or ethnic groups but I am sure that others will soon apply:

This proposal probably made Samuel Goldwyn (MGM), Jack Warner (Warner Bros), Louis B. Mayer (MGM) and Jesse Lasky (Paramount) stand up in their graves as they and other Jewish people are primarily responsible for the creation of Hollywood. As the New York Times reviewer wrote (July 6, 1955) in reviewing a Scott Eyman’s biography of Lewis B. Mayer (“The Lion of Hollywood”) he was one of “the first- and second-generation East European Jews who built Hollywood created an idealized world where all differences were cast aside in favor of a dream in which everything was beautiful.”

The whole subject of DEI standards has become a lightning rod in the cultural wars we are now experiencing. For those on the right, they are “red meat” and, for those on the left, they must be vigorously defended. I think that the right may be more correct than the left on this issue.

The real hotbed for DEI standards is the American college or university. For example, the Chief Diversity Officer of Johns Hopkins Medicine recently resigned after she sent a newsletter identifying people with “privilege” (Baltimore Sun, March 6, 2024). Dr. Sherita Golden wrote that “privilege” was the “word of the month” defining it as a “set of unearned benefits given to people who are in a specific social group.” The groups she identified were white people, heterosexuals, cisgender people, men and Christians.

Once the conservative media got hold of that newsletter all hell broke loose and the national media picked up the story. And while Dr. Golden has resigned as Chief Diversity Officer, she remains on the Hopkins faculty. Hopkins Medicine has announced that a “national search” for a new Diversity Chief is underway. Think about that. Diversity Officers for universities are in demand on a national basis and I’m quite sure that they are extremely well paid and have well-staffed offices. This may be one of several reasons that college graduates are burdened with overwhelming debt.

I fall into all five of Dr. Golden‘s identified groups so I have “unearned privilege” times 5. But if you look at her definition more carefully, I think 99+% of the population are included given her comment about “cisgender people.” Cisgender means anyone who identifies with the plumbing they were given at birth. Almost all members  of “underrepresented” groups are cisgender. In fact, with the exception of the transgender community, it’s hard to find anyone who does not fit into this category.

DEI Standards identify people in certain groups as being frozen in amber and whose only recourse is through a DEI intervention. Life is much more fluid than that and to think otherwise is fundamentally misleading. To create an infrastructure to carry out DEI interventions is good for the well-paid interveners but not for anybody else.

I don’t think Denzel Washington needed a DEI intervention to become one of the finest actors in my lifetime. He is excellent in good movies (Philadelphia, Malcolm, X, The Hurricane, Training Day, Glory) and even in mediocre movies (Equalizer 1,2,3). Always a joy to watch, he has been nominated for best actor on numerous occasions and has received an Oscar for best actor and another for best supporting actor.

I don’t think Oprah Winfrey needed a DEI intervention to become the GOAT of talk show hosts. She is just incredibly talented.

I don’t think Ellen DeGeneres needed a DEI intervention to become a talk show host with legions of followers. She too is remarkably talented.

I don’t think that Jerry Seinfeld and Larry David needed a DEI intervention to become the greatest comedians of recent years. They too were so talented that they have been keeping us laughing for 30 years.

There is no question that many people are discriminated against. I am quite sure that Denzel, Oprah, Ellen, Jerry and Larry experienced such discrimination and countless sleights, many intentional and some not. In the end, however, talent will out every time.

The DEI police don’t recognize this fundamental truth, nor do the universities who go on “national searches.”

In 1961, Connie Hawkins was expelled from the University of Iowa. He was not expelled for poor grades or misbehavior. Indeed, he had done nothing wrong but was the victim of a false rumor.

Hawkins was a freshman on a basketball scholarship and his name had surfaced in a college basketball “point shaving” gambling scheme centered in New York City where he lived. Hawkins was a well-known high school basketball star in New York City and that had earned him the scholarship at the University of Iowa. He adamantly denied involvement, a denial subsequently confirmed by independent investigators but too late. Indeed, even if he had wanted to “shave points,” it would’ve been impossible for him to do so since, in those years, a freshman could not play on the varsity team.

His expulsion effectively blackballed him from playing basketball for any college or university. The head of the National Basketball Association(NBA) piled on, saying he would not be allowed to play in the NBA.

Connie Hawkins was not only a good player but, by all accounts, may have been the greatest player of his generation. If Nike had been around in the 1960s, there might have been a shoe line known as the “Air Hawks,” a precursor to the “Air Jordans” of more recent times.

The intersection of gamblers and sports figures is concerning. Did Sonny Liston take a dive in the first round of his heavyweight championship fight with Muhammad Ali for the benefit of gamblers? Did Pete Rose take his foot off the gas pedal because he was betting on baseball games? No matter that Pete (Charlie Hustle) played as hard as always. Because of his gambling, he will never be admitted to the Baseball Hall of Fame where he belongs as one of the best players of the 20th century.

But 1961 is not only some 60 years ago, it is the Pleistocene age when compared to the present day. Back then, no one would have dared suggest that a professional sports team be located in a place such as Las Vegas.

The most recent version of the Super Bowl was played in Las Vegas. Las Vegas now has an NFL football team (Raiders), a WNBA basketball team (Aces), a NHL hockey team (Golden Knights) and it’s about to get a MLB baseball team (Athletics). The Commissioner of the National Basketball Association has just announced that Vegas is at the head of the queue for an NBA franchise when expansion occurs, and LeBron James has  indicated that he would like to be the owner of that franchise. What could possibly go wrong when professional athletes are in the gambling mecca of the United States?

You really have to wonder about a city whose motto is: “What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas!” Most cities call attention to their museums, their restaurants, their historic sites, their waterfront and the like. Vegas calls attention to the “sins” that can be committed there and adopts a “see no evil, speak no evil” attitude. That’s not exactly a message that you want to give to your children or, for that matter, to almost anyone.

There are surely upright citizens in Vegas, but it clearly leads any location in the United States for the per capita number of gamblers, grifters, hookers, touts and con men. In short, it is a place where things can run amok.

I suppose we should have seen it coming. Anybody watching a televised professional sport in the last few years has been inundated with ads from gambling websites (FanDuel, DraftKings, MGM, Caesars, etc.). You not only can bet on the game you’re watching before it starts but you can make bets on the game as it is progressing. Who was in favor of this? Well, obviously the gambling companies but maybe, not so obviously, the professional sports leagues and the state governments which take a slice of the take. Maryland took in $6.5 million from sports betting in the month of December 2023 and expects to make not less than $40 million a year. Basically, everybody gets a piece of the action.

Things are so out of control that children are now encouraged to use their smart phones to place bets with the equivalent of Monopoly money. The National Football League (NFL) and Nickelodeon launched a kid’s site which has sport betting elements, www.legalsportsreport.com. Sponge Bob, the animated Nickelodeon character recognized by all kids, can now help to pick the winner of the Super Bowl. Presumably, once schooled, kids can then graduate to the real deal.

Well, is this the end of the Country as we know it? Probably not, but I am not comfortable when sports and gambling are so chummy. The genie may be out of the bottle, but the least that the professional sports leagues could do is pump the brakes every once in a while. For instance, get out of the business of hooking kids.

In the end, Connie Hawkins did play in the NBA and was a star. But he only succeeded by bringing a lawsuit against the NBA for its role in denying him the opportunity to play. The NBA relented when it was clear that its defense was going to fail, and it arranged a settlement which awarded Hawkins today’s equivalent of $10 million and the right to play. He had lost at least five good years because of the NBA’s intransigence but still he was inducted into the Basketball Hall of Fame.

The NBA has now forgotten about its old objections as it readies entrance into the Vegas sweepstakes because that’s where the money is. The NFL is already there along with Nickelodeon.

Who knows but it may be a possibility that, in another 60 years, Sponge Bob is inducted into the Football Hall of Fame.

In 1968, the Rolling Stones released their song “Sympathy for the Devil”. While not their best-known song, it is one that you will not forget once you have heard it. The song engendered speculation that the band was worshiping Satan but that seems very unlikely given the lyrics of the song. However, if there had been a church for drugs, sex and rock ‘n’ roll, those boys would have been in the front pew. Give it a listen Sympathy.

When Donald Trump descended on the escalator in 2015 to announce that he was running for President, I told my wife that he was the “devil” and I meant that he was an instrument of the real Devil who appeared as a Serpent in the Garden of Eden and appeared as himself in the Gospels of the New Testament, tempting a weakened Jesus after his 40 day fast, promising him dominion over the entire world if he would just recognize him. Jesus refused. The American electorate did not share my concern about Trump.

I had been following Trump since the 1980s when he became the owner of the New Jersey Generals, a team in the United States Football League. He then single-handedly imploded that league when he challenged the National Football League in a court case. There are so many things to say about Trump, and most of them have been said, but I think the most succinct summary was just published by David Brooks in the New York Times. With Trump, the whole world is “us” versus “them” and “us” is always being screwed by “them.” Like Satan, outright fabrication is a necessary tool.

A few examples:

“They” stole the election from “us.”

“They” are overrunning “our” country, and “they” are not like “us”, so we need to keep “them“ out. (never mind that current “us” are the descendants of the “them” from an earlier time).

And he has made the Republican Party into a party of “grievance” because he is all about grievance and settling the score with his enemies.

To me, one of his more despicable comments was his reference to former Senator John McCain as a “loser” because he had been captured and spent five years in a North Vietnamese prison camp where he was so abused that he could not raise his arms. Meanwhile, Trump, who loves military trappings, made sure that he concocted bone spurs to avoid that same war.

The current polling data shows Trump winning in the electoral college states over Biden. I think the actual election will be much different as the economy continues to get strong, gas prices drop, and Social Security increases kick in. Nevertheless, the political class is apoplectic and in a complete dither over the current projections.

The editorial writers in all of our major papers, and the opinion columnists in those papers (whether conservative or liberal), in one form or another, believe that a Trump victory, as one of my friends said, would be the end of democracy and that the American experiment, almost 250 years old, would be over.

To which I say, quoting Pat Brady in the Roy Rogers television show of the 1950s, “Whooaa Nellie Bell” (the phrase he used to stop his Jeep, Nellie Bell). This flimflam artist – no matter how odious – has neither the discipline nor the smarts to undo 250 years of the American Republic. Will his four years be pretty? Absolutely not. But he will have a Congress and a Supreme Court to deal with, and he did extremely poorly with both in his first go round. Indeed, even though he self-proclaims himself a “winner,” he has been the regular “loser” in his thousands of court fights. Why should that change?

And don’t count out the American people. Only a handful of true believers are not disgusted by what happened on January 6, 2021 when the Trump hoard overtook the Capitol. You could bet your bottom dollar that those scenes will be run over and over again in political ads. For me, there is little doubt that most Americans blame Trump for that debacle and will remember it in the voting booths. Most Americans do not think that the crowd at the Capitol that day are, in current Trump speak, “hostages” who deserve to be pardoned.

Trump caught lightning in a bottle in 2016 and he may yet catch it again. There are some of you who will agree that Trump is a bad fellow but not agree with me that he is an instrument of the Devil. Well, the Devil is an attractive fellow and very good at persuading people that he doesn’t exist. After all, he led the fallen angels so we know he had considerable charisma although in the end he lost. But he hasn’t given up.

I remember Trump being interviewed by a religious broadcaster in 2016. He was asked what his favorite part of the Bible was. He deflected by saying “oh there are so many that he couldn’t pick just one.” But once pressed, he finally said: “an eye for an eye and a tooth for tooth.” I don’t think it’s an accident that this quote was from the Old Testament and that this instruction was radically changed in the New Testament (rather than revenge the new rule is to “turn the other cheek” ). The Devil would never want to acknowledge the New Testament where Jesus refused his offer.

So why all this religious claptrap and stories of fallen angels? Someone says: “You must know that many of us are not religious and do not accept these ancient fables you reference.” I do know this but I think the theological story is a good one and explains a lot. I realize there are other explanations but they don’t seem to be as persuasive.

And Trump supporters? Are they also devils? Absolutely not, but Trump will never call forth the “better angels” in us to which Abraham Lincoln appealed; he only calls for our “worse angels” because, like the Devil, his purpose is to divide not unite, to create anger not love, to pit one against another and keep us from achieving the possibilities within ourselves.

To be sure, Trump has raised a number of significant issues such as uncontrolled immigration and the Democratic Party is hardly blameless. But ultimately Trump is not about solving the issues because that requires hard work, negotiation, compromise, and the willingness not to vilify the people you are negotiating with on Twitter (now X).

If the whole world is divided into either firefighters or arsonists, Trump will never be a firefighter. Nor will the Devil.