Class Clown: A Review

 

 

I am not making this up: Dave Barry has a new book. It is a memoir called Class Clown: The Memoirs Of a Professional Wiseass.  The subtitle is How I Went 77 Years Without Growing Up.

I will save you a lot of time. You should buy this book for yourself. You should buy this book for your friends. You should buy this book in bulk and hand it out on street corners to people that pass by.

It is the funniest book of 2025. In fact, it is probably the funniest book of this decade. Although it is still early, this book is probably the funniest book of the century.

This is Barry's life story of how a kid raised in New York who wore Davey Crockett t-shirts became the best humorist in America, even if that's not a real thing anymore since all of America has decided to become humorless scolds.

Barry's not a stand-up comedian. But his nationally syndicated column was as funny as any act in the past forty years.

It is because Barry has never shied away from the issues of the day, like low-flow toilets, which Barry was criticizing long before Donald Trump heard about them. 

He also alerted us to the dangers of roller-blading Barbies which could spontaneously combust unless you are on "Late Night With David Letterman".

Barry is a champion of the little guy, particularly the little guy who decided to major in English and if there is a more worthless college degree than History it is English.*

His English degree came in handy when he joined a small local Pennsylvania newspaper and was able to cover local events.

From there, he took a job teaching businessmen how to write. This job has now been eliminated by AI.  While he was teaching business writing, he submitted his humorous essays to various newspapers. One thing led to another and soon he was writing a weekly column for Tropic magazine which was the Miami Herald's Sunday insert.

 It was a glorious time.  Living in the Atlanta area, I could read Lewis Grizzard three times a week and our Sunday paper ran Barry's column too. Then, if you were lucky, there would be a magazine running an article written by P. J. O'Rouke.  It was grand, I tell you, just grand.

 Of course, I am required by law to tell you things have not been all peaches and cream in Barry's life. His father, a Presbyterian minister, developed a drinking problem when Barry was in college. His mother, committed suicide after his father died. He's been married three times but is very nice about the two that didn't work out. 

Aside from all that, Barry has led a pretty charmed life. He won the Pulitzer Prize for Commentary in 1988 for "the most creative use of booger jokes since Charles Krauthammer."  No really, he really won a Pulitzer, and his first couple of books were turned into a television show that starred Harry Anderson and it wasn't bad.

I hadn't realized it, but Barry ended his column twenty FREAKIN years ago.  No wonder the country is full of sour pusses who fall over from the vapors if somebody tells a joke. 

But never fear, Barry has a website and a blog. The blog carries hilarious newspaper articles that Barry comments on.  When "24" was on, Barry would do a recap of the latest episode. In the early days of my blog, I would use Barry's recap as a template for my "24" recap. His was much funnier than mine, but he is a professional. 

Barry still does his Year In Review series in December. And yes, I use his Year In Review as a template for my last posting of the year. And yes, his is funnier than mine. 

It was through Barry, I found James Lileks of the Minneapolis Star-Tribune. Lileks has a blog too and a humor column which has been canceled by the powers that be up there. That's the world we live in today.**

Barry is now in the Substack game. You can do the free Substack or you can do the paid Substack. I do the free one. It is just like the old days, funny as ever.  And I am not making that up. 

 

 

* We liberal arts majors always cheer for another liberal arts majors who make a lot of dough.

** Lileks was recently given an assignment by one of his editors and instructed not to put any humor in it. 

 

They Deserve It

 

 

I am shocked.  I simply can't believe it.

Do you mean to tell me that Joe Biden was out of it for most of his presidency? [Definition of "out of it":  Totally cuckoo for Coco Puffs]

And his White House fooled the national press corps?  All of these Ivy League school graduates who would take valuable time out of their schedules to explain how the mean, nasty right-wing media (i.e.: FOX News) would do "deep fakes" and make fun of Biden's stutter?

 In case you don't remember, Joe Biden was elected President in 2020 despite being four-hundred-years old. He was elected because his name was not Donald Trump, a New York land developer best well known for being well known and being an egotistical turd, on his good days. 

There was also the matter of COVID-19, which was all the rage back then. The sliver of the electorate that determines our Presidential elections was tired of Trump and all of his Trump-ness and thought maybe Joe Biden was normal.

There were several problems.  One was being four-hundred-years old. Another was that Biden wasn't exactly Einstein when he wasn't four-hundred-years old.  Other problems included that he's never been a good manager, and he's a terrible, dishonest person. Other than that, he's fine.

However, age was the biggest issue. Biden would fall up steps. Biden would fall off his bicycle. I was in high school when Ford was President and Ford's mishaps was all you ever heard about.

But you heard nothing from our famed news media, the media that wasn't about to let democracy die in darkness, about Biden and his mishaps because, you know, Trump was out there lurking around.

Biden's speeches, when he was not drilled on how important the speech was, were a mess.

In 2023, there was a private school shooting in Nashville, Tennessee. Three children and three adults were killed.  The news announces that THE PRESIDENT will comment on the incident and how it wouldn't happen if we just had these sensible gun laws on the books. The President is announced. He shuffles to the podium. He spends five minutes, at the beginning of his speech, talking about how much he likes ice cream. 

 It didn't take a physician to realize the President wasn't all there. 

The problem wasn't Biden. The problem was that the legacy news media had morphed into a partisan outlet for the Democratic Party. 

H. L. Mencken said a journalist was supposed to "afflict the comfortable and comfort the afflicted." But that's not true.  A journalist is supposed to report what is happening regardless of who it is affecting.

 Ever since the late fifties, national journalism has tilted to the left. Somewhere in the mid-nineties, journalism, especially television journalism, reacted in horror to FOX News being a GOP organ, decided to wear the Democratic Badge proudly. 

When Trump came along, the legacy media 1) could not believe he was elected and 2) would run any story that could possibly inflict damage on Trump and his administration.

When 2020 came around, the Democrats had around twenty potential candidates for the nomination. The one thing that united all of these candidates is they were all, historically speaking, dingleberries. 

It came down to either Biden, a socialist, or one of the dingleberries.  The Democrats went with Biden and he was able to run a campaign from his basement. It worked for him because they could hid his condition with little or no effort.

The Legacy News Media had to have known that they were being played, but in the greatest use of Situation Ethics in the century, they decided not to report the Biden's condition for the good of the country.  You don't want Orange Mussolini again, do you?

Some of the reporting from the New York Times, which has all the news that's fit to print, is funny.

When Special Counsel Robert Hur said Biden presented as an “elderly man with a poor memory” and with “diminished faculties", the Times trotted out medical experts who said the special counsel’s opinions “were not based on science and that its methods bore no resemblance to those that doctors use to assess possible cognitive impairment.” 

You need doctors to tell you that when Grandpa drove into a pond, he could possibly have cognitive impairment.

It wasn't until after his performance in the June debate with Trump that the Democrat Party and the Legacy News Media saw the gaslighting had to stop and finally admit Biden has been defeated by the all-time champ: Time.

Now you have books out by people like Jake Tapper explaining that it was dirty dogs in the White House that hid the President's condition.  They were as shocked as you were because everything they ever heard about the President was that he was as sharp as a tack. 

For only $27.00, you can buy Tapper's book, which helps Tapper deal with being fooled into thinking Joe Biden was A-OK.

And the Legacy News Media wonders why we dumb-dumbs that had to go to state colleges, if we went at all, do not trust them. 

 

 

So Far

 

 

It has gotten to the point where I don't like writing about politics anymore.

One reason is that it is tough. Have you ever tried to write a joke about Doug Burgum, who is either the Secretary of the Interior or the Secretary of Energy?  

Believe it or not, you must write facts like Jonathan Cain is married to a minister, Paula White. Paula White is the senior advisor of the White House Faith Office or is the Secretary of the Interior.  Mr. Cain is also a member of Journey which is a rock band everybody in my age group loves except me. This is kind of like Pat Benatar being married to Pat Robertson, if Pat Robertson worked in the White House Faith Office.

The great Atlanta radio personality, Southside Steve, says that Journey is the greatest rock band in the history of rock bands. There's this little band called "The Beatles" which I think is better.  Also, "The Rolling Stones" are better. But, hey, if you think Journey is better, then don't stop believing.

Last year, I saw two cover bands that played Journey songs. One played all of the hits. The other played all of the hits and the deep cuts off of Journey's albums.  Let's just say I'm Journey-ed out.

Secondly, while today's climate is certainly divided, it is also performative and about as exciting as a "Happy Days" episode where Ralph Malph uses a slur against Italians and Fonzie makes him sit on it.

One side wants you to say Trump is the best thing ever and we should be happy sharing oxygen with him. The other side wants you to say Trump is Hitler and laughs while he clubs baby seals.

You can't please everybody and my problem is I want to please everybody, at least to the point that they will read my blog.

But here goes my review of Trump 2.0.

 

The Good

 

He has curtailed illegal immigration. You can't say we have open borders now.

 

I haven't figured out why this is such a big issue. We have to have rules, right? And if you come in, you have to do it in the right way.

Additionally, if you are here illegally and you are part of a gang, you shouldn't stay.

 

I'm not a constitutional scholar, so I'll leave the "due process" questions to them. However, at least we are talking about this question and not ignoring it or napping through it like Biden.

 

The second good thing Trump has done is that he is doing the job. He's working. You see him working. Biden called it a day at four o'clock. 

 

Calling for the defunding of NPR and PBS is an idea I've been pushing for years because the government should not be in the radio or television business. Chalk one up in the good column.

 

I know as a cis-male of the Caucasian persuasion, I shouldn't have a negative opinion on DEI (Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion) because DEI is what makes America great, besides the First Amendment and stuff like that. But, Charles C.W. Cooke said it best:  "In practice, diversity, equity, and inclusion has not been diverse, equitable, or inclusive, but uniform, prejudiced, and clannish"

 

The Bad

 

There has been plenty of bad to go around.

The worst is the Trade War.

Trump has, in the words of many leading economists, a hard-on about tariffs. This goes back to when he was appearing on "Oprah" complaining about the Japanese buying all of the office buildings in Los Angeles.

He thinks slapping a tariff will cause manufacturing plants to spring up in the USA, paying good non-union wages.

Those days are gone.

 

Mr. I've Got An MBA From Wharton decided to try out his novel economic theory even though there was no compelling reason to do it besides he evidently was awake in Tariff Class and thought it would be neat to do it.

This has caused the economy to poop on itself. This is funny because one of the things Trump 1.0 did right was the economy.

 

 The Dumb

 

He's gone back to doing his daily, weekly, monthly dumb stuff since the election.

I mean, Pete Hegseth?  I used to watch him on Fox but I was never awed by him.  He is an Ivy Leaguer and he did serve his country, but it is a big step becoming the Secretary of Defense and  he has not been impressive at all.  

The spat Trump had with Volodymyr Zelenskyy wasn't as terrible as it looked but a President, even Trump, has to keep his cool. 

Renaming the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America makes no sense whatsoever.  He didn't even campaign on it and I don't see the point.

The trolling of Canada is another joke I don't get. Why would we want Canada?  I spent several hours in Victoria, British Columbia in late May of 2016 and it was the coldest I have ever been in my life.

Let Canada be Canada and the United States be the United States, eh?!

 

Trump's latest dumb thing was reposting an A.I. image of him as Pope.  This is typical of Trump in that it is tacky but it also shows no class. He just thought it was funny.

But, with Trump, you are going to get the good, the bad, and the dumb.  He's fortunate the Democrats are being just as dumb.  One of these days that might change if the Democrats gets a sudden infusion of brains. 

This doesn't seem likely seeing as their main tactic to win public opinion is to swear loudly.

 

 

 

 

 

 

I Was Wrong

 

 

I'm going to say something unusual.  

I was wrong.
 
A long, long time ago, I came out in favor of paying college athletes, particularly college football players.  The NCAA used to come down hard on football players for some of the most insane reasons. If a player got a T-shirt, a tattoo, or whatever, the player would be suspended.

One school would rat on another school. Schools would be placed on probation. Bowl wins were vacated.

It was just a mess.
 
My reasoning for favoring paying players was they are employees of the school, whether or not the school admits it. The football teams are a part of the marketing department of the school. It is unfair for the school to rake in money from the football team and yet punish the player for accepting money to buy a pizza (buying a pizza was a big deal in 2010-11).

The NCAA has instituted a Name-Image-Likeness (NIL) rule so the players can benefit from things like EA Sports College Football video games. Which seems fair to me. If there was a video game of old, fat, retired hospital revenue cycle analysts, I definitely would want to get a piece of the action. (This would be the worst selling video game ever.)
 
It has caused the really good players to become incredibly wealthy even before becoming a pro. Carson Beck, a fairly good college quarterback, bought a Lamborghini with his NIL money.  I have only seen one Lamborghini in the wild. It was owned by my dentist.

Nico Iamaleava (do not ask me to pronounce his last name) was an excellent quarterback last season for the University of Tennessee. He decided this spring to test the "open market" to see if he could make more money at another school. You can imagine how this has gone over in Knoxville.

 At press time, it looks like Iamaleava will be going to UCLA.  All I can say is good luck, UCLA.

I'm not one of these guys with misty water-colored memories of college football.  You know: the pom-poms, the tailgating, and the singing the old Alma Mater.

First of all, nobody in the 21st Century gives a rat's rear about pom-poms. Tailgating is a fancy word for a picnic and if you heard one Alma Mater, you've heard all of them. (The only lyrics I know from my Alma Mater, Kennesaw State University, is: "Pine Tree covered hills".)

At least in the South, a majority of the football season is played in September and October and it is still hot. Once, and this is the truth, I came home from a football game played in mid-October with a sunburn.

It may surprise you to learn there is a lot of drinking at football games, primarily when the fans are tailgating. This means the fans are well-lubricated by the time they enter the stadium.  Which leads to fighting and vomiting, but not necessarily in that order. 

Going to a college football game is an all day, if not all month, commitment.  And if your team beats the University of Alabama, there is a law that says you must take your goalpost down and throw it in the nearest river.

I am a total free-market guy.  If Iamaleava can find someone dumb enough to pay him a truckload of money, more power to him. He can buy a pizza or a Lamborghini with it, I don't care.

Still, there is something wack about a non-professional making professional type of money.  

I had friends tell me that the NIL was going to destroy college football. I thought they were just being Luddite reactionaries. Now, I think they were right.

I didn't it like the ticky-tacky College Football rules. But this new system is not what I had in mind.

"1923" Like It or Lump It

 

Just like everybody, I've been watching the various shows created by Taylor Sheridan.

His shows are "Yellowstone", "1883", "The Mayor of Kingstown", "Tulsa King", "Lioness", "1923", and "The CBS Evening News With Taylor Sheridan".

His shows are taut dramas with a lot of action, including punching, kicking, biting, shooting, and stabbing.

His shows also feature the most creative use of the F-word ever since Tony Soprano stopped believing in the New Jersey diner.

Everybody curses in a Taylor Sheridan show. Mom, grandmothers, priests, policemen, Girl Scout troop leaders. Everybody.

Mom:  "Did you do your F-wording homework you little mother F-word?"

Kid:  "F-word yes. Get off my F-wording back! F-word. Do we f-wording have  any F-wording Oeros?"

Dog: "Bow F-ing wow!"

"1923" is the sequel to "1883" and a prequel to "Yellowstone". Or as they describe it: "A Yellowstone origin story". It follows the grand and glorious Duttons and their cattle ranch in Montana and the people they have to punch and shoot to keep it because everybody wants their land and their land is important because it is their land.

When we last left Montana, Tim McGraw and Faith Hill found their land in Montana because they liked it, they loved it, and they wanted some more of it.  

Their show, "1883", was a good old-fashioned trip to the West, kind of like the old show "Wagon Train" except it had a lot more F-words.

Tim and Faith were the leaders of this wagon train which included their sons and one hot-to-trot daughter. [SPOILER ALERT] The hot-to-trot daughter becomes the Yellowstone narrator after she is killed by "the people that were here first" despite the fact she sounds like an Ole Miss co-ed who just read a Sylvia Path book.

In "1923", Tim and Faith are long gone, and taking their place are Han Solo and one of the old ladies from "Calendar Girls".

Han and the old lady raise the remaining Dutton boys as their own. One of them, Spencer, goes over there to France during World War I and somehow becomes a big game hunter in Africa afterward because some of the tigers have become man-eaters. How this happened, nobody really knows.

Back in Montana, Han is dealing with some Scottish shepherds who have the gall to want to feed their sheep.  One of the shepherds has a real hard Scottish accent which is difficult to understand, but don't worry, the word he says most often rhymes with "buck".

On top of that, a shady, rich, British tycoon named James Bond has turned up in town and he wants to, if you can believe it, make money on something other than cattle.   He gets the big idea that people will come to Montana to ski.

James Bond is also a freak if you catch my drift. This makes him double bad and means the Duttons will need to kill him. [SPOILER ALERT] James Bond finds what on "Yellowstone" is called "the train station". It is the place you dump bodies who you happen to kill because they needed killing. It is in a part of Wyoming which is not incorporated into a county and therefore you can do what you want. This has been determined as legal by the Supreme Court in the famous Dead Former Yellowstone Employees vs Dutton case.

The old lady has written a truckload of letters to Spencer in Africa begging him to come home and fight for Yellowstone because the Scottish Shepherd had ambushed Han Solo and he was hit.

In the midst of all of this, is a side story featuring an Indigenous Girl who is abused by everybody in the Catholic church. She does the only thing she can do (kills everybody) and goes out on the run. This really doesn't have anything to do with the Duttons except the Indigenous Girl may be the grandmother of the Indigenous Man John Dutton dealt with.

While Spencer is in Africa, he meets one of the semi-royal snots of England who has a really hot body and a ten-cent brain. She is engaged to another royal snot but she is so infatuated with Spencer and his conversational skills (various grunts), she runs off with Spencer.

She finds the letters from Montana and soon her and Spencer are heading back to Montana from Africa which in 1923 took forty years. 

Season Two of "1923" is Spencer trying to get home, the Indigenous girl on the run, Han Solo trying to get better, various minor characters getting shot, a 1923 brain operation without anesthesia, a wolf in the house, and lots of snow.

Plot:  "1923" has a pretty good plot especially if you have watched "Yellowstone".

Acting:  Okay. Han Solo did a pretty good job although I expected him to ask for Chewie.  The Old Lady went out to the front yard a lot and screamed. James Bond was very slimy. The Sheriff of the county was the Terminator, so that ought to count for something.  The guy who was Spencer was good at mumbling. The Hot English girl was okay, but very dumb. 

Violence:  A lot. If there is one thing Taylor Sheridan can do is stage a shoot-out.

Nudity:  A lot of bosoms for a TV show on a "network". 

Sex:  Some outdoor love making. Some mommy and daddy time. Some "Fifty Shades Of Grey" Montana style.

Verdict:  Despite all of the violence, sex, bosoms, and cursing, "1923" was pretty good show. I thought it was better than "1883" and much better than the last two seasons of "Yellowstone".  Liked it. 

 

 

 

Old Enough

 

Over the past few years, there have been a few things on Facebook that annoy me.

I mean, besides all of the political arguments people get into.

New Flash!  People can have different opinions than yours!  Who would have thunk it?

Over the past three presidential election cycles, it has been proven that we are a 50/50 country.  50 percent of the country thinks Trump is Hitler with a better-looking wife and 50 percent thinks Trump was sent directly from the Lord himself.

People now express themselves through memes. The memes have a snotty tone and are often not safe for the office, car, church, loading dock, prison, or ball field due to what we used to call "dirty words".

But I'm not here to discuss memes and the breakdown of American culture which is the fault of Trump, Biden, elitists, FOX News, MSNBC, Hollywood, popular music, and talk radio. 

No, I'm annoyed at people of my generation, the older folks among us, who want to bond with our past.

For example, there is a meme that has made the rounds on Facebook showing two car keys.  One is a rectangle and one is oval. The meme says, "Who is old enough to remember when you needed 2 keys for 1 car?"

I guess I was supposed to lean back in my chair and think "I remember that" and suddenly be transported back in time to when I was tooling around Marietta, Georgia in my car listening to Lynyrd Skynyrd's "Sweet Home Alabama" on the radio. (Wait a second, that was yesterday.)

The whole point is to remember how things were way back when and share them with young people.

You:  Yeah, we used to have two car keys for one car.
Young Person:  Sir, this is a Wendy's

I belong to several Facebook groups about growing up in Cobb County. The most common post is: "Hey, who remembers Gary McKee?" This happens about every other month.

Gary McKee was the popular morning DJ at WQXI-FM. The last time he was on WQXI-FM, Bush was president. The first one.

I liked Gary McKee. He was a great way to wake-up in the morning. He had Willis The Guard, Yetta Levitt, and The Birthday Monster.  The Birthday Monster would sing "Happy Birthday" in a monster voice. Or maybe it was Yetta. It was a long time time ago. You had to be there.

One of the Cobb County groups will have some of the most inane topics and threads.  Here's a couple with the Topic highlight followed by the responses.

 

"Hey, who remembers that Stop sign on Sewell Mill Road?"

 

"I do."

 

"I must have missed that one."

 

"Must be nice to have a road."

 

"Good times."

 

 "Hey, did anybody ever use a spoon?"

 

 "I did."

"We didn't have spoons growing up. We used to eat chili with our fingers."

"I used to go out with this girl that went to Wheeler who thought she was all that because her family brought down spoons from Iowa or wherever she was from.  I found out the hard way she used to stuff her bra with toilet paper.  I loved her so much"

"Good times." 

 

 

"Hey, who remembers this guy?  (A picture of either Captain Kangaroo, Richard Nixon, or Leonard Nimoy)" 

"I remember him. I think."

 

"He was in my homeroom at Wheeler."

 

"My dad used to work for him and had to break-in the Watergate complex with a bunch of Cubans  for him. His supervisor was named Mr. Greenjeans"

 

"Good times." 

 

My favorite post of all time said, "Who remembers the Martine Drive-In that was next door to Town and Country Shopping Center and across the street from Duncan's donuts? Me and my boyfriend used to do some freaky-deaky thangs in his Cutlass 442. Good times".

 

 

I don't remember the Martine Drive-In.  I remember the Martin Drive-In.  It has swing sets and the Manis family would pile into the 1962 Plymouth Valiant and watch the latest the pagans in Hollywood had to offer.  I remember we saw "The Sound Of Music" there which is just the type of movie you want to take a bunch of feral boys from East Cobb to see. 

Looking at this post, I was thinking "Duncan's Donuts"?  You mean "Dunkin Donuts"?  I could just imagine this poor person going through life thinking this great American franchise was called "Duncan's Donuts".  (But it would be a good name for rock band.)

I was going to make my typical Facebook wisenheimer remark when I noticed the person who posted the thread was a tad bit older than me and maybe I should cut the person some slack because that's what people who are old enough to know better do.

 

So I didn't comment. But, come on, "Duncan's Donuts"?  I deserve a medal.  

 

Meditations In An Emergency Five Years Later

 

My wife went in for a check-up.  The medical staff found her heart was in Atrial Fibrillation. They took her to the emergency room at the local hospital.

I went to the emergency room on December 31, 2019, at 9:30 a.m.

The emergency room was packed. People were lying on beds in the hall. I asked a nurse what was going on.  The nurse said, "It's the flu".

Later in January, my wife and I went to New York City. Every person we saw who appeared to be from the Far East was wearing a face mask.  We wondered why. 

About six weeks later, we found out.

I don't remember the exact day, but we drove by our local Publix and the parking lot was full. Everybody was buying toilet paper.

The Covid-19 crisis was in full bloom. The NBA canceled the remainder of its season. Major League Baseball postponed the start of its season. 

Tom Hanks got it. We thought we were going to lose Tom Hanks.

They (the government) requested everybody give it two weeks to "flatten the curve". Here, they said, watch this show about an amoral zoo keeper in Oklahoma. 

They (the media) told us that the Covid virus originated in a Wet Market which sold bats and pangolins instead of a lab that just happened to study viruses.  To claim otherwise was to be a sinner. One of the knuckle-dragging mouth breathers who have soiled our good nation for too long.

Last week, The New York Times published a column titled: “We Were Badly Misled About the Event That Changed Our Lives.” Just like Tonto said to the Lone Ranger-"What do you mean 'We' kemo sabe?"

The column should have been titled, "You Were Badly Misled About The Event That Changed Our Lives By Us".

It turns out all the really smart people, for whatever reason, decided like Colonel Nathan Jessup that we couldn't handle the truth and put forth the goofy Wet Market story. Then accuse anyone who wouldn't tow the supposed scientific line to be a twenty-first-century Bull Conner. 

The crisis elevated Saint Dr. Anthony Fauci to be the nation's PCP.  He came up with the Mask mandate. Which turns out didn't work. And social distancing. Which turns out didn't work either.

Fauci has admitted there was no science (besides him being Science incarnate) behind the Mask mandate or social distancing. Scientifically speaking, he pulled the Mask mandate and social distancing out of his butt. 

Another problem was the rules that were created for us in steerage to follow.

A lot of the rules in Covid-19 were my favorite legal phrase: arbitrary and capricious.  The government decided which businesses were "essential". Small business was not. Wal-Mart was. Funny how that works.

I was able to obtain my vaccine earlier than most because I worked for a health system even though I'm not a clinician of any sort and I never saw any patients because I worked out of my home.  Grocery store workers, who literally were on the "frontline" of Covid became eligible for the vaccine in the second stage of the rollout.

Michael Brendan Doughtery said, "It’s fearful to consider how much of our law and Constitution just seemed to evaporate and how swiftly and completely it was replaced with the Absolute Sovereignty of Liberal Professional Class Conventional Thinking, however brain-dead or self-serving. The Sovereignty of Liberal Professional Class Conventional Thinking is why kids wore masks for a year after a vaccine was available to adults. And why schools had bizarre barriers on desks, and why it suddenly became okay to congregate outside so long as it was a Black Lives Matter riot and not something else protected by the First Amendment, like a Jewish funeral in Brooklyn."

In case I'm ever in front of a Senate subcommittee, I think Trump lost the 2020 election, but the day Biden was declared the winner, a group of celebrants were outside of the White House, unmasked, and drinking champagne from the same bottle without even wiping off the top. Nobody said a word to them because the virus wanted Trump to lose.

For all his Trumpness, he did fast track the vaccine so the national could go back to normal. There were those who said we couldn't trust the vaccine Trump rushed through because, hey, you can't rush these things. You might take the vaccine and grow three heads.

Until Joe Biden became President and then you had to take the vaccine or lose your job.

I took the vaccine. I had no problem with it. I thought (and think) everybody should take the vaccine. 

But, President Biden had COVID-19 three times in two years after taking the vaccine and the boosters

I worked with an individual who went deaf in one ear after taking the vaccine. Things like that happened.

Some people were very, very against the vaccine.

In strolled in our entertainment class to scold Americans they disagreed with. 

We had a late night talk show host say  "Vaccinated person having a heart attack? Yes, come right in. We'll take care of you. Unvaccinated guy who gobbled horse goo? Rest in peace, wheezy."

The "horse goo" was Ivermectin, which is an actual drug. NIH said in October of 2020 paper, "There were no severe adverse drug events recorded in the study. A 5-day course of ivermectin was found to be safe and effective in treating adult patients with mild COVID-19." 

Howard Stern who has transformed from a "shock jock" to our national nag said, "We have no time for idiots in this country anymore. We don’t want you,” Stern said. “We want you to all either go to the hospital, stay home, die there with your COVID, don’t take the cure but don’t clog up our hospitals with your COVID when you finally get it. Stay home, don’t bother with science, it’s too late. We want you to go away. We want you to leave the country. Go somewhere where they have ultimate freedom, wherever that is, some bizarro world where you don’t have to take the vaccine. I don’t know when nonsense became such a thing."

The man who created "Fartman" wonders when nonsense became such a thing.

I'm glad COVID-19 is in the rear-view mirror.  Did our betters, our smarty parts, our cultural influencers handle it well?

No.