America the Beautiful

In America, beautiful and ugly, grotesque and tragic, good and evil, each has its place.

— Nelson Algren

It's February 1947.

Chicago novelist Nelson Algren takes the El to Monroe and walks a block to the Palmer House, where he meets fellow novelist Simone de Beauvoir in a cocktail lounge named Le Petit Café. 

He buys her a drink and they try to hold a conversation, but it's tough: he speaks no French and her English is limited.

"I’m the only serious writer in this city," Algren boasts, and offers to show de Beauvoir, visiting from Paris, the "real" town.

He takes the famous Existentialist to a tiny dance club filled with down-and-out customers; old winos, ruined whores, and a crazy spastic misfit who dances alone on the empty stage. Algren used to be a hobo, himself, a member of Chicago's lowlife.

"He’s here every day," Algren says, pointing to the spastic man. 

"He's beautiful," Beauvoir replied. "They're all beautiful."

"In America, beautiful and ugly, grotesque and tragic, good and evil—each has its place" Algren says. "We don't like to think these extremes can mingle.”

We still don't.

Report No. 32-04 VD

Ukraine's tragedy may be America's blessing.

The sudden spotlight on Putin may open the eyes of Trump fans to his treachery.

They might come to realize what the rest of the world knows: Trump is Putin's bitch, which doesn't quite recommend 45 for reelection.

Excerpt from Report No. 32-04 VD

With luck, that spotlight will land soon on a Kremlin document leaked last July, Report No. 32-04 VD.

While America's mainstream media slumbered all that month, reporting only on the Tokyo Olympics, Europe's media headlined the document's leak.

Report No. 32-04 VD, dated January 14, 2016, is a Kremlin brief that was discussed by Putin in a meeting of Russia's national security council a week later.

At the end of the meeting, Putin directed three spy agencies to begin "all out" disinformation campaigns to help then-candidate Trump win in 2016. 

The spy agencies were to "alter the consciousness of the masses, especially in certain groups."

Putin believed a Trump White House would disrupt and weaken America, his longtime nemesis.

"A Trump victory will definitely lead to the destabilization of the US socio-political system and will see discontent erupt," the report says.

The document also assesses the mind of then-candidate Trump.

"Trump is an impulsive, mentally unstable and unbalanced individual suffering from an inferiority complex.”

Report No. 32-04 VD confirms the Kremlin had blackmail materials from "previous unofficial visits by Trump to the territory of the Russian Federation." 

No doubt, those include the infamous "golden showers" video.

Should Trump resist the Kremlin's intervention in the presidential election, Putin would remind the candidate he could ruin him.

So as you witness Ukraine's tragedy unfold, remember what mom used to say.

"Behind every cloud there's a silver lining."

Or at least a golden shower.

True Ignorance

True ignorance is not the absence of knowledge,
but the refusal to acquire it.

— Karl Popper

I rarely encounter a fatuous opinion that's based on knowledge.

They're almost always based on bullshit.

Knowledge has never been as easy to acquire than it is today.

And yet ignorance remains rampant.

Our polity is a disaster today because, while we test citizens relentlessly—for Covid-19, alcohol, cholesterol, illegal drugs, math skills and driving skills—we don't test our citizens for ignorance. 

We let it go unchecked.

People who are ignorant counter knowledge by labeling it opinion, as if there were no difference. 

"Well, that's your opinion."

But there's a vast difference, which has been understood for 2,500 years.

The Ancient Greek philosophers called opinion doxa; knowledge, episteme.

The former is hearsay; the latter, science.

Episteme, the philosophers taught, had privilege over doxa because it was rational (or what we'd call "evidence-based").

To label episteme as doxa—to say, "Well, that's your opinion"—is to conflate the two forms of knowledge. 

In short, to pile ignorance on top of ignorance.

But some ignorant people want to double down even on that. 

When cornered by unwanted evidence, they label it fake news, as Trump labeled Covid-19 in October 2020—despite the detection of 69,000 new cases every day.

Insisting there's fake news is worse than ignorant; it's psychotic.

It's the cranial condition Karl Popper described as "true ignorance."

Ignorance that won't seek self-help.

Millions of our citizens share this psychosis—incurably, I'm afraid.

But that's nothing new.

"There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there has always been," science writer Isaac Asimov said in 1980.

"The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge."

"All you need in this life is ignorance and confidence," Mark Twain said in 1887, "and then success is sure."

Quousque Tandem?

For how much longer, Catiline, will you abuse our patience?

— Cicero

Fox News cut off Trump last night when he attributed Putin's invasion of Ukraine to the "big steal."

"Putin was going to be satisfied with a peace, and now he sees the weakness and the incompetence and the stupidity of this administration, and as an American, I'm angry about it, and I'm saddened by it, and it all happened because of a rigged election."

Interviewer Laura Ingraham cut off Trump at this point and jumped to another story. She returned to Trump minutes later, only to get into an argument with him.

We can only hope media companies—even propagandist ones like Fox News—have lost patience with Trump's bullshit.

It would not be the first time a popular figure was silenced by broadcasters.

In November 1938, radio stations nationwide banned Father Charles Coughlin, a Nazi-sympathizing Catholic priest with 30 million avid American listeners, after he denied during his weekly broadcast that Kristallnacht had hurt Germany's Jews. (He claimed it only targeted Communists.)

The stations insisted the airwaves could not tolerate Coughlin's intolerance—an abuse of the freedom of speech. Without a platform, the Nazi-loving Coughlin soon vanished from the public forum.

In November 63 BC, Rome's consul Cicero convened the senate in order to lay before it a plot to overthrow the Roman Republic.

The plot's leader, the corrupt Senator Catiline, sat in the gallery as Cicero delivered his First Speech against Catilina, one of history's greatest political orations. It opens:

Quo usque tandem abutere, Catilina, patientia nostra? Quam diu etiam furor iste tuus nos eludet? Quem ad finem sese effrenata iactabit audacia? 

For how much longer, Catiline, will you abuse our patience? How much longer will your madness make playthings of us? When will your unbridled effrontery stop swaggering?

Quo usque tandem abutere, Trump, patientia nostra?

Absurdities

Love the offender, yet detest the offense.

— Alexander Pope

Self-justification is a powerful force.

A recent Goodly post offended a friend of mine, who's rejoicing over the end of mask mandates. 

He was particularly upset by my calling anti-maskers "discourteous" and "miserable" and wanted to know if I was labeling him as such.

"I and millions of other well-informed people are convinced we are well past the point of mandating mask-wearing," he said.

This fallacious argument is known among logicians as the argumentum ad populum. 

It insists that, because a belief is held in common by a large group of people, it is therefore correct.

The fallacy is clear: just because a crowd thinks something is so doesn't make it so. (More on this in a moment.)

In fairness to my friend, I believe he views my criticisms as instances of "name-calling."

Name-calling is mightily offensive to everyone (especially to name-callers).

He also views mask-wearing as an instance of "hygiene theater."

Medical experts now know Covid-19 is transmitted through the air and that many of the now-outdated public-safety protocols we cherish, like surface-scrubbing, hand-sanitizing, plexiglass shields and disposable menus, are worthless "theatrics" designed to soothe anxious citizens.

Mask-wearing, however, doesn't fall into the same category. 

Mask-wearing, in fact, deters the spread of Covid-19.

Naturally, you can always find a medical practitioner or two who insists masks are hooey; but they'd be lacking evidence. 

You can also assert that the entire scientific community is stupid and wrong; but you'd be lacking evidence.

My problem with anti-maskers is simple: their behavior is unconscionable. 

By ignoring the fact that Covid-19 has killed 1 million Americans and isn't done with us yet, they're guilty of criminal negligence.

And rather than delight in their guilt, I'm saddened. 

I'm sad that a microbe is smarter than the millions of our fellow citizens who'd tell you mask-wearing is whimpy.

They skew Conservative and represent the same crowd that voted for Trump in 2020 (although they'd deny it).

They're the "fake news" bunch.

They don't believe in science and medicine and don't accept civic duty, unless it's convenient, justifying their irresponsible behaviors with the argumentum ad populum.

I'm sorry, but accepting without evidence another's beliefs—or even many people’s beliefs—is just wishful, lazy thinking.

It's thinking of the kind that, throughout history, has produced absurdities like these:

• The earth is flat.
• The fifth day of every month is unlucky.
• Drinking gladiators' blood will cure epilepsy.
• Mice originate from cheese wrapped in dirty rags.
• The earth is 6,000 years old.
• Proximity to the sun determines IQ.
• Blistering the skin with a hot iron cures disease.
• Tobacco enemas revive drowning victims.
• Plowing the ground will make it rain.
• The speed of trains crushes passengers’ brains.
• Implanting goat testicles in the scrotum will cure ED.
• Lower taxes for the rich benefit everyone.
• All Mexicans are rapists.
  
• Vladmir Putin is admirable. 

We don't need anti-maskers' absurdities.

The world is absurd enough.

Dutch and the Donald

Nothing personal, just business.

— Dutch Schultz

A judge last week ruled that Donald Trump must testify in New York Attorney General Letitia James’ investigation of his company.

With the decision, Trump can no longer avoid justice. 

"He's running out of the tricks that he used in the past," one journalist noted.

Not quite.

He can take a page from fellow New Yorker Dutch Schultz. 

He can kill Letitia James.

In 1935, the Jewish mobster Schultz found himself the target of New York City’s special prosecutor Thomas E. Dewey, who'd pledged with his appointment to rid the city of racketeers.

Dewey was a crusader, with eyes set on higher office (he would run for US president three times between 1940 and 1948). He pursued Schultz with vigor, indicting him for tax evasion. As Dewey wrote in his 1974 memoir, Twenty Against the Underworld, "I regarded it as a matter of primary importance to get Dutch Schultz."

Schultz's reaction was true to form. 

"Dewey's gotta go," he told associates and put out a contract on the prosecutor's life worth $25,000 (over $500,000 in today's money).

When Schultz advised the New York syndicate of the contract, the other family bosses balked, insisting that to rub out Dewey would only bring more government prosecution. They refused to authorize Schultz's hit.

"I’m gonna hit him myself," Schultz told the syndicate.

But the hit never happened. 

Instead, the syndicate rubbed out Schultz, whom they considered a loose cannon.

But, flashing forward, Trump doesn't have a syndicate to answer to. He can rub out Letitia James with impunity.

Stay tuned.

Fade up music.

Prediction

With all eyes on Putin, watch for this story to develop in the coming weeks: all along Mr. Obvious was a paid shill of the Russian autocrat.

Follow the money.

Goofy Governing

The repeal last week of Seattle's 30-year-old bike helmet law by the city's board of health exemplifies the sort of goofy governing that infuriates right-wingers.

As reported by The New York Times, Seattle scrapped the law—despite its proven ability to save lives—because police used it as a pretext to hassle Blacks.

“The question before us wasn’t the efficacy of helmets,” a board member said. "The question before us was whether a helmet law that’s enforced by police on balance produces results that outweigh the harm that that law creates."

As the basis of its decision, the board cited a local advocacy group's analysis of court records.

The analysis showed cops disproportionately ticketed Blacks for breaking the bike helmet law.

The analysis neglected to examine whether Seattle's Blacks wore bike helmets less frequently than other citizens, or rode bikes more frequently (both highly likely).

The same board declared racism a public health crisis in 2020.

You might credibly argue the bike helmet law was never fair, or that governments shouldn't "legislate safety" in the first place, and so the board's decision is the right one.

I don't see it that way.

Bike helmet laws have proven to reduce brain injuries and save lives everywhere. Their fair enforcement is a matter of police reform.

But if police harassment outweighs pubic safety, and social justice trumps public health, then it's only logical that all traffic laws be rescinded, and that police forces be defunded accordingly.

We don't need a lot of cops to enforce nonexistent traffic laws. Get rid of them! 

And it's that inevitable logic which sends right-wingers into apoplexy.

As it should.

Laws often have unintended consequences. (The mandate to stop at red lights, for example, often makes me late for my art classes, which really pisses me off.)

That doesn't make them laws we should rescind.

Goofy governing like Seattle's gives liberals a bad name. 

Toxic Masculinity

I have a bad feeling about this.

— Han Solo

"Toxic masculinity."

I overhear this phrase in coffee shops, cafés, and restaurants more than any other single phrase.

I don't know why it's on the top of women's minds right now—at least the minds of the women who frequent coffee shops, cafés, and restaurants—but it definitely is.

I don't know what's happening to women; but—whatever it is—I have a bad feeling about this.

Perhaps you can blame their wrath on Andrew Cuomo, Jeffery Epstein, or Texas's Republicans.

But, whatever the cause, I think men are soon up for a collective asswhuppin' (defined by Urban Dictionary as an "intense physical retribution involving heavy bruising, put upon a person in need of a life-lesson in civility, politeness, and manners"). 

The phrase "toxic masculinity" was coined 36 years ago by farmer and writer Shepherd Bliss. He thought it described the authoritarian streak displayed by his absent, career-military father.

Over the decades since, however, the phrase has come to denote practically all the attitudes and actions of men, who by dint of gender are not only vulgar and sloppy, but aggressive, competitive, homophobic, sexist, and misogynistic.

That's seems awfully harsh; but I'm not most men's target.

Novelist Norman Mailer, fairly macho himself, believed that contemporary American males were toxic because they were without honor.

"Masculinity is not something given to you, something you’re born with, but something you gain," he wrote in 1962. "And you gain it by winning small battles with honor. 

"Because there is very little honor left in American life, there is a certain built-in tendency to destroy masculinity in American men."

I think Mailer was onto something.

Somewhere on the journey to manhood, American men forgot about honor.

Endemic

There’s no finish line.

— Gov. Gavin Newsom

My hat's off to Gavin Newsom for declaring that Covide-19 is no longer epidemic, but endemic, in California. 

And so he's taking steps to mainstream it, acknowledging that government must combat Covid-19 perpetually, as it perpetually combats smoking, obesity, unsafe products, and water pollution.

And naturally, as with other public hazards, some people will die.

News flash, America: death is endemic everywhere. It always has been. It's inescapable and baked in.

Most of us simply choose to deny that cold fact.

Perhaps mainstreaming Covid-19, which to date has killed nearly 1 million Americans, will depoliticize it and wake sleepwalking citizens to the inexorability of their own deaths.

Our country would be a much happier place.

The existentialist philosopher Martin Heidegger defined the human being as finite, a "being-toward-death" (Sein zum Tode).

Where man is concerned, death is baked in, Heidegger claimed. Death is life's "fellow." 

Heidegger also believed that accepting death—your own death—brought you unbounded freedom—and unbounded happiness.

"Turning away from a flight from death," he said, "you see a horizon of opportunity." 

Embracing your death—denying your denial of death—"puts you in a state of anticipatory resoluteness with a solicitous regard for others that makes your life seem like an adventure perfused with unshakeable joy."

Who knows but that mainstreaming Covid-19 could make common courtesy and civility—the "solicitous regard for others"—routine again; and make vaccination and mask-wearing badges of honor that announce to the world, "I can't outrun death and don't wish to try. I'm terribly mortal—and happy."

As to those discourteous, miserable many who resist vaccinations and masks I say, so think you can outrun your own death? Good luck with that. 

There's no finish line but one.

Moderates Rise Up

Everything in moderation, including moderation.

― Oscar Wilde

San Francisco voters this week put the kibosh on "Squad politics," according to Axios, when they tossed three lefties off the city's seven-member school board.

It seems the jettisoned board members went too far when they placed priority on renaming 44 public schools in honor of BIPOC over reopening the city's shuttered schools.

That in a nutshell is the problem with immoderate Dems.

Like their right-wing opponents, they never address problems; they only manipulate symbols. 

Moderates, on the other hand, roll up their sleeves and get shit done. (For a vivid history lesson in this, listen to the LBJ Tapes. They're remarkable.)

Moderates also know that America looks like more like Maybury than Roxbury. 

What happens in San Francisco doesn't stay in San Francisco, alas, and as a result left-wingers on the national stage are freaking out.

Their loud-mouthed obsessions with punishing police, tearing down statues, and renaming buildings now threaten their re-elections—and the majority enjoyed by Democrats.

"It's a huge problem," one political strategist told Axios.

Squad politics are left of most voters', who want fixes not to systemic injustices, but to galloping inflation, violent crime, illegal guns, crumbling bridges, diseases like Covid-19, and a rigged tax system.

"The hard-left politics of the so-called 'Squad' are backfiring big-time," Axios says. The Squad has turned the Democrats' brand toxic in the hinterlands.

No surprise, Squad members and their Congressional aides are refusing to comment on the voter uprising this week. No doubt they're working in closed session on a new name for San Francisco.

How about Graybury?

NOTE: Learn more about the voter uprising this week in San Francisco.

Intel Inside

Aristotle, the father of biology, believed purpose distinguished living things from lifeless matter and that purpose drove the evolution of species.

Rather oddly, he also believed that purpose came from "inside" every creature—that purpose was in fact the cause of the creature.

Aristotle's theory pretty much ruled Westerners' ideas about evolution for 2,400 years, when suddenly Darwin exploded onto the scene in 1859, claiming evolution was random and purposeless.

Now, 163 years after the publication of Darwin's On the Origins of the Species, a new study reveals Aristotle was right all along: there is purpose behind mutations, but it comes both from "inside" and "outside" the creature.

The study shows human genes mutate not randomly, but in response to outside pressures.

The University of Haifa researchers responsible for the study have produced evidence showing that the rate of mutation of the genes that protect us against malaria is faster among Africans than among Europeans.

Because malaria grips Africa more so than Europe, the researchers concluded the genes mutated not by accident, but to help Africans survive the disease.

Darwin's insistence that mutations were random looks wrong.

"The results show the mutation is not generated at random, but instead originates preferentially in the gene and in the population where it is of adaptive significance," one researcher told Science X.

"We hypothesize that evolution is influenced by two sources of information: external information that is natural selection, and internal information that is accumulated in the genome through the generations and impacts the origination of mutations."

Since Darwin's book, scientists have assumed that mutations occur by accident and that natural selection—survival of the fittest—favors beneficial accidents, leading to evolutionary adaptations.

But the new findings suggest otherwise.

"The results suggest that complex information accumulated in the genome through the generations impacts mutation, and therefore mutation-specific origination rates can respond in the long-term to specific environmental pressures," the researcher said. 

"Mutations may be generated nonrandomly in evolution after all."

The study opens doors to reimagining evolution and to curing diseases caused by mutations such as cancer. While lending no credence to creationism, it also makes old Aristotle look pretty smart.

The study appears in Genome Research.

Guilty Pleasures

 

Hold onto your taste, even when you're embarrassed by it.

— Jerry Saltz

Connoisseurs and critics often look down on art that's driven by pop culture (the source of the "pop" in the term "pop art").

Not me. 

I guess I'm a child of the '60s, because I love pop paintings and subjects.

New York critic Jerry Saltz nails it when he says of pop subjects, "Never renounce them for the sake of others' pieties.

"Own your guilty pleasures."

My latest stab at depicting what I term a "nostalgic goodie" is Ding Dongs.

I could just have well titled the painting Ring Dings.

Ding Dong aficionados know that in 1967 their maker, Hostess, engaged in an all-out, take-no-prisoners brand war with Drake's Cakes, the maker of Ring Dings, by copying the latter's immensely successful product.

The bloody war, known to history as the "Ding Dong-Ring Ding Conflict," lasted for nearly 20 years. Hostess only won by buying its rival and discontinuing the Ring Ding.

That takes the cake, you might say.

If you're anywhere near Delaware in the next 10 days, be sure to drop into my solo show, Cold Comforts. It features 30 paintings of food.

And if you're not near Delaware, pop onto my website.

I decline to accept the end of man. It is easy enough to say that man is immortal simply because he will endure: that when the last ding dong of doom has clanged and faded from the last worthless rock hanging tideless in the last red and dying evening, that even then there will still be one more sound: that of his puny inexhaustible voice, still talking.

— William Faulkner

Above: Ding Dongs by Robert Francis James. Oil on canvas. 20 x 16 inches.

Come on Sunday without Fail

Since on this ever happy day, all nature's full of love and play,
yet harmless still if my design, 'tis but to be your Valentine.

— World's Oldest Printed Valentine Card

While there's a Valentine's letter from 1477, the world's oldest Valentine card dates from 1790, a time when literate lovers of every social class secretly exchanged soupy notes.

The card features the word Love and a hand-drawn dove and hearts on the front, and inside a handwritten poem that begins, "Life they say is but a span, let's be happy while we can." 

The sender probably cribbed the poem, as in the 18th century you could buy books full of suggested verses for lovers.

The world's oldest printed Valentine's card, dating from 1797, features hand-tinted cupids on the outside, surrounded by the verse quoted above.

The card was sent by a certain Miss Mossday to Mr. Brown of Dover Place, Kent Road, London. 

Inside she wrote, "As I have repeatedly requested you to come, I think you must have some reason for not complying with my request. But as I have something particular to say to you, I could wish you make it all agreeable to come on Sunday without fail."

Clearly, she didn't copy that from a book.

Two centuries later, we still send our squeezes cards on Valentine's Day. 

Most of us rely on Hallmark to express our feelings.

But if you're feeling lovey-dovey this Valentine's Day, you might consider buying a blank card and using Poem Generator to pen a love poem.

I tried it, and here are the results:

For My Lovely Rose

A Love Poem by Bob

Roses are red,
Violets are blue,
Ladies are lovely,
And so are you.

Orchids are white,
Ghost ones are rare,
My speech is free,
And so is your hair.

Magnolia grows,
With buds like eggs,
Hands are shapely,
And so are your legs.

Sunflowers reach,
Up to the skies,
Your grin is foxy,
And so are your eyes.

Foxgloves in hedges,
Surround the farms,
My air is warm,
And so are your arms.

Daisies are pretty,
Daffies have style,
A baby is cute,
And so is your smile.

Torpedoed

Sometimes a little subterfuge is in order.

— Justina Ireland

I despise subterfuge. Despise it.

And I despise the developers who so often use it.

Developers in Alexandria, Virginia, are about to torpedo a favorite old haunt of mine, the Torpedo Factory, evicting the artists who've occupied it for 40 years.

In their relentless pursuit of profits, the developers will replace the artists' studios with Burger Kings, Cinnabons, and Gap Stores—even though these sorts of dumps are already within five minutes' walking distance.

Reading the naïfs on the city council, the developers used the cause of the month, diversity, as a ruse. 

The Torpedo Factory, they claim, isn't diverse: the artists are all White.

They've hung a big banner on the grounds demanding "A Torpedo Factory for All" and have promised to engineer diversity into their newly commercialized Torpedo Factory.

Their chicanery sickens me. And their hypocrisy.  

The developers are all White, as well. Lilly White.

The City of Alexandria, which owns the building, wants to earn a profit from it, too—even if that means evicting the artists.

The developer's promise of future profits for the city is yet another subterfuge.

A local waterfront preservationist told ALXnow, "Looking at the Torpedo Factory as a negotiable source of revenue that we would farm out to some developer who would make the future profits is a grave mistake."

The art community isn't happy with the plan, either.

"We’re being asked to step aside and sacrifice our livelihood and this institution in the name of development," one artist told The Washington Post.

NOTE: For accuracy's sake, I'll acknowledge there's in fact one Black on the developer's 48-person senior staff. Odd, for a firm using diversity in its self-promotion.

Toiletgate

Our Commode in Chief may no longer be on the seat of power, but he occupies the headlines daily.

Axios reported this week that Donald Trump routinely flushed White House documents down the toilet, in violation of the Presidential Records Act, which requires their preservation.

Aides regularly found the papers clogging his personal toilet.

Trump, of course, pronounced the story "fake."

But I think the story holds water. Far too many White House aides saw this Super Bowl to doubt it.

If Trump were half as smart as Richard Nixon was, he'd have called the White House Plumbers to fix things.

The Washington Post called called Trump’s action a "wrenching testimony to his penchant for wanton destruction.”

I agree wholeheartedly with The Post, as I agree with Harvard historian Heather Cox Richardson's assessment of Trumps' document dump.

"The idea that he was flushing so many documents that he periodically clogged the toilet seems a commentary on his regard for the American people."

Trump promised a "Great America;" but he dealt us a royal flush.

Now can we please flush Donald down history's drain?

Heroes

A Hero of Liberty is a person who either promoted freedom, faith, or family values.

— Heroes of Liberty website

A new publisher of kids' books hopes to combat wokeism in grade schools with a series of books that glorify so-called "Heroes of Liberty," including John Wayne, Ronald Reagan, Margaret Thatcher, and Amy Coney Barrett.

Fox News has called the series, written for second grade readers, "phenomenal," failing to recognize that it's above the reading-skills of 99% of Fox News' viewers.

As right-wing Supermoms move to ban classics like Maus, Animal Farm and Fahrenheit 451 from curriculums and school libraries nationwide, the Delaware-based publisher has released its first title in the series, John Wayne: Manhood and Honor.

House editor Bethany Mandel, formerly a staff writer at the Heritage Foundation, thinks John Wayne: Manhood and Honor can rescue kids from the wrongs of feminism.

She told Axios the book "counters the narrative that 'masculinity is toxic.'

"Boys are conditioned to behave like women," Mande said. "We wanted to give boy readers a glimpse of a positive male role model who doesn't apologize for being manly and masculine."

While she wants the "Heroes of Liberty" series placed in school libraries, Mandel also wants "inappropriate" books removed.

You can guess what those books might be.

For my part, the only heroes I want to celebrate are the sandwiches that go by that name.

I want to see them removed from federal watchlists and made a standard menu item in every school cafeteria. And I want to see September 14 made a national holiday.

Which is why I recommend Delawarean Vince Watchorn's A Meal in One: Wilmington and the Submarine Sandwich.

A Meal in One tells the story of how the foot-long gut-bomb first came about—and why. It's an enthralling book about poor immigrant laborers and the small-time entrepreneurs who kept them fed.

You want to talk about "family values?"

There are more family values packed between two halves of an Italian roll than than in all the bombast ever spewed by Wayne, Reagan, Thatcher, or Barrett.

None other than President Biden wrote, in the foreword to A Meal in One, "I frequently stop in one of Delaware’s established sub shops to pick up lunch, dinner or a late-night snack without thinking twice about the role the sub played in putting Delaware on the culinary map.

"I must give credit to the Italian-Americans who settled in Delaware’s Little Italy and developed and popularized the culinary creation Wilmingtonians simply and affectionately call the 'sub.'

"I give further credit to Vince Watchorn for publicizing this relatively little-known fact about our proud city to everyone who loves good food."

John Wayne may know a thing or two about manliness, but I prefer my heroes to come with capicola, sweet peppers, and an extra dab of mayo.

Con

Con: a ruse used to gain another's confidence.

— Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary

Texas is suing a Christian "influencer" for falsely claiming she could cure eating disorders, Insider reports.

The state accuses Brittany Dawn of misleading customers about her expertise and of falsely promising custom nutrition plans she never delivered.

A self-proclaimed "Jesus seeker" with a half million Instagram followers, Dawn also promised customers regular phone check-ins that never occurred and charged them "shipping fees" for emails.

Allegations against Dawn first surfaced in 2019, when followers began to call her a "scammer" on her Facebook page. Their complaints led to an investigatory report on ABC's Good Morning America.

When the heat grew too much to bear, Dawn shuttered her nutrition business and turned to monetizing Jesus, producing hotel shows for vendors of Christian tchotchkes.

    Jesus clears the "den of thieves"

Brittany Dawn is only one of thousands of scammers we innocents encounter on line every day.

They've made the web a den of thieves.

But who was America's first big scammer?

The credit goes to William Thompson, known to history as the original "confidence man."

Operating in New York City in the 1840s, Thompson would dress up as a gentleman, walk up to a wealthy mark on the street, and begin a conversation, as if an old acquaintance. After a minute, Thompson would borrow the mark's watch, then disappear from his life forever.

Thompson's haul each time was considerable. A gentleman's watch in the 1840s cost $4,200 in today's money.

Thompson capitalized on the instinct of the genteel to avoid a faux pas at any cost; in this case, the cost of a fancy watch. His consummate skill at appearing trustworthy earned Thompson the newspaper nickname "Confidence Man," a moniker that quickly became synonymous for scammer; and, in its shortened form con, synonymous for scam.

Herman Melville immortalized William Thompson's nickname in 1857, by using it for the title of a novel. 

The Confidence Man features a cast of characters who are card sharps, stock swindlers and snake-oil salesmen, cheats who Melville thought symbolized all that was wrong with America.

NOTE: The word scam, by the way, entered American usage in the 1960s. Meaning a "trick," scam is a carnival barker's term derived from the 18th-century British word for a "highway robber," scamp.

POSTSCRIPT, FEBRUARY 10. 2022: Axios today announced that Maggie Haberman's Confidence Man, the "book Trump fears most," will be published in October.