We'll throw in a book!
The Canadian portion of the Bill and Hillary Clinton tour did not begin with a rousing success in Toronto last week. Booked into the 19,000-seat Scotiabank Arena, the event featuring the former president and his former secretary of state wife sold only about 3,330 tickets.
The top price to the event on Ticketmaster was $434, but one tweeter reported one ticket - apparently being scalped - was going for $6.55 in the last few minutes before the program began, but it did not sell. StubHub reported last-minute tickets were down to $4.90 in U.S. dollars. VIP meet-and-greet packages had been offered for around $2,000.
Ultimately, event organizers blocked off the upper deck seats in the arena and used a curtain to make the arena appear fuller than it was.
"An Evening With The Clintons" is billed as "a one-of-a-kind conversation with two individuals who have helped shape our world and had a front seat to some of the most important moments in modern history."
Save the children from 'Rudolph'
Anti-religion zealots would have you shield the kids from "A Charlie Brown Christmas" because of its blatant Christian message, and now a video courtesy of the Huffington Post says "Rudolph The Red-Nosed Reindeer" is said to be "seriously problematic."
Let us count the ways: for displays of bigotry, bullying, exploitation of workers, homophobia, lack of acceptance, racism, sexism and verbal abuse.
"Viewers are noticing the tale may not be so jolly after all," the text of the video said.
A screenshot of the video displays a tweet in which someone refers to the children's classic as a "parable on racism & homophobia w/Santa as a bigoted, exploitive ---." Meanwhile, another screenshot finds that his operation in the North Pole is "an HR (human resources) nightmare" that is "in serious need of diversity and inclusion training." The video concludes that the television special teaches that "deviation from the norm will be punished unless it is exploitable."
Yes, viewers will recall the young reindeer being forced to wear a fake nose, being laughed at and made fun of because of his nose, of the disdain of the misfit toys, the violence of the abominable snowman, and the loneliness of the misfit wanderers from the North Pole.
But did anyone who produced the Huffington Post video think it important to point out, among other things, Rudolph winds up the hero, characters are sorry for the way they acted, and most importantly, the whole thing is fiction?
Beware the coach in the black robe
A Washington Post story on U.S. Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh returning to coach a girls' basketball team, as he had done in years past, was placed in the newspaper under a category called Public Safety last week.
In that section, generally and on this day, were stories about murders, sex offenders and fatal accidents. The implication was that the justice, who was the subject of false and unproven allegations of sexual offenses during his nomination hearing, is a figure of whom to be wary.
No, no, said the Post, which editorialized against his confirmation, the piece should have been put in the local news section, but articles by the author of the item usually go in the Public Safety section. Nevertheless, even after the placement was pointed out, the article remained where it was before finally being recategorized.
"I love coaching more than anything I've ever done in my whole life," Kavanaugh said during his Senate hearing. "But thanks to what some of you on this side of the committee have unleashed, I may never be able to coach again."
Conservative tweeters, among others, took exception to what happened.
"The gutter journalism that still surrounds reports about Brett Kavanaugh make[s] me want to tear my hair out," wrote Ashe Schow of The Daily Wire.
"What a joke, media bias is real," added former Florida congressional candidate Chuck Callesto.
Welcome to 2018
A Texas father has been sued for refusing to accept his ex-wife's decision that their 6-year-old son, James, should be a girl. According to court papers, the father says his son "violently refuses" the offer of female clothes when he is with him, and friends say when he is with them he only wants to be a boy and will not go into public dressed as a girl.
But when he is with his mother, she dresses him as a girl and calls him "Luna." She also enrolled him in school as a girl and told the court a "gender transition therapist" she chose confirmed her diagnosis.
In their divorce proceedings, the mother charged the father with child abuse because he does not treat the child as a girl, is seeking a restraining order against him, and wants to terminate his parental rights. In addition, she is trying to force her ex-husband to pay for a pro-transgender therapist and transgender medical treatment like risky hormone therapy.
The father, to fight back, has set up a website called "Save James" in hopes of saving him from an intentional misdiagnosis and, ultimately, unwanted medical procedures.