One son MIA
Former Vice President Joe Biden's tweeted Christmas greetings last week included a photo of the 2020 presidential candidate, his wife, his surviving daughter and five grandchildren. "May your time with loved ones be full of peace, laughter and joy," the message read. "Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays. With love from my family to yours."
He followed that with a video of two family dogs, Champ and Major, who hadn't been in the photo. "When we say Merry Christmas from the entire Biden family, that means even the dogs," he tweeted.
But the entire family wasn't pictured. Missing was Biden's surviving son, Hunter, who has been in the news recently for his role as a board member of a controversial Ukrainian energy company and for the recent announcement of the birth of his child to a woman with whom he once had a relationship.
Twitter conspiracy theorists had a field day.
"Is Hunter not welcome at these family parties?" asked one.
No explanation from the Biden family was forthcoming.
Humble-ish beginnings
The humble beginnings millionaire Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Massachusetts, likes to talk about don't quite square with the feelings of one of her brothers, David Herring.
Herring, according to a family friend, as recounted in the Boston Globe, is "furious" about her repeated references to her father as a janitor.
"When she called her dad a janitor during the early stages of this," said Pamela Winblood, "David was furious." Apparently, Warren's father was a maintenance man.
"I grew up on the ragged edge of the middle class," the 2020 presidential candidate tweeted. "My daddy ended up as a janitor and my mother worked the phones at Sears."
Warren often trots out the "janitor" reference when someone mentions her wealth status in the top 1% of all Americans.
'Home Alone'-gate
With "Home Alone" and "Home Alone 2: Lost In New York" playing practically nonstop on cable television in the weeks leading up to Christmas, alert viewers in Canada noticed someone missing from the second movie - now U.S. President Donald Trump.
A 10-second cameo of the then-New York City real estate mogul, playing himself, giving directions to the hotel lobby to Kevin McCallister (Macaulay Culkin), was removed from the 1992 film by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation.
In a statement to CNN, the network said the scene was edited out when it was adapted for television.
"The scene with Donald Trump was one of several that were cut from the movie as none of them were integral to the plot," the network said. " These edits were done in 2014 when we first acquired the film and before Mr. Trump was elected President."
However, according to PJ Media, the first time on Twitter the missing cameo was mentioned was December 2015, six months after Trump announced his candidacy for the Republican nomination for president.
With the recent impeachment hearings, many viewers noticed this year, and presidential son, Donald Trump Jr., took to Instagram to register his complaint.
"Absolutely pathetic," he said. "The liberal media like [CBC] is where Trump Derangement Syndrome manifests itself fully."
'Naughty' Hillary
Any year-end CNN "Naughty or Nice List" is predictable, with a naughty list full of Republicans. But Chris Cillizza apparently surprised the news network by putting 2016 Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton on his naughty list.
"[S]he's done a couple things that don't really make sense from a party-building perspective or even a public figure perspective," he said on the show "New Day."
"One, why did she attack Tulsi Gabbard and suggest that Tulsi Gabbard, the Hawaii congresswoman, was a Russian asset? If you're going to say that, that's a pretty big charge.
"Then, another thing with Hillary Clinton, she is talking all about Bernie Sanders in the 2016 race and how, well, he didn't get out soon enough and had he gotten out I probably would have won and he better not do it again. ... [I]t's also our right to say some of these choices you are making are not good for either your public image or, and this is more important, for your party."