Paul du Quenoy

“When you die at the palace, you really die at the palace,” laments Comicus, the ancient Roman “stand-up philosopher” played by Mel Brooks in his iconic, if not exactly well received, History of the World, Part I (1981). Forced to improvise a comedy routine for Dom DeLuise’s Emperor Nero, Comicus repeatedly puts his foot squarely in his mouth, insulting the capricious ruler for his corruption and weight. An enraged Nero sentences him to death, setting up a madcap escape sequence.

“We do not need loud, forceful communication,” said Pope Leo XIV, the Chicago-born American prelate Robert Prevost – at his first press conference on Monday, “but rather communication that is capable of listening and of gathering the voices of the weak who have no voice.”  His Holiness, who opened by thanking the 6,000 attendees in English before delivering his remarks in superb Italian, also called for freedom for imprisoned journalists, urged members of the Fourth Estate to avoid “ideological or partisan” language in their work and admonished them to pursue a “path of communication in favor of peace.

As the Church of England faces an exodus of parishioners, some of its more inventive clerics have rushed to embrace EDM as a new medium to draw young people back to their faith. “Our 90s-themed silent disco will be appropriate to and respectful of the cathedral,” curiously insisted the Very Reverend David Monteith, Dean of Canterbury Cathedral, to much derision over that sacred space’s conversion into a party zone for 3,000 revelers in 2024.

“I am Kamala Harris. My pronouns are ‘she’ and ‘her.’ I am a woman sitting at the table wearing a blue suit.” That embarrassing exercise in self-parody was how the former vice president of the United States chose to introduce herself at a July 2022 roundtable on how the Supreme Court’s reversal of Roe v. Wade could affect disabled people. Harris’s pandering indulgence in radical gender ideology barely attracted notice at the time. But two years later, just after she took the mantle of the 2024 Democratic presidential nomination from the addled Joe Biden, a video of her awkward self-presentation resurfaced and went viral as evidence of her intellectual vapidity, poor public speaking skills, and display of a sensibility that most Americans reject.

Let the handwringing begin! Long before the polls closed in Tuesday’s off-cycle elections, pundits were already racing to assign blame for another underwhelming Republican performance. The usual suspects duly took the predictable hits. Legally troubled former president Donald J. Trump played almost no role in the elections, but it was easy to pin lackluster results on him as the GOP’s runaway favorite for the 2024 presidential nomination and the party’s de facto leader. The only major candidate he endorsed, Kentucky attorney general Daniel Cameron, lost to Democratic incumbent Andy Beshear.

“President Trump is my friend,” his former UN ambassador Nikki Haley declared on Fox News after announcing her candidacy for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination. Trump, who says he spoke with Haley before she announced, seemed unthreatened by her, avoiding the invective he has reserved for his strongest potential challenger, Florida governor Ron DeSantis. And although he later posted comments linking Haley to Hillary Clinton and Paul Ryan, he also said he is “glad” she is running. Trump has little to worry about from Haley. In all the national polls, she is languishing in the single digits. Some 41 percent of Republicans either have no opinion of her or don't know who she is.

Fresh — or not so fresh — from his awkward and stilted State of the Union address, President Biden took his show on the road to Florida to stump against what he claims are Republican plans to cut (“sunset” in Beltway-speak) Social Security and Medicare. Apparently unaware that Florida is now an irretrievably red state, on Thursday the president spoke at the University of Tampa in what was widely received as a kickstart to his expected 2024 reelection campaign. Despite platitudes about bipartisanship, Biden targeted Florida Senator Rick Scott, a Republican who has floated a plan to review federal programs once every five years for reauthorization (though the plan does not specifically mention either Social Security or Medicare).

“President Biden should be impeached by the incoming House Republican majority over his ongoing destruction of the southern border,” proclaimed National Review columnist Andrew McCarthy on New Year’s Eve. Once the preserve of the GOP’s right wing, which introduced nine failed impeachment resolutions against Biden prior to the midterm elections, the idea of impeaching Joe Biden is gathering ground. Even staid moderates are beginning to realize that six million illegals pouring across the Rio Grande might not be such a blessing of liberty. Rank-and-file Republicans are hungering for revenge against Democrats for twice impeaching former president Donald Trump.

A scandal-prone president of tepid popularity and questionable health sits in the White House. The Republicans hold a majority in the House of Representatives, but a dissident faction of 20 opposes the establishment candidate for speaker and demands greater powers for the party conference. For the first time in living memory, the favored candidate loses election on the first ballot, then on the second, then the third, fourth, fifth, and sixth. Yes, Washington certainly was a messy place in 1923, exactly a century ago. That was when the GOP was mired in a predicament similar to the one Republican leader Kevin McCarthy finds himself in this week. Back then, the troubled candidate for speaker was Massachusetts Representative Frederick H. Gillett.

“Everyone deserves to live their life as their full an authentic self.” So tweeted the Department of Energy on November 20. “Trans and gender non-conforming individuals are part of the DOE family,” the tweet insisted, “and with them we mourn the lives lost and reject the darkness that would erase their light.” One might think the Energy Department should be more concerned over out-of-control gas prices and predicted shortages of heating oil this winter. But its useless mandarins instead were devoting their efforts to observance of something called “Transgender Day of Remembrance,” an annual date chosen by an activist in 1999 to mourn “transgendered” people who have died violent deaths.