You think we don’t know there was an election? Actually, we do. Each side saw darkness and ruin if the other prevailed. Yet here we venture only to make a few observations with one eyebrow cocked. There will be time enough in the New Year to decry or applaud the course of the nation, a job we cede to the heavy lifters in the opinion business.

Besides, we must leave room for other news. The national debt, to say nothing of the number of genders, grew still further beyond comprehension. Ever more imaginative ways were contrived to salvage the planet. And smart-alecky AI made bloopers of its own—what a consolation to Homo sapiens!

They failed to say his apron was at least a size small

During a campaign stop in Bucks County, Donald Trump dished fries at a McDonald’s drive thru while mocking a claim by Kamala Harris that she had worked for the fast-food chain in her youth. The stunt went viral, provoking the New York Times to note that Trump still wore French cuffs and lacked a hair net.

Perhaps he doesn’t understand Canada would be a blue state

After threatening Canada with tariffs, then meeting with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, Trump wise-cracked: “It was a pleasure to have dinner the other night with Governor Justin Trudeau of the Great State of Canada.”

There’s no telling where this story ends

Former Congressman Matt Gaetz, Trump’s pick for attorney general, lasted only eight days before withdrawing from consideration as Senators pressed the House Ethics Committee to release the findings of its investigation into sexual-misconduct and other allegations against Gaetz. He had denied it all. The Committee, reversing an earlier vote, eventually released the report, an unusual move given that Gaetz, upon being tapped for Trump’s cabinet, had quit his seat in the soon-to-end session of Congress. The report found that Gaetz “took advantage of the economic vulnerability of young women to lure them into sexual activity for which they received an average of a few hundred dollars after each encounter” and that women reported seeing him using cocaine and ecstasy. Gaetz meanwhile floated the retaliatory threat that come January he would take a seat in the new session of Congress, to which he had been elected in November, and try to force disclosure of what he alleged was the use of public monies to settle “me-too” allegations by women against other congressmen, past and present.

OK, so long as they don’t mess with that beautiful organ

Amid a sluggish commercial-real-estate market, it was reported that Center City’s historic Wanamaker building would undergo an office-to-residential conversion. 

Do as I say, not as I do

During table-talk caught by a hidden camera, New York City’s former Covid czar blithely spoke of participating in sex and dance parties even as he had been advocating social distancing and lockdowns for millions of others. He later admitted to joining “private gatherings.”

It’s true — a lot of whites got hooked

The medical school at the University of California Los Angeles scheduled a lecture titled “Beyond Magic Bullets: Whiteness as a Structural Driver of the Opioid Crisis,” a topic later ponderously revised to “BioSocial Futures: Towards a Symbiotic, Community Ecology of Health.”

Not your everyday endorphin surge

The Times reported that “an 80-year-old Chicagoan who listens to political podcasts while she exercises felt something today … Call it the Kamala Harris vibe shift.”

He wants you to know the other party can shimmy, too

“The vibe was so intense, the energy was so crazy …,” shouted Hulk Hogan about what he saw at the Republican National Convention.

A handshake would do, thank you very much

During an interview with Harris, the talk-show host Drew Barrymore gushed: “We all really need a tremendous hug in the world right now, but in our country we need you to be Mamala of the country.”

Admit it: We all need a spell checker

Until replaced, a new overhead sign at an I-95 ramp in Holmesburg pointed drivers toward “Cenrtal Phila/Chester.”

Surely it will all go away if we just stop counting

The debt of the federal government passed $36 trillion; interest on the debt exceeded spending on national defense.

The language cops must outnumber the expense cops

The federal budget for fiscal 2025, as it emerged from the House of Representatives, included these amendments: “out-of-school youth” became “opportunity youth”; “low-skilled adults” became “adults with foundational skill needs” (both amends under State Workforce Development Board, page 958), and “criminal offenders” became “justice-involved individuals” (under Programs for Correction Education And Other Institutionalized Individuals, page 1,400). 

Meditate on this

The college-loan forgiveness program relieved a 49-year-old musician of debt amounting to $249,255. The beneficiary said he could now consider studying with a meditation teacher in India.

He didn’t even need a bathrobe

When special counsel Robert Hur recommended against prosecuting President Joe Biden for retaining classified documents after his vice presidency, a waggish editorialist  said Hur foresaw a too-easy “bathrobe defense”—a reference to an old case in which a mobster claiming mental impairment showed up for his arraignment in bathrobe and pajamas. Hur had referred to the president as “a sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory.”

At least they can emerge from senescence

A Philadelphia Inquirer columnist railed against “a suddenly energized White House press corps” that glommed onto Hur’s remarks about the well-meaning elderly man. 

Look for them at your nearest Nike store

Biden was photographed stepping off Marine One in black “maximum stability” sneakers to complement his navy suit—“Air Bidens” joked someone on “X”.

Was she the one right before John XXIII?

Google temporarily halted its Gemini AI launch after its DEI efforts were found to include such gaffes as the image of a dark-complected woman to represent a pope.

Or try ordering takeout

A search query to Gemini AI found glue suggested to keep cheese stuck on pizza.

A tad cliquey, no? 

A 25-year veteran at NPR broke ranks to rue the number of “employee resource” groups based on identity: “MGIPOC (Marginalized Genders and Intersex People of Color mentorship program); Mi Gente (Latinx employees at NPR); NPR Noir (black employees at NPR); Southwest Asians and North Africans at NPR; Ummah (for Muslim-identifying employees); Women, Gender-Expansive, and Transgender People in Technology Throughout Public Media; Khevre (Jewish heritage and culture at NPR); and NPR Pride (LGBTQIA employees at NPR).”

If only she could speak as well as the old Car Talk guys

Katherine Maher, the CEO of NPR, said she soured on the Wikipedia Foundation, where she had earlier been CEO, because it became a “white male construct” that “did not end up living into the intentionality of what openness can be.”

Calling 911 would seem so much easier

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. confessed it was he who had dumped a dead bear in New York’s Central Park a decade ago after finding it as road kill and loading it into his van. The nominee to run the Department  of Health and Human Services said he would have skinned the bear and refrigerated the meat had he not needed to rush to an airport after a day of falconry followed by a steakhouse dinner.

Beware those bookshelves

The Princeton University Library brought together a focus group “to explore not only how we warn users before engaging with the content, but also to better understand what constitutes harmful and offensive content for different users and contexts.”

The world has yet to stamp out hunger …

Isra Hirsi, a student at Barnard College and the daughter of Congressional “squad” member Ilhan Omar, complained that she couldn’t use the student dining hall following her suspension from the college for refusing to abandon a campus encampment protesting Israel’s response to the October 7 pogrom: “There was no food support. No nothing.”

… but here’s an idea

A doctoral student at Columbia University demanded “basic humanitarian aid” for student protesters who camped out and occupied a university building: “Do you want students to die …?”

Not 73?

A medical doctor came up with 72 genders (aesthetigender, ceterogender, mirrorgender, etc.) beyond male and female.

The defendants have little comment, and we are utterly speechless

A 20-year-old UCLA student who underwent “gender-affirming” care as a teenager brought a medical-negligence suit against Children’s Hospital Los Angeles and other healthcare providers. According to her complaint, she had been sexually abused as a child and adolescent, and her “symptoms and concerns” included “anxiety, depression, presumed autism, and undiagnosed post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), potential bipolarism, as has been suggested by one of her psychiatrists, ongoing confusion regarding her gender, and eventually psychosis (including audio and visual hallucinations), panic attacks, and paranoia.” The complaint further alleges that she was “fast-tracked” into treatment with puberty blockers at age 12 and cross-sex hormones at age 13 — and then a double mastectomy at age 14. Defendants in the case have issued statements saying they provide appropriate care.

The Constitution takes one for the planet

Eco-activists entered the National Archives to dump a red powder on the case protecting the US Constitution.

The Magna Carta, too!

Two eighty-somethings campaigning for the “Just Stop Oil” movement hammered on the glass enclosure of the Magna Carta preserved at the British Library. Failing to break through the glass, each then glued one hand to a hand of the other. 

There must be desks somewhere for Musk and Ramaswamy

A reform-board survey of thirteen federal buildings in the D.C. area estimated that only 12 percent of the total office capacity was used from January through September 2023.

This has gotta be fake news

Georgetown University’s McCourt School of Public Policy offered students a post-election “Self-Care Suite.” On offer: milk and cookies, Legos and coloring, self-guided meditation.

May every happiness be yours in the year to come, and no matter the headlines.

Richard Koenig is the author of the Kindle Single No Place to Go, an account of efforts to provide toilets during a cholera epidemic in Ghana.