Glory! Glory! Hallelujah! A Gettysburg success

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Sitting there freezing our butts off about 300 feet from where Abraham Lincoln delivered the Gettysburg Address, I wondered if Lincoln lied.

Maybe all men aren’t created equal.

If we were, then how come I had to wait about 90 minutes in the cold to hear Steven Spielberg speak?

It eventually dawned on me that all men and women are created equal, but many of us spend the ensuing years goofing off, getting drunk, sleeping in or cutting short productive work hours so we can race home in time to watch Drew Carey announce the Showcase Showdown on “The Price is Right.”

We have our priorities.

As a filmmaker, Spielberg is without equal. It was a thrill to be among the 9,000 or so attendees at the Gettysburg Soldiers National Cemetery on Monday as part of the 149th Remembrance Day activities.

And he gave a great speech, as did historian Doris Kearns Goodwin -- and that’s a difficult compliment for me to bestow upon an avowed plagiarist.

I’m always amazed at the effect being near a celebrity has on me. As Spielberg walked out, he gave a dapper bow then spent considerable time scanning the audience. 

I straightened up, put my arm around my daughter and drilled him with eye contact.

I was hoping Spielberg would notice me and think, “Now, there’s a clear-eyed young go-getter. Brings his daughter to Gettysburg! No doubt a man of substance. Probably a responsible social drinker like myself. I wonder if he’s a writer. I’m going to approach him and introduce myself.”

If the great director thought this, he didn’t act upon it.

I thought momentarily about writing the premise of my unpublished novel on a piece of paper and tossing it to him as he concluded his speech.

But it was a bit windy so I’d have had to wrap the note around a heavy rock. And me tossing a rock at Steven Spielberg during his speech would have certainly drawn security.

And by security, I’m not talking about the several thousand bayonet-armed Civil War re-creators. On each side of the stage were two severe-looking men in overcoats who looked like today’s Secret Service agents minus the eyes filled with 21st century hooker lust.

I guess maybe they were there to prevent a John Wilkes Booth re-enactor from assassinating the Abraham Lincoln re-enactor.

I’m happy to report our daddy-daughter weekend exceeded my fondest hopes and expectations. It was marvelous.

History-rich Gettysburg is one of America’s greatest small towns. It is filled with wonderful restaurants, museums, book shops and according to Josie, 12, the world’s greatest candy store. It’s “Sweeet!” at 100 Baltimore Street, home of the two-foot-long gummi earth worm.

Yum! Yum! Yum!

I think years from now I’ll look back on this weekend as the one where I succeeded in ways General Robert E. Lee did not.

Our tasks were similar. We needed to conquer a resilient combatant on foreign soil against long odds.

With Lee it was the Union army.

With me, I was trying to bond over history with a 12-year-old girl who dearly loves her mother and iCarly (in mostly that order) and spent the first morning morose at the unbidden separation.

But as our days filled with activities, she began to brighten and by the middle of a three-hour battlefield tour, the tide had turned. Our expert guide was teaching us how equestrian statuary can be used to discern the rider’s battlefield mortality when Josie asked if she could use my iPhone.

I trembled. Was she going to text call Mommy she was bored? Disperse Facebook ridicule?

No.

She wanted to take notes.

OMG!

She was so inspired by what she was learning she began taking lengthy notes to remind her of stories she will this week share with her class. 

My heart swells with pride. I have forged a creative bond with her that will endure and strengthen throughout our lives.

All men are created equal; mothers and fathers are not. 

Biological imperatives mean fathers of daughters are destined to be parental punchlines. The advantage will always reside with the female because in the eyes of our children, mothers suckle while dads just suck.

Like it or not, that’s the way it is.

And this Dad’s truth goes marching on.

Related . . .

• My novel done! Again!

• My work week sabotaged by distractions

Marching on Gettysburg with daughter, 12

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I’m doing something tomorrow I haven’t done in more than 20 years: I’m getting in the car and going for a long drive hoping I can get a girl to fall in love with me.

The stakes are higher than they’ve ever been, even as the girl is lower than any other.

She’s my 12-year-old daughter and we’ll be consecrating our weekend together in the blood of dead heroes.

We’re going to Gettysburg. As prelude, I’m yanking her out of school today for lunch and an early screening of Stephen Spielberg’s “Lincoln.”

My march to Gettysburg is every bit as important to me as Robert E. Lee’s was to him. It’s do or die.

As the country is poised on a fiscal cliff, I sense Josie and I are perched on a personal one.

I understand in a year, maybe months, she won’t be applying the brakes as she approaches the cliff. She’ll be flooring it.

It’s perfectly natural. I remember at her age being so eager to grow up -- and just because it still hasn’t happened with me doesn’t mean it might not happen with her.

She’s starting to understand the joy of camaraderie, of being with your own, of friends banding together against common enemies.

That’d be Dads.

And I’m playing my role, too.

As she’s starting to test the boundaries of her freedoms, I’m there standing guard against her going too far. Kids need that.

To mix in another military metaphor, she wants me on that wall, she needs me on that wall (DVR alert: “A Few Good Men” 20th anniversary showing, Saturday, AMC, 8 p.m.).

Many fathers of daughters I admire say the same thing. When a daughter hits about 13, she just goes away from her father who as a result of her biological and emotional changes becomes an even more alien creature next to Mommy.

They say we’re on the verge of a Civil War destined to last about five years, a little longer than the duration of what many of our Southern friends still refer to as “The War of Northern Aggression.”

A natural pacifist, I will do everything I can to avoid the inevitability of the coming storm.

That means taking my sockdologizing old mantrap of a girl on a daddy/daughter weekend to Gettysburg.

Calling a girl a “sockdologizing old mantrap” probably doesn’t sound like a term of endearment. It is with me and J-Ro.

It was a year ago when I was reading Jay Winik’s outstanding Civil War history, “April 1865: The Month That Saved America.”

Josie was watching something I deemed insufficiently worthy and told her to shut the damn TV off. I had a story I wanted to tell her.

I read to her the part where John Wilkes Booth skulked into the presidential booth at Ford’s Theater and waited for the precise moment when actor Harry Hawk calls an adversarial character a “sockdologizing old mantrap.” The insult provoked the biggest laugh of the play and Booth hoped to use the guffaws to cover the pistol’s clap.

And those were the last words Lincoln ever heard.

The story had the intended effect. Josie was mesmerized.

She became even more fascinated when I told her Lincoln died 47 years to the day before Titanic went under.

So we bond over history and when I was invited to attend Lincoln Remembrance Day festivities in Gettysburg, I seized the opportunity.

Tomorrow she and I will drive four hours, tour the battlefield, visit the museums and on Monday morning witness the 149th historical reenactment of  Lincoln reading 263 of the most powerful words ever written (this is already plus-600 for those of you keeping score).

But it won’t be Lincoln and all that happened between Union and Confederate that’ll matter most to me. It’ll be all the little father and daughter moments in between. I will revel in the talks, the secrets and the togetherness of times I know she’ll never forget.

Me neither.

See, this weekend despite what we filled out on the school permission slips isn’t about studying history.

It’s about making it.

Related . . .

• Of humdingers and sockdologers

• Daughter, 4, thinks Dad works too much

With Kelley, spy scandal plot thickens

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I was hoping circumstances in the scandal involving two people with combined zero body fat would evolve enough to allow me to write a headline that includes the words the "Plot Thickens.”

So I guess I should be grateful for investigators for revealing the existence of Jill Kelley, a woman described by neighbors as “The Tampa Kardashian.”

For those of us blessed with romantic natures, this once all seemed so simple.

Spy meets girl, girls writes book about spy, clothes fly and the late night comics simultaneously exalt the book composed during the affair is titled “All In.”

Enter Kelley.

Everything I’ve read about Paula Broadwell indicates she’s a quality human being. Accomplished in her field, she has the bearing of the thoughtful American scholar she is. In fact, her poise is more apparent than even her looks. And I’m shallow.

Kelley has the bearing of Snooki.

If Broadwell warns me to avoid Kelley, I’m going to listen. Not that Kelley’s my type. She looks like Russell Brand’s type.

This just keeps getting more and more strange.

Now we come to Marine Gen. John Allen. Talk about bearing. He looks like he could drill holes in your heart with his eyes.

That’s why it’s difficult for me to suggest somebody important needs to treat him like we treat our 12-year-old daughter. We need to take away his toys.

Like most parents of 12-year-old girls, we’re wrestling with how to manage her precious tech time. Her infatuation with her iTouch reminds me of the infatuations  our top brass feels with women whose chests are significant for things other than service ribbons.

It’s iTouch vs. theyGrab.

But of the two of them, I guarantee you our daughter is being more judicious than the general.

C’mon, 20,000 to 30,000 pages of messages between Allen and Kelley?

Investigators say that number seems inflated because some pages may include two words like, “Yep, sweetheart.”

My wife and I haven’t in 20 years typed 20,000 letters or messages to one another. And I’m not talking letters in envelopes. I’m talking 20,000 total characters like a, b, c . . .

No one will ever be able to explain to me how a general managing a war has time to type ANYTHING to a Tampa housewife.

I reflexively feel like confiscating Allen’s smart phone and sending him to his room to spend the next hour reading Harry Potter.

All the people who know them best swear Gens. Petraeus and Allen are outstanding leaders and judges of character. Of course those that know them best are fellow generals and now we’re all left to wonder how reporters pried them away from Angry Birds long enough to extract comment.

I predict her infidelity with Petraeus will be the only scandal to emerge about Broadwell.

Not so with Kelley. She will for the next month be what journalists consider an authentic treasure chest of scandalous revelations, even as I question the authenticity of her treasured chest.

It’s shocking both generals vouched for her in court cases and were instrumental in seeing she obtained an honorary South Korean consul general title. She used it to try and bully 911 operators into doing her bidding yesterday.

“I’m an honorary consul general, so I have inviolability,” she said in requesting police shoo reporters from her lawn. “I don’t know if you want to get diplomatic protection involved as well.”

Well, la-de-dah.

This honorary consul general status thingie sounds like something I’d enjoy.

My blog had 323 Ukrainian readers this month -- “Pryvit Ukrainian dryhs!” Maybe they’d give me one. I could get a special license plate for my dinged jalopy and park it in the bar’s handicap spot just as soon as they designate one.

Now you’ve got an FBI agent sending shirtless pictures of himself to Kelley.

It’s impossible for me to express the level of dismay I feel in a world where I, an underemployed blogger with a rat hole office about a corner tavern, feel compelled to scold our generals and federal agents for acting childish.

It’s so bad I am going against my instincts that cry for universal equality and argue it’s time to take discriminatory actions for the good of the country.

Yes, it’s time America bans heterosexuals from serving in the armed forces.

Do it now or we’re at risk of watching them become the armed farces.

Related . . .

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• The John Edwards Rielle-ity Show

Youth hockey league in hot water over icing anthem

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Disclaimer: I posted this and immediately heard from a disgruntled friend who hates this one. He doesn't like the Nazi reference or the contention that too much patriotism can be, as I say, tedious. He said this one wasn't one of my best. I agree. I appreciate any reader who holds me to a high standard and will try and keep his or her fair complaints in mind. I hope you'll stick with me through low spots like this. So . . . you've been warned. Read at your own risk. CR

A western Pennsylvania controversy has erupted that is defying the laws of nature. Yes, there’s a firestorm on ice.

A local youth hockey league is trying to save money by telling its teams to cease “Star-Spangled Banner” pre-game performances. They want to eliminate the anthem because ice time is expensive and overly long anthems have meant games ending with time still on the clock.

People are furious.

This is especially important to me because I was once a participant in that very league. Hockey was our game. I played on all the traveling all-star teams and was captain of my high school team.

Yes, when I was a boy, I was the man.

When I heard the news I was surprised they were singing the national anthem there at all. They never did it before games when I was a kid.

In fact, the song I remember them playing during our warm-up skate was Elton John’s “Saturday Night’s Alright for Fighting,” which really psyched us up. We teenagers loved the song and all believed, man, that Elton John kicks ass. He must be one really macho dude.

Here’s what I think I’d have thought if they’d have swapped the ballsy rocker for the national anthem: “Man, this is so boring. Nobody’s even singing. I don’t know why they make us do this. Just drop the puck so we can play.”

I’m always wary of what I call patriotic creep. We’ve seen it with flag pins, the pledge of allegiance and various patriotic ditties.

The world becomes awfully tedious when you spend your time trying to out-patriot the next guy. Since 9/11, baseball for instance added the singing “God Bless America” to many games during the 7th inning stretch.

The controversy is occurring while I’m enjoying Erik Larsen’s outstanding “In the Garden of the Beasts,” about William E. Dodd’s tenure as U.S. ambassador to Germany from 1933 to 1937. It was an era where the Nazi seed began to beanstalk and inflict its insanity on every aspect of daily life in Berlin.

It became mandatory that everyone greet one another with the “Seig Heil!” salute and any display of patriotic devotion had to be observed with joy and reverence. If someone turned their attention from a storm trooper parade to smile at a beguiling bird, the storm troopers would break ranks and without fear of repercussion smash the nature lover over the head.

Soon, people were being judged on their patriotic fervor and secret police were making midnight visits to those who’d been deemed by neighbors with grudges as being insufficiently patriotic.

Of course the two have nothing to do with one another, but I thought I’d mention it to show my historical gratitude I wasn’t a smart ass blogger in Berlin 79 years ago.

If I had to pick, I’d come down on the side of my old league ditching the anthem. But I sense an opportunity for compromise. How about this?

Focus on the singer, not the song. Each singer must agree to sing the song in under 30 seconds.

I just timed myself and on the first try made it through in 23.7 seconds.

Too many anthem singers believe they are auditioning for a big record deal. Loved ones film the performance for YouTube posterity and the singer is encouraged to  emote, pout and extend every note beyond its melodic stability.

It should be played like a polka.

Or maybe instead of pretty young singers, we could use crusty barn auctioneers sure to keep it snappy.

I think that’s a great compromise and would be acceptable to the traditionalists, more so than my secondary proposal, I’m sure. That being sing only every other word:

“Oh! can see the early

What proudly hailed the last

Whose stripes bright thru perilous

O’er ramparts watched so streaming

And rocket’s glare bombs in

Gave thru night our was there

Oh! does star-spangled yet

O’er land the and home of brave?

That would cut in half the time of every single rendition, and the mind has a way of filling in the blank spaces, an exercise that would help increase the mental agility of the your typical boneheaded sports fans without forcing them to do things like Sudoku or Jumble.

Or how about this? Let’s go back to the original intent. 

Woodrow Wilson in 1918 ordered it played when the flag was raised during military ceremonies.

I like the idea of changing tradition and having the flag raised prior to games. It would be dramatic. Plus singing the song could be a way of saying, “Hello flag! You look great! Nice to see you!” which I think would make the flag feel good.

And let’s have a rule where the anthem won’t be played at any sporting event where the players outnumber the spectators.

So please help spread these common sense solutions so we don’t have to go through this again.

I wouldn’t want to have to go all Elton John on anyone's ass.

And that threat would have had a vastly different meaning back when I was playing hockey.

Related . . .

• I pledge allegiance to the pledge of allegiance

• C’mon America! Let’s all sing the national anthem!

I know Victoria's secret

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I was strolling through the local mall yesterday and found myself feeling an odd sort of nostalgia for a heterosexual man like myself.

It was in front of Victoria’s Secret, a store I haven’t set foot in about 12 years.

I thought, “I wonder if they’ve redecorated the dressing rooms since when I was in there pretending I was a transvestite.”

I don’t know why I haven’t written about this before, but I was once tagged to do wacky field reports for one of the Pittsburgh morning radio giggle shows.

It was during my swashbuckling heyday for National Enquirer from about 1994 to 2000. Back then, I’d do just about anything outlandish for a buck.

I guess I still would, but what I do now -- basically nothing -- is such an outlandish way to make a living I don’t know how I could top it.

The radio station had just been taken over by a communications conglomerate that promised to shower them with big bucks. The boys there liked my segments enough that they wanted to sprinkle some of the loot on me.

“What would you say to doing hidden mic pranks using your wacky brand of humor. We’ll pay you $300 per stunt.”

Sold!

The gig lasted one day and they never paid me a dime.

Turns out Victoria’s secret is she has no sense of humor.

I found this out during my very first scheme. They dispatched me and a producer to the mall with me rigged with a hidden microphone -- and I’m being candid here on the assumption the statute of limitations on childish radio pranks expired as soon as the station went to the very next commercial break.

I took great pains to visually and aromatically prepare for a prank that would only be broadcast on the radio. I got a haircut, trimmed up my mustache, put on a dashing suit, splashed on some cologne and did my best to look like a shorter Tom Selleck.

And pulling that off wasn’t as difficult as you think. Really, it was easy to appear handsome for women who are used to seeing men dressed like they were in rush to find a deer to gut, as so many men around here do year round.

So the three lovely girls at the counter smiled and straightened up a bit when they saw me approach. We bantered for a bit then I made the pivot to business.

“I have a very important date this evening, the outcome of which could determine the direction of my entire life. I will do anything to make this darling person happier than they’ve ever been. Everything must be perfect. That’s why I’m here.

“I need something that is both daring yet coy. It has to accentuate the parts of a body a man finds irresistible. It needs to have enough frilly distractions to tease while still offering instant access for when passions can no longer be restrained. I need something now and I don’t care how much it costs.”

I started feeling a little bit guilty at this point because I’d in those three minutes become their dream customer. I’d placed my romantic future in their hands and they were self-assured enough in their knowledge of women, love and lingerie that they were going to deliver. 

The younger girls deferred to the more senior, a stunning brunette.

“I’m sure we can help you,” she said. “Let’s start with her size.”

“Oh, it’s not for a woman,” I said. “It’s for me.”

These were simpler times. We all had an idea about how a gay man was supposed to look and act: think Richard Simmons in a tutu.

It was like I’d detonated a gay bomb near the brassiere display tree.

The jaws of all three went crashing to the counter. They’d never experienced anything like what I’d presented.

Two of them were completely unnerved, while the third recovered nicely, although with a red-faced stammer that remained intact through the duration of my visit.

“W-w-w-well, let’s have a l-l-look at some Merry Widows, okay? Okay!” And together we browsed. I finally settled on three really racy numbers and asked her to show me to the fitting rooms.

I guess I was in there for about 20 minutes. I held each of the outfits up to my body to see how they looked in the mirror, but didn’t try any of them on. I thought they all looked good enough that if I tried even one of them on it might necessitate a drastic lifestyle change that would put an unusual strain on my relationship with my wife.

I finally emerged, said I was thinking of going in a different direction and asked if there was a latex paint store in the mall.

The only thing that had me nervous was that the recorder might malfunction.

It did not and the very next day we played the whole tape on air to much hilarity. 

It was later that day furious company attorneys called the station with all kinds of threats. The station caved, there were some key personnel changes and my career in giggle radio came to a swift close.

So I confess to feeling a swirl of regret yesterday as I gazed into that store with all its lusty inspirations.

Because, yeah, I think I’d have looked dynamite in that little pink teddy.

Related . . .

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Bonding over spy sex scandals

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It’s purely coincidence the story of a famous American spy who kissed a woman who wasn’t his wife broke the same weekend millions of Americans went to see a movie about a spy famous for kissing women who aren’t his wife.

What would James Bond say about General David Petraeus?

I think he’d be neither shaken, nor stirred.

Of course, the conspiracy-minded among us -- and brain-munching zombies are less resilient -- say the timing of the affair’s revelation is evidence President Obama is dumping Petraeus because the CIA chief knows damaging information about a Benghazi cover-up.

So now instead of dealing with one scandal I don’t understand, I’m now juggling two.

The far-right outrage over Benghazi it seems is because government sloppiness led to four tragic deaths.

History, our most reliable teacher, shows these very same people expressed zero outrage when government sloppiness led to tens of thousands of tragic deaths in Iraq.

I guess murder matters more when it’s not your guy, body counts be damned.

Call me naive, but I’m never surprised when Americans get killed for being American in places where they hate Americans. These hysterical inquiries about what was and wasn’t done in Benghazi strike me as ridiculous. 

And who knew having a consensual extra-marital affair disqualified someone from being a spy? I thought telling pillow talk lies was part of being a spy or at least one of the perks.

You know, “Close your eyes and think of England!”

That’s a cheeky British phrase for doing something -- usually something sexual -- you’d rather not do.

I don’t think that was the case with Petraeus and Paula Broadwell, a woman I’d describe as fetching if it didn’t have such canine connotations. She’s a babe. Unfortunately, she’s a babe with a husband and two dependent babes of her own back home in Charlotte.

She wrote the glowing Petraeus biography with the now snicker-inducing title of “All In.”

Part of me thinks that if someone devotes two years to writing a book that says what a great guy you are, sleeping with her is the least a gentleman can do.

If anyone ever does that for me, I promise I’ll come straight over and clean your gutters.

And that’s not some provocative sexual innuendo. I despise cleaning our gutters and doing that for someone else is the most humanitarian gesture I can muster short of handing over a spare kidney.

I don’t know where this one’s going to end, but I’m hoping it’s not with congressional hearings where panels of serial adulterers spend hours questioning a witness about his or her adulterous behavior.

I don’t see any homeland security breach here, other than the psychic security the involved families are bound to be feeling in their once happy homes.

But it pains me to think common infidelity is going to cost America the talents of this man who has served so well for so long.

I mean, nobody does it better than the spy who loved Mrs. Broadwell.

I hate to think he’s going to be exiled to some murky Halliburton consultancy where he’ll be forced to spend days listening to Dick Cheney predict daily doom and chart how shareholders can profit from it.

It puts Republicans, the party that recently enthused about having him run for president in ’16, in a tricky position. They’re conditioned to publicly abhor infidelity -- unless it’s practiced by party sex symbols like Newt Gingrich.

Obama and the Democrats seem to be in an unforgiving mood, too. They’re sensitive about the Benghazi charges and were hoping to enjoy a longer bask in the electoral results.

It’s times like these I wish our leaders had some European sensibilities. Consensual  intimacies trouble them not even a bit.

They are baffled by our puritanical streak.

They think private infidelities are best left to angry spouses, not congressional committees.

It’s kind of the way I feel.

Even our best spies are human beings who on occasion will lapse into being human.

It’s a mindset over which enlightened souls everywhere can, hmm . . .

What’s the word I’m looking for?

Bond?

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A Sunday re-run about cow sex selection

There's no rhyme or reason as to why I pick a past post to honor with Sunday re-run. I try to ensure it's something apolitical, something unchallenging, something light. If that's the case, then this one fails. Cow sex is an inherently heavy topic.

I'll write, of course, tomorrow about the Petraeus sex/spy scandal tomorrow. Hope you'll stop by to check it out.

Have a splendid and relaxing Sunday. 

A recent report shows that any parent eager to pre-determine the sex of their offspring ought to pause and consider the cow.

Yes, in what is surely an indicator of what’s to come for mankind, dairy farmers have for the past three years been given the opportunity to select the sex of their cattle. They got to tinker with the divine selection ordained by God and Mother Nature that had previously set the balance at roughly 50-50.

Here’s basically how the new draft went: girl, girl, girl, boy, girl, girl, girl, boy, girl, girl . . .

Of course, dairy farmers interested in producing more milk would want to breed more milk producers. What they didn’t foresee was that the result would be, duh, too much milk.

Understand, they didn’t make their selection based on charity. Their calculation wasn’t designed to end starvation by making more nutritious milk. They don’t think like that.

No, they thought the way oil men think when they do their drilling. They thought profit. Nothing wrong with that.

But this time they thought wrong.

“It’s real simple,” said Hartford, California, farmer Tony De Groot, told The NY Times, “we’ve got too many cattle on hand and too many heifers on hand and the (milk) just keeps on coming and coming.”

Thus the retail price of milk is down 24 percent in one year.

I suppose to assist the always beleaguered farmer we could all start washing our vehicles with milk, but I’m satisfied I already do plenty for the farmer.

I eat three meals a day. Sometimes I even over-eat. Plus, I pay taxes that go to farmers who accept the money with the stipulation that they do something other than farm. I understand the basic economic function behind that maneuver, but I’ve never grasped people being paid not to make food in a world where so many other people really need food.

It would make much more cultural sense, for instance, if someone came along and paid me not to write. That I could understand. Really, on many days I look back at these musings and am surprised it hasn’t happened yet.

Maybe my indifference for the plight of the farmer stems from my early days as a young news reporter. Every summer, it was my job to write the annual unhappy farmer story.

If it had rained more than usual, I’d call my local farmer and he’d say: “Too much rain. Lousy summer for farmin’.”

The next year, I’d call back after a long stretch of sunshine and that very same farmer would say, “Not enough rain. Lousy summer for farmin’.”

I knew even then that challenging a farmer’s hallowed wisdom was like being mean to Cub Scouts. It just isn’t done.

But I had to restrain myself from asking why he didn’t think of becoming an accountant, a shoe salesman or engaging in some other pursuit involving room temperature indoor work far from bucolic pastures perfumed with manure.

So today the National Milk Producers Federation is paying farmers to send herds to slaughter. Since January the program has culled more than 230,000 cows nationwide.

That’s probably upsetting to the people in the beef industry who see their prices artificially depressed. It goes without saying how upsetting it must be to the doomed cows themselves.

Once again I’m morally chagrined that the occasional steak is toothsome enough to make me resist the vegetarian option.

That brings us to today when soon the same sex-selection techniques will be offered to ovulating moms-to-be.

To go into the unintended consequences here would be so monumental that it might inspire a movement to pay me to stop writing and I’m unprepared for that sort of government-imposed leisure (I remain, however, open to offers).

In short, if parents select boys over girls, it’ll be good for football, but bad for peace.

If it’s the reverse and girls dominate, it’s bound to to be bad for traffic and good for people who produce programming for the Lifetime Channel.

The lesson can be summed up in the tagline of an old commercial from the 1970s that promoted artificial Chiffon butter over the real thing:

It’s not nice to fool Mother Nature.

And that’s no bull.