Overpromise. Under deliver. In pubic life it’s wise to observe this retail maxim for managing expectations. Had several notable figures and media outlets done so in the past few weeks, one might not be on the verge of losing his government, another its prominence as a media giant. 

Yeats’ observation in the run-up to WW II— “The best lack all conviction/ while the worst are full of passionate intensity”— rings true today as we hear of hush money and attempts to hush the attorney general. 

Journalist Lara Logan was hot shit when CBS News hired her in 2002. The South African had been a first-rate war correspondent who’d proven she could get the people that mattered on a story. Soon, she was appearing on 60 Minutes and the network’s top programs.

In the tale of the scorpion and the frog, a frog offers a lift across the river to a scorpion. Halfway across the river the scorpion stings the frog. With its dying breath the frog asks why the scorpion would sting him after such a generous favour. “But you knew I was a scorpion when you met me,” he replies as the pair both drown.

Try this thought exercise. You’re watching a tennis match between Novak Djokovic, winner of 15 Grand Slam singles titles, and a Cinderella performer getting his first taste of a final in a big event. Who are you cheering for? Well, most people would be pulling for the faint hope to have his day in the sun.

The movie world is buzzing about the Oscar-nominated film The Favourite. It’s a British movie documenting the romantic rivalry between two courtiers in the time of Queen Anne. The women— Lady Marlborough and Abigail Masham— are cousins who both want a place in the Queen’s heart— and bed— at the start of the 18th century.

This week’s celebration of the life of Dr, Martin Luther King has seen the requisite images of the era of racial intolerance in the United States. As time passes, the images of KKK lynch mobs beggar the imagination even more. 

For those who think the #metoo movement over-reached a tad in making a 36-year-old unsubstantiated sexual assault claim the basis for rejecting a candidate for the U,S. Supreme Court: Hold my beer.

Call it American Gothic 2019. On Tuesday, 72-year-old president Donald Trump addressed the nation from the White House. He was followed by 78-year-old Nancy Pelosi, Speaker of the House, and 68-year-old Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer delivering a rebuttal. 

George Bernard Shaw famously noted that Britain and America were two nations “separated by a common language”.

Their respective fates have dominated 2018. In the year-end lists now emerging, two names dominate the news of their respective nations. Justin Trudeau and Donald Trump.

As General Michael Flynn’s case reaches its resolution, the ongoing project of Trump Derangement Syndrome has shifted from Russia paranoia to process crimes based on the president’s lewd lifestyle.

Perhaps the most risible notion from Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s grotesque GoFundMe rescue of traditional media is the suggestion that he’s paying the journalists to keep them in line with his Liberal policies.

The T-shirt summed up the philosophy of the woman wearing it at Costco: Strong Is The New Sexy. 

Though data clearly demonstrate that the rainfall and heat statistics in southern California are well within predictable and historical norms for arid Southern California, Jerry Brown continues to attribute his state’s disasters to a failure of people like President Trump to heed his ever-more-frantic claims.

He’d taken the left's best shots and was still standing, leaving them just the cold comfort of a possible Hail Mary from Robert Mueller’s special-counsel report. Just before their star candidates are consumed by bids for the Democrat 2020 nomination to fight Trump. 

The 20th anniversary of The National Post was a bittersweet event for anyone who loves journalism. On the one hand there was an outpouring of nostalgia for a singular moment in Canadian journalism.

In case you missed the memo, please turn your Twitter Madness Metre ® to Khashoggi. Yes, the all-consuming bonfire of the inanities this week is the brutal murder of Washington Post scribbler Jamal Khashoggi by what appears to be a Saudi hit squad in the nation’s embassy in Turkey.

For a nation that fetishizes fake virtue, Canada’s rollout of legalized marijuana on Wednesday might have been the Parnassus of self absorption. The blanket coverage by the domestic press of the first stores opening suggested something akin to a PCP D-Day in its scope and gravity.