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NBC’s “Saturday Night Live” returns with a new episode on March 27 and it remains a mystery whether the show will have someone portray President Biden. A bigger question: Will SNL dare give Biden the same treatment it gave Gerald Ford?

President Ford, a star athlete in college, slipped on the steps of Air Force One in June 1975. When SNL had its debut four months later, Chevy Chase played Ford as a klutz, falling down in sketch after sketch – a depiction that helped make Chase a big star. It branded Ford and helped dash his chances against Jimmy Carter the following year.

Last Friday, President Biden had the misfortune to slip at least twice on the steps of Air Force One. He wasn’t injured, but his image might have been hurt. Right-wing commentators already claim he’s too old and frail for the job. They’ll be aching for Biden to get a Ford-style portrayal on SNL.

So far, the NBC series has stayed clear of Biden. He is mentioned briefly on Weekend Update, but there has yet to be a sketch with a Biden character in 2021.

The last time anyone played Biden on SNL was December 19, when cast member Alex Moffat took a turn. Before the election Jim Carrey portrayed Biden and some Democrats felt it was too harsh. Carrey left the role last fall without much explanation except to say it was never meant to be a permanent gig.

Earlier, Woody Harrelson provided a toothy, straight-from-the-headlines version of Biden, and Jason Sudeikis did a spot-on impression of the then-vice president during the Obama years.

I placed a call to Alan Zweibel, who was one of the original writers at SNL and worked on the Ford parodies. “We were at an age where the Republicans were the bad guys,” he told me. He recalls that after Richard Nixon resigned in disgrace, “Ford comes along and he’s the guy who not only pardoned Nixon, but kept falling down a lot. So, you know, it just seemed like the natural thing to do.”

SNL and its creator, Lorne Michaels, frequently state that they treat both parties equally in search of comedy and satire. But Jay Pharoah, who did a winning impression of President Obama, has said in interviews that SNL went a bit soft on Obama in the latter stages of his presidency. “A lot of the time I was told I had to keep him presidential,” Pharoah explains. “I was just forced to be a part of the machine and try to do the best I can.”

So, what will be Joe Biden’s fate? Will SNL turn him into a Ford-style bumbler who keeps losing his footing? Or will SNL steer clear of damaging Biden’s image at a time when the nation is already so divided on politics?

Chevy Chase is now 77, one year younger than Joe Biden. Maybe SNL will invite him to stumble back into the presidential role.

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Peter Funt is working on a book about portrayals of sitting presidents, titled “Playing POTUS.”

Copyright 2021 Peter Funt. Columns distributed exclusively by Cagle Cartoons, Inc., newspaper syndicate.

Irwin Fox died the other day. If you missed it because you were engrossed in obits about Hank Aaron, Larry King and Cloris Leachman, that’s understandable. Besides, at 95, Mr. Fox had outlived many of his fans.

As a kid in Brooklyn they called him “Sonny,” so he kept it – for the months he spent in a Nazi POW camp during WWII, through broadcasting courses at NYU, and into the offices of the “Candid Microphone” radio program, where my father, Allen Funt, gave him his first job in 1947.

The radio show and its television offshoot, “Candid Camera,” became Dad’s entire career. Sonny Fox moved on, first as a correspondent for the Voice of America during the Korean War, and then as a pioneer in children’s television. He paved the way for performers like Bob Keeshan (Captain Kangaroo) and then Fred Rogers, to name two who, like Sonny, could relate to kids on their own level.

“They taught me as much as I taught them,” he said about the children he interviewed. “I had an insatiable curiosity about the inner life that goes on in children.”

His first foray into kids TV came at an educational station in St. Louis, where he answered an ad for “A man who can talk to a boy, man-to-man.” This daily series, “The Finder,” was later used by the Ford Foundation to introduce public stations to children’s programming – the forerunner of “Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood.”

In the mid-fifties Sonny landed a show on CBS called “Let’s Take a Trip,” a marvel of live-TV production, using full-size studio cameras that had to be lugged around the globe. Sonny and two young companions visited the Truman Library in Missouri, spring training in Florida with the Dodgers, as well as a rope factory, a shoe factory, and a ski slope in Canada.

Today’s kids can go to such places via the Internet, but back then it was unique, embellished by the smooth, gentle, always curious Mr. Fox. Unlike other kids’ fare of the period – mostly cartoons and slapstick – “Let’s Take a Trip,” which ran for three years, was a product of the CBS News Division. Billboard magazine reviewed this series in 1955, noting: “Like so many good things, ‘Let’s Take a Trip’ is so simple it is only amazing it was not done before.”

CBS gave Sonny a second job, in prime-time, hosting “The $64,000 Challenge.” He didn’t care for it – and wasn’t very good, once reading the answer instead of the question – so getting fired was a piece of good luck. He was spared the quiz show scandals that came a short while later.

In 1959 he took over as host of a local kids show on Channel 5 in New York that became nationally renowned, although televised only in the tri-state area. “Wonderama” was a weekly four-hour children’s festival.

“I have no talent – no performing talent,” Sonny conceded. “I don’t do puppets, I don’t sing. I realized that the kids in the audience were the show. I didn’t condescend to them.”

“Wonderama” was a mix of fun and games, but it featured guests such as producer Joseph Papp and a troupe of Shakespearean performers, opera star Roberta Peters, and regular appearances by Sen. Robert Kennedy, who conducted “press conferences” with youngsters.

Sonny went on to serve as head of children’s programming at NBC, and as chairman of Television Academy, but his legacy lies in what he did for children during the fifties and sixties.

W.C. Fields famously advised performers to never work with animals or kids. It’s a good thing my friend Sonny Fox never got the message. “What a long-lasting thumb print we left on those malleable minds,” he said.

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A list of Peter Funt’s upcoming live appearances is available at www.CandidCamera.com.

Peter Funt is a writer and speaker. His book, “Cautiously Optimistic,” is available at Amazon.com and CandidCamera.com. Copyright 2021 Peter Funt. Columns distributed exclusively by Cagle Cartoons, Inc., newspaper syndicate.

To paraphrase Rudyard Kipling: A good cigar is a smoke, but a cigar box filled with trading cards is a treasure.

My father smoked Dutch Masters Panetelas and the box in which they came was the perfect size for storing baseball and football cards made by the Topps company. Cards came in packs of six, along with a stiff slab of pink bubble gum that had a distinctive sweet smell, while the box, having once held cigars, had a deep earthy scent. In combination the aroma was intoxicating.

With modern digital enhancements, and boosted by pandemic-altered lifestyles, the sports-card business is booming. This month, a single card printed in 1952 by the Topps company, depicting the Yankees rookie sensation Mickey Mantle, sold for a record $5.2 million.

Topps was a family business in Brooklyn, launched in 1938 by Morris Shorin and his four sons. The business, however, was gum—sold for a penny per slab. It wasn’t until 1949 that the Shorins decided they could sell more gum by including “Magic Photo Cards” in the packs, featuring sports stars such as Babe Ruth and Cy Young.

Within three years Topps was producing more than 400 different baseball cards annually. Then, in 1992, after four decades of selling kids candy they no longer wanted, Topps determined it could peddle more cards by eliminating the gum. Besides, buyers hated the fact that, when warm, melting gum stained the valuable cards.

Today’s collectors have more on their minds, as reflected by a recent piece in The Athletic magazine titled, “A guide to football card investing and future speculating.” The focus was on cards produced by Panini, an Italian firm that specialized in selling stickers of soccer stars and expanded to the U.S. in 2009. Having scooped up rights to the NBA and NFL, the company has modernized the trading-card trade and made speculators out of collectors.

Demand is growing for cards manufactured by Panini America and for Topps, which continues to hold rights for Major League Baseball.

As a former collector and current diehard fan, I must say the new card craze leaves me cold. The Athletic reports, “like any investment, speculating on football cards carries risk. But those risks can be minimized given that Panini produces cards for each player in a range of investment levels. Think of these as akin to small-cap, medium-cap and large-cap investments.”

Another recent wrinkle is “box breaks,” in which collectors buy rights to a certain number of cards in a new box or case, usually opened “live” on YouTube or other social media sites. Topps is conducting a Breaker Showcase next month, with “distinguished guests!” and a chance for someone to win the “Platinum Box Cutter!”

In March, Panini will release its newest NFL set: “Six cards per box, 10 boxes per inner case, two inner cases per master case” in what it calls “stunning Optichrome technology.” These are sold at an online auction, with the price starting at $800 and dropping every five minutes until the set sells out.

My allowance used to be 25 cents a week, which bought me 30 Topps cards and five slabs of stale gum. I’m guessing that, even with inflation, today’s kids are priced out of the Panini auction. But, maybe, if they’re lucky, dad will let them play with the box.

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A list of Peter Funt’s upcoming live appearances is available at www.CandidCamera.com.

Peter Funt is a writer and speaker. His book, “Cautiously Optimistic,” is available at Amazon.com and CandidCamera.com. Copyright 2021 Peter Funt. Columns distributed exclusively by Cagle Cartoons, Inc., newspaper syndicate.

Donald Trump is trying to win the election with every court challenge and tweet he can muster, but he doesn’t really care how many votes he and Joe Biden wind up getting. That’s because the election Trump is determined to win is in November 2024.

Although Trump and his cable-news enablers mock the polls, Trump has known for some time he wasn’t going to win this year. That was clear months ago as he mounted a crusade against voting by mail – his first salvo in discrediting Biden’s eventual victory.

“Mail-In Ballots will lead to massive electoral fraud and a rigged 2020 Election,” Trump tweeted on July 2. Why would he do that four months before the election if he actually expected to win? And the brouhaha about alleged vote-counting irregularities in Philadelphia, Detroit and other Democratic strongholds is only designed to further enrage Trump’s base when Biden is officially certified as the 46th president.

Trump’s goals: (a) convince those who voted for him that the system is rigged and they were cheated, (b) promote conspiracy theories to undermine Biden’s presidency, (c) energize cable-TV and talk-radio hosts who will promote Trump and his brand for the next four years, and (d) raise money, starting with urgent appeals to fund bogus legal challenges.

Trump is sending multiple emails per day to supporters, such as this on Nov. 10: “We cannot let the Left go unchecked any longer. There are too many irregularities and room for potential DECEPTION to give up now. We need to FIGHT BACK, but we can’t do it without your help.”

According to Axios and other news outlets, Trump is expected to hold campaign-style rallies in the coming weeks. If he does, his 2024 re-re-election bid will have begun.

In his acceptance speech in 2016, Trump said, “Ours was not a campaign but rather an incredible and great movement.” In a twisted way, that’s not unlike the approach Bernie Sanders took when he lost the nomination to Hillary Clinton. Sanders spent the next four years building a powerful grassroots movement among progressives who believed they had been cheated by Clinton’s forces. They were encouraged by talk shows like “The Young Turks,” and by the time campaigning began again in 2019 Sanders had what many believed to be the best shot at securing the nomination.

Trump just got over 71 million votes – a number that no amount of recounting will change – creating a powerful base for 2024. Many Trump voters are angry. Everything he’s doing now is designed to reinforce that anger so that it survives as a “movement.”

Even as he emailed that the race with Biden wasn’t over, Trump formed what’s known as a leadership political action committee. Such PACs can accept up to $5,000 per year from each donor. While the money can’t be used to directly fund a campaign in 2024, it will be available for travel and other expenses as Trump charts his course to retake the White House.

In 2024 Trump will turn the same age as Biden will be when he takes the oath of office: 78. Many have speculated that Biden will step down after one term at age 82, presumably making possible a run by Kamala Harris to replace him. I imagine that’s a fight Trump would relish.

That said, American politics are increasingly tough to predict. Four years is a long time. The nation faces so many problems right now that even thinking about scenarios four years out is folly.

But those watching Trump’s current post-election circus act should understand what’s up. The man isn’t trying to stay in office, he’s looking for a way to get back. As he said upon winning in 2016: “While the campaign is over, our work on this movement is now really just beginning.”

That’s how Sean Hannity, Laura Ingraham and others at their network will cast it. To them, Trump will always be crazy like a Fox.

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A list of Peter Funt’s upcoming live appearances is available at www.CandidCamera.com.

Peter Funt is a writer and speaker. His book, “Cautiously Optimistic,” is available at Amazon.com and CandidCamera.com. Copyright 2020 Peter Funt. Columns distributed exclusively by Cagle Cartoons, Inc., newspaper syndicate.

Those of us who assumed Election Day would mark a merciful end to the torrent of emails asking for money, obviously don’t understand the new normal in politics. On Nov. 5 the Trump campaign emailed:

“Defend the Election. We need you to protect the election results!” It asked for a donation which would be “matched by 1000%.”

Minutes later, the Biden campaign emailed:

“Peter, your donation – right now – to the Biden Fight Fund will help prevent Donald Trump and Republican’s attempts to throw out duly cast ballots and steal elections.”

Does this ever end? What’s next?

Nov. 10 – “Fellow Democrat: Our election victory still faces challenges in court by desperate Republicans. Will you donate $25 today to the Biden Legal Fund?”

Nov. 26 – “Friend, we all have so much to be thankful for. Please click below to make your donation of $10 or more to the Biden Thanksgiving Fund.”

Nov. 27 – “As we continue to digest our election victory, help show your support by sending $50 to the Biden Black Friday Fund.”

Dec. 8 – “Fellow Democrat, the inauguration is drawing near and there’s work to be done! Use the link below to make your pledge to the Biden Inauguration Fund!”

Dec. 23 – “Greetings! Please show your support by signing this digital holiday card for Dr. Jill Biden and President-Elect Joe Biden. Donations to the Biden Holiday Fund are welcome.”

Jan. 5 – “As you know, most presidents wear a red tie for their inauguration, but some have opted for blue. Please take a moment to share your preference for Joe’s big day, and give what you can to the Biden Wardrobe Fund.”

Jan. 6 – “Dear Supporter, we wish you could join us in Washington for the inauguration, but participating in our online gathering is the next best thing! Click here and contribute $50 to reserve your spot for the Biden Zoom Fund.”

Jan. 14 – “Friend, we know you get a lot of requests for political donations. Joe’s team wants to put an end to that. Please help our effort by contributing to the Biden Donation Fund.”

Jan. 20 – “Hello! It’s a new day in America. As Joe takes the oath of office, please help us prepare for the tough fights ahead. Give today to the Biden First Term Fund.”

Jan. 21 – “Fellow Americans, Joe needs your help! Please click below to make your urgently-needed donation to the Biden Re-election Fund.”

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A list of Peter Funt’s upcoming live appearances is available at www.CandidCamera.com.

Peter Funt is a writer and speaker. His book, “Cautiously Optimistic,” is available at Amazon.com and CandidCamera.com. Copyright 2020 Peter Funt. Columns distributed exclusively by Cagle Cartoons, Inc., newspaper syndicate.

Hollywood must deal with the burden of producing TV programs during a pandemic and at a time of social and political upheaval in our country. Viewers, however, deserve better than to endure heavy on-screen doses of the very things they are hoping to escape in real life.

The issue was brought into sharp focus in the season premiere of NBC’s drama “This Is Us,” which has pleased audiences and won numerous awards. Now, after four years of untangling the complicated fictional lives of the Pearson family, we find the characters discussing George Floyd’s death and Black Lives Matter, while wearing masks to cope with COVID-19.

Although too melodramatic for some, I’ve loved the series. The writing is compelling, the dramatic themes believable, and the acting exceptional. Most appealing is the show’s deft intercutting of scenes from the characters’ lives spread over several decades.

The producers had long developed a storyline that would play out over the final two seasons. Then, when the pandemic hit and production was delayed, a decision was made to incorporate both the coronavirus and racial strife in new episodes. The show’s creator, Dan Fogelman, said it would have “felt almost irresponsible” to avoid writing actual events into the plot.

The NBC series is not the first to take on current themes. Netflix’s eight-part anthology “Social Distance” fictionalized the lives of people dealing with the pandemic, as did the four-part “Love in the Time of Corona,” distributed by Hulu. But these are limited-run projects, designed expressly to explore the effects of the pandemic.

An established series like “This Is Us” faces different obstacles when dipping into current events. If the Pearsons wear masks and talk about COVID-19, and if Randall Pearson’s Black family agonizes over George Floyd’s death, then who are the Pearsons voting for? How can a series be so “on the nose,” as Hollywood puts it, about viruses and protests, while ignoring the most divisive election of our times?

It can’t. Fogelman was right to skip the election, telling the LA Times, “I don’t think our show is the forum for it.” But he was creatively misguided to cherry-pick other topics from the headlines. Earlier, for example, the show developed a compelling political theme about Sterling K. Brown’s character, Randall Pearson, running for city council in Philadelphia, while staying clear of real-life politics. Similarly, we see Pearson exploring his Black identity, but we don’t need it reenforced by actual news about protests in Minneapolis.

Medical dramas, including ABC’s “Grey’s Anatomy” and “The Good Doctor” have incorporated coronavirus themes for this season. Even the animated series “South Park” had a pandemic-themed special, a standalone episode on Comedy Central.

Hollywood’s rush to relevance could be a serious misjudgment about viewers’ interests during these stressful times. For some of us, the drone of television’s “breaking news” provides as much topical tension as we can tolerate.

Fogelman and his team are taking “This Is Us” down a rabbit hole where art imitates the very things in life we’d just as soon forget, at least for an hour or so.

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A list of Peter Funt’s upcoming live appearances is available at www.CandidCamera.com.

Peter Funt is a writer and speaker. His book, “Cautiously Optimistic,” is available at Amazon.com and CandidCamera.com. Copyright 2020 Peter Funt. Columns distributed exclusively by Cagle Cartoons, Inc., newspaper syndicate.

Ever since FCC chief Newton Minow famously branded it a “vast wasteland” six decades ago, television has tried to polish its image. One way was with probing documentaries, pioneered by journalists like Edward R. Murrow and Fred Friendly. Today, documentaries are more popular than ever, but as competition to produce them heats up, they’re becoming part of a new kind of journalistic wasteland.

Two of the summer’s popular docs, both Emmy nominees, are examples of the loosened journalistic standards. “Becoming,” Michelle Obama’s personal story, was produced for Netflix by…the Obamas. “Hillary,” Hulu’s documentary about the 2016 Clinton campaign, came from a production company selected by…Mrs. Clinton.

Programs like these are being produced at a frenetic pace, with over 1,000 titles labeled “documentary” currently available on Netflix and Amazon alone. But are they all really documentaries? Or are they infotainment?

Why is “This Is Paris,” a new YouTube film about Paris Hilton, labeled a documentary? It stars Paris Hilton and was produced by Paris Hilton, who is quoted as saying she gave the director, Alexandra Dean, “full creative control over the film.” That’s like hiring a stylist and saying you’ve given her “full control” of your hair.

Slick production and viewer-appeal among current offerings isn’t in question. What’s troubling are the editorial compromises required to make them, and the ways in which cozy relationships are camouflaged.

So muddled are standards for TV’s new quasi-journalistic documentaries that even veteran TV critics are sometimes misled. James Poniewozik of the New York Times began his review of “Hillary” by stating: “During the 2016 election, the director Nanette Burstein got exclusive behind-the-scenes access to the campaign…” That might have been Emmy-worthy had it been true. In fact, Burstein was hired a year after the election by Clinton and producers at Propagate Content. The “exclusive” footage had already been shot by a crew employed by the campaign.

As is often the case when such creative compromises are made, money is at the root. In Murrow’s day documentaries cost little and made even less. Today’s docs are big business. Budgets are soaring because of competition among streaming services and because those who control access to material are driving hard bargains.

My son Danny has been looking into this for the Columbia Journalism Review. Dan Birman, a director who has worked for Netflix, told him: “Documentaries have never been so popular, but it opens up the possibility that people will abuse the form in the name of entertainment.” Birman said that for documentarians, “These are the best of times and the worst of times.”

Music and sports documentaries are particularly prone to behind-the-scenes entanglements. Showtime ran a documentary this summer about the Go-Gos that was produced by the group’s record label, owned by Universal Music. ESPN garnered enormous publicity with its Emmy-winning documentary “The Last Dance,” a project that was only possible after the basketball superstar Michael Jordan stipulated terms by which his trove of behind-the-scenes footage could be shown.

Some outlets, notably PBS, still follow strict journalistic guidelines. In its standards manual, suppliers are advised: “Content distributed by PBS must be free of undue influence from third-party funders, political interests, and other outside forces.” Such rules are largely ignored on streaming services and pay-cable channels, where many popular documentaries are entirely dependent on “outside forces.”

A new twist in the making of modern documentaries is the growing awareness among politicians, celebrities and athletes that the market value of their story is likely to increase in direct proportion to the amount of footage available to tell it. This has created a new job in the entourage of many VIPs: full-time videographer. One of the first to recognize this was the basketball star Dwyane Wade, who arranged to have his career photographed beginning in 1997. After Wade retired last year he marketed the footage for use in a documentary about his life, “D. Wade Life Unexpected,” produced by Ron Howard’s Imagine Documentaries.

It could be argued that today’s documentaries are no different than autobiographies, in which persons of interest tell their own stories. But few such books promote false veneers of objectivity. Hillary Clinton was interviewed for 35 hours by the director she hired, and publicists stressed that “no questions were off limits.” But publicists didn’t mention that Clinton participated in editing.

Viewers would be better served if this popular style of programming were more carefully labeled. At a time when some rail about fake news, there’s little room for faux documentaries.

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A list of Peter Funt’s upcoming live appearances is available at www.CandidCamera.com.

Peter Funt is a writer and speaker. His book, “Cautiously Optimistic,” is available at Amazon.com and CandidCamera.com. © 2020 Peter Funt. Columns distributed exclusively by Cagle Cartoons, Inc., newspaper syndicate.

The only thing worse than having more presidential debates as bad as the one Tuesday night would be not having any at all.

Some politicians and pundits were quick to suggest that Donald Trump’s rude, crude conduct makes it possible, even desirable, for Joe Biden to withdraw from the remaining debates on Oct. 15 and 22, or for the Commission on Presidential Debates to cancel them. Doing so would give Trump’s flagging candidacy a lifeline. Moreover, it would remove another brick from the foundation of our political process already on the verge of collapsing.

Televised presidential debates have been conducted every four years since 1976. They draw huge ratings – although this week’s was down significantly from the first debate in 2016. For interested voters, they provide the only opportunity in a tediously long campaign to see the candidates on the same stage. Regardless, the degree to which they change voters’ minds is not the main reason for having them.

Debates are a reflection of our open society. Right now, based on Trump’s conduct in Cleveland, that reflection is not pretty, but it’s accurate. Ugly, uncompromising politics is the new national norm, reinforced by the echo chamber of fractionalized, partisan media.

As bad as Tuesday’s debate was, it was predictable and revealing. Trump showed his true self, and conservative outlets, led by Fox News, were forced to carry it live and uninterrupted for 90 minutes.

Joe Biden was decent, as expected, and semi-articulate. He managed to avoid his party’s worst fears that he would fumble or gaffe his way into Trump’s traps.

The moderator, Chris Wallace, faced an impossible task and performed well under the circumstances. Although urged by organizers to ask questions and stay clear of fact-checking, Wallace tried to curb the worst of Trump’s behavior. But the moderator is not a referee; he doesn’t have a penalty flag.

Some have suggested that the moderator should be given a mute switch. He could cut a candidate’s microphone when his opponent is speaking. As appealing as it might be to muzzle Trump, it’s a bad idea.

The point of this quadrennial exercise is to show the candidates for what they are. If Trump is a hostile, fact-deprived interrupter, then he must be seen and heard, not muted.

Still, the format could be better. Beginning in 2012 it was decided that debates would be divided into six segments, each starting with two-minute statements from each candidate, followed by a free exchange. The idea was to provide more depth on important topics and less fluff. But maybe that needs to be revisited.

When Trump and Biden were delivering their two-minute statements, Wallace was at least able to forcefully insist that each man allow the other to finish. Trump often ignored the command, but he was less interruptive than in the following section, where the timer was off and the free exchange was underway.

A return to the earlier approach – with timed answers and rebuttals, plus opening and closing statements – would be welcome. Wallace could have maneuvered better with more structure, not less.

I also believe it was a mistake to have Wallace announce the six debate topics in advance. While it’s true that nothing should surprise these candidates after so much debate prep, it makes little sense to provide an outline with which to prepare memorized answers.

The CPD says it will announce rules changes before the next debate.

If Joe Biden wins next month he’ll face bigger bullies than Donald Trump on the world stage. Those now urging a halt to the debates are only underscoring their original fear that Biden can’t handle Trump’s heat. I think they’re wrong.

Joe Biden has never walked away from a fight, and he has two more rounds to go in this one.

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A list of Peter Funt’s upcoming live appearances is available at www.CandidCamera.com.

Peter Funt is a writer and speaker. His book, “Cautiously Optimistic,” is available at Amazon.com and CandidCamera.com. © 2020 Peter Funt. Columns distributed exclusively by Cagle Cartoons, Inc., newspaper syndicate.

“How was your vacation?” used to be the standard query at Labor Day. Not this year.

For many people summer vacation became summer furlough.

We took walks, but instead of stopping to chat with neighbors, we crossed the street as they approached. Handshakes and hugs were replaced by waves.

Buying produce at farmers’ markets gave way to planting veggies in containers on the fire escape.

We found time to clean the garage and discovered camping gear that reminded us how summer used to be.

The book bag sat next to our couch, not beside a beach chair. Those who ventured to the shore wound up on the news as social-distancing scofflaws.

Televised sports were better than nothing – but not by much. Baseball was turned over to The Cardboard Fans of Summer.

The truck at the curb brought Amazon staples, not summer treats from the Good Humor man.

Watching multiple episodes of old TV shows was no longer considered bingeing – it became a nightly routine.

Back on Memorial Day, Zooming was exciting. By Labor Day it was a drag.

Presidential politics devolved into virtual conventions that played like infomercials.

We read lengthy commentaries about the new normal: Will men ever wear ties again? Will women wear heels?

Dr. Anthony Fauci, Gov. Andrew Cuomo and others who guided us through spring wilted in summer.

Kids didn’t write papers about “How I Spent My Summer Vacation.”

It was steamy in many places. Smokey in others. Storms punished the Midwest and the Gulf. It was as if nature, too, had misplaced the season.

I used to live for summer. This year, I’m grateful just to have lived through it.

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A list of Peter Funt’s upcoming live appearances is available at www.CandidCamera.com.

Peter Funt is a writer and speaker. His book, “Cautiously Optimistic,” is available at Amazon.com and CandidCamera.com. © 2020 Peter Funt. Columns distributed exclusively by Cagle Cartoons, Inc., newspaper syndicate.

More than 16 hours of political conventions over two weeks boiled down to a single word: fear.

Democrats spent most of their time stoking their brand of fear – appropriately, in my view – about the damage a second Trump term would cause. Republicans in turn focused almost entirely on the threat posed by Joe Biden – with the president saying Biden will “demolish our cherished destiny” and “give free reign to violent anarchists who threaten our citizens.”

Conducting conventions in a pandemic was bound to be unorthodox. But what Americans got over these two weeks was positively surreal.

Beyond partisan fear-mongering, the only other issue of significance at both conventions seemed to be the pandemic itself. Democrats reminded us of the horrific death toll and the Trump administration’s blunders in dealing with the coronavirus. Republicans, on the other hand, acted as if the pandemic had passed and staged a non-socially-distanced celebration on the South Lawn of the White House, with few masks in view.

What does it say about two conventions when the best speeches are given by women who have never run for anything: Michelle Obama and Melania Trump? Both spoke calmly and effectively, in from-the-heart style. Of course, as non-politicians they weren’t expected to make campaign promises.

Judging by this year’s conventions, both parties are too frightened to articulate many actual policies.

This is unfortunate because Democrats actually have a platform. It’s detailed in a single-spaced, 92-page DNC document that voters aren’t hearing much about. Included are such things as expanding unemployment insurance, a $15 minimum wage, 12 weeks of paid family leave, universal background checks on gun purchases, and free public college for students whose families earn less than $125,000 annually. The DNC platform also calls for abolishing the death penalty and granting statehood to the District of Columbia.

Yet, in their eight precious hours of TV time, Democrats barely mentioned any of these important reasons to support the Biden-Harris ticket. In fact, neither Joe Biden nor Kamala Harris spoke about them at all. Biden’s speech, for all its rave reviews, was devoted to, “Character is on the ballot. Compassion is on the ballot. Decency, science, democracy…”

Is it wise for Democrats to run a campaign that steers so clear of specifics? As for the Republican National Committee, its members cared so little about an agenda that they voted to simply skip having a platform.

But with the advantage of going in the second week, Trump seized on the fact that Democrats had offered little substance. He used some of his 71 minutes Thursday night to lay out a few second-term goals. He promised more tax cuts, more police, more energy development and “a new age of American ambition in space” that lands the first woman on the moon.

For all their split-screen Zooming, why didn’t Democrats devote a bit of convention time to actual policies? In Biden’s acceptance speech, other than pledging to close tax loopholes he mentioned only one specific new policy: “We’ll have a national mandate to wear a mask.”

Those of us who hoped the conventions would provide a meaningful start to real campaigning in this pandemic-plagued election will now have to wait for the first of three presidential debates on Sept. 29. Surely Trump and Biden will get beyond fanning fears about each other when they meet face to face, right?

During eight nights of conventioneering, the two men actually agreed on one thing. Said Biden, “This is a life-changing election that will determine America’s future for a very long time.” Said Trump, “This is the most important election in the history of our country.”

Neither man dwelled on chickens in every pot. Only fear at every kitchen table.

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A list of Peter Funt’s upcoming live appearances is available at www.CandidCamera.com.

Peter Funt is a writer and speaker. His book, “Cautiously Optimistic,” is available at Amazon.com and CandidCamera.com. © 2020 Peter Funt. Columns distributed exclusively by Cagle Cartoons, Inc., newspaper syndicate.