Cagle World

Jimmy Kimmel is a fool.

Last week, Kimmel mocked DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin for beginning his career as a plumber, rather than being, say, a lawyer, like most of the double-talking charlatans holding political posts.

Kimmel’s logic is backward. Blue-collar sensibility is the key to our country’s success.

Benjamin Franklin left school at about age 10. He started off as a printer’s apprentice, a messy job. His trade helped him master communication, business management, politics and human nature.

Thomas Paine lacked formal education, as well. He left school at age 13 and became a corset maker and laborer. When he made the case for American independence in his legendary “Common Sense” pamphlet, he didn’t write like a lawyer. His simple, powerful words resonated with ordinary Americans and helped spark the American Revolution.

George Washington left school around age 11. As a farmer, he was forever getting his hands dirty as he tried new ways to cultivate and harvest his crops and cross-breed hemp to make durable rope.

Many of our Founders were farmers, humbled by the unforgiving realities of nature. Blue-collar work made them sensible and innovative. Their good sense is evident in the practicality of the U.S. Constitution.

Blue-collar workers have no choice but to develop horse sense — to develop efficient ways to solve real problems.

An electrician mixes up the hot wire and ground wire only once.

A carpenter is kept honest by his level — he measures twice, cuts once.

A plumber’s skill is evident when the water valve is opened and the pipes don’t leak.

That’s exactly why Markwayne Mullin matters. When his father got sick, Mullin, at age 20, dropped out of college and took over the family’s struggling plumbing business.

He turned that small operation into a successful company that grew to become one of the largest home services firms in the region, providing good-paying jobs for hundreds of people before he and his wife sold it.

He and his wife co-founded Rowan’s Steakhouse in Stilwell, turning it into a thriving local staple for country-style comfort food and fresh bakery goods that employed additional staff and drew steady crowds for years before selling the property.

Fed up with inane government policies that were hindering his businesses, he ran for Congress and won.

In Congress, he built a reputation as a guy who approached issues the same way he approached a broken pipe — he figured out what was wrong and fixed it. He focused on small-business realities, energy and cutting through regulatory nonsense that people in the real world have to deal with every day.

Then he was elected to the Senate and kept the same approach — direct, practical and not especially interested in impressing the cocktail circuit. He fought for small-business relief, energy independence, practical border security measures and stopping the flow of deadly drugs.

President Trump chose him as DHS secretary because he embodies the common-sense spirit of our founders better than most in Washington — and he will get things done.

Surely, we can agree that Mullin’s blue-collar horse sense is something we need more of in Washington.

And, surely, most of us can agree there’s one other thing we could use a lot less of:

The foolhardy bile that comes out of Jimmy Kimmel’s mouth.

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Copyright 2026 Tom Purcell, distributed exclusively by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.

See Tom Purcell’s syndicated column, humor books and funny videos featuring his dog, Thurber, at TomPurcell.com. Email him at [email protected].

Note to editors: A version of this column was last distributed by Cagle in 2025.

I can only imagine how President Trump would have handled three mischievous beavers that attacked Washington, D.C.’s beloved cherry trees in 1999.

The National Cherry Blossom Festival is underway in Washington. Some 3,700 cherry trees — a gift from Japan in 1912 — are in bloom, and tourists are flocking to see them.

In 1999, however, three beavers were felling these trees faster than you could say “timber!”

Washington bureaucrats and advocacy groups responded to the crisis in their usual convoluted manner.

PETA was first out of the gate. Its spokesperson said it would be best to trap the beavers in the most humane way possible and relocate them.

No sooner was PETA’s uncharacteristically sensible idea floated than wildlife experts began crawling out of the woodwork.

One expert warned that it would be tragic to separate the beavers, since they’re likely from the same family. One beaver was a yearling, she said, and beavers should stay with mom and dad until the age of two.

Another expert said you can’t move beavers to a new colony anyway, because the new colony would reject the freeloaders.

A third expert said that all things considered, the most humane thing to do might be to just kill the buggers.

Boy, did the public react negatively to that suggestion. That’s because beavers are really cute.

Heck, if they looked more like their pointy-nosed cousins — rats — even PETA might have lined the Tidal Basin banks, firing 12-gauge buckshot without relent.

But PETA wanted nothing to do with euthanizing the furry critters. A spokesperson said they should leave the beavers alone — so what if they created a gigantic cherry tree dam.

I can only imagine how Trump would handle the situation if it happened now.

He would fire out this 3 a.m. tweet: “Beavers are DESTROYING our beautiful cherry trees — a GIFT from Japan, very historic! Evacuate within 48 hours or I’ll send in SEAL Team 6!”

He would open his subsequent press conference by boasting, “Nobody’s been tougher on beavers than me!”

“But Mr. President,” reporters would shout, “why didn’t you relocate the beavers?”

“Maybe I did, maybe I didn’t,” Trump would say. “Why would I tell a reporter?”

In any event, in 1999, after weeks of bickering, the National Park Service finally hired a professional trapper to catch the beavers and cart them off to a “safe house,” which, I believe, is a witness protection program for semiaquatic rodents.

But the experts continued bickering for weeks. Multiple D.C. types complained about the solution. Some beaver advocates accused the Park Service of fake news before that term was in vogue.

All I know is that spring has arrived in Washington, and like it or not, Trump’s aggressive approach to governing has taken a sledgehammer to the way Washington and the world have long operated.

It’s lucky for Trump critics that the great beaver invasion happened in 1999 and not during Trump’s second term.

Otherwise, tourists would be visiting the “Make Cherry Blossoms Great Again Festival.”

The Tidal Basin would be renamed “Trump’s Tremendous Waterscape — Beaver-Free!”

And three very confused rodents would be wondering how the heck they ended up in Guantánamo Bay.

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Copyright 2026 Tom Purcell, distributed exclusively by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.

Find Tom Purcell’s syndicated column, humor books and funny videos of his dog, Thurber, at TomPurcell.com. Email him at [email protected].

Generation Z should consider buying a fixer upper.

Houses are expensive these days and mortgage rates are high. It’s no wonder that only 27% of Zoomers, 28 or younger, own homes, whereas nearly 45% of baby boomers did at the same age.

Zoomers should consider following my path.

Thirty years ago, when I quit corporate America to become a freelance writer, money was tight — so I bought a fixer upper cheap.

It took three days for my father and I to tear off the old bathroom tile, replaster the walls and put up a vinyl tub surround.

We thought we were home free — until we got to the toilet.

You see, the bolts that secure the toilet to the floor had both broken. I raced to the hardware store to buy a new bolt kit.

We spent 90 minutes getting the new bolts in place — only to discover they were too short.

“Son of a !!” said my father.

“The idiots gave us the wrong bolts!” I said.

I raced to the hardware store for longer bolts. It took two hours to remove the bolts we’d just installed, then attach the longer ones.

Finally, we secured the toilet — but the wax goop, which seals the toilet to the sewage pipe, wasn’t thick enough, causing water to leak all over the recently laid tiles.

“Son of a !!” said my father.

“The idiots gave us the wrong goop!” I said, then I raced back to the hardware store.

Our third attempt to secure the toilet succeeded — until we attempted to reattach the water fittings.

To reattach the water fittings, you must wedge your body between the tub and the toilet. Then you must screw the water-line bolt, made of metal, into a pipe coming from the toilet that is made of plastic. But they won’t screw together.

So you keep trying to screw them together until you bang your head on the toilet, which makes you angry, so you attempt to stand quickly, which kicks the soaking wet floor tile out of place, then you bang your shin on the toilet, which causes you to throw the plumber’s wrench you are holding through the bathroom window.

Eventually, we got the metal water-line bolt to screw into the plastic pipe, but we stripped the threads. When we turned the water back on, a leak sprouted that made Niagara Falls look like a lap pool.

“Son of a !!” shouted my father.

“The idiots!” I said.

I raced back to the hardware store and bought every plumbing fitting, glue and sealant ever designed by man. The hardware-store manager smirked at me.

“You forgot the bathroom window,” she said.

Though the project took several more days than we’d planned, we finally completed it — and the experience is one I wish for all Zoomers to have.

Once Zoomers own fixer uppers, they, too, will achieve a hard-earned pride — and become better voters.

They’ll elect common-sense people who root out government waste and lower taxes. They’ll demand that local, county and state government officials improve their schools and fix their potholes, while keeping property taxes low.

They’ll become as miserable as every other homeowner and, in the process, make America a better place.

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Copyright 2026 Tom Purcell, distributed exclusively by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.

See Tom Purcell’s syndicated column, humor books and funny videos featuring his dog, Thurber, at TomPurcell.com. Email him at [email protected].

My second-grade teacher, Sister Mary, would be shocked that I turned out to be a writer.

Please allow me to explain.

In recent years, many schools within the United States, the United Kingdom and Australia have barred teachers from marking student papers in red.

Their thinking is that correcting young students with red pens is too confrontational and upsetting for the children. Many teachers prefer to grade in more soothing colors, such as green, blue, pink and yellow.

Red ink surely wasn’t banned at St. Germaine Catholic School in the ’70s. That school was all business, and the wonderful sisters who taught there were too busy ramming knowledge and values into us to worry about our sensitive little egos.

It’s true that the sisters were more favorable toward the more engaged students. Who could blame them?

We had 40 kids or more packed into each class. The sisters, many of whom entered the convent during the Depression and were getting on in years by the 1970s, were exhausted. They had little patience with daydreaming runts like me.

Whereas the better students were always attentive and eager, I was always staring out the window, thinking about the hills I would ride with my Murray five-speed — or plans I had to put an addition on the never-finished shack my buddies and I built in the woods.

I was a continual disappointment to Sister Mary (we called her Sister Mary Brass Knuckles) and, boy, did she let me have it. When she called me out of my daydreaming world to approach the chalkboard and complete an equation, it was humiliating.

“Are you lost in left field without a glove, Tommy?” she would say.

“Sister,” I’d say, “I don’t even have tickets to the game!”

Sister never let me or anyone off easy — and certainly didn’t worry about our feelings.

She knew the only way to improve our self-esteem, ultimately, was to teach us how to be accurate and correct.

She marked up my English compositions as though she were being funded by the red-ink lobby.

She was ahead of her time. The educational emphasis on self-esteem and emotional comfort over the past 30 years is producing dismal results.

The latest Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) results (2022) show that the math scores of U.S. 15-year-olds are well below those of other developed nations.

PISA concluded that “America’s infatuation with the ‘happiness factor’ in education may be misplaced, and could, in fact, be hurting, not helping, American students when it comes to maintaining an international competitive edge.”

In other words, America has some of the most smug, self-assured students on the face of the Earth.

Since they were babies, caring adults and educators assured them they are intelligent, attractive and wonderful — everybody gets a trophy — even though nobody asked them to break a sweat earning their wonderfulness.

So it turns out the proponents of the anti-red-ink mindset have it wrong. The good sisters at St. Germaine had it right.

All those red marks on my second-grade composition papers were unpleasant at the time, but they did me good in the long run.

As I said, Sister Mary Brass Knuckles would be proud to learn that this daydreaming pupil eventually applied himself and has been writing a nationally syndicated newspaper column for 20 years.

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Copyright 2026 Tom Purcell, distributed exclusively by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.

Find Tom Purcell’s syndicated column, humor books and funny videos of his dog, Thurber, at TomPurcell.com. Email him at [email protected].

Note to editors: A version of this column was last distributed by Cagle in 2017.

On St. Patrick’s Day, 1988, an unexpected visitor arrived at Pat Troy’s Irish pub, Ireland’s Own, in Alexandria, Va. — President Ronald Reagan.

The pub, now closed, had been a favorite watering hole for Washington insiders for more than 30 years. Reagan’s advance team secretly arranged the visit.

Just before noon that day, Reagan and his entourage arrived. As news got around, the pub quickly filled to capacity. While Reagan enjoyed a pint of Harp and some corned beef and cabbage, Troy was so busy tending to patrons, he didn’t have time to react to his famous patron.

“He had an energy about him that put you instantly at ease,” Troy told me in 1999. “He made it easy to carry on as though he was just another patron, so that is what I did.”

In the video, Troy took the stage and led the audience in “The Wild Rover.” He directed sections of the audience to compete with each other to see which could sing and clap the loudest.

“You have to clap louder, Mr. President,” he said to Reagan, prompting the president, not used to being given orders, to laugh.

Troy next led the audience in “The Unicorn Song.” While Troy sang the words, the audience mimicked the animals referenced in the song:

“There were green alligators and long-necked geese, some humpty-backed camels and some chimpanzees. Some cats and rats and elephants, but sure as you’re born, the loveliest of all was the unicorn.”

Reagan turned and watched a group of young women act out the song. His face showed curiosity and delight — he’d never seen this song performed before.

But that was who he was: At the same time he was the world’s most powerful man — the man who helped fell communism and restore American optimism — he was also a man of youthful innocence who delighted in the simplest things.

When Troy finished, he handed the president the microphone.

Reagan thanked Troy for having him for lunch. He said it was a great surprise. He talked about his father, an Irishman.

“When I was a little boy, my father proudly told me that the Irish built the jails in this country,” he said, pausing. “Then they proceeded to fill them.”

The crowd laughed heartily.

“You have to understand that for a man in my position, I’m a little leery about ethnic jokes,” he said. The crowd roared. “The only ones I can tell are Irish.”

He talked about a recent trip to Ireland. He visited Castle Rock, the place where St. Patrick erected the first cross in Ireland.

“A young Irish guide took me to the cemetery and showed me an ancient tombstone there,” he said. “The inscription read: ‘Remember me as you pass by, for as are you so once was I, and as I am you too will be, so be content to follow me.’”

As Reagan paused, the crowd eagerly awaited his follow-up.

“Then I looked below the inscription, where someone scratched in these words: ‘To follow you I am content, I wish I knew which way you went.’”

The crowd roared, causing the president to deadpan to his advance men: “Why didn’t I find this place seven years ago?”

Reagan’s pub visit showed how easily he could charm any audience, Republican or Democrat.

Which is why I toast him every St. Patrick’s Day: To follow you we were content and thankful for the way we went.

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Copyright 2026 Tom Purcell, distributed exclusively by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.

See Tom Purcell’s syndicated column, humor books and funny videos featuring his dog, Thurber, at TomPurcell.com. Email him at [email protected].

Ah, St. Patrick’s Day is upon us — a fine time to restore our sense of humor.

More than 20 years ago, British sociologist Christie Davies wrote in “The Mirth of Nations” that Americans were becoming as nervous about swapping jokes as people once were in communist Eastern Europe — a warning he issued well before cancel culture.

Which makes me long for the jokes my dad and Uncle Mike — a child of Irish immigrants — shared on Sundays, such as this one:

“Mike,” says Pat, “If you were stranded on a desert island, who would you like most to be with?”

“Me uncle Malachy,” says Mike.

“Why him?” asks Pat.

“He’s got a boat,” says Mike.

Davies noted that nearly every country has a neighboring group that is the butt of such jokes — in England it was the Irish, in France the Belgians and in America the Poles.

Though the English may have told Irish jokes to mock the Irish, Americans of Irish descent share them to celebrate Irish wit, as this one shows:

“Father,” says Pat in the confessional, “I’ve had an adulterous affair.”

“Tell me,” says the priest, “was it Molly O’Reilly?”

“No, Father.”

“Kathleen Murphy?”

“No, Father.”

“Bridget Kelly?” says the priest.

“Father, I can’t tell you her name.”

“Then I won’t absolve your sins.”

Pat goes outside and is greeted by Mike.

“Did you get absolved of your sins?” says Mike.

“No,” says Pat, “but I got three really good leads!”

Irish jokes have always worked this way — mischief, self-deprecation and a punch line that turns the whole story upside down.

Davies argued that many academics see evil intentions in the average joke. Freud thought jokes were a sneaky way of saying something demeaning about a person or a group.

But Davies said hogwash.

He said a good joke clarifies complex feelings and hard truths. It cuts to the heart of a matter better than any speech or law or government policy — and certainly brings levity, as this one does:

When the jury declared Paddy not guilty of robbery, he rushed to the judge and shouted:

“Does that mean I get to keep the money then?”

Recent surveys by the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression — including their latest College Free Speech Rankings — show that a significant portion of Americans, especially younger ones, admit they self-censor their speech for fear of backlash or professional consequences.

That’s unfortunate because when people are fearful of expressing their thoughts, humor is often the first casualty.

Ronald Reagan understood the power of humor. In this joke, he used his Irish wit to expose our common frustration with politics:

Two men, a minister and a politician, arrive at the Pearly Gates. St. Peter takes them to their accommodations.

The minister is given the keys to a rooming house. The politician is given the keys to a mansion.

“I’m confused,” says the politician. “Why does a man of the cloth get such modest accommodations, while I get such opulence?”

“Well,” says the minister. “We’ve got millions of ministers up here, but you’re the only politician who ever made it.”

The Irish have long known that humor uplifts the human heart as it celebrates our common humanity.

Surely we can all agree on this one?

“Knock, knock!”

“Who’s there?”

“Irish!”

“Irish who?”

“Irish you a happy St. Patrick’s Day!”

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Copyright 2026 Tom Purcell, distributed exclusively by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.

See Tom Purcell’s syndicated column, humor books and funny videos featuring his dog, Thurber, at TomPurcell.com. Email him at [email protected].

A few years ago, I hired a young man who lived nearby to chainsaw some trees on my property.

He used the money I paid him to buy drugs — and died from a bad batch of fentanyl-laced heroin.

Statistics will tell you he was one of the tens of thousands who have died from opioid addiction — a crisis that has devastated communities for years but is finally showing signs of easing in recent data.

What the statistics can’t tell you is that he was smart, talented and hardworking. He had a strong work ethic and took real pride in what he did. He could have gone to college or mastered any trade. His addiction stole that future.

According to the National Institute on Drug Abuse, many heroin and fentanyl users begin with prescription opioids, such as OxyContin (a morphine-like drug). They obtain them from family or friends or via a doctor’s prescription.

In the 1960s, addiction often involved street users in impoverished areas. Today, it affects soccer moms, business executives and suburban high school students.

Once addicted, many switch from prescription drugs to street heroin or fentanyl because illicit fentanyl is far cheaper and more potent — whereas prescription pills can cost up to $80 each.

As fentanyl has flooded the U.S., primarily from Mexico (using precursor chemicals from China), it has destroyed lives.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates 72,108 drug overdose deaths in the United States over the 12 months ending in September 2025 — a sharp drop from the peak of around 110,000 total overdose deaths in 2022.

In 2025, opioid-involved overdoses outnumbered gun homicides by more than 3-to-1. Just 10 years earlier, around 2015, gun homicides outnumbered heroin deaths by more than 5-to-1, but the rise of fentanyl has fueled the ongoing crisis.

The drug’s powerful addictiveness is the reason why. Like any opioid, as users’ tolerance grows, they need increasing amounts to experience the same high. Stopping brings severe withdrawal: depression, nausea, jitteriness and extreme flu-like symptoms.

Most can’t endure withdrawal, so they continue using. Those with resources often fund their downward spiral until a fatal overdose occurs — as happened with actor Philip Seymour Hoffman.

Those without funds often steal from family or burglarize homes and businesses. A bank near my suburban home was robbed four times by young men addicted to opioids.

The only hope for addicts is professional counseling and painful detox — and recovery for life.

The country’s only hope is aggressive action to combat this epidemic.

According to NPR reporting, President Donald Trump is pursuing exactly that through a strong emphasis on enforcement: designating Mexican drug cartels as foreign terrorist organizations, imposing tariffs on Mexico, Canada and China to disrupt fentanyl flows, and launching military operations against traffickers.

The administration also signed the HALT Fentanyl Act, permanently classifying fentanyl-related substances as Schedule I drugs — making it easier to prosecute the dealers who peddle them — and established the Great American Recovery Initiative to coordinate national prevention, treatment and recovery efforts.
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We must keep our foot on the throttle — because no family should have to bury a talented young son who died alone with a needle in his arm.

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Copyright 2026 Tom Purcell, distributed exclusively by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.

See Tom Purcell’s syndicated column, humor books and funny videos featuring his dog, Thurber, at TomPurcell.com. Email him at [email protected].

Forbes says the “man purse” — or “murse” — is no longer just a trend, but a luxury must-have.

Featured heavily during Paris Men’s Fashion Week, designers presented murse styles from tiny satchels to purses larger than the one my mother used.

My mother’s purse contained Band-Aids, knitting yarn, granola bars, a plumber’s wrench and lint balls dating back to the first of her six children.

According to fashion historians, the man purse dates back to the Stone Age, when men carried flint, berries and whatever else a modern Neanderthal might need.

By the 17th century, when pockets became standard in men’s clothing, the man purse disappeared. Men stored what they needed in their pockets, while women continued without sewn-in pockets, storing their items in tie-on pouches.

From the 1950s through 2022, my dad, like most men of his era, carried his keys in his right front pocket. He kept loose change in his left pocket — which he jingled with his hand when shooting the bull with other men.

He kept his thick, worn wallet in his right rear pocket. It included only the basics: license and insurance, money and a yellowed photo of my mother from 1953.

The fashionistas began trying to get men to spend big money on designer purses in the 70s and 80s, with little luck.

In the 90s, Gucci and Prada started pushing them hard on runways, but murse sales were mostly limited to “metrosexuals” — a term coined by British writer Mark Simpson to describe single, young, urban males obsessed with grooming, high fashion and, most of all, themselves.
The murse was still mostly a punchline.

In 1998, Jerry was mocked on “Seinfeld” for carrying a “European carry all,” while in 1999 Joey from “Friends” got roasted by Chandler for carrying a leather shoulder bag.

In 2004, three regular guys — Brian, Thai and Peter — were tired of being ribbed for carrying their gadgets in “lady purses.” The final straw came one night when Brian was mockingly called a “pursey” at a party.

The fellow who insulted Brian’s purse was lucky Brian didn’t smack him with it.

Determined to reclaim any shred of masculinity, the trio designed a bag specifically for men and dubbed it the MAN-n-BAG. The product quickly caught the media’s attention, giving the man purse its first serious foothold in American culture.

Fast forward 22 years to 2026. Forbes says the man purse has become essential gear for men, a $12 billion industry that’s here to stay.
Critics say the murse is further evidence that the lines between men and women are being intentionally blurred — that the rugged back-pocket wallet guy of old is being turned into a feminized, accessorized shell of his former self.

Proponents of the man purse say it simply gives modern fellows a practical way to carry around their sunglasses, notebooks, smartphones, hair goop and whatever other items they tote around.

Both sides make valid points.

Still, I think young men would be better off embracing the traits of my low-fashion father, whose focus was on his family, rather than buying into an industry determined to make them obsess over themselves.

Truth be told, I carry all my items — including my laptop — in an Italian-leather bag.

It’s a computer bag, not a murse!

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Copyright 2026 Tom Purcell, distributed exclusively by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.

See Tom Purcell’s syndicated column, humor books and funny videos featuring his dog, Thurber, at TomPurcell.com. Email him at [email protected].

No wonder the ratings for the Winter Olympics are so much better than they were four years ago.

Four years ago, the Winter Olympics were held in China. The Beijing Games were designed to showcase the glory of the communist state. Athletes were under constant surveillance and warned to keep their yaps shut.

This year, in democratic Italy, the Milano Cortina 2026 Games are buzzing with open expression: entitled American athletes insisting they only partially represent their country, a Ukrainian racer honoring war dead and local Italian protesters protesting all kinds of things.

Unlike Beijing, these Games are a vivid reflection of everything in the human heart — good, bad and everything in between.

Take Eileen Gu, the American-born freestyle skier who chose to compete for China, her mother’s native country, rather than the U.S.

When asked about the many atrocities her communist benefactor continues committing, she goes full Sergeant Schultz: “I know nothing!”

All you really need to know is that she’s being paid millions more by Chinese interests than she’d ever receive as a U.S. athlete. If she were taller, her cash-grabbing opportunism might land her a spot in the NBA.

That brings us to curling, a never-ending source of entertaining scandal.

This year, the Swedish team is accusing the Canadian team of double-touching the rock with their fingers after the shove.

If anything is more entertaining than an accused Canadian rock tosser dropping the F-bomb — eh? — I’m not sure what it is.

Speaking of scandal, some are alleging that French judges rigged the scoring in Olympic ice dancing to hand the gold to the home team — and drop the Americans to a silver.

Who do they think they are, NFL referees?

Such accusations would never happen at the Beijing Games. Any hint of cheating would reflect poorly on the state — resulting in certain French judges getting quietly disappeared.

That brings us to groin-gate — the ski jumping scandal in which male competitors allegedly tried manipulating aerodynamic drag by injecting hyaluronic acid into their nether regions to enlarge their crotch measurements.

The International Ski and Snowboard Federation mostly dismissed it, but such comedy gold never would have seen the light of day in China.

Embarrassed party elders would have shipped the perpetrators off to “don’t jab your junk” re-education camps faster than you could say, “Dude, you just tanked your social credit score.”

In any event, it’s no wonder the Winter Games ratings are nearly double what they were four years ago.

It’s all thanks to Italy’s democratic freedoms.

Freedom opens the floodgates of everything that is bad in the human heart — greed, vanity and dishonesty — but it also opens up everything that is good, such as sportsmanship, sacrifice and selflessness.

The Chinese fail to understand that you can’t restrict what is perceived to be bad without also restricting what is good.

Freedom unleashes the best of the human heart — as well as painful honesty.

Take bronze-winning Norwegian biathlete Sturla Holm Lægreid. In a post-race interview, he confessed that he cheated on his girlfriend.

Hey, Sturla, I applaud the honesty — but bro, TMI. Maybe if you’d won a gold, you could bare your soul to the world. But third place?

Buddy, all third place gets you is a greater likelihood that your girlfriend is going to cheat on you.

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Copyright 2026 Tom Purcell, distributed exclusively by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.

See Tom Purcell’s syndicated column, humor books and funny videos featuring his dog, Thurber, at TomPurcell.com. Email him at [email protected].

Note to Editors: A prior version of this column was distributed in 2024.

All my father ever wanted as a young man was to marry my mother and start a family — plans that were interrupted when he was drafted into the Army during the Korean conflict.

As he served in Texas, Germany and other parts of the world, there was only one affordable way to stay in contact: writing letters.

Every single day, seven days a week, he wrote a letter to her and she wrote one to him.

Some letters ran four pages. Some days, they wrote two letters!

They shared their hopes and dreams, and how they missed each other so.

My father joked that they’d have four boys — a football player, a baseball player, a basketball player and a priest (they’d have five girls, one boy, 17 grandchildren and 11 great-grandchildren).

Their cursive handwriting was as impeccable and as artful as their words. Their letters offer a case study in the art of romance.

Romance, according to Dictionary.com, is “to court or woo romantically; treat with ardor or chivalrousness.”

“Ardor” defines my parents’ romance especially well: “great warmth of feeling; fervor; passion; intense devotion, eagerness, or enthusiasm; zeal; burning heat.”

Halfway through my father’s Army tour, my mother stopped writing to him for three weeks.

He was mortified, thinking she’d found someone else — unaware that she’d become so sick from rheumatic fever that she nearly died.

He was relieved to learn there was a reason her letters had ceased, but he agonized over her well-being until she recovered.

Finally, after two long years, he returned home. They were able to get on with their lives.

The romance my parents experienced is a dying art.

Romance is about kindness, honesty, graciousness and affection — it’s about patience and sacrificing now to enjoy greater fulfillment later on.

It’s about trust — the sense that someone places you above all others and cares more for your needs than his or her own.

My parents really did believe that when they married they became one under God.

They fully accepted that their commitment to each other was to “have and to hold, for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health, until death do them part.”

Some consider these dated concepts in a modern era of instant gratification, cynicism, self-centeredness and hookup dating, but without the principles on which my parents built their love, romance cannot flourish.

My father told me that the first time he set his eyes on my mother he knew he would marry her — his proudest achievement was that he made it happen.

I am hopeful to learn that, according to Psychology Today, nearly half of younger generations believe love at first sight is still possible.
They are romantics at heart — as we all should be!

We are all authors of our own stories, too, so why not begin writing romance into our lives?

This Valentine’s Day, turn off your devices. Gather some stationery and a pen and write to someone you love.

Maybe you’ll fail, maybe you’ll succeed, but know this: The act of writing your story is where true romance begins.

My father died four years ago, and my mother misses him desperately. But together they wrote a love story for the ages.

Young or old, any of us can still do the same.

Happy Valentine’s Day!

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Copyright 2026 Tom Purcell, distributed exclusively by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.

See Tom Purcell’s syndicated column, humor books and funny videos featuring his dog, Thurber, at TomPurcell.com. Email him at [email protected].