Don’t show up. For some parents, your absence will speak louder than any sodden arguments over the density of pumpkin pie. If you can’t even look them in the eye, they’ll know you mean business. [Note: Is he joking? I know many families who are eschewing family gatherings for exactly this reason. Yes, I put most of this on the Angry Left and Barack Obama, aided and abetted by late night TV comics and the news media. They have set out to divide the nation by race, gender, age, class and party, seeking to build metaphorical walls where once there were divisions that could be forgotten or ignored during recreation and the shared commonality of citizenship. .]

Show up and be kind of an asshole. No hugs; only stiff, formal handshakes. During the football game, talk about police brutality nonstop. Take any opportunity to emphasize just how much Bruce Springsteen and the entire E Street band loathes Trump….[Note: See?]

Scorched Earth. Not even a handshake; just stare, disgustedly, at their outstretched arms….[Note: Among the  inarguable outrages that the essayist claims justifies such treatment: not supporting an increase in the minimum wage, refusing to uncritically accept climate change propaganda, and the President speaking “almost exclusively in racist dog whistles and ‘locker room talk.'” You know, racist dogwhistles like opposing the tearing down statues of Robert E. Lee,  correctly stating that a white nationalist group has the same rights to assemble and protest as anyone else without being attacked,  or objecting to NFL players inflicting an incoherent protest on their captive audience. ]

I was asked for ethics advice regarding looming political disputes during Thanksgiving, and here it is: It is rude and unkind to raise a topic you know is emotional and painful for people at the table. So don’t do it, just as you wouldn’t (I hope) deliberately raise such topics as Cousin Cecile’s abortion, Jim Jr.’s arrest, or Uncle Ethan’s IRS problems.

However, I reserve the right to go Popeye whenever someone states as fact something that is a pernicious misrepresentation. Allowing these misrepresentations and talking points to go unchallenged is tantamount to endorsing them. I will not sit by, for example, when a family member claims that opposing illegal immigration is racist and xenophobic, that NFL players have a right to stage protests on the field, or that “hate speech” isn’t protected by the Constitution, or shouldn’t be. Just make sure you have your facts as straight as their facts are crooked.

4. Won’t somebody explain to Kathy Griffin what “accountability” is?  It is times like these when I’m grateful for the Warm-Up, because otherwise I might have to devote a whole post to Kathy Griffin, who isn’t worth it. Still, it is worthwhile to point to her as a teachable opportunity. The fast-sinking celebrity-snark comic released a YouTube video wailing about the unfairness of her fate, becoming persona non grata following her dead-faced pose holding a prop bloody head of the President of the United States. Her “why won’t anyone hire me?” lament goes right into the Self-Answering Video Query Hall of Fame next to Hillary’s “Why am I not ahead by 50 points?” ad.

Griffin crossed a line that before this President no comedian would have ever dreamed of crossing. Does November 22 ring a bell, you moron? We don’t joke about killing Presidents, because not only isn’t it not funny, it rips open ugly scars, breaks basic rules of civility and political discourse, and is potentially dangerous. Nonetheless, you never apologized to the President or his family, immediately claimed to be the victim rather than the offender,  and, in a burst of true stupidity, attacked your former employer, CNN, and your New Years Eve partner, Anderson Cooper, for distancing themselves from you, a decision they literally had no choice regarding unless they wanted to make their already obvious anti-Trump bias official.

You’re not being hired, Kathy, because nobody likes you. That’s because you have behaved abominably, and continue to, now by acting as if any performer has a right to be on TV or be paid to perform when very few people want to see or hear her, if they ever did. (I liked Griffin as a comic actress, as on “Seinfeld” and “Suddenly Susan” as Brooke Shield’s wisecracking co-worker, but then she wasn’t writing her own lines.)

When you show that you understand what was wrong with holding a President’s bloody head [Hint:still saying “I know I took a picture that offended a lot of people…” won’t do it] , accept full responsibility, apologize to the President and his family, and announce that you will accept this self-created setback and start working your way back by making audiences laugh wherever you find them, and not by demanding work and shouting that you have been “blacklisted,” then you might, maybe, have a career again.

5. Today’s obligatory Roy Moore note: Even Fox News is chiding President Trump for supporting Roy Moore’s Senate candidacy. Wrong. It is unreasonable to expect him to do anything else. Trump, it should be remembered, opposed Moore’s candidacy in the primary, but Alabama’s Republicans gave him a damned if you do, more damned if you don’t choice. Now, if the Democratic Party were responsible, and didn’t have elected members of Congress trying to reverse the election, with the assistance of their captive news media, by impeaching the President for the crime of not being a Democrat, I might argue that the ethical position for him to take would be that Moore is unfit to serve. (That is and was my position, even before we learned that he stalked cheerleaders in training bras.) Trump’s primary duty, however, is not maintaining the integrity of the Senate, but maintaining the integrity of the Presidency and the electoral system. That means fighting the dangerous effort by an increasingly anti-democracy party—How ironic!—that doesn’t respect the electorate or the Constitution, to make Presidential elections subject to their veto.