Turn on any TV show with a funeral scene. Watch any movie from 1915 to 2026 with a funeral scene.

What do you see? Dignified grieving families all in tasteful, restrained black clothing. The men wear black suits. The women wear black dresses and obscure their faces with a veil, or at least the suggestion of one on a fascinator.

‘Personalization’ is precisely what most of us do not need at a moment of crisis.

You’ll never see a more unrealistic scene on film.

Putting the ‘fun’ in funeral

Very few reading this article have ever witnessed this kind of sober, black-clad mourning in real life. America in the late 20th and early 21st centuries has jettisoned nearly all etiquette as “lol boomer stupid,” and not even the most solemn occasion was spared the vulgarization.

Go to a funeral today and tell me what you see. I’ll tell you what I see: men who should know better walking into the parlor in jeans and name-brand sneakers in day-glo colors. Women wearing tarty outfits that barely cover enough leg to qualify for even the skimpiest Catholic schoolgirl uniform.

Since the hippie-commie takeover of the 1960s, we have decided to let it all hang out, including our backsides and cleavage. No matter what. Nothing is serious. Nothing is sacred. Not even death has enough gravitas to prod the average American into showing respect through sober dress.

It’s time to bring back the black. Contrary to modern glibness about everything, etiquette is not some silly, optional “Boomer” fixation on using the correct utensil at dinner. It’s not an oppressive regime. Etiquette is the word we use for the universally agreed-upon rules of behavior.

All human societies have etiquette. Without it, there is no society, only tribes and warfare. When etiquette is important enough to be codified, it becomes what we call “law.” That, too, is becoming seen as some quaint notion from a bygone era, and we can all look to our cities to see where this road is taking us.

Digging in

For 20 years I was the executive director of a nonprofit called Funeral Consumers Alliance. It was an educational organization and a watchdog group. Think of it like Consumer Reports magazine, but only for the funeral and burial purchase. Our aim was to give people accurate information so they could choose a send-off that was emotionally meaningful and affordable.

Strange as that may sound, contemplate the fact that Americans spend more than $20 billion annually to bury the dead. It’s easy to see how the grieving can be hoodwinked into paying premium prices for scams like “protective caskets” (the claim is that they keep the body dry and preserved; not true) and a host of other purchases that push the tab up to $10,000 or more.

My mentor was the outgoing organization director who became my dear friend. Lisa was a tough old no-nonsense broad. We spent many a night at her kitchen table working while drinking wine and chain-smoking, cracking each other up over the absurdity of the funeral business while figuring out how to arm grieving people against graveside upselling.

Lisa taught me almost everything I know about the subject. When we first met in 2002, she told me how “modern” consumers wanted something different in a funeral. “The Baby Boomers aren’t going to put up with cookie-cutter funerals. They want personalization,” she said.

Graveside groove

Lisa was correct, as I would discover after taking over her job. During my two decades, I spoke with more than 10,000 American families over the phone who needed counseling on funeral arrangements. This gave me a good baseline of understanding of the American mind on the topic of deathways.

The majority who called for advice wanted to avoid overspending, certainly. But the next biggest category of question was, “How do we do this the right way, but also our way?”

This never sat right with me. The more I thought about it, I began to realize why. “Our way” invariably meant conforming to a new set of assumptions about death, assumptions we had adapted en masse at some point in the last 50 years.

To say someone “died” is offensively blunt; “passed away” or simply “passed” is preferred.“Funerals” are gloomy remnants of the Victorian era designed to make everyone suffer. What your friends and family really want is a “celebration of life.”And anyway, who cares what other people want? This is about you — not your loved ones and their messy, depressing grief. “Throw me a big party!”

In other words, we have agreed to pretend that death is just another stop on a soft-focus Life Journey™. If we maintain this fiction, then somehow the deaths of our husbands, wives, and friends won’t be real. Or we won’t hurt as much. We convinced ourselves that there was something pathological about being bereft.

Crisis without crutches

This is all fake. We can’t party away grief, and our efforts to do so have left people in mourning with no guideposts. Like G.K. Chesterton’s fence, we tore down the structures around death without asking why we built them.

Should I send invitations to the funeral or is that not “done” any more? Is it OK if I skip the wake? What kind of photos am I supposed to put in our PowerPoint Tribute™? Is it OK to play the pop standards of the 1950s that my dad loved? Am I wrong to think my granddaughter should not have worn a halter top to my husband’s wake?

Honestly, there’s no need for any of this flailing, but we did it to ourselves by insisting that what mattered most was “personalization.” Well, no. “Personalization” is precisely what most of us do not need at a moment of crisis. We need dependable crutches, and that’s what our former customs did for us.

Sadness welcome

Judith Martin is one of the wisest philosophers of the American mind of the past century. You know her as the arch etiquette columnist “Miss Manners.” Years ago, I read an essay in which she said in more eloquent words the same thing I’m trying to communicate now: Death is no time for improvisation. Funeral customs were support structures that buttressed the grieving, taking pressure off of them so they didn’t have to stand on their own when it was impossible to think through the emotions.

I’m pleased to see that she hasn’t changed her tune. And I’d like to persuade you to take her viewpoint seriously. In her column from March 2025 in the Washington Post, Martin responds to a reader who went all in on the “celebration of life” approach. Martin’s gentle reader asked her if she made a distinction between “funerals” and “celebrations of life.” She also asked Miss Manners if it was acceptable to wear white instead of black.

Martin responded this way:

Funerals used to be set rituals, usually religious ones. Eulogies were given by clergy members, who were unlikely to have known the deceased as well as their relatives and friends and could inadvertently make mistakes — misattributing specific virtues, for example.

She acknowledged that many modern people prefer “celebrations of life,” but find themselves making mistakes in tone at a time of solemnity because they’re preoccupied with putting on a “personalized” performance at the wrong time.

“But there is another danger in the very premise of a celebration of life: the attempt to banish sadness,” Martin wrote.

So please do not mandate cheerfulness. This loss is a tragedy, and grief should not be made to seem out of place. You may succumb to it yourself. The American color of mourning is black, although the code is only sporadically observed (except in cases of funerals for national figures). But Miss Manners is not going to say you should not wear white — a mourning color in other cultures — if it makes you feel better.

I’m going to out Miss-Manners Miss Manners and be a little less gentle to the readers. No, you may not wear white. Or green. Or what “feels comfortable.” The funeral is not about you. It is about standing together with people in sorrow and showing them that you recognize the depth of their loss. It is your moral duty to voluntarily forswear your own comfort and vanity as a signal of respect and love.

Get back into black.

​Manners, Judith martin, Miss manners, Etiquette, Funerals, Celebrations of life, Lifestyle, Funeral consumers alliance, Mourning, Death, Intervention 

For Americans tuning in to watch the Super Bowl on Sunday, there was more than one choice for halftime show entertainment. Viewers could watch Bad Bunny’s halftime show at the Super Bowl, most of which was in Spanish, or they could switch over to Turning Point USA’s counterprogramming on YouTube and other social media platforms.

President Trump apparently watched the former — and quickly made his opinions about the show known.

‘Nobody understands a word this guy is saying, and the dancing is disgusting.’

On Sunday night, Trump attacked the performance via Truth Social.

“The Super Bowl Halftime Show is absolutely terrible, one of the worst, EVER! It makes no sense, is an affront to the Greatness of America, and doesn’t represent our standards of Success, Creativity, or Excellence,” Trump said.

RELATED: Bad Bunny delivers just 1 line in English during Super Bowl LX halftime show

Photo by Kevin Sabitus/Getty Images

He continued, “Nobody understands a word this guy is saying, and the dancing is disgusting, especially for young children that are watching from throughout the U.S.A., and all over the World. This ‘Show’ is just a ‘slap in the face’ to our Country, which is setting new standards and records every single day — including the Best Stock Market and 401(k)s in History!”

Trump added that there was “nothing inspirational” about the show, but that the “Fake News Media” would shower the performance with praise “because they haven’t got a clue of what is going on in the REAL WORLD.”

Trump concluded the post with a familiar call to replace the NFL’s “ridiculous new Kickoff Rule,” a request he has made on more than one occasion when talking about the league.

Turning Point’s alternative show drew as many as 6.1 million concurrent viewers, according to one estimate from the Athletic.

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​Politics, Super bowl, Super bowl lx, Bad bunny, Trump, President trump, Turning point usa, Super bowl halftime show, Truth social 

A male who last year ran over a Kansas City police officer with an ATV during a traffic stop, then sped away from the scene, has received his sentence.

Kansas City police said they tried to stop a group of ATV riders and motorcyclists committing traffic violations on April 12, 2025, KCTV-TV reported.

‘The noise and the aggressiveness, they’re not following any road rules, you know, they’re blazing through intersections.’

One officer tried to remove Kendall Coleman from his ATV and place him in custody, police told the station, adding that Coleman reversed, causing the officer to fall.

Police said Coleman then lifted his ATV into a wheelie, hit the officer with its front two tires, and ran over the officer with all four tires before speeding away, KCTV reported.

Court documents from last year indicate Coleman called his father — Marc Coleman — the night of the assault, telling him he was in trouble and needed to leave town, KMBC-TV reported.

Investigators used license plate readers to track Marc Coleman’s vehicle traveling west on Interstate 70 into Colorado Springs, KMBC noted.

Authorities told KMBC that prepaid phones were purchased after Kendall Coleman’s phone was disconnected, and surveillance video and other records helped link him to the ATV involved.

An anonymous Crime Stoppers tip ultimately led investigators to Kendall Coleman on April 23, and he was arrested, KCTV reported.

You can view video of the assault on the police officer in the below news video, which aired prior to Coleman’s capture:

RELATED: Blaze News original: A dozen times gangs on motorcycles, ATVs, and bikes harassed, attacked, and killed others

The officer suffered head injuries but has since made a full recovery, KMBC reported.

Kendall Coleman pleaded guilty Thursday, KMBC reported.

Prosecutors dropped an armed criminal action charge against Coleman — who is 28 years old — as part of a plea deal in which he pleaded guilty to second-degree assault and aggravated fleeing, KCTV said, citing Jackson County Circuit Court records.

KMBC also said Coleman originally had been charged with first-degree assault.

Jackson County Circuit Judge Adam Caine sentenced Coleman to 12 years in prison, KCTV said, citing court documents.

Coleman remained in the Jackson County jail Thursday evening and was awaiting transfer to the Missouri Department of Corrections, KCTV added.

A restaurant owner down the street from where the assault took place told KMBC that ATV riders have been a problem: “The noise and the aggressiveness, they’re not following any road rules, you know, they’re blazing through intersections.”

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​Atv, Police officer injured, Arrest, Prison sentence, Kansas city, Ran over, Crime 

The Department of Justice is apparently no longer willing to play ball with U.S. District Court Judge James Boasberg, the Washington, D.C.-based activist judge who has spent the past year frustrating the Trump administration’s efforts to keep suspected criminal noncitizens out of the homeland.

This turning point, signaled in a court filing last week, all but guarantees a showdown between Boasberg and government attorneys in the case J.G.G. v. Trump on Monday — and a possible return to the U.S. Supreme Court.

Quick background

President Donald Trump issued a proclamation on March 15 invoking the Alien Enemies Act and declaring Tren de Aragua “a designated Foreign Terrorist Organization.”

The Trump administration subsequently deported hundreds of suspected Venezuelan gangsters — many of whom were credibly accused of murder, robbery, rape, and other crimes — to El Salvador, where they were placed in a Salvadoran prison for terrorists.

‘Defendants intend to immediately appeal.’

In July, the administration had Venezuelan deportees who were imprisoned at the Terrorism Confinement Center repatriated to Venezuela, where they were welcomed home by Venezuelan dictator Nicolas Maduro, who has since been deposed.

The deportees’ safe return home evidently wasn’t enough for Boasberg and other activists back in the U.S., including the American Civil Liberties Union, which is representing the suspected foreign gangsters.

RELATED: Federalism cannot be a shield for sanctuary defiance

Photo by El Salvador Press Presidency Office/Anadolu via Getty Images

In December, Boasberg — an Obama-appointed judge who initially tried to stop the deportations and previously helped the Biden FBI spy on Republican lawmakers’ phone records — certified the Venezuelan deportees as a class and ordered the administration to offer them legal relief abroad.

DOJ punches back

DOJ lawyers noted in a filing last week that Boasberg’s demands were unworkable.

For starters, the government lawyers pointed out that remote hearings for all of the suspected Venezuelan gangsters would “present insuperable legal bars and substantial practical problems that together render this an untenable and unacceptable proposal.”

Besides there being “no legal basis for holding remote habeas hearings without custody,” the lawyers noted that the U.S. “cannot enforce perjury or other procedural rules in Venezuela, or even verify the identity of the witnesses.” Additionally there would be no way of ensuring that sensitive or classified information implicated in the proceedings could be protected over “potentially unsecure lines in foreign settings.”

In light of these and other problems with remote hearings, the lawyers noted that “the only jurisdictionally proper means of permitting new habeas proceedings would be for aliens to return to United States custody.”

Bringing the Venezuelans back for proceedings, however, “presents grave national security and foreign policy impediments” — not least because the deportees “have been determined to be members of a foreign terrorist organization” and may lack passports or identity documents.

The lawyers suggested that taking the Venezuelans back into custody would require “diplomacy with top leaders in the Delcy Rodriguez interim regime or foreign sovereigns in third countries and thus raise separation of powers issues.”

Satisfying Boasberg’s order would threaten “material damage to U.S. foreign policy interests in Venezuela” as it would inject an “extremely complicated issue into what is already a delicate situation, potentially negatively affecting U.S. efforts toward stabilization and transition that aim to benefit tens of millions of Venezuelans,” added the lawyers.

The DOJ effectively concluded by telling Boasberg to pound sand: “If, over Defendants’ vehement legal and practical objections, the Court issues an injunction, Defendants intend to immediately appeal.”

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​Tren de aragua, Boasberg, Activist judges, Judgest, District court, Justice department, Doj, Deportation, Immigration, Foreign terrorist organization, Terrorist, Obama, Politics