Last week I went to see a serious movie and sat along with the rest of the predominantly middle aged white suburban moviegoers. To our right was one black couple, a well dressed pair in their mid thirties. The sixth or seventh movie trailer was of a horror film. When a zombie leaped from off screen upon an actor the black woman screamed at the top of her lungs, as if old Nathan Bedford Forest hand caught her hanging William Tecumseh Sherman’s laundry on his clothesline.

Far from being offended, the theater erupted into laughter, as the movie trailers had been positively dreadful and phony throughout, with this lady giving the best performance of the day until Leonardo Dicaprio took the stage.

I have viewed the following news story in the same entertainment-oriented vein. When a people—one of three of the five great races of Man that is not in imminent danger of extinction—declare universal lack of agency and seek succor at every turn from Asian and Caucasian, it is only fitting that their more personable members devote their energies to entertaining the rest of us as we all hurtle at the speed of blight toward extinction.