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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
President Donald Trump and Department of Homeland Security Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin shared graphic images to social media Saturday evening apparently showing part of a Homeland Security Investigations officer's finger — in a jar.
McLaughlin said Minneapolis "rioters attacked our law enforcement officer and one of them bit off our HSI officer's finger."
'This avoidable tragedy is a result of the total failure of Minnesota’s city and state officials.'
"He will lose his finger," added McLaughlin.
One of the photographs appears to show a medic tending to an HSI officer who is missing the end of the fourth digit on his right hand. Another photo apparently shows the missing piece of the finger with its nail intact inside a plastic container.
The alleged incident — which U.S. Rep. Greg Steube (R-Fla.) cited as the latest sign that Trump should invoke the Insurrection Act — came just hours after an armed 37-year-old Illinois native identified as Alex Pretti was fatally shot amid a struggle with federal agents.
Pretti's ex-wife told the Associated Press that he was a Democratic voter with a permit to carry a concealed firearm who previously took to the streets in 2020 to protest the death of George Floyd. Pretti's father, Michael Pretti, said he warned his son about protesting, telling him "do not engage, do not do anything stupid, basically."
The AP added that family members said Pretti was an intensive care nurse at a VA hospital who "cared deeply about people" and was upset by Trump’s "immigration crackdown in his city."
The Department of Homeland security said its "law enforcement officers were conducting a targeted operation in Minneapolis against an illegal alien wanted for violent assault, an individual approached US Border Patrol officers with a 9 mm semi-automatic handgun. The officers attempted to disarm the suspect but the armed suspect violently resisted."
More from the DHS post on X:
Fearing for his life and the lives and safety of fellow officers, an agent fired defensive shots. Medics on scene immediately delivered medical aid to the subject but was pronounced dead at the scene.
The suspect also had 2 magazines and no ID—this looks like a situation where an individual wanted to do maximum damage and massacre law enforcement.
— (@)
In addition to asking about Pretti's firearm, Trump wondered, "Where are the local police? Why weren't they allowed to protect ICE officers? The mayor and the governor called them off? It is stated that many of these police were not allowed to do their job, that ICE had to protect themselves — not an easy thing to do!"
Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche indicated that an investigation into the shooting is underway but stressed that "this avoidable tragedy is a result of the total failure of Minnesota’s city and state officials who have resisted federal law enforcement and created this escalation."
Multitudes of radicals converged on the location of Pretti's shooting and immediately began clashing with federal agents.
DHS Secretary Kristi Noem noted that the protesters who rushed to the scene "began to obstruct and to assault law enforcement officers. We saw objects being thrown at them, including ice and other objects."
"A rampant assault began and even an HSI officer agent's finger was bitten off," added Noem, who faulted Democrat Gov. Tim Walz for branding ICE as the "gestapo" and other Democrats for effectively painting targets on federal immigration officers' backs.
— (@)
Walz activated the Minnesota National Guard on Saturday at the request of Democrat Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey. Hennepin County Sheriff Dawanna Witt also asked for support from the National Guard at the B.H. Whipple Federal Building.
The Hennepin County Sheriff's Office said in a statement that role of the Minnesota National Guard "is to work in support of local law enforcement and emergency responders, providing additional resources. Their presence is meant to help create a secure environment where all Minnesotans can exercise their rights safely, including the right to peacefully protest."
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On the North Norfolk coast, dawn is more sensory than visual.
Sea lavender and samphire engulf you before the bite of the wind reminds you of nature’s power. As the sun rises above the horizon, my father and I cross the salt marshes, the light revealing tidal creeks winding through the mudflats. This time, though, I know it is our last trip together.
In angling, the tippet is the thinnest section of line, the point most likely to fail.
Every step is taken with the knowledge that these rituals — these early mornings, the scent of salt and wildflowers, the quiet companionship — are being performed for the final time.
This is not just a landscape but a stage on which the story of my family unfolds. Each tradition echoes those who came before and those still to come. This place, and these shared customs repeated year after year, have woven our family history together — each visit another stitch in a tapestry stretched across generations.
There is no better place for solitude than Stiffkey, an idyllic village nestled in the Norfolk countryside. For miles around, the only sounds are wood pigeons cooing in the trees and the distant thunder of the sea. It is still very early — five in the morning — when we break this peace with the rhythmic punch of a shovel digging into saturated sand. My father and I do not speak as we work. Ours is a silence filled with meaning, a language shaped by years of tradition and respect for the world around us.
The rhythm of these mornings — the shared labor, the quiet companionship — blurs the boundaries between past and present, between father and son, creating a continuous thread running through my memory. Growing up, my father and I mainly communicated through the tension of a fishing line. Our family has never been big on talking; we are like frayed strings, bound and spliced together by tradition.
In the modern world, silence between two men is often treated as a void to be filled with noise. But on this stretch of coastline, silence is a form of stewardship. To be quiet is to respect the natural world. To be quiet together is to acknowledge a bond that does not require speech.
Here time folds in on itself — my father’s footsteps merging with his father’s, and mine with both of theirs.
My father brought us to Stiffkey every year for our family holiday. For decades, this was his parish. He moved through the shifting terrain with the confidence of a man who knew the tide’s schedule like the back of his hand.
This time, watching him navigate the narrow ravines in the soft morning light, I see not the man who first guided me to the water 20 years earlier but his shadow. His light has dimmed — but it is still bright enough to guide us.
The lessons of Stiffkey are as much about patience, respect, and inheritance as they are about fishing. Each action — from digging bait to laying lines — forms a thread in the fabric of our shared history.
Laying fishing lines is a skill. The tide’s timing and direction determine how the lines must be slanted to catch fish. Digging your own bait matters too; no competent angler wants to carry unnecessary weight from home.
You take only what you need, while respecting the land and sea. From an early age, this was the lesson my father taught me: We are merely guardians, entrusted with care until it is time to pass things on.
“The ragworms aren’t biting,” I would tell him. He would approach with his antalgic gait, quietly move my shovel a few feet, and say, softly but with conviction, “Dig between the holes — that’s where they live.” Ten minutes later, the plastic bucket would overflow.
These moments bridge generations, passing down not just skill but belonging. This was where my grandfather taught my father to fish. Decades later, my father stood here teaching me.
A disused sewage pipe stretches northward, its end disappearing beneath the waves of the North Sea, marked only by a lone orange buoy. With an upturned wooden rake slung over my shoulder, its worn teeth piercing an old onion sack, I would walk the length of the pipeline. I can still feel the chill of rusted metal beneath my bare feet and my father’s watchful eyes — stern yet generous — urging me on. Together we raked the mudflats for cockles, the famed “Stiffkey blues,” once plentiful, now sought like hidden treasure.
RELATED: How I rediscovered the virtue of citizenship on a remote Canadian island
Every sensory detail — the cold pipeline, the mudflats, the weight of the rake — anchors memory to place, making past and present inseparable.
Trust and love, learned in my father’s shadow, now guide me as I support him. The cycle of care turns gently but inexorably.
My father's name is Peter. As his name suggests, he was always my rock — my moral guide — and I followed him with a child’s absolute confidence. Now the roles have quietly reversed. I lead; he leans on my shoulder.
The symbolism of the tippet — its fragility and strength — mirrors this transfer of responsibility. In angling, the tippet is the thinnest section of line, the point most likely to fail. As I watch my father struggle with the nylon — his hands, calloused by 50 years of labor, unable to tie the hook — it becomes clear that we are in the tippet phase of our relationship.
I take over, tying a grinner knot. He has taught me this a thousand times, but today feels different. As I pull the knot tight, I feel the weight of his legacy. He is handing over the keys to his kingdom.
At daybreak the following morning, we set off with the same excitement I once felt as a 5-year-old. His unspoken lesson had always been that disappointment should be met with patience. Then there it is: a solitary bass, glistening in the early sun. His hands tremble as he holds it up, smiling. On the walk back to the car, we laugh as seagulls swoop in, trying to steal our catch.
As our roles shifted, so did my understanding. Fishing became a meditation on acceptance, mortality, and shared silence. Fishing with a dying father reminds you that life is finite. It shows that the boundary between this world and the next is as thin as a fishing line — fragile, transparent, yet strong enough to bear the weight of a soul.
Even after loss, the rituals persist. Each return to Stiffkey is both goodbye and renewal. The year after his death, I returned to scatter his ashes. As the wind carried him out to sea, I understood that life’s true tippet strength is not measured by where it breaks but by what it can hold before it does.
Scott Adams, the creator of the "Dilbert" comic strip and a frequent defender of President Donald Trump, revealed in May 2025 that he had been diagnosed with prostate cancer, it had metastasized to his bones, and he was not long for this world.
"The disease is already intolerable," said Adams. "So if you're wondering, 'Hey Scott, do you have any good days?' Nope. Nope. Every day is a nightmare, and evening is very worse."
'What happens next is between me and Jesus.'
While Adams had run out of good days, good news was on the horizon.
The 68-year-old cartoonist revealed on the Sunday episode of his show, "Real Coffee with Scott Adams," that he is converting to Christianity.
In November, Adams requested Trump's help in securing the prostate cancer drug Pluvicto for which his health care provider had apparently approved his application but "dropped the ball in scheduling the brief IV to administer it."
Trump and members of his administration indicated they were "on it" and apparently intervened on the cartoonist's behalf. However, Adams' potentially life-changing treatment was postponed last month on account of his radiation treatment.
Last week, Adams noted on his show that "the odds of me recovering are essentially zero."
In addition to suffering paralysis below the waist, Adams indicated that he is struggling to breathe on account of ongoing heart failure.
Days after telling his audience that January will probably be "a month of transition one way or the other," Adams made clear on Sunday that the imminent changes in his life were not all of a medical nature.
RELATED: Christian, what do you believe when faith stops being theoretical?
"Many of my Christian friends and Christian followers say to me, 'Scott, you still have time. You should convert to Christianity.' And I usually just let that sit because that's not an argument I want to have," said Adams. "I've not been a believer. But I also have respect for any Christian who goes out of their way to try to convert me because how would I believe you and believe your own religion if you're not trying to convert me?"
'You're never too late.'
Evidently the efforts of Adams' friends were not in vain.
"You're going to hear for the first time today that it is my plan to convert," said Adams. "So I still have time. But my understanding is you're never too late. And on top of that, any skepticism I have about reality would certainly be instantly answered if I wake up in heaven."
Adams — who has long wrestled with questions about God and has been critical both of religion and atheism in his writing — notified his Christian friends that he does not require any more apologetics and has embraced what appears to be Catholic philosopher Blaise Pascal's argument for believing in God.
"I am now convinced that the risk-reward is completely smart. If it turns out that there's nothing there, I've lost nothing but I've respected your wishes, and I like doing that," said Adams. "If it turns out there is something there and the Christian model is the closest to it, I win."
"Argument made, argument accepted," added Adams.
In the wake of his announcement, Adams wrote on X that while he appreciates the outpouring of support and questions, "What happens next is between me and Jesus."
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Police officers responding to a report of a domestic dispute in Wilmington, Delaware, found a woman dead on Sunday at the home of Jill Biden's ex-husband, Bill Stevenson.
According to the New Castle County Police Department, officers arrived around 11:16 p.m. and found Linda Stevenson, 64, unresponsive in the living room. Despite administering life-saving measures, Mrs. Stevenson was later pronounced dead.
'She's the greatest thing in my life.'
Detectives with the NCCPD's Criminal Investigations Unit responded to the scene and have taken over the investigation. The decedent's body was, meanwhile, turned over to the Delaware Division of Forensic Science so that an autopsy can be conducted to determine the cause of death.
When pressed by the Daily Mail about the suggestion by the decedent's daughter, Christina Vettori, that the death is being investigated as a murder, the New Castle County Sheriff's Office responded, "No, it is a death investigation."
No charges have been filed.
Bill Stevenson, the founder of the University of Delaware-area bar Stone Balloon, married the former first lady in February 1970. The pair divorced in 1975 — two years prior to her marriage to Joe Biden.
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Jill Biden's biographer Julie Pace claimed in a 2022 interview that "she had these expectations of sort of what that marriage was going to be, and the marriage did not live up to those expectations."
Stevenson told the Daily Mail in 2020 that he suspected that Jill was having an affair with Biden in August 1974 — when she declined to join him on a trip to meet Bruce Springsteen, allegedly claiming she had to look after Biden's kids, who had lost their mother years earlier in a car crash. Jill and Joe Biden alternatively claim that they began dating in March 1975.
Stevenson claimed, however, that he was not bitter because "if it wasn't for my divorce, I would never have met my wife, Linda, and she's the greatest thing in my life."
Citing law enforcement sources, TMZ reported that Bill Stevenson was the individual who called police to report the domestic dispute at his home and was present when authorities pronounced his wife dead.
The Office of Joe and Jill Biden did not respond to a request for comment from Blaze News.
Like Blaze News? Bypass the censors, sign up for our newsletters, and get stories like this direct to your inbox. Sign up here!I have lost grandparents, childhood friends, and college friends. As you age, death becomes familiar. Each loss shakes you briefly, reminds you that life is fragile, and then fades. You drift back into the illusion that tomorrow is guaranteed. That you will have time later to become a better Christian, husband, and father.
That illusion shattered on September 10, the day Charlie Kirk was assassinated by a leftist.
Charlie Kirk showed us how a Christian lives and how a Christian dies. His race is finished. Ours must now begin.
I did not know Charlie personally. I worked as his publicist last summer for what became his second-to-last book, “Right Wing Revolution,” but we never spoke directly. Still his death devastated me in a way no other loss had.
I had to understand why. Answering that question became the genesis of this book, “For Christ and Country: The Martyrdom of Charlie Kirk.”
On the day Charlie was killed, I joined my wife to pick up our 2-and-a-half-year-old daughter from preschool. The day before, she had asked again and again, “Dada in car? Dada here?” This time, I wanted to be there when she came running out.
As we pulled into the parking lot, my phone lit up. Charlie Kirk had been shot. My stomach dropped.
I had felt that dread once before. On July 13, 2024, I was rocking my daughter to sleep when an alert flashed that President Trump had been shot in Butler, Pennsylvania. Minutes later, dread gave way to relief. Trump survived.
This time, the dread did not lift.
While my wife walked toward the school entrance, I sat frozen in the car, refreshing news feeds. Then I saw the video. The moment the bullet struck Charlie.
One look told me no one could survive that wound.
Then my daughter appeared.
Her face lit up when she saw me. Pure joy. The same joy Charlie’s daughter would never experience again.
As my little girl ran toward the car shouting, “Dada!” another child had just lost her father forever. His daughter. His son. His wife. They would never again live a moment like the one unfolding before me.
Nothing had changed for my daughter. Everything had changed for me.
That night, I slept on the floor beside my oldest daughter’s crib. I lay awake for hours, listening to her breathing and thinking of Charlie’s children and of Erika, facing the impossible task of explaining why their father would never walk through the door again.
In the days that followed, I cried more than I ever had. I am not a man who cries. But something in me died with Charlie, and something else was born.
I began studying Charlie’s words, speeches, debates, and sermons. Not as content but as testimony. What I saw changed me. Charlie possessed a maturity beyond his years, a steadiness most men twice his age never reach. He knew who he was and whom he served. He knew his mission and the cost of it. He accepted that cost.
In Charlie, I saw the man I wanted to be. Strong yet gentle. Courageous yet humble. Unmoved by hatred because he feared God more than man. That recognition exposed an uncomfortable truth. I shared many of Charlie’s convictions but not his courage.
I had spoken boldly only when it was safe. I avoided conflict when it was convenient. The wounds of losing lifelong friends in 2020 because I voted for Trump still stung, and I carried a residual fear of losing more.
Charlie did not hesitate. He lived Matthew 5 and Mark 8 not as verses but as marching orders. He carried his cross onto hostile campuses and into debates before crowds that despised him, knowing exactly what it cost.
When that hatred finally culminated in a sniper’s bullet, it ended his life but not the mission that made him a target.
His death exposed my compromises. It forced me to confront the gap between the man I was and the man God was calling me to be. It demanded that I stop postponing courage and start living the truth now. Costly truth. Dangerous truth. Biblical truth.
Charlie’s life and death were not political events. They were spiritual ones.
He defended the family because God commanded it. He rejected identity politics because every person bears God’s image. He championed fathers because fatherlessness destroys nations. He defended black Americans by insisting on their dignity as individuals created by God, not as pawns of a political movement. He confronted transgender ideology because lies about human nature are lies about God Himself.
For that, he was vilified, dehumanized, and finally murdered.
The ideology that killed Charlie did not emerge overnight. It grew in the silence of those who knew better but feared the cost of speaking. Evil advances when good men retreat, and too many of us did.
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Charlie did not retreat. Now none of us can afford hesitation.
The man I was — cautious and hesitant — died with Charlie. In his place stands a man who understands that truth requires sacrifice, that silence is surrender, and that the only approval that matters comes from God.
My daughter deserves a country where political murder is condemned, not excused. Where truth is spoken even when it is dangerous. Where courage is not outsourced to a handful of men like Charlie Kirk but lived by millions.
That is why I wrote “For Christ and Country: The Martyrdom of Charlie Kirk.” Not simply to remember Charlie but because his death demanded my transformation and now demands yours.
Charlie Kirk showed us how a Christian lives and how a Christian dies.
His race is finished. Ours must now begin.
The torch is ours to carry — for Christ, for country, and for Charlie.
Editor’s note: This article is adapted from the author’s new book, “For Christ and Country: The Martyrdom of Charlie Kirk” (Bombardier Books, Post Hill Press).
'The doctors who advocate for it call it compassion, but ethical doctors are healers, not killers.'
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