In Ukraine, a funny thing happened on the way to the voting booth . . .

A funny thing happened on the way to the polling booth in Ukraine. Citizens chose a comedian to be their next president. No joke.

Tired of inauthenticity and hypocrisy, exhausted by unrepresentative leadership and downright cynical about democratic process and outcomes, people are turning to those who seemingly tell-it-like-it-is for insight and leadership. Around the world and at home, voters are looking to comedians to break the cycle of undeliverable political promises.

Volodymyr Zelensky is Ukraine’s new president. A role he practiced on his popular television comedy, “Servant of the People” — a show where the 41-year old Zelensky plays an outraged teacher who is suddenly thrust into the presidency.

Art imitates life imitates art. READ MORE

Brexit aside, Poland and Italy are Europe’s latest troublemakers

Poland is free because of a pope, the Vatican and a European dream. Not that long ago, Soviet-dominated Warsaw created a spiritual alliance and common cause with a church-dominated Rome and its dream of an expansive pan-European political union.

That dream is now a nightmare that aligns the two Catholic-dominated nations of Poland and Italy, bound together in an anti-immigrant stance, an unholy alliance ready to take on Europe and cut it down to size.

This latest assault on the European Union comes on top of an uncertain and undefined Brexit brought on by a banger-eating British populace tired of Polish plumbers unclogging their water closets. Europe seems especially brittle right now with the political chaos surrounding Britain’s political schizophrenia and the unanswered Irish border wall question. Despite Brexit’s severe disruption, however, Poland and Italy are the European Union’s newest challenge for survival. READ MORE

Unfortunately, the American KKK’s brand of hate travels well

Film director Spike Lee’s most recent film about a black cop joining the Ku Klux Klan is a caustic reminder of America’s “original sin” of slavery and our raw, homegrown racism. The KKK is truly an American original, but it has not remained within U.S borders. No wall of ideas has corralled this toxic concept from jumping the Atlantic and infecting Europe, where the KKK has found a new home.

KKK promoters do not regularly crow about their network or membership numbers. The European Klan plays a coy game, often masking its illegal affiliations and private intentions while publicly sugar-coating its rancid message. But their goals are clear. As German investigative journalist Frederick Obermaier told Deutsche Welle, “The German groups admire the American Klan, and they hope to be as big as the KKK in the U.S.” Blood and soil is their refrain.  READ MORE