Photo: French President Emmanuel Macron, speaking at the World Economic Forum, 2026.
Before expressing his concern, the French president began his address [in Davos] with a joke: “It’s a time of peace, stability and predictability.”
— from an article on APNews.com, January 20, 2026.
We all need a good joke, now and then, to help put things into perspective, and keep us from doing things we will regret later.
On Tuesday, when French President Emmanuel Macron suggested to the audience at the 2026 World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, that “It’s a time of peace, stability and predictability,” an audience full of global leaders laughed.
Obviously, this was meant as a joke. Maybe only global leaders could understand such a joke, but a comedian needs to sculpt his jokes to whatever audience he’s addressing.
In the case of our own President, he recently announced the creation of a global ‘Board of Peace’ which will, according to administration announcements, end all the wars President Trump has not yet managed to fix on his own.
I’m not sure what audience that joke was aimed at, but I haven’t yet heard any laughter yet from global leaders.
Considering the political discord in France lately, President Macron might be looking for another job in the near future, but I would not recommend ‘comedian’ as a career prospect. I thought his timing could have been better.
And the rest of his routine was way too serious.
It’s not clear if the jokes coming from President Trump, about invading Greenland, are getting any traction.
But not everyone at the Davos event was joking. In fact, California Governor Gavin Newsom was cussing. When speaking with reporters, including AP, Governor Newsom said:
“I can’t take this complicity. People rolling over. I should’ve brought a bunch of knee pads for all the world leaders… Wake up! Where the hell has everybody been? Stop with this (expletive) diplomacy of sort of niceties and somehow we’re all going to figure it out, saying one thing privately and another publicly. Have some spine, some goddamn (expletive)…”
Call me perverse, but I was not satisfied with the Lamestream Media coverage of the Governor’s comments. I wanted to know how serious the cussing really was. Telling me that the Governor used two (expletives) only whetted my (expletive) curiosity.
Obviously, “hell” and “goddamn” are no longer considered expletives by AP reporters, so the censored words must have been worse than those.
Our President has done his share of cussing recently, and has sort of made cussing acceptable for politicians, so they can sound like the rest of us when we’re angry about something. I can’t imagine Speaker Mike Johnson cussing in front of the cameras, but almost everyone else…?
Anyway, I visited several media websites in an attempt to discover the actual cuss words used by Governor Newsom.
No one wanted to tell me. They all wrote (expletive) the same way the AP did. As if I’ve never heard anyone say (expletive) before?
Remarkably (or maybe it’s not remarkable) the expletives were revealed by a Fox News video on YouTube. They censored the offending words in such a way that you could actually hear part of the word. So here, for our readers, is the unauthorized version of Governor Newsom’s angry complaint about the global leadership in Davos:
Wake up! Where the hell has everybody been? Stop with this bullshit diplomacy of sort of niceties and somehow we’re all going to figure it out, saying one thing privately and another publicly. Have some spine, some goddamn balls…”
Technically, the word “balls” is not an expletive. I can, for example, talk about “tennis balls” or “golf balls” all day long, in polite company, and no one will be the least bit offended. In fact, I have done so, on numerous occasions.
But everyone in the Lamestream Media treats it like an expletive, when associated with the phrase “Have some goddamn (expletive)” in which case it no longer refers to tennis balls, or golf balls, but rather, to a certain part of the male anatomy that everyone knows about, but which cannot be implied in a news article.
A person who uses the phrase “Have some goddamn balls” in an interview with media reporters, indicates thereby that he — the speaker — has some goddamn balls.
Also, journalists who dare to print this same phrase, perhaps in a widely-read news column, could be said to have “some (expletive) balls.”
Ha ha. Just joking.
Underrated writer Louis Cannon grew up in the vast American West, although his ex-wife, given the slightest opportunity, will deny that he ever grew up at all. You can read more stories on his Substack account.