SHORT TAKES ON THE DRIFTING WRECKAGE – AT 11:56 P.M. ET: 

MACRON WINS IN FRANCE – FROM FOX:  Emmanuel Macron, the centrist and political newcomer, defeated far-right candidate Marine Le Pen Sunday to win the French presidential election.  With all votes counted, the passionately pro-European Union Macron had garnered 66 percent of the vote to just 34 percent for Le Pen, who had promised a “Frexit” referendum should she win the election.  At a victory party outside the Louvre Museum in Paris, Macron supporters roared with delight at the news, waving red, white and blue tricolor flags. The jubilant crowd swelled to thousands as the night wore on.  "A new page in our long history is opening tonight. I want it to be one of hope and renewed confidence," Macron said. The 39-year-old investment banker became the youngest president in the 59-year-history of the French Fifth Republic with his victory.  He's young, he's good-looking, he married his teacher.  In other words, he's French.  Now let's see what he can do to revive a France that has become a welfare state, and one saddled with new immigrants who refuse to assimilate.

AN ASSAULT ON THE ROYAL HOUSE - FROM THE DAILY MAIL:  The BBC was last night accused of inflicting ‘deliberate pain’ on Prince Harry by dredging up an unfounded slur that he is not Prince Charles’s son.  The outrageous and discredited insinuation that Princess Diana’s lover James Hewitt is his father is repeated in the controversial BBC2 drama King Charles III, to be screened this week. The timing is especially cruel so close to the 20th anniversary of Diana’s death, and those close to the Royal Family say the hurtful claims should never have been included in a BBC programme.  Diana’s closest confidante, Rosa Monckton, said: ‘The BBC is deliberately causing pain to a real living person in a salacious fashion. Prince Harry was 12 when his mother died and she is no longer around to reassure him. I don’t think this is why millions pay their licence fee.’  The Brits, too, have their problems with sleazy TV, but those wonderful accents save them.

NEWT EXAMINES LATE-NIGHT COMEDIANS – FROM DAILY CALLER:   Newt Gingrich identified a major problem with late-night comedians, asserting that they are too angry with President Trump to be funny.  “Fox News Sunday” host Chris Wallace showed his panel, which included the former Speaker of the House, a clip of Jimmy Kimmel’s monologue about health care and Stephen Colbert’s arguably homophobic comments about Trump.  Gingrich was seemingly not amused.  “The problem you have with humor in America today is that Hollywood is so enraged at Donald Trump that they can’t be funny,” Gingrich responded. “All they’ve got is pure anger.”  “They think it must be funny because they’re called comedians, so they exhibit their anger almost as a pathology on late-night television, and you’re supposed to laugh because after all they’re comedians,” he ranted.   And I think Newt has nailed it. 

May 7, 2017