Paul Random

Nate Bargatzi’s Goal: Don’t Embarrass Mom and Dad

Comedian Nate Bargatze went from being a college dropout to a water meter reader to a nationally beloved comic, hosting Saturday Night Live twice these past two years.

How did he pull it off?

Writing in Tuesday’s Wall Street Journal, Nate says there’s nothing funnier than making yourself part of the punchline. But he attributes this ease with self-deprecating humor to his mother and father.

“My mom is very funny, more like me in terms of setting up jokes,” he writes in the Journal. “Dad is more slapstick in his delivery. But what I always admired is how he made fun of himself.”

Growing up in Tennessee, Nate’s dad, Stephen, was a professional clown and magician. “We were different,” he says with a smile. He’d watch his father tirelessly prepare and practice his routines.

It was amid his meter reading job that Nate took a shot at improv comedy. He worked at a club for eight weeks, deciding it wasn’t a good fit for him. He then took a stand-up comedy class, found his rhythm and started the climb.

But his father and mother were never far from his mind, especially how hard his dad worked at perfecting his craft as a performer.

“I think that work ethic was huge and that’s what I’ve had in comedy,” Bargatze said. “When I went to New York, I would go out every single night and do shows every night for nine years because I had to keep doing this if you want to get to a high level.”

It was a grind. “You got to get on stage a lot,” Bargatze says. “A lot of reps, you got to do a lot of reps. That’s the biggest way to practice and get better.”

That’s good advice for any line of work.

Raised up in Long Hollow Baptist Church in Hendersonville, Tennessee, Nate’s father, who was raised Catholic, was at one time studying to be a minister before becoming a professional clown and magician.

Bargatze finds some humor in being raised by “cradle” Catholics who were born-again.

“So I have all of the Catholic guilt, without any of the fun of Catholic, and then just the strictness of Baptist. Which is the most strict. Not as much now. But when we were growing up, Baptist was the most … they could get disappointed real fast at you.”

To this day, Nate Bargatze cares a lot about what his mom and dad think. In fact, the Nashville-based comic says his goal is “To be funny on stage without saying things that would embarrass or upset my parents.”

He then added:

“Being nice to others was a household principle. Insulting someone for a laugh was frowned upon.”

It was Aristotle who believed humor should involve blunders that don’t cause someone else pain. The best and enduring comics laugh with us, not at us.

Modern culture often dismisses guilt as an unnecessary burden, a social construct that somehow shackles us to living under too many constraints. Instead, we hear about the liberating nature of living as we wish regardless of other’s expectations, let alone God’s ever watchful eye. We’re warned about being “people pleasers” and instead encouraged to please and satisfy ourselves.

From the outside looking in, it appears that Nate Bargatze has a strong conscience. As a believer himself, and a father, he has an appreciation for the words of 3 John 1:4: “I have no greater joy than to hear that my children are walking in the truth.” He obviously also has a strong conviction regarding the fifth commandment: “Honor your father and your mother, that your days may be long in the land that the Lord your God is giving you” (Exodus 20:12).

Nate has said it gives him joy to look out an audience and see children laughing along with their parents.

Our culture would be in a healthier spot if more young adults sought to please both the Lord and their parents with their words and actions on a daily basis.

Married to Laura for 18 years, the Bargatzes have one daughter, Harper, who is 11.

Mark your calendar or set your DVR for “Nate Bargatze’s Nashville Christmas” on December 19th on CBS at 9:01 p.m.

Stephen Bargatze often joins Nate on his comedy tour, performing as a warmup to his son’s act as well as introducing him. It often makes the father cry.

“Because of realizing how great God is,” Stephen explains. “We know as a family, and I believe Nathan believes this in all of his heart that we can’t take any credit for this success. I mean, come on. We’re just regular people talking about our family. … We just know it’s a God thing.”

Should Employer Health Plans Have to Pay for Weight Loss Drugs?

It’s one of those shocking statistics that seems hard to believe – until you just stop and look around, or even look in the mirror. Upwards of 70% of Americans are either overweight or obese, a statistic that has more than tripled in the last 60 years.

Why have our citizens gotten so fat, so fast?

The simple answer is that we’re eating more calories than we’re burning. While the average Olympic swimmer has been known to burn between 5,000 and 10,000 calories a day, Joe Sixpack burns closer to 2,000.

Battling the bulge is nothing new, of course, but its prevalence is a phenomenon driven by an increasingly sedentary culture coupled with the proliferation of lesser expensive and convenient processed foods.

Back in the 19th and early 20th century, doctors were known to try and treat incidents of obesity with thyroid medication, believing an underactive thyroid was leading to weight gain. Then came the use of amphetamines and methamphetamines that were designed to suppress appetites. Other weight loss drugs followed, many coming with dangerous side effects ranging from stroke to hypertension to heart valve disease.

If you watch any television or consume any form of media, you’ve undoubtedly heard about the latest weight-loss pharmaceuticals to take the world by storm. While there are numerous ones competing for market share, Novo Nordisk’s “Ozempic” and “Wegovy” and Eli Lily and Company’s “Zepbound” seem to be grabbing the most headlines.

The century-old Novo Nordisk, which produces half the world’s insulin, has boldly stated plans to “defeat the serious chronic diseases” crippling culture.

It might surprise you to learn that Ozempic has been on the market for more than six years. Analysts credit its popularity to advertising and celebrity endorsements.

Eli Lilly’s Zepbound was approved in November of 2023.

This current crop of weight loss drugs works to slow digestion and send signals to your brain that you’re full.

As you can imagine, there are side effects to these medications, and you’ve likely heard them rattled off very quickly at the end of advertisements. All the usual suspects are warned about: nausea, diarrhea, vomiting, constipation, indigestion, belly pain, dizziness.

Patients considering the medication are recommended to discuss the issue with their doctor, but this is where the issue is relevant to everyone, including those who have neither the desire nor need for it.

Representatives from companies like Eli Lilly and Novo Nordisk are petitioning companies to cover the drugs as part of their regular health plan. And with so many potential takers and medication that can cost more than $1,000 a month, the outcome could prove to be a boon for Big Pharma – and a major financial hit for everyone else.

Predictably, pharmaceutical companies are arguing that lighter employees lead to healthier, more productive and ultimately, more cost-efficient employees.

As it stands now, only half of large employers currently cover weight loss drugs.

But should companies pay for a drug to do a job that for most self-discipline would otherwise cover at no cost beyond maybe some sweat and hard work?

At what point does the typical employer become a caretaker, too, responsible not only for your work wellbeing, but your daily diet and health habits?

We get the idea that the apostle Paul was an athlete who paid attention to what he ate and how he lived. “I discipline my body and keep it under control” he wrote to believers in Corinth (1 Cor. 9:27). He also seems to make clear that gluttony is problematic when he said that for those who seek to thwart Jesus’ teachings, “Their god is their stomach” (Phil. 3:19).

“Moderation in all things” was the mantra of my mother, a phrase that seems to come from the Greek poet Hesiod who, around 700 years before Jesus’ birth, urged, “Observe due measure; moderation is best in all things.”

Some of the best advice is the oldest advice.

‘A Charlie Brown Christmas’ is Still Worth Watching

Months before its December 9, 1965 debut, The New York Times television reporter Val Adams called A Charlie Brown Christmas a “big gamble” that was “tampering with the imaginations of millions of comic strip fans on how Charlie Brown, Lucy and others should act and talk.”

It might have been a risk, but it was a wager that certainly paid off.

How and why does a nearly six decade old animated television program manage to connect with younger audiences – and still draw many of us older viewers back year after year?

One of the main reasons is that A Charlie Brown Christmas isn’t about Santa Claus and reindeer and the traditional sentimental trappings found in your typical holiday television fare.

It’s about the birth of Jesus Christ, perfectly and poignantly articulated by Linus in the climactic scene of the Peanuts’ gang’s stage performance.

In writing the special with producer Lee Mendelson and director Bill Melendez, Charlie Brown creator Charles Schulz insisted on including a passage from the gospel of Luke, which contains a detailed description of Jesus’ birth and the popular Christmas passage read every year in churches all over the world. 

You probably know the spiritual emphasis on regular television made his collaborators nervous. 

“Bill said, ‘You can’t put the Bible on television,’” his widow Jean remembered. “And Sparky’s (Schulz’s nickname) answer was: ‘If we don’t, who will?’ Lee said that Sparky then got up and walked out of the room, and he and Bill just sat there, saying ‘What do you think that means?’” 

What it meant was Charles Schulz was willing to walk away from the television deal if producers insisted on cutting out the true meaning of Christmas.

It’s ironic but true that Linus van Pelt’s recitation is often the first sacred words of Scripture that some children ever hear.

We read in Isaiah, “The wolf shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the young goat, and the calf and the lion and the fattened calf together; and a little child shall lead them” (11:6).

One of the great charms of A Charlie Brown Christmas is that most of the voices you hear are from everyday kids who lived in Schulz’s neighborhood. In fact, Christopher Shea, who voiced Linus and delivered those meaningful verses from the Gospel of Luke, couldn’t even read. Shea had the lines read to him one sentence at a time – and he then recited them back for the production.

Another draw of the special is its simplicity, a far cry from the fast moving, hyped-up animated shows of today. The comfortable pace was something that worried its producers, who feared they had a flop on their hands. Concerned the children’s dialog was too slow, some jazz music was added to add more energy – but they held their collective breath when it first aired.

Over 15 million households tuned in on the night of December 9th, a ratings bonanza that led to CBS agreeing to re-air it the next Christmas. They also ordered four more Peanuts’ specials.

The Christmas “spectacular,” as one-off specials were referred to back then, was on its way to becoming an enduring classic. A Charlie Brown Christmas won both an Emmy and Peabody in 1966 – and has never been off the air since.

Charles Schulz’s bold and principled management is instructive and inspirational. It reminds us that the experts are often wrong. It also highlights the fact that faith in Jesus is enduring, courage is rewarding, childhood innocence is worth promoting, and the true meaning of Christmas is always something we should be celebrating each December.  

That Jesus sent his only son to earth in the form of an innocent baby to live among us, suffer, die, and rise again to save us from our sins?

Linus was right: “That’s what Christmas is all about, Charlie Brown.”

Image credit: ABC

Jeff Bezos Should Be Fiercely Pro-Life

Monetarily speaking, Jeff Bezos is a very rich man.

The Amazon founder is said to be worth upwards of $240 billion, a level that puts him as the world’s second wealthiest person between Elon Musk at the top ($362 billion) and Meta founder Mark Zuckerberg ($215 billion) in third place.

Personally and spiritually speaking, the jury is still out.

Jeff and MacKenzie Bezos’ high profile divorce captured headlines in 2019. Married for 25 years and the parents of four children, they said the decision to dissolve their marriage came “after a long period of loving exploration and trial separation.”

Bezos is now engaged to Lauren Sanchez, a former television news personality. MacKenzie Bezos’ second marriage in 2021 ended in divorce last year.

As best can be discerned, Jeff Bezos has never publicly shared anything about a personal faith. When he and MacKenzie were married, the Reverend Richard Riccardi, who was affiliated with a breakaway, liberal Catholic denomination, officiated the ceremony.

When Jeff Bezos joined the crew of his “Blue Origin” rocket company to briefly travel 60 miles up into space, his ponderings afterwards were scientific, not theological.

“The most profound piece of it for me was looking out at the Earth and looking at the Earth’s atmosphere,” he said at the time. “Every astronaut, everybody who’s been up into space, they say this. That it changes them and they look at it, and they’re kind of amazed and awestruck by the Earth and its beauty, but also by its fragility. I can vouch for that.”

With that as a backdrop, it might not surprise you to learn that Jeff Bezos’ Amazon responded to the Supreme Court’s reversal of Roe by pledging to pay for any employee living in a pro-life state to go get an abortion somewhere else.

But one has to still wonder just how conflicted Jeff Bezos may or may not be.

Writing in his book, Invent and Wander, the serial entrepreneur devotes a chapter titled “My Gift in Life.”

“You get different gifts in life, and one of my great gifts is my mom and dad,” Bezos begins.

Jeff goes on to tell the story of how his mother, Jackie Gise, conceived him when she was 16 and gave birth when she was 17.

“I’m pretty sure that it wasn’t cool in 1964 to be a pregnant mom in high school in Albuquerque, New Mexico,” he writes. “In fact, my grandfather, another incredibly important figure in my life, went to bat for her because the high school wanted to kick her out. You weren’t allowed to be pregnant in high school there, and my grandfather said, ‘You can’t kick her out. It’s a public school. She gets to go to school.’”

Jeff’s grandfather and school officials worked things out. She stayed in school and gave birth to Jeff.

Jackie Gise married Jeff’s birthfather, Ted Jorgensen, but divorced him when Jeff was seventeen months old.

In the chapter, we learn about Jackie’s new husband, Miguel Bezos, who came to America from Cuba via a Catholic mission program. Jeff considers him his “real” father.

“So I have a kind of fairy take story,” Bezos states. “I was always loved.”

It was Jeff’s parents, Jacklyn and Miguel, who made the initial $250,000 investment in 1995 in his internet bookstore that eventually became Amazon.

“They’re so loving and supportive,” Jeff has said of his parents. “When you have loving and supportive people in your life … you end up being able to take risks.”

Tweeting on X of his mother, Jeff has stated, “So grateful. So proud. #Grit.” He later added, “Mom, I have no idea how you did what you did. Thank you for sharing your strength and for all the sacrifices you made. I love you.”

Jacklyn Bezos chose life, Jeff’s life was transformed – and countless lives have been changed because of that one teenage mother’s decision.

Given Jeff Bezos’ fortune and influence, just imagine how many lives he could help save were he to connect his story with an outwardly facing pro-life conviction.

It’s the way to pray.

Image from Getty.

President-Elect Trump Picks Pro-Lifers to Run FDA and CDC

Pro-lifers concerned with President-elect Trump’s appointment of Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. to serve as Secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS) can take comfort in two recent high-profile medical-related nominations.

Late last month, Trump announced the appointment of pro-life physician Dr. Marty Makary to lead the Food and Drug Administration (FDA).

Around the same time, President-elect Trump nominated another physician, Dr. David Weldon, to run the Centers for Disease Control (CDC). The former Florida congressman has long been an advocate for the pre-born, strong supported a ban on partial-birth abortion and came alongside Terry Schiavo’s parents back in 2003 in their quest to keep their daughter alive via a feeding tube.

Hailed as the most pro-life president in generations, if not ever, and specifically when it comes to policies, Trump’s appointment of Drs. Makary and Weldon serve to balance an increasingly diverse administration that promises to disrupt the status quo.

Dr. Makary, who is currently a surgical oncologist at Johns Hopkins University, has previously spoken about the horrors of abortion – specifically a preborn baby’s visible fight for life in the womb.

“Somewhere between 15 and 20 weeks, babies will actually resist the instruments of abortion,” he said.

In an interview with Tucker Carlson back in 2022, Dr. Mackary expressed indignation towards those who either ignore or readily accept the brutality of the killing of preborn babies.

“It doesn’t matter which side you protest on around this issue, if you see the actual images of what’s happening and a baby resisting an abortion, it’ll weigh on your conscience,” he said to Carlson.

He continued:

“Ironically, we sometimes do fetal surgery on a baby inside the womb of the mother to save the baby’s life, and yet at the same age in other settings, surgical instruments are used to abort a baby,” he said.

“Today, you can barely talk about it,” he said. “Nurses can get fired if they don’t participate, medical students are ridiculed, most of the professional medical associations have taken a political stand now supporting abortion right up until the third trimester.”

Tapping Dr. David Weldon to run the CDC promises to restore sanity and ethics to an agency that’s grown increasingly woke these last four years. Despite having a mission to save lives and protect the public from health threats, the bloated bureaucracy has published nonsense like “Health Equity Guiding Principles for Inclusive Communication.”

As a member of Congress, Dr. Weldon sponsored a ban of human cloning and regularly touted the benefits of sexual abstinence. He also sponsored and helped pass what has become known as the “Weldon Amendment” – legislation that safeguards the rights of conscience.

Simply stated, it says taxpayer dollars cannot go to any local, state, or federal program that “subjects any institutional or individual health care entity to discrimination on the basis that the healthcare entity does not provide, pay for, provide coverage of, or refer for abortions.” 

That radicals refer to it as a “poison pill rider for abortion access” confirms just how solidly pro-life the legislation has turned out to be.

The incoming Trump administration may not look exactly like the last one when it comes to across-the-board pro-life stalwarts, but it it’s nevertheless encouraging and promising for those committed to saving the innocent that stalwarts like Drs. Makary and Weldon will soon be hanging up their shingles in Washington, D.C.

Image from Getty.