Oh, grow up, Mayor Frey: Devine

Minneapolis’ boy of a mayor, Jacob Frey, proves that no matter how much you abase yourself to the mob, you can never be woke enough.

In a scene reminiscent of a Maoist struggle session, he stood before two black protest organizers Saturday and confessed through a mask into a microphone that he was “coming to grips with my own brokenneness.”

But the organizers, standing on a platform above him, weren’t interested in providing therapy for this 38-year-old man-child.

“Yes or no?” asked a woman with a microphone. “Will you commit to defunding the Minneapolis Police Department … We don’t want no more police.”

Poor Frey couldn’t bring himself to say yes so his fate was sealed.

“Get the f–k out of here!” she snarled and he was forced into a ritual walk of shame through the jeering crowd as they chanted “Go home, Jacob!”

The only thing missing was a sign around his neck listing his transgressions.

Frey also made a spectacle of himself in front of hundreds of people in a Minneapolis chapel at a memorial service Thursday for George Floyd, the black man whose death under the knee of a white police officer has sparked nationwide protests.

Kneeling beside Floyd’s golden casket, Frey’s body trembled with great heaving sobs, as people nearby looked on in wonderment.

Someone should tell this half-price Justin Trudeau to stop wallowing in his own brokenness and start repairing his broken city.

There is no patience for self-indulgence amid the ruins. If Minneapolis had a grownup mayor instead of a snowflake, the rioting and looting of the past two weeks might have been nipped in the bud and America spared more pain piled on top of the pandemic.

Instead, the nation suffers due to one man’s inadequacies.

Frey is the perfect representative of a Democratic Party that has moved so far left it is eating itself alive.

His overwrought gestures are as useless as those of the white women on the streets of Manhattan last week who were tricked by a man claiming to work for Black Lives Matter into getting on their knees and apologizing for their “white privilege.” Five well-meaning women were pranked for his camera, but at least all it cost was their pride.

In Cary, NC, on Saturday, the self-abasement took on religious tones when white people knelt to wash the feet of black protest organizers in a ritual described by a woman with a megaphone as “repentance on behalf of Caucasian people.”

A white foot washer took over the megaphone at one point to say: “It’s our honor to be here on behalf … of all of the white race … repenting for our pride.”

Seriously, the groveling is over the top and does nothing to heal racism in or mend community relations with police. It certainly won’t rebuild those black neighborhoods trashed in Minneapolis.

Identity politics is the disease, not the solution. Dividing people into competing victim groups based on race, gender, sexuality and other superficial characteristics is the opposite of what America needs in order to unify.

If Frey and his ilk stopped obsessing about themselves they might understand Minneapolis’ unique problems, which revolve around the country’s largest Somali-refugee population, more than half of which lives in poverty and is plagued by gang warfare.

Abolishing the police force and replacing it with flying squads of social workers, as several council members are advocating, would just recreate the anarchy these refugees escaped in the 1990s.

That’s not what the Somali mothers want. They’ve been begging the city not to allow another mall to be built which, they fear, will just disintegrate into another gang hangout.

Guns and gang warfare in the city of 450,000 make it one of the most dangerous in the country.

In the two weeks since Floyd’s death, 19 people have been shot, only one linked to the protests. That’s business as usual.

Far from too much policing there has been too little that’s effective, as you can see from crime stories chosen at random from the Minneapolis Star-Tribune.

Last month, 18-year-old Arionna Buckanaga died in a drive-by shooting.

In March of last year, 17-year-old Abdiwasa Farah was killed when 26 shots were pumped into his car.

In June, Steven Markey, 39, was shot dead by carjackers.

In August, Abdullah Adeed, 40, was shot dead in a home invasion.

In October, Mustafa Ali, 25, was killed in a shootout between rival gangs.

In November, Somali refugee, Shirwa Hassan Jibril, 75, was beaten to death after asking a group of men on a bus to quiet down.

Other victims since 2016 include Birdell Beeks, 58, hit by a stray bullet as she sat in her car with her granddaughter, and Le’Vonte King Jason Jones, 2, killed in a van with his father during a drive-by shooting.

Fed-up local businesses have had to pool money for their own security because they’re not being protected by police.

Violence is terrorizing a city that has been under Democratic control for most of the past 50 years. Instead of focusing on keeping residents safe, progressive mayors have attempted to social engineer police with notions of diversity and “cultural competency.” The result is a demoralized, weak, understaffed police force, with tragic consequences

A city with such problems needs better policing, not no police. It also deserves a serious person as mayor.

We need answers, Andrew

It’s about time Prince Andrew is questioned by investigators about his relationship with pedophile Jeffrey Epstein. The royal family has been tarnished by the scandal hanging over the Queen’s favorite son.

Epstein’s former teenage sex slave Virginia Giuffre, 36, has accused Andrew of having sex with her between 2001 and 2002.

His denials have been weak, and his refusal to be questioned by New York prosecutors suggests he has something to hide.

Now that the Department of Justice has officially requested that Great Britain allow Andrew to be questioned under oath, he should welcome the opportunity to clear his name.

Social-distance hypocrites

For weeks, families were forced to leave loved ones to die alone and were forbidden to attend their funerals, all in the name of public health.

But we complied with the rules because we trusted public health officials who said draconian social distancing was essential to stop the spread of COVID-19 and save lives.

That trust was betrayed when 1,200 of those same health “professionals” wrote an open letter condoning mass protests in flagrant defiance of the rules because “white supremacy is a public health issue.”

They just look like faithless political activists, and the next time there is a public health crisis, they won’t be able to count on blind obedience from the law-abiding.