STEPHEN KRUISER: There Was No Dissing.

HMM: High-tech wearable UV patch aims to improve sun safety.

CHANGE: The Gig Economy Is a Boon for Boomer Retirees.

WELL, GOOD: Russia hits Islamic State in Syria with advanced cruise missiles.

MORE BAD NEWS ABOUT PROTON PUMP INHIBITORS.

NEWS YOU CAN USE: Top 5 Pleasant Surprises Lurking on Netflix Right Now.

I’m going to give Max Rose a try tonight — Jerry Lewis was often underrated as a dramatic actor, and I can’t remember the last time he starred in anything at all.

FIRST-WORLD PROBLEMS: “Hip Dips.”

BRITAIN GOT TIRED OF ALL THE WINNING: Winning is banned at more than half of primary school sports days.

Modern sport and the cultural aspects it both requires and nurtures — clear and binding rules, fair play, gentlemanly conduct from winners and losers — all trace their roots to England.

Giving up sport means giving up much of what made England English.

INCONCEIVABLE! Shock Report: Trump’s tough trade talk is working.

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: Here’s How Anti-Conservative Academic Discrimination Works: Students loved Keith Fink’s free-speech classes at UCLA. Other professors did not.

I think the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights should investigate this.

THE MYSTERY OF MELANIA: The first foreign-born supermodel to occupy the White House has much in common with Europe’s first supermodel, Emma Hamilton.

Tracy Quan:

Emma’s fame is due, in part, to a seven-year relationship with admiral Horatio Nelson, who died after winning the Battle of Trafalgar in 1805. But Emma was already a celebrity when she met Nelson.

Ten years before she became Lady Hamilton, Emma Hart was discovered by the British painter George Romney, who depicted her as Circe, St. Cecilia, and Shakespeare’s Miranda. On rare occasions, she appeared as herself. Together they produced more than 60 paintings, attracting other painters such as Joshua Reynolds, Elisabeth Louise Vigée Le Brun (famous for her portrait of Marie-Antoinette), and Angelica Kauffman. Romney missed her terribly when she left London for Naples.

More than a new face for painters of the 1780s, she was a new kind of persona, never a passive model, something of a gossip-magnet. Indeed, she was the supermodel prototype — harbinger of Kate Moss, Amber Valleta, and Melania Knauss.

In Italy, Emma shared a household with two men: her husband Sir William Hamilton and her lover Admiral Nelson. After Hamilton’s death, Emma lived with Nelson as his unofficial wife and conceived their daughter Horatia. Biographers have honored her with titles like England’s Mistress (2006) and Patriotic Lady (1936) by Marjorie Bowen, the genre novelist whose publishing debut turned young Graham Greene into an aspiring writer.

Both Melania and Emma have changed our idea of what’s possible for a woman in public life.

Fascinating history, and well worth your time.

DAVID GELERNTER ON THE FAILURE OF THE “CONSERVATIVE RESISTANCE:”

Conservative thinkers should recall that they helped create President Trump. They never blasted President Obama as he deserved. Mr. Obama’s policies punished the economy and made the country and its international standing worse year by year; his patronizing arrogance drove people crazy. He was the perfect embodiment of a one-term president. The tea-party outbreak of 2009-10 made it clear where he was headed. History will record that the press saved him. Naturally the mainstream press loved him, but too many conservative commentators never felt equal to taking him on. They had every reason to point out repeatedly that Mr. Obama was the worst president since Jimmy Carter, surrounded by a left-wing cabinet and advisers, hostile to Israel, crazed regarding Iran, and even less competent to deal with the issues than Mr. Carter was—which is saying plenty.

But they didn’t say plenty. They didn’t say much at all. The rank and file noticed and got mad. Even their supposed champions didn’t grasp what life under Mr. Obama was like—a man who was wrecking the economy while preaching little sermons, whose subtext was always how smart he was, how dumb they were, and how America was full of racist clods, dangerous cops and infantile nuts who would go crazy if they even heard the words “Islamic terrorism.” So the rank and file was deeply angry and elected Mr. Trump.

Couldn’t have said it better myself. They’d rather see the country collapse than risk being called a racist by Rachel Maddow. “Country over party” indeed. But Trump has brought along his own people, who are doing a lot better at engaging the left than the Bill Kristol/David Frum beltway types. As I wrote:

Yet the tea party movement was smeared as racist, denounced as fascist, harassed with impunity by the IRS and generally treated with contempt by the political establishment — and by pundits like Brooks, who declared “I’m not a fan of this movement.” After handing the GOP big legislative victories in 2010 and 2014, it was largely betrayed by the Republicans in Congress, who broke their promises to shrink government and block Obama’s initiatives.

So now we have Trump instead, who tells people to punch counterprotesters instead of picking up their trash.

When politeness and orderliness are met with contempt and betrayal, do not be surprised if the response is something less polite, and less orderly. Brooks closes his Trump column with Psalm 73, but a more appropriate verse is Hosea 8:7 “For they have sown the wind, and they shall reap the whirlwind.” Trump’s ascendance is a symptom of a colossal failure among America’s political leaders, of which Brooks’ mean-spirited insularity is only a tiny part. God help us all.

But if you don’t like Trump, you really won’t like what comes after Trump, if the “resistance” succeeds. Luckily for Trump, the resistance seems mostly to be a bunch of self-important clowns and Antifa thugs.

CHANGE IT BACK: Missouri Republicans Lower St. Louis Minimum Wage From $10 To $7.70.

After St. Louis leaders raised the wage floor for workers within city limits, the state GOP recently passed what’s known as a statewide “preemption” law, forbidding localities from taking such matters into their own hands. On Friday, Missouri Gov. Eric Greitens (R) said he would let the law go into effect, thereby barring cities and counties from setting a minimum wage higher than the state level.

For low-wage earners in St. Louis itself, the new law will have a startling consequence: It will actually push the minimum wage back down, from the city-approved $10 per hour to the state-approved $7.70. The downgrade is slated to take effect on Aug. 28.

For someone earning the bare minimum, that’s a potential cut of 23 percent.

For someone who couldn’t get hired at $10, that’s a raise of $7.70.

On the other hand, I’m not so sure Jefferson City should be overruling St. Louis’s bad decisions, which could be used as a powerful lesson in what not to do.

ANOTHER TICKING TIME BOMB FOR CHINA? What Will China Do When Land Use Rights Begin to Expire? Writes Greg Stein: “China does not allow private ownership of property; rather, it lets private parties use property for periods of 40, 50, or 70 years. The first round of land use rights will begin to expire soon, and it is not clear what will happen then. This introduces uncertainty into the real estate market and could lead to public unrest.”

KURT SCHLICHTER: We Should Cheer CNN’s Ritual Suicide. “If you ever had any doubt that Donald Trump was right that the mainstream media is the enemy of the American people, CNN corrected your inexplicable inability to comprehend this painfully obvious truth by choosing July 4th to threaten some guy for daring to make fun of Its Medianess Holiness. Apparently, if you dare defy the media it has the right to wreck your life – as long as you are an anti-Obama rodeo clown or a meme-making rando on Reddit. If you are a zillionaire like Anthony Scaramucci with the bucks to hire top flight law firms and Gawkerize its lame carcass – which I would have done in a split-second if CNN had lied about me the way it did about him – then you get a free pass. . . . Now, before we move on, someone is going to point out that the meme guy is kind of a jerk and said stuff that offends decent people. So? How is that the point? This is a multi-billion dollar media corporation using all its power to threaten an individual into not criticizing it. How is that ever okay? And don’t pretend for a minute this media extortion precedent gets limited to outlier Reddit guys. Normal Americans are next.”

Plus: “As much as it is a joy to see CNN shred its pretenses and act openly as we always knew it wanted to, this sort of thing is not good. There is a cultural war underway already, and this only makes it more likely to get worse. When the media takes a side, it makes the other side its enemy. That’s a conscious choice. And CNN seems happy to help feed the fire by embracing its liberal fascist id.”

BREAKING: Possible Terror Attack Targets Police Near Barcelona.

OLD MACDONALD GETTING EVEN OLDER: “Nearly two thirds of the nation’s farmers are 55 or beyond. Part is the lure of the larger cities. Part is the consolidation of the family farm into larger, corporate groups, which has changed the face of the rural landscape.”

VOA reporters spent part of February and March along the upper Mississippi River in Minnesota, Wisconsin, Illinois and Iowa. They spoke to Americans in counties that turned from supporting the Democratic Party candidate in previous elections to the Republican Donald Trump in 2016. Our team spoke with many along the way who felt they are among the “forgotten men and women” that Trump promised to champion.

The legacy media could learn a thing or two by leaving Georgetown or the Upper East Side.

ROGER SIMON: (Some of) ‘Old Europe’ Is Not So Bad:

A key reason for the success of Copenhagen and Amsterdam (Islamophobia alert) is that they both have shut the door, in different ways, on Islamic immigration.