Isn’t it sweet to be surrounded by so much make-believe? So much pretending.

In the Big Apple the Fire Department graduated a new class of firefighters. All of them endured the training. All of them passed various written exams. All of them passed the rigorous physical test. Except one.

The department allowed one person who failed the physical test to become a firefighter. Why? Because she is a woman. And the department wants to avoid looking like it is anti-women. The woman failed the test six times. Well…let’s pretend she is strong enough.

Other city fire departments spin similar fairy tales. They pretend. Pretend that weak women can lug bodies down and hoses up ladders. Bodies and hoses as heavy as the weights they could not handle in the tests. Right.

You should hope we won’t see the same pretending when it comes to training for brain surgery. It won’t happen there, Tom. Because patients’ lives are in the balance. Well, don’t firefighters have lives in their hands?

Meanwhile various characters pretend our economy is just peachy. Pretend that any day now it will kick into even higher gear.

I hate to be the guy who tugs back the curtain to reveal the Wizard of Oz. But things ain’t peachy. It is time to stop pretending.