By Jim Schuh

“I swear on a stack of Bibles…”

How many Bibles does a politician need when taking the oath of office?

A skeptic would answer, “none” because he doesn’t believe the politician will be trustworthy even if he uses a Bible in his swearing-in.

But Ohio Governor Mike DeWine thinks the number is nine.  That’s how many Bibles he used when he took his oath recently.  Many came from his family – his late daughter, his mother, his grandmother, his grandfather, his great-great grandmother, etc.  Most elected officials use just one.

Does using nine Bibles assure voters that a candidate will be more honest than if he’d used just one?

I don’t know – and you’ll have to answer that question for yourself.  But it does make one wonder…

On a related topic, many of us learned never to mix politics and religion in conversation or over dinner and family get-togethers.  But now it looks as if we should extend that admonition to advertisers who buy ad time in the Super Bowl – especially for sports fans who consider football almost a religion.  Just stick to selling your product.

A research firm named Morning Consult found that two-thirds of Americans feel it’s inappropriate for advertisers to make political statements in their commercials.  That would suggest that any firms that do so are making a big mistake by alienating two-thirds of the audience of some 100,000,000, thereby wasting 66 percent of the $5 million they’re spending for each ad.  Besides that, such ads might leave lingering negative effects in consumers’ minds of the company or its products.

Republicans feel more strongly than Democrats about not broadcasting ads that make political statements.  President Trump figures in the two of the reasons: 34 percent don’t want to see ads supporting his plans and 29 percent reject ads opposing his policies.  32 percent don’t want to see ads about protestors’ right to kneel during the National Anthem, and 27 percent dislike seeing ads on stricter policies to prevent abortion.  Stricter gun control, immigrations policies, and transgender and gay rights also make the list.  But Americans will accept ads about helping veterans, providing disaster relief and civil rights.

If you have tickets for the Super Bowl in Atlanta and plan to fly in, you’ll be glad to know that the airport will have 1,800 volunteers on hand to help with the big increase in passengers.  On a normal day, the airport handles about 270,000 passengers, but on the weekend of the big game, officials expect an additional 125,000 passengers.

Speaking of airports, Kentucky’s Louisville Regional Airport soon will become the Louisville Muhammad Ali International Airport, named after the late boxing champion who was from the city.

What do you do after you retire as a member of Congress or former governor?  Take a job with a lobbying firm used to be a good choice, but now It’s joining a cable TV channel.

Former Missouri Senator Claire McClaskill has joined MSNBC and NBC, while former Ohio Governor John Kasich goes to work at CNN – both as political analysts.  Kasich earlier served almost two decades as a member of the House of Representatives and was a candidate for president in 2016.

When I was a teen of 15, our family got its first TV set.  Whatever my parents wanted to watch, we watched.  There were only three or four channels available, and to change channels, someone had to get up from his chair, amble over to the TV set and physically turn the channel knob.  No remote controls back then.

Over the years, TV sets multiplied in homes so that nearly every household member had one, and technology advanced to make TV signals available on other devices, like smartphones so that people could watch whatever they wished alone and on their own screens by themselves. Watching TV together became almost a thing of the past.

But that appears to be changing, at least a little bit.

Today, almost half of all TV viewing is “co-viewing” – watching TV with somebody else – a partner or the kids.  Among young viewers, the figure is about 60 percent.  It turns out that in viewing TV, we’re spending more time with others or watching the same show.  This information comes from MRI Cord Evolution research.

Finally, here’s some news you probably won’t find anywhere else.  A new magazine has hit the newsstands in France, centered around…toilets.

”Flush” debuted in mid-November to coincide with World Toilet Day.  The quarterly magazine showed up on 4,000 newsstands and sold for $8.  Its articles deal with all sorts of toilet issues.  For example, it’s illegal to use newspaper for toilet paper in Turkmenistan or that women must pay one-third more than men to use restrooms in Switzerland’s railway stations.

The Columbia Journalism Review first revealed the news about “Flush” and reports the owner says that if it’s successful, we might see it published in other countries.

I can wait.