For thousands of years expectant parents never knew their baby’s gender until the moment of birth. Ultra-sound scans changed all that, of course, but the news was shared discreetly with parents and close friends.

No longer. Nowadays aspirational vulgarians are making a huge deal out of gender-reveal parties. The same immoderate types who throw self-aggrandizing birthday parties for themselves invite pallies to outdoor events in which their child’s gender is proclaimed like the winner of a regional beauty pageant, with all kinds of pomp and braggadocio, smoke-generating devices and fireworks displays, etc. Blue smoke for a boy, pink for a girl, champagne all around.

Yesterday morning a smoke-generating pyrotechnic device that was used during an outdoor gender-reveal party in Yucaipa’s El Dorado Ranch Park ignited a major blaze, which is currently burning over 8,600 acres in San Bernardino County.

What kind of a drooling moron ignites any kind of incendiary device for any purpose during a massive heat wave while fires are burning throughout California? If I was the deciding judge I would throw the book at the couple who did this. I would insist that both be put on a daily work detail in which they’d have to smash rocks with sledge hammers.