Oh THAT Deserves a Proclamation, Yer Honor

Be with you in a second...just making a bet with myself that the same folks who claimed, at volume, that Bloomberg's Big Gulp ban made him Hitler on the Hudson will rise in full-throated defense of the Littlest Billionaire over this:

Mayor Bloomberg: NYPD ‘Stops Whites Too Much And Minorities Too Little’ 

New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg defended the police department’s controversial stop and frisk program during a radio interview on Friday morning, and complained that the NYPD was stopping too many white people.

Bloomberg's money shot:

"One newspaper and one news service, they just keep saying ‘oh it’s a disproportionate percentage of a particular ethnic group.’ That may be, but it’s not a disproportionate percentage of those who witnesses and victims describe as committing the [crime]. In that case, incidentally, I think we disproportionately stop whites too much and minorities too little. It’s exactly the reverse of what they’re saying. I don’t know where they went to school, but they certainly didn’t take a math course. Or a logic course."

However...

The statistics are overwhelming. An independent study of the city’s stop-and-frisk program found that 87 percent of the 685,724 stops in 2011 — a record high — were of blacks and latinos. Young black men between the ages of 14 and 24 were stopped 106% of the time — as in, there were more stops of young black men than the entire population of young black men.

"I'm very pleased and honored by this... Wait a second...This Proclaims me an asshole!"

Anyway, it's all academic now.  Under pressure from a civil suit filed against the NYPD and the Bloomberg Administration, the Mayor has directed the Police Commissioner to replace the controversial stop-and-frisk with a new program: stop-and-frisky.

Under this new system, adopted from a successful program introduced last year in Britain, subjects detained by police may not be searched without probable cause, but may be required to spontaneously "frolic, caper, or gambol." Statistically, most people take this as a cue to dance, according to Metropolitan Police Service spokesperson Brince Funnelwidth.  "Some people go low impact, of course; just do The Robot, or Prancercise.  But most choose to get jiggy with it, especially if they've got some Belgian New Beat or speedcore on their mp3 player. Irish stepdancing is the most effective for dislodging weapons and contraband of course, particularly the Treble Hop Back move, but really any high energy dance style is sufficient to provide an officer with probable cause.  One constable told me about a subject who performed a rapid series of stag leaps and chaînés that sent concealed bags of meth flying as far as six, seven meters away."

British police point to polling which suggests the public actually prefers the new program to being frisked.  "It's less invasive," says Sergeant Funnelwidth, "And allows more room for self-expression.  It's been such a success, in fact, that most members of the public now leave their homes dressed to move, and with a two-minute song prepared."

Some lawyers concerned with civil liberties point out, however, that stop-and-frisky has actually led to increased racial profiling.  Statistics show that minorities were involved in 91% of all stops, whites in only 6% (the remaining 3% involved stops of bollards, mannequins, and Nelson's Column by constables who were "more than ordinarily drunk"at the time).    Funnelwidth concedes that Stop-and-Frisky has not eliminated all problems of ethnic bias, but believes the disparity has been overstated by plaintiffs' attorneys, and even echoes Mayor Bloomberg's belief that Met officers stop far too many whites.  "Have you ever seen them dance?  It's bloody awful, mate."

And You Are There

Lincoln, Nebraska:  Photographer J. Hanover Whitscomb captures the earliest known use of the "Wet Willie," by Johann Bernauer, retired farrier, on Arthur Millstone Bagby, prominent corn factor (February 11, 1910).

Scientific American

All right, we went five rounds with Philosophy in our last post, now it's time to give Science! a chance to kick our ass.  (But just regular Science!, not the Sweet Science, because I think that'd probably give it an unfair advantage in the ring).  So who's on the card today?  An old ham 'n egger familiar to regular fans of World O' Crap's Underground Bloodsport Kumite and Souplantation -- James (The Ravagin' Rationalist) Lewis, who in his previous bouts (examples here and here), modestly allowed that he's "a scientist by trade, and carps as a hobby about the passing parade of human fraud and folly".  James is wearing blue and brown trunks with white trim, representing the muddy, but patriotic color scheme of American Thinker.

An Uncontrollable Ego 

IRS. FBI. NSA... Under Obama they consistently exceed their previously understood legal powers. Yes, there was technical consent by the secret FISA court for massive NSA spying. In times of national threat the FISA court is a pushover; just imagine if they said "No" and we had another 9/11/01.

When has the FISA court ever not been a pushover?  Hell, I've got a partially herniated disc and a torn rotator cuff and I could throw it up against the lockers and take its lunch money.  But as we shall see, it's not the mere technical legality of NSA and FBI spying that troubles Mr. Lewis.  Nor is it the fact that the IRS didn't really spy on anybody, but James needed one more three initial agency and he's hoping you won't notice that he just sort of tossed it in there like a fistful of corn starch to thicken up his thin sauce of an opening sentence.  No, what bothers him most is that the organs of U.S. intelligence gathering and Federal law enforcement are now under the control of a Negro -- which is the exact same nightmare J. Edgar Hoover once had after catching a dollar matinee of Watermelon Man at the Uptown Theater.

But first, James will demonstrate his mastery of the scientific method by imagining Supreme Court Justices piercing the Bill of Rights with phallic symbols:

So they drove a dagger into the U.S. Constitution rather than stand for principle, the way Chief Justice John Roberts helped damage the Constitution by voting for ObamaCare, and the Burger Court shafted the Constitution and ruined millions of young lives with unrestricted abortion.

I was hoping it wouldn't happen so soon in the post, but I'm afraid my lack of scientific training is already beginning to tell, because I'm confused about whose "young lives" were "ruined" by abortion after Warren Burger poked his penis through the parchment at the National Archives.  I mean,  I'm used to right bloggers complaining that abortion "kills millions of babies," but I don't agree that it ruins a young woman's life if she's not forced to bring an unwanted pregnancy to term.  Or maybe James has access to secret scientific studies which indicate the "abortion is murder" trope isn't getting as much traction as they expected, and is just trying out a new spin:

"What happens when you've got a souffle in the oven and you open the door too soon?  The souffle is ruined!  Well, the same thing happens when you've got a bun in the oven..."

Perhaps the most damaging Leftist assault ever was reverse discrimination to make up for white racial sins going back to the slave trade that ended in 1865; that racialist revenge narrative still drives reverse discrimination, forty years after the start of "affirmative" action. It will never end, as long as there is a penny to be made on racial blackmail.

Hm...there seems to be something missing from Mr. Lewis's data set.  Maybe some trend or social order that existed between the end of the "slave trade" in 1865, and the beginnings of affirmative action in 1965.  Maybe something having to do with state and local laws....of a race-based nature...?  Had kind of a short, catchy nickname...You know what I'm talking about, right, Jim?

The equal protection clause is gone. 

Suddenly, there was no trail.  No clause.  No monster.  There was nothing in the tunnel but the puzzled men of courage who suddenly found themselves along with shadows and darkness.  So I guess the joke's on us.

Every time the left imagines another victim group, that gaping wound in constitutional protections grows larger and larger

Anytime anyone who isn't a white man uses a constitutional protection, it's like giving the 14th Amendment an episiotomy.

 -- first on behalf of American blacks, then for all "people of color," then women and gays, and now, illegal immigrants.

Those are all great, very imaginative victim groups, but I'm thinking we can push the envelope a bit more. 

"What about, like, super hot Silvan Elves who earn only 73 cents on the dollar compared to a Man of the West?"

 Reverse racial discrimination has empowered an unelected political class growing fat and thuggish on a new spoils system. With ObamaCare, racial spoils may capsize our elected ship of state, leaving only an EU-type corruptocracy.

Affordable healthcare leads to obesity and The Poseidon Adventure.

The Left has pushed against the Constitution beginning with the Wilson administration and World War I.

Which was pretty stupid of them, because it says clearly right there on the Constitution, "Pull."  But what do you expect from a perpetually stoned Yippie like A. Mitchell Palmer?

 What's different about Obama is his Leninist grandiosity, combined with amazing oppositional-defiant disorder.

So, Mr. Science, you're diagnosing our 51-year old President with a behavioral affliction common to children?  Why don't you just call him "Boy" and get it out of your system?

 In street language that means his f-u attitude.

Thanks for the translation, it saved me a trip to Urban Dictionary, but I'm a little surprised The Street is so squeamish about profanity.

MAN:  Can I have a sip of that?

STREET:  No!  Get the H-E-Double Hockey Sticks away from my M-Fing ice tea!

Obama takes pleasure in waving his finger in the air while violating our most precious values. Obama's narcissism and oppositional-defiance therefore control his official actions.

While Supreme Court Chief Justices are using the Constitution as a Fleshlight, Obama is out there flouting our precious belief that high government officials shouldn't mime prostate exams.

The week after Obama's first inauguration, commuters in New York City were shocked when Air Force One buzzed the Statue of Liberty. When the White House was queried nobody took responsibility. But only the President of the United States can override standing orders and FAA safety rules in that symbolic act of giving the middle finger to the whole country, within sight of the ruined Twin Towers.

Presidents of the United States must always travel with two briefcases: the "Football," which contains the nuclear launch codes, and the "Shuttlecock," which contains the phone number of the FAA, just in case the leader of the free world gets a yen to make Air Force One buzz around lower Manhattan like it's a big-ass Cox Mustang.

In fact, it was some guy in some office in the White House who approved the flyover of a plane that wasn't actually Air Force One, so they could snap some pictures, which the FAA doesn't actually seem to have any rules against, and which most people have completely forgotten about, since it happened back in 2009.  But James appears haunted by Obama's middle finger, whether literal or symbolic, so you can see why this kind of thing would have lodged inside his consciousness, at least up to the second knuckle.

Today the Europeans are genuinely afraid of Obama. If you doubt that, look at these two news photos. The first shows Frau Merkel looking with fear and doubt in her eyes at Obama in Germany this week. 

I'm no expert in psycho-photo-analysis, but all I see is a picture of Chancellor Merkel looking German.  Maybe a little extra German, but it could just be that her plastic ear thingy is pinching.

Merkel started life as a communist in East Germany, but seems acutely aware of personality cults like Stalin's and Obama's. She fears what she knows.

But she knows what she likes, and you can tell she's thinking, "If I wasn't a frau I would tear that up."

The second photo shows Britain's David Cameron doing that little head bow that politicians do around Obama. Both photos show fear of Obama's arbitrary temper and rage, which is by now understood by governments around the world.

Yes, you can see the Prime Minister has gone rigid with terror, and appears to be releasing a cascade of urine down his leg in the hopes that if he can only hold this pose, Obama might mistake him for the Manneken Pis fountain and just take a snapshot.

Merkel's look is particularly revealing, because it was her job this week to protest against Obama's unbounded NSA spying against Germans and other Europeans, who have known Obamas before --- Mussolini, Hitler, Lenin, Stalin, and a raft of other control freaks who became enraged when their orders were not followed. Led by our loathsome media, many Americans took the public revelations about Obama's abuses of power with a shrug. The Germans did not, because they still suffer from earlier generations of Obamas.

Obama's "Show Trials" may lack the authenticity of Stalin's purges, but thanks to the President's dupes in the entertainment industry, they do feature jazzier Show Trial Tunes.

The Muslim world has come to the same conclusion. The farcical Arab Spring started after Obama told Egypt's President Hosni Mubarak to leave office, arbitrarily, in the single most blatant act of public imperialism in American history.

It's the total arbitrariness of Obama's decision-making that's so frightening, because you never know when he wakes up if he'll order a Denver omelet and a glass of grapefruit juice, or demand the resignation of a world leader and then just grab some Sanka and an Eggo frozen waffle.

Even more mystifying is the fact that protests erupted in Cairo on January 25, and by February 8, the President was still refusing to call for Mubarak's resignation.  So in order for Obama to have started the Arab Spring by firing the Egyptian President, he would need a time machine, which explains why James sounds less like he's doing Science, and more like he's writing fiction -- because he's actually doing both.  It's Science Fiction!

Based on his own messianic authority, Obama has brought nothing but war and suffering to the Middle East.

Okay, Obama hasn't been the best messiah we've ever had in the Middle East, but to be fair, George W. Bush, Prince of Peace, is a hard act to follow.

The Saudis fear him as a wild man who has brought Mecca and Medina within easy range of Iranian nuclear weapons. Israel has not been damaged so far, but they don't want a wild man running U.S. policy either.

I'm guessing James' field is astrophysics, since he seems to have discovered a mirror universe where everybody sports goatees.

Politics is worse today than it has been for decades, because of the rise of the Boomer Left, culminating in Obama the Messiah.

Which, when you're expecting Jesus, is sort of like when you open the door in a game of "Mystery Date" and get the sloppy beatnik instead of the crewcut guy with the corsage.

Wise policymakers understand the limits of their power and end up practicing the rule of "First, Do No Harm." We now have a U.S. president who has turned that upside-down: First, do some harm.

Please do not reveal the incredible twist ending to James' previous paragraph.  Especially if M. Night Shyamalan is within earshot.

It hasn't worked, and it won't. Obama is a loose cannonball. He has only one guiding principle, the aggrandizement of his own ego. But just one Nobel Peace Prize, just one presidency, can never be enough for his insatiable needs. Obama will always need more. 

Obama wants to control everything except himself. That has always been a formula for tyranny, and Obama is no exception. 

Character is destiny.

It would also appear, James, that cartoon character is destiny -- especially if you're destined to write for American Thinker.

Plato's Retreat

My friends, we've been getting away with this gentle mockery and spoofing buffoonery for a good many years now, but it had to happen sooner or later, and I'm afraid World O' Crap has finally met its match.  At first I thought this would be merely another wingnut scouting report, yet another toe-dipping test of the tepid waters at Townhall.  But then I reached the bottom of the article, and realized-- too late! --  that I had locked horns with a professional philosopher:

Jack Kerwick received his doctoral degree in philosophy from Temple University. His area of specialization is ethics and political philosophy. He is a professor of philosophy at several colleges and universities in New Jersey and Pennsylvania. Jack blogs at Beliefnet. ... Kerwick has taught a variety of philosophy courses as an adjunct instructor for nine years at a range of schools. He is now seeking a permanent residency as he continues his research into classical conservatism.

Personally, I like the idea of an itinerant philosophy professor, pushing his cart through the cobbled streets at dawn, crying "Syllogisms and peritropes, alive, alive, oh!"  But I'm just a Right Brain slob who never trained in critical thinking, and am clearly unequipped to match wits with a skilled rhetorician.  Unfortunately, I'd already cut 'n' pasted his post into my browser, which is the blogger equivalent of lifting your hand after moving a chess piece, leaving me in a logical cleft stick from which I had but one way out...

All right, Prof, let's get our proofs on!

Amnesty Nonsense

Let’s be blunt: anyone who endorses anything remotely resembling the “comprehensive immigration reform” currently bandied about in Congress is either a fool or a liar.

And since everyone is Congress is a fool and a liar, this postulate cannot be disproved! Please proceed, Professor...

Amnesty — and make no mistakes about it, “comprehensive immigration reform,” “a pathway to citizenship,” and whatever other euphemisms its apologists invoke do nothing to change the fact that it is amnesty that they favor — is a fool’s errand of epic proportions. This becomes obvious once we consider it in light of an analogy from everyday life.

Whew, an analogy. I thought he was gonna beat me about the head and shoulders with a more complicated rhetorical device, like an allegory, or a metalepsis.

You’re married.

True, but I wish you'd keep my personal life out of this.

Chief among the obligations inherent in marriage is that of fidelity.

And putting the cap back on the damn toothpaste.

Your spouse has chronically failed to fulfill this most basic of duties. 

Exactly!  Am I the only one around here who cares that the mouth of the tube is clogged with a petrified geyser of Crest?

Finally, you’ve had enough. Upon threatening your philandering spouse with divorce, she acknowledges that your marriage is “broken” before swearing to not only change, but change radically. 

I could tell she was trying to spice up our apolitical love life when I found she'd placed a copy of Saul Alinsky's marriage manual, Rules for Red Hot Radicals: A Prurient Primer for Fornicating Fabians in the magazine rack next to the toilet.

Not only will she stop cheating, she promises to transform herself into the epitome of the loyal and loving wife.

So you're saying June Cleaver was heating up the house with torrid sexytimes while Ward was off doing his vague job in his nondescript office?  No wonder she always had a pearl necklace.  (By the way, was it Lumpy?  I always suspected she had something going on the side with Lumpy.)

While you would doubtless want to believe this, you could not do so.

The italics simply would not let you!

Unfortunately, none of the good sense on display here is present in this debate over amnesty — even though the reasoning for the latter is identical to the reasoning of the unfaithful wife.

I don't know why they don't just scrap the immigration reform bill and pass Lady Chatterley's Lover.  Since the current legislation apparently requires that our spouses slut around behind our backs, this would have the same effect, with the added benefit that it'd be one of the few bills Congressmen would actually read, albeit in the Cloakroom.

It is among the most basic obligations of a government to secure its country’s borders. As fidelity is essential to preserving the integrity of marriage, so too is border security essential to preserving the integrity of a nation. Indeed, a government that fails to secure its borders is unfaithful to its citizens.

Therefore, it is incumbent upon our representatives to immediately appropriate funds to build a fence around our wives' vaginas.

First, if the government can’t or won’t fulfill its most basic and simplest of obligations in securing the country’s borders now, there is zero reason to accept its assurances that it will fulfill this duty as well as a bunch of new duties later. As my old martial arts instructor used to say, you’ve got to learn how to walk before you can learn how to run.

I like how smoothly he slipped in that reference to his training in the manly art of fisticuffs and footicuffs, but I gotta say, if that's the kind of advice his martial arts instructor was dispensing, the Professor wasn't getting his $65-a-month's worth.

With respect to this issue, our government hasn’t yet learned how to walk or even crawl. But the Gang of Eight and their accomplices in the media would have us believe that with the stroke of a pen, the federal government will instantaneously become a marathon runner.

I also like how the terms of debate have changed from "immigration is adultery" to "I took karate!" to "Congress is a toddler that lacks the cardiovascular conditioning to compete in distance running events!"  You have to admit, that is one flexible analogy.

Second, border security is as big of a non-negotiable in governing as fidelity is a non-negotiable in marriage. 

And now we've veered wildly back toward the swarthy gardener who's humping his missus.  You know what, Professor Kerwick -- why don't you stop the analogy and let me off here.  I'll walk the rest of the way to your point.

The citizens of the United States should no more have to negotiate with their government to secure its borders than spouses should have to negotiate with one another to refrain from engaging in adultery. Spouses owe it to each other to be faithful. Similarly, the government owes it to its citizens to secure their borders.

Unfortunately, our government is a newborn that can't even crawl yet, so it's not likely to outrun immigrants darting across the border.  Also, somebody should turn Congress onto its back before it smothers.

However, when Marco Rubio or Chuck Schumer or any other politician favoring amnesty tells us that, in order to secure the border we must first place millions of illegal immigrants on a “pathway” to citizenship, what they are essentially saying is that we, the people’s elected representatives, will not discharge our constitutional duty unless you go along with what we want.

What do we want?  Emphatic typeface!  When do we want it?  Now!

Finally, when Chuck Schumer, Marco Rubio, and their allies in Washington inform us that our immigration system is “broken,” they admit, albeit unwittingly, that they, Republicans and Democrats alike, broke it. 

Not necessarily.  It might have been that Not Me asshole.

Only now, after decades of breaking the system apart piece by piece, they expect for citizens to trust them to construct a new system that is better than ever, a system that will magically solve all of our immigration related issues once and forever.

Oh, I doubt most Americans believe this solution, even if it works, will prove effective for eternity, because we've all shopped for crap in this country and realize our entire system is based on planned obsolescence.  I am intrigued, however, to discover that the Gang of Eight is dabbling in sorcery (I imagine them all wearing black tights, powder blue jerkins, and big flowy capes like Dr. Strange as they ensnare Subcommittee witnesses in the Crimson Bands of Cyttorak).

I'm also interested to learn that when his strawman argument fails, the trained philosophy professor will accuse his opponents of witchcraft.  Then maybe throw one of those ninja smoke-bombs at the floor and vanish like Lee van Cleef in The Master.

To take seriously such a claim is to expose oneself as a fool. To ask others to take it seriously is to expose oneself as a liar.

And to study the writings of Dr. Jack Kerwick, migrant philosopher and cuckold, is to learn that these two things are not necessarily mutually exclusive.

Father? Yes, son? I Want to Kill You

By Bill S., World O' Crap's Bad Breeders of the Big Screen Correspondent

It's Father's Day, and time once again for my annual look at the Worst Dads In Movies & Television (for previous editions, see here and here). I doubt there's any fictional dad who's worse than the real-life one I reads about who showed up for a custody hearing dressed in a Nazi uniform, but perhaps a few of them do come close.

WORST MOVIE DADS:

Johnny Nolan (James Dunn) in A Tree Grows In Brooklyn (1945):  A tragic figure in the story, to be sure, but one of the ways he's a tragic figure is that he's an undependable lush and a screw-up. (This classic movie's not available on DVD. Think about that next time you're at a Redbox poring over the selections desperately searching for something to watch, before settling on Furry Vengeance or Just Go With It.)

Frank Stark (Jim Backus) in Rebel Without a Cause (1955): Such a clueless, ineffectual mound of wussyburger, you wonder how he managed to even conceive a child at all, much less James Dean.  Bonus bad dad: Judy's Father (William Hopper). When Judy (Natalie Wood) tries to give him an affectionate kiss on the cheek, he slaps her. (WTF???)

Alfred P. Doolittle (Stanley Holloway) in My Fair Lady (1964): Upon learning his daughter Eliza (Audrey Hepburn) is living with a man, he tries to profit from the situation by shaking down Professor Higgins (Rex Harrison) for money. It's debatable whether he's trying to pimp her out, since he only asks for five pounds, as he knows the Professor's intentions are honorable. For less honorable intentions, he'd have charged fifty.

Mac Sledge (Robert Duvall) in Tender Mercies (1983): Duvall makes this list for the third year in a row, this time for his portrayal of country singer Mac, a recovering alcoholic and deadbeat dad. Mac was absent from his daughter's life for most of her childhood. When they're finally reunited, she asks him to sing the song he used to sing for her when she was little (her one happy memory of him), and he pretends not to know it. We know he's pretending, because the song in question is "Wings of a Dove", and a country singer who doesn't know that one would be as likely as a rock musician who doesn't know "Heartbreak Hotel", or an R&B singer who's never heard "Respect". When she dies in an auto crash, Mac barely registers any emotional response to the tragedy at all, while his ex-wife (Betty Buckley) breaks down in hysterics. (No wonder she dumped him.)

Bender's Dad in The Breakfast Club (1985): We never actually see him, but we can deduce from the fact that he burns his kid with a cigarette and smacks him (and his wife) around that he's something of a bastard.

Martin Chernak (David Strathairn) in Dominick & Eugene (1988): Strathairn returns to our list for the second year (he also played a pedophile priest in the made-for-TV movie Judgement, but that's a terrible father of a different kind). Martin beats his son on a daily basis, and one day, knocks the boy down a flight of stairs, killing him. When he learns that Nicky (Tom Hulce) a man afflicted with brain damage, is the only witness, he threatens to kill him too. Bonus bad dad: Dominick and Eugene's father, who we learn was the cause of Nicky's brain damage, sustained from the beatings he gave his son as a boy.

Daniel Hillard (Robin Williams) in Mrs. Doubtfire (1993) I find Daniel's drag alter ego amusing on its own terms, and perhaps you do too. So it's easy to lose sight of why he had to resort to this ruse: because as a father, he's an irresponsible goof. Worse, when his wife Miranda (Sally Field) complains about having to always be the grownup, he has the nerve to complain that she's no fun anymore. Of course she isn't, she's the one paying the bills. Imagine trying to get out of work, racing to get home for your kid's birthday, and finding the house has become a zoo, literally, and your husband  telling you, "We were gonna clean it up before you got home!" (On the assumption she'd be working late. Thanks for that dig, asshole. No wonder she dumped him.)

[side note: Mara Wilson, who played the Hillard's 6 year old daughter, wrote a very sharp, funny column about her experiences as a child actor. It's worth checking out. ]

Guy Quoyle (John Dunsworth, played by Andrew Fowler in flashback) in The Shipping News (2001): Made his son feel worthless, even when the kid nearly drowned while learning to swim. He was also a terrible brother, having raped his sister when she was twelve, which explains her treatment of his ashes after he dies. He was also universally despised by the entire town, so there's that.

Tom Lagatos (Steven Charles Fletcher) in Dorian Blues (2004): So reactionary he made the Great Santini seem like the dad on "Family Ties". When his son Dorian, at age seven, begins having anxieties about the possibility of one day going to war, his father assures him, "You're not going to Canada. You're GOING TO WAR. And you might get killed, but you'll get killed like a man!"

Gerry Ryan (James Caan) in Mercy (2009): Advice to father's out there: when your son is grieving the death of his fiancee, which he feels responsible for, and wants to talk about it, the appropriate response is not to complain about the way he's being a buzzkill.

(a special thank you to Anntichrist S. Coulter for recommending this sleeper to me. Thanks, Annti!)

Daniel Plainview (Daniel Day-Lewis) in There Will Be Blood (2007): Adopted a deaf orphan to improve his standing as a businessman, using the boy as a prop, more or less. When the boy grows up to be an adult with ideas of his own, Plainview mocks his son's handicap and reveals his origins -- "There is none of me in you!" which can only be a compliment, considering what a rat bastard he is. There's also the matter of beating his son's brother-in-law to death with a bowling pin, which is bound to make the next Thanksgiving dinner a bit awkward.

WORST TV DADS:

Chester Tate (Robert Mandan) on "Soap":  A serial adulterer and embezzler, he also murders his daughter Corinne's boyfriend, and, at the wedding of his daughter Eunice, hooks up with (and eventually marries) the maid of honor. When he's missing and presumed dead, the family holds a memorial service, and nobody -- including his children -- can think of one good thing to say about him.

Don Draper (Jon Hamm) on "Mad Men": It's a close call between him and ex-wife Betty (January Jones) as to who the worse parent is, but I think Don has the edge, if only because he's spent a lifetime deceiving his kids with a false identity. (The only thing Betty pretends to be is happy, and nobody buys it.)  Small wonder then, that when daughter Sally catches a woman breaking into the apartment, she half-believes the woman's claim that she was Don's nanny. When she calls her father to see if the story checks out, she sighs, exasperated, and realizes, "I don't know you at all." Words I'm sure she'll live to regret after the latest episode where she caught him banging the next-door neighbor.

(Hey, that's two shows featuring a character named Peter Campbell.  I don't know what that signifies, just thought I'd note the coincidence.)

Ryan Howard (B. J. Novak) on "The Office":  He didn't become a father until the final episode of the series, when he turns up at Dwight and Angela's wedding with a newborn in tow. When he reunites with ex-girlfriend Kelly (Mindy Kaling), the two decide to run off together, and he ditches the baby, leaving him with one of the guests, who, understandably, calls child services. Considering what a complete and utter little shit Ryan was throughout the series, we can't help thinking the baby might be better off.

and last, but not least:

Janie's dad.

Happy Father's Day to all the World O' Crap dads out there. I promise you did a better job with your kids than those guys did!

-Bill S

It's a bird! It's a plane! It's a serial killer!

Director Zack Snyder and screenwriter David S. Goyer promised a "darker" look at America's archetypal superhero in Man of Steel, and I have to confess that as a lifelong comics fan I was thrilled by the notion of a Superman who could exist in a relevant and recognizable -- if not necessarily realistic -- version of the world we live in.  And if that vision meant accepting a Clark Kent who was not a mild mannered reporter for a great metropolitan newspaper, but a furry-faced bum from the reality TV show Deadliest Catch, and a Man of Tomorrow who doffs his iconic red underpants and goes commando, then so be it. What I wasn't prepared for, however, is an uncompromising Superman who collects gruesome trophies from his victims.

"Get the point, Lex?  Or do I have to start stringing a necklace out of dicks?"

There's precedent for this, of course; in The Dark Knight Returns, it's strongly implied that Oliver Queen, the Green Arrow, began killing white collar criminals who were beyond the reach of the law, prompting Superman to tear off the archer's shooting arm.  That may seem out of character for the Man of Steel, a hero with a well-known bias against killing, but Queen survived, so Superman merely maimed him, and no doubt even administered prompt first aid by cauterizing the gushing stump with his heat vision.  Plus, it just seems natural that if any DC character would turn out to be a corporate stooge, it'd be Supes, because he's spent the last 75 years proving that his powers and abilities to whore himself out are far beyond those of ordinary men.

Still, I hate to think the worst of people -- especially people who can rip my hand off -- so perhaps there's a more benign explanation for this macabre phalanx.  For instance, the display of severed hands could simply be evidence of a new and exciting super power.  As any comic book fan can attest, Superman has a familiar and unvarying skill set, preternatural abilities that are stimulated by exposure to Earth's yellow sun, which include super-strength, heat vision, x-ray vision, flight, invulnerability, and sanctimony.  But he also possesses a series of impromptu, short-lived, and quickly forgotten super powers that are stimulated by lazy writing and looming deadlines, including super-ventriloquism, super-knitting, and the ever popular super-friction.  Most important of all, he occasionally, when the plot demands it, shows signs of super telepathy, which I believe he's using in the photo above to mentally command an army of Things from The Addams Family.

After all, Superman is a joiner (Justice League of America, Legion of Super-Heroes, League of Titans, etc.), and even though Man of Steel is a solo project, I suspect he got lonely and decided to form a team drawn from the traumatically amputated appendages of his foes, allies, and casual acquaintances -- a sort of dismembered Super-Friends.

So remember, if you wake up in an ice-filled bathtub and find a note from Superman explaining that he took your kidney, it doesn't necessarily mean he's an organ trafficker, it may just mean he wants you to be his Pal (and if you're lucky, Superman's previous Pal, Jimmy Olsen, might let you wear his Superman Signal Watch, because at least you've still got a wrist).

What do you guys think?

E Pluribus Anus

Judging by the symbol above the door,  Greendale Community College has opened a satellite campus in our neighborhood.  Or perhaps it's the Asterisk Luxury* Apartments.

*Not actually luxurious.