Why does liberalism serve as a get-out-of-jail free pass for speech and behavior that would bring the establishment media down upon conservatives for engaging in the exact same speech or conduct? That's the question John Nolte asks at BigHollywood regarding octogenarian crank Gore Vidal's latest outburst. The novelist and failed politician said this when asked about Roman Polanski's rape of a 13-year-old girl: "I really don't give a f^*#. Look, am I going to sit and weep every time a young hooker feels as though she's been taken advantage of?" Vidal, it should be noted, has written favorably on underage sex. He also admits in his autobiography of being on the giving and receiving end of cash in exchange for sex. Though he may not view the label "hooker" as an epithet, everybody else, including your garden variety hooker, does. Ditto for the taboo on sex with junior-high students. Vidal may not find it repugnant, but everybody else does. Who in their right mind would call a thirteen-year-old rape victim a "hooker"? Bobby Kennedy, William F. Buckley, Truman Capote, and Norman Mailer agreed on exactly one thing: Gore Vidal is a jerk .

The food service industry is down for the fourth quarter in a row. Tipping, on the other hand, is up over the past few years. According to Zagat, St. Louis and Philadelphia tip the best at 19.5 percent.

I wonder about the poll's findings. It is in Zagat's interests to inflate the average tip. Also, people aren't proud of being cheapskates. If Americans will lie to pollsters about their favored candidate, or sexual preferences, then certainly they might fib that they tip more generously than they actually do. Perhaps St. Louis and Philadelphia tip the best. I just wonder if everybody lies a little, including waitstaff eager to psychologically induce higher and higher gratuities, about tipping.

The industry standard used to be 15 percent. But even the standard need not be adhered to if the service doesn't meet the customer's standard. Years ago, as a clear sign of my disgust with horrible service, I left little or nothing as a tip. I did so at a restaurant I frequented, well, frequently, so I didn't feel like a coward. A tip isn't an entitlement. Witholding a tip happened just once in thousands of visits to resturants. Bad service, unfortunately, has happened occasionally since.

I once lived with a foreigner who worked six days a week waiting tables at a French restaurant. He had strong opinions about various ethnic groups. "White people...the best, the best!," he once announced. It dawned on me that his opinions sprang from the gratuities that his customers generally left. I hesitate to call his opinions stereotypes, as they proved malleable depending upon the generosity of his previous night's patrons.

I worked two jobs that relied, to one degree or another, upon tips. As a kid, I delivered the Boston Globe for more than five years. Most customers didn't tip well at all. Only two or three customers met the 20 percent standard that Zagat suggests is normal for waiters and waitresses. I generally delivered the paper past its scheduled time (7 a.m. on weekdays, 8 a.m. on weekends), so maybe there was good reason for this. But waiters and waitresses don't deliver meals in blizzards, so I resented many of my customers for not tipping--even at Christmastime. In one of the more memorable encounters of my youth, one customer even refused payment for months of the Boston Globe. I was eleven, and it was a rotten thing for a grown adult to stick me with the bill for the paper that she read.

The ones who did tip well, and employed me to shovel out their driveways, I remember fondly. A few of the pensioners, who probably viewed the paper as a big expense, still tipped well. Collecting from them often entailed long conversations, as they didn't get out much and I have always enjoyed the company of old folks--several of my customers were children of the 19th century! The level of tipping generally did not conform to income levels. Yuppies, as they were called in the '80s, were often cheapskates. A wonderful gay couple, and a father and son who lived on respective floors of a duplex, I remember as the best tippers.

Shortly after I retired as a paperboy, I got a coveted job at Fenway Park. It's my lone foray, albeit a seven year one, into the food services industry. The vast majority of customers didn't tip. How they rationalized tipping a waiter, but not the guy who carted around a steaming hot-dog tray on a 90-degree day, I never understood. Tips were often dependant upon pricing. When a hot dog cost $1.75, people might say "Keep it" regarding the quarter. When priced at $2, tips were harder to come by. It's understable. Without spare change hanging around, who's going to give you a buck on a two-buck product?

Last night, I dined at the Outback. My tip amounted to 18 percent before tax and sixteen after tax. Whether it's customary to tip based on the percentage of the Outback's bill or the total Outback/Taxman's bill has always been a mystery to me. By Zagat's St. Louis standards, I am a bit of a cheapskate either way you cut it. By the standards of everybody, I suspect I am pretty normal. Alas, I suspect the guy who tips at ten percent thinks he's normal too.

Crazy talk about Xenu and body thetans didn't spur Hollywood writer Paul Haggis to quit the Church of Scientology. The misperception that a Scientology affiliate supported California's Proposition 8, which legally restored marriage to one man and one woman, did. "I told you I could not, in good conscience, be a member of an organization where gay-bashing was tolerated," the writer of "Crash" and co-writer of "Million-Dollar Baby" told a Super Adventure Club/Scientology leader in his resignation. Joining the Church of Scientology was no doubt a boon to Haggis's career. Leaving it will be too.

"The flashing banner ads, questionable color schemes and omnipresent 'Under Construction' signs of GeoCities are no more," CNN reports. GeoCities, the third most popular internet destination a little over a decade ago, has been wiped clean from the web. Today is Internet's first day without GeoCities since the outfit's inception in 1994. What's on the web is supposed to be forever. For posterity's sake, I hope that is so. If GeoCities now seems as dated as parachute pants, it was once one of the most important venues on the world wide web. It further democratized the net by empowering people, rather than just large institutions such colleges and businesses, to put up their own web sites. Hosting, which had been cost prohibitive, was free through GeoCities. Free is a good deal, even if it comes with web rings and internet "neighborhoods" (It probably wasn't such a good deal for GeoCities, which explains why after its acquisition by Yahoo it has gone out of business.). Many of the GeoCities amateurs went on to become tech professionals as a result of their experience with HTML. Wiping the Internet clean of these sites, even if they appear aesthetically offensive to modern web surfers, is an offense against history. Someday, not today but someday, people will be really interested in the early days of the Internet as a form of mass communications. When that day comes, people will be interested in GeoCities again, wondering what's up with the floating watermark as you scroll down, if "neighborhoods" really once existed on the world wide web, and whether some of those sketchy GeoCities sites stopped generating traffic long before GeoCities ceased to exist.

There is a Center for Wrongful Convictions attempting to spring a serial murderer from prison despite the killer's confession, and physical and circumstantial evidence tying him to three murders. I am tempted to sponsor a Center for Wrongful Releases in response.

Sixty-three-years ago, William Heirens murdered three people. His victims included a six-year-old girl, whom he kidnapped and then decapitated, leaving her head in a sewer. "There is no reason to keep this man behind bars," claims Steven Drizin, legal director of Northwestern's Center for Wrongful Convictions. "He meets all the criteria for parole." In bizarro world he meets all the criteria for parole. In our world, he doesn't. We're just not that stupid yet.

There are certain people who can empathize only with the living. They see an 81-year-old man suffering behind bars. They can't see the three people he killed. There's a good reason for this: they are dead and gone. But the blindness goes beyond this. They can't even imagine these victims as people with lives and loved ones. Being gone for the bleeding hearts means being forgotten.

For similar reasons, they imagine the criminal justice system as an institution that rehabilitates prisoners and protects society from criminals. They don't see the criminal justice system as an organ to mete out justice on behalf of those who have gone, voiceless, to their graves. Put yourself in such a jumbled mindset, and you begin to understand why they wish to spring a triple murderer from jail. He's 81. Whose safety does his freedom jeopardize? Probably nobody's, but that misses the point of the criminal justice system--to administer justice.

Many of these same morally confused people mistakenly believe that monsters don't age. Once the monster's hair grays, eyelids droop, and stomach protudes, he graduates to from perpetrator to victim. The monster effectively dies when the monster's form changes. But the incarcerated man who suffers from diabetes in 2009 is the same man who terrorized Chicago in 1945 and '46.

"Mercy to the guilty is cruelty to the innocent," quipped Adam Smith a long time ago. Times change, but truths remain.

According to Gallup, the percent of Americans who identify as "very conservative" or "conservative" stands at 40 percent, more than double the percent who identify as "very liberal" or liberal." Americans have not moved left on a single question asked by the Gallup organization during the last year. A majority of Americans now call themselves "pro life," 41 percent believe global warming to be exaggerated, and 45 percent say there is too much regulation of private business. On every hot-button issue polled, save one, there is a wide chasm between the attitudes of Democrats and Republicans. Party identification doesn't seem as indicative of one's attitudes on the question of immigration, of which 61 percent of Republicans and 44 percent of Democrats would like to see decreased. "All of this has potentially important implications at the ballot box, particularly for the 2010 midterm elections," the pollsters editorialize. "The question is whether increased conservatism, particularly among independents, will translate into heightened support for Republican candidates. Right now, it appears it may."

Broadcaster Steve Phillips had sex with a 22-year-old intern. ESPN fired him for this. Fired for having sex with a 22-year-old intern, huh? Where were Lanny Davis, Geraldo Rivera, and Charles Grodin to defend Phillips? Why didn't Phillips's wife charge that a vast conspiracy concocted this tale? Where was the petition from Phillips's followers asking ESPN to "move on"? Why didn't Phillips point his finger into the camera and emphatically state, "I did not have sex with that woman"? There was a template for saving his job, but Steve Phillips chose to ignore it at his own peril. Even presidents have private lives. Baseball analysts--not so much.

CBS' 60 Minutes aired on Sunday an outstanding report on Medicare fraud, which they contend is a $60 billion a year problem. The Steve Kroft segment noted that Medicare fraud has overtaken drugs as South Florida's most lucrative criminal enterprise. The scam seems incredibly easy, perhaps because when the government gets robbed they don't care as much because it's not their money in the first place. Easy come, easy go. Phantom medical supply outfits obtain lists of older Americans, and then submit reimbursement forms to the gargantuan Health and Human Services bureaucracy for wheelchairs, prosthetic limbs, and hearing aids that they never supplied to the old folks on the lists they obtain. The government, obliged by law to cut a quick check to the medical interests, pays the money and then the phony medical supply outfits close up shop before the government figures out it has been had. It's a simple and effective racket.

The story has obvious and not-so obvious political implications. First, if the government currently gets ripped off to the tune of 100 Brinks robberies a day due to Medicare fraud, how mindbogglingly enormous would the fraud figure be if Barack Obama suceeds in empowering the federal government to offer Medicare for all, the so-called public option? Second, Attorney General Eric Holder pushing the issue of Medicare fraud couldn't have come at a more inopportune time for the Obama Administration.

Considered alongside Holder's impolitic "nation of cowards" speech on race, his strange talk of an assault weapons ban that his boss didn't want to touch with a ten-foot pole, and his witchhunt against CIA interrogators, Holder's decision to push the Medicare fraud issue makes one wonder what team he plays for. Is the former Clinton Administration official a fifth columnist for the sub rosa Hillary '12 presidential campaign? Probably not. After all, he supported Obama during the primaries. But his strange behavior as attorney general makes you think.

Even when Holder is doing good, as his war on Medicare fraud certainly is, the attorney general has a penchant for making the president look bad. He rarely is on the same page as Obama. He takes sides on issues that the president generally agrees with but, because of political considerations, can't put on the front burner. Gun control, taunting white people about racism, targeting CIA agents who go after terrorists, and highlighting Medicare fraud at the exact time Obama seeks to expand Medicare through a public option are all politically inexpedient for Barack Obama. Is it because Eric Holder knows this that he pushes these causes?

What's clever about Holder's game, if that is indeed what it is, is that should the president tire of him and fire him, Holder wins and again makes the president look bad in the process. By pushing issues near to the hearts of Obama's liberal base but offputting to nearly everyone else, Holder would get to play liberal martyr, the guy who tried to keep Obama honest, to the party's left wing. He would become, if he hasn't already, a hero to the MSNBC, Air Air America, Daily Kos crowd. His status as attorney general, which, although a cabinet position like any other, gives him an independence that his peers don't share. When, say, the Secretary of the Interior or Defense strays off the reservation, they get fired. When the attorney general does it, it displays his integrity and independence. In other words, Obama has put himself in a bad position by installing as his attorney general someone whose loyalty may be to the Clintons, or to himself, but not to the political future of Barack Obama. There's a reason John Kennedy made his brother attorney general.

Willie Sutton said he robbed banks because that is where the money is kept. His criminal forebears rob the government for the same reason. The only surefire way to decrease fraud in government is to give it less money, which flies in the face of everything the Obama Administration is trying to do with health care.

Fifty years ago this month the smartest television show of all time first aired. As a writer, I am a sucker for good writing. The Twilight Zone, as Michael Anton recently wrote in his commemoration at National Review Online, is nothing if not a writer's show. Modern sci-fi fans, caught up in dazzling special effects and action, lose sight of the fact that sci-fi, in its radio incarnations X Minus One and Dimension X, and its later television offerings such as The Outer Limits and Doctor Who, is the plaything of nerd scribes with creative imaginations. The megastars and big-budgets would come later. In the beginning, there were wordsmiths.

It's telling that The Twilight Zone's recurring character is not an A-list hearthrob but the diminutive, gap-toothed, akimbo-eared Rod Serling, the show's chief writer. Rocky Balboa's trainer, otherwise known as that bow-legged villian of Gotham, is the closest thing one gets to an actor associated with The Twilight Zone. Even the theme music steals the limelight from the actors.

A few years ago, I purchased the 28-disc "complete, definitive collection" spanning all five of the show's seasons. I'm on season five, and I generally watch late on weekend nights after imbibing. The benefits to this are twofold: first, my imagination is more malleable then and, second, it enables me to enjoy the episodes a second time around without deja vu.

After purchasing the series, a friend recommended The Obsolete Man as his favorite episode in this his favorite series. Rather than watch sequentially, I skipped to that Burgess Meredith-starring episode. The Howling Man, Eye of the Beholder, The Invaders, and To Serve Man are also well done, but The Obsolete Man may be my favorite now too. Its set is spartan, the costumes drab, and the budget that of a high school play. Who needs CGI when you have Rod Serling writing the script?

Thirty years before that anonymous Chinaman stood up to a tank in Tiananmen Square, Burgess Meredith yelled "The emperor has no clothes!" at the state in The Obsolete Man. Life imitates art. Our hero, Mr. Romney Wordsworth, standing before his prosecutor/judge/executioner, vehemently defends individuality against the dystopic conformity of the total state, books against their burners, and God against the hubristic men who would play Him as they deny Him. "You cannot erase God with an edict!" Wordsworth boldly informs the kangaroo court. His interrogator responds, "The state has no use for your kind." The writers made the hero not a warrior or a saint, but a librarian.

Though Serling was a man of the Left, so much so that he returned the good cheer of his neighbor Ronald Reagan with contempt, several Twilight Zone episodes, particularly The Obsolete Man, feature distinctly conservative themes. This is true of a few Doctor Who episodes (The Sunmakers, Invasion of the Dinosaurs) and numerous scifi films (Serenity, The Island, The Invasion). This certainly doesn't make the genre inherently conservative; if anything, science fiction tends to lamely absorb the liberal shibboleths of its age (see [hear?] the Cold War moral equivalence of '50s radio scifi) as it imaginatively anticipates the future of science, technology, government, etc.

Other writers have advanced the idea that Star Trek and The X-Files echoed conservative themes. I find these arguments interesting but ultimately unpersuasive. There's an impulse to read one's politics into what one finds aesthetically pleasing. This is ultimately not as harmful as imposing one's politics on one's artistic tastes. But it is still a form of mild delusion. Propaganda isn't art. And good art generally transcends politics.

Fifty years after the first Twilight Zone, one is struck by the dearth of writer-driven shows on television. Visitors to the 500-channel wasteland find an abundance of reality television, celebrity news, and game shows--or a combination of all three formats. Is there a place on the twenty-first-century idiot box for intelligently written programs? Rod Serling's villains often targeted men of letters. A half-century later, television executives have marked writers as "obsolete men." We are all living in the Twilight Zone.

Magic Johnson and Larry Bird were once fierce rivals. Now, they've teamed up to write a book. Magic Johnson and Isiah Thomas were once so close that they used to kiss at half court before tip off. Now, because of the book Magic has co-authored with Larry, Magic and Isiah despise one another. Magic claims Isiah stoked rumors that the HIV+ point guard is bisexual. Isiah fumes over Magic acting as one of the conspirators keeping him off the 1992 Dream Team. "If he was feeling this way, why was he shaking my hand and kissing me and acting like he and I were such buddies?'' Thomas told Sports Illustrated. "I'm tired of getting punched and people using me because they think I'm not going to say anything. Those days are over. Game on.'' Game on, indeed.

A few words of advice for businessmen: Don't take money from the mafia. Shortly after you receive the godfather's bailout, the don will demand his cut, dictate how much you and your executives get paid, and essentially run your company. Don't take money from the government for the same reason.

I lived right next door to good looking, both growing up and as a young adult. Let me explain. Cambridge, Massachusetts (#3) and Bethesda, Maryland (#1), cities bordering on former longtime residences of mine, are among the cities named on TotalBeauty.com's "Top Ten Hottest Guy Cities." Did girlie men come up with this list? Attributes of beauty, according to TotalBeauty.com, include income, education level, fitness, and avoidance of smoking, drinking, and other vices. Ugly cities include Philadelphia (#7), Hagerstown, Maryland (#2), and El Paso (#1), where many of the residents apparently don't disagree with its dubious distinction.

ESPN features an outstanding documentary on the fall of the United States Football League, the long defunct, and soon-to-be revived, challenger to the National Football League. Titled "Small Potatoes: Who Killed the USFL?," the program points the finger at New Jersey Generals owner Donald Trump, who comes across as a real villain. Though depicted as the ultimate businessman on "The Apprentice," the Donald Trump of "Small Potatoes" is an egomaniac whose greed for fame and fortune undermines the league. Specifically, Trump's arrogance in seeking to move the USFL's season from spring to fall, and thereby take on the three-letter pigskin behemoth head to head, and his big-spender ways undermining a more prudent fiscal model, are cited as ways in which the real-estate mogul derailed the league.

Though the USFL lasted just three seasons in the mid 1980s, its impact on the NFL continues. The USFL instituted instant-replay officiating, giving coaches a red flag to challenge questionable calls. When the NFL limited point-after conversions to the one-point kick, the USFL adopted the more traditional model of offering a two-point conversion as well. Faced with competition willing to pay out big bucks to such future NFL stars as Reggie White, Sean Landetta, Mike Rozier, Herschel Walker, Doug Flutie, Kelvin Bryant, Sam Mills, Jim Kelly, and Steve Young, the NFL necessarily responded by paying players--who made an average of $90,102 in 1981--far more than they had prior to the arrival of competition.

Though a USFL seeks a return this spring, the timing couldn't be more off. The NFL, suffering through lopsided Super Bowls and strikes in 1982 and 1987, was a mess when the USFL launched. Its popularity has probably never been greater than it is now. Arena football (it lives!) and the new UFL, combined with the NFL and college football, may induce a pigskin overdose in some fans. Then again, there are some football fans who have built up such an immunity to pigskin overdose that a new league will always find grateful viewers. This is especially true during that post-Super Bowl/pre-Opening Day sports lull, when hockey and basketball trudge through their almost meaningless regular seasons.

Unlike the ABA, WHL, and AFL, whose happy fate was to be absorbed--in whole or part--by the leagues it challenged, the USFL's fate was to watch its inovations and players find their way into the NFL but its teams dissolve. Thankfully, ESPN keeps memories of the days of spring football alive in this excellent documentary on the death of the USFL.

The Senate Finance Committee has finally posted online its bill overhauling health care in the United States. It comes in at 1,502 pages. I didn't want to strain my eyes so I just read the first line: "To provide affordable, quality health care for all Americans and reduce the growth in health care spending, and for other purposes." Of course, the effect of the bill will be the exact opposite of its intent. It will inflate the cost of health insurance by mandating it and necessarily lessen the quality of care as it expands coverage to those unwilling or unable to pay for it.

"The legitimate powers of government extend to such acts as are injurious to others," Thomas Jefferson reminded in Notes on the State of Virginia. "But it does me no injury for my neighbour to say there are twenty gods, or no god. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg." The wisdom applies to a whole number of areas beyond religion, including the federal government's war on marijuana. The Obama Administration, wisely, advised federal prosecutors to leave alone users or suppliers of medical marijuana in states in states where it is legal. The laissez faire attitude on legalized medical marijuana represents a shift in policy from the Bush Administration. It is one instance where Barack Obama actually represents federalism and laissez faire more faithfully than his predecessor (which isn't such a tall task).

Though aware of the saga of "balloon boy," I made a point of avoiding television attention of it lest my intelligence be insulted. Proud of the fact that, until Sunday, I had not watched a second of news coverage on the publicity stunt, I channel surfed my way through the line-up of NFL games no longer immune to the tabloid allure of Balloon Boy. From the family curiously capturing the balloon's moment of departure on video, to Balloon Boy's six-year-old honesty in telling Wolf Blitzer he did all this for a show, to the boy's nervous vomiting on national television when again asked about the course of events, evidence strongly suggests the whole affair was staged. Add to this the bizarre YouTube videos, appearances on the reality show Wife Swap, pitches to crass cable channels for a reality show, and the parents allegedly meeting in acting school, and the motive seems pretty clear. The motive seems pretty base, too. The desire for fame divorced of accomplishment is as widespread as it is gross. It's not that you are known, but why you are known, that matters. That's a lesson, one would guess, the Balloon Family patriarch probably understands better now that he has accomplished his goal of renown.

Just as an unseasonably warm day does not prove global warming, an unseasonably cold day does not disprove it. That said, if you bought into the global warming models then a snowstorm in October would be out of the question for Massachusetts. That's an outlier in a normal year, but under the new model it's an impossibility, right? But, as the television broadcast of New England's varsity squad blowing out Tennessee's junior varsity squad attests, pre-Halloween snow fell in abundance from the sky (even if it didn't stick to the ground). Again, one day's weather doesn't validate or invalidate a theory. But it is worth noting that anecdotal evidence--heat waves, hurricanes, tsunamis--have been cited to great effect by the proponents of the theory of man-made global warming. One wonders if it will now prove their undoing.

The Boston Globe printed an interesting article lamenting the fact that since the Willie Horton brouhaha there hasn't been a great deal of enthusiasm among Massachusetts governors for pardons, commutations, or a fulough program for murderers. "In Massachusetts," Michael Blanding writes, "there hasn't been a single commutation approved by a governor since 1997 -- and there were only seven in the previous 10 years (four for murderers). Over the past 22 years, more than 650 petitions have been denied. In that same period, Delaware has approved hundreds, 12 for convicted murderers. Michigan's Democratic governor has approved 23 in the past five years; in the prior 12 years, her Republican predecessor approved 34. And from 2003 to 2007, Maryland’s Republican governor granted 15 commutations, including five for life sentences for murder." That should be a boasting point for recent Massachusetts' governors, but to the Globe it's a mark of shame. Accuse liberal politicians of being too liberal in their treatment of criminals if you must, but don't forget that liberal politicians are generally more politician than liberal. The operative acronym here is CYA. Consider this gem: "Ever since what Willie Horton did to Mike Dukakis, governors are going to think not twice but 10 times before they ever commute anyone,” notes a retired judicial hack in the Globe piece. Get it? It's not what Willie Horton did to that poor woman he kidnapped and raped in Maryland, it's what he did to Michael Dukakis!

The new Fox News poll purporting that only 43 percent of registered voters would cast ballots to reelect the president demonstrates the difficulty Barack Obama has in passing his health-care legislation through a Congress controlled by his own party. Tethering oneself to a shinking ship is a poor means to survival. "Abandon ship!" is a more likely rallying cry for Democratic congressmen seeking reelection next year. The pull Obama had on day one is not the pull he exerts on day 270. This helps explain the belated frantic push to pass a bill that few have set eyes upon and recalls Milton Friedman's common-sense analysis in The Tyranny of the Status Quo: "a new administration has some six to nine months in which to achieve major changes; if it does not seize the opportunity to act decisively during that period, it will not have another such opportunity." Nine months after being sworn into office, President Obama probably wishes he had taken heed of such wisdom rather than indulged the fantasy he would be popular forever.

Twenty-eight-years ago, I saw Captain Lou Albano along with the Moondogs wrestle Tony Garea, Rick Martel, and Pedro Morales in a half-empty Boston Garden. A few years later, Albano teamed up with Cyndi Lauper and Vince McMahon to defeat wrestling's pop-culture reputation as a vestige of 19th-century carnival barkers and travelling sideshows. The "Rock and Wrestling Connection," the bizarre pop-culture cross-pollination that still leaves me scratching my head, strangely catapulted, rather than killed, the careers of those involved. Read my piece @ the American Spectator celebrating Captain Lou Albano, who died yesterday, and remembering professional wrestling, which died for me a long time ago.

The matriarch of America's longest running primetime entertainment program is on the cover of Playboy. "Wake up and smell the corruption," Judith Reisman writes. "Playboy marketers have launched a global seduction of 'tweens' by stripping Mother Simpson on its cover." I can't divine intent, but as the father of a small child I can guess effect. Children are attracted to cartoons, even the ones targeted for adults. My child begs me to take the Beavis and Butthead DVDs down from the shelf and shouts "South Park" whenever I pass by Comedy Central--even when Reno 911 or the Colbert Report is playing. Socialized into liking cartoons, he's not too particular about the cartoons he likes. I'd rather children's eyes not be diverted to the adult section of the local magazine rack, though I can't imagine too many 'tweens' seeking a copy of Playboy to see Marge Simpson naked. Jessica Simpson, maybe. If you find Reisman's argument unpersuasive, does it not expose the hollowness of the attacks on Joe Camel?

When Massachusetts looks in the mirror, it sees a good government state a la Wisconsin or Nebraska. When everyone else looks at Massachusetts, they see Cook County East. Our third straight speaker of the state house of representatives under indictment has been indicted again--this time on extortion and fraud charges. Speaker Felony Tax Evasion and Speaker Obstruction of Justice got slaps on the wrist. Speaker Kickbacks, however, faces 185 years in prison.

I am not surprised that a woman has cashed-in on her addiction to abortion by landing a book deal. I am surprised that 51 publishers passed on the tale of 15 abortions in 17 years. At least Whoopi Goldberg had the decency to stop before she reached double figures.

Back in my days in the Marine Reserves, my comrades and I partook in a cheesy mustache contest during annual training. The tradition antedated me, so I don't know its exact derivation, but my sense is that whoever started it did so in tacit acknowledgment that mustaches, particularly ones unaccompanied by its sidekick the beard, look silly. "Why can't the mustache have its comeback?" Wesley Morris asks in the Boston Globe. "The answer lies in something deeper than maintenance. It's about manliness. There's an unapologetic ruggedness to the mustache that's been gradually chastened and civilized out of popular American culture. Americans just aren't as comfortable with masculinity as they were 30 years ago. Today, men wax their chests. They do yoga. As one barber I spoke to erupted, in a robust Russian accent: 'There are no mustaches anymore because there are no real men!'" The author blames the Village People, Ron Jeremey, John Holmes, and Tom Selleck for killing the mustache. When men wanted to exaggerate their masculinity, in an X-rated movie, at a gay bar, or on primetime, they did so by not shaving their upperlip. This trivialized the grooming style to the point where it now serves as comedic relief or identifies the Hollywood villain as effectively as the black hat once did. "The mustache survived Hitler," Morris writes. "It could not survive porn, disco, or Magnum P.I."

President Obama blew off the Dalai Lama this weekend to speak to the Human Rights Campaign. Moniker aside, the Human Rights Campaign isn't a campaign for the rights of all humans. It's a euphemism concealing an effort for the freedom, be it at the expense of your rights or not, of people who like abnormal sex. Do you have a right to rent your home to whomever you want, fire an employee for whatever reason you've got, and not to have your taxdollars support the schoolhouse proselytization of lifestyles of which you disapprove? Not according to the euphemistically named Human Rights Campaign. It's their freedoms, which occasionally impose upon your freedoms, with which they are concerned. Past presidents have met with the Tibetan holy man, but this president is a bit more parochial in his interests. Homosexuals vote in U.S. elections. Tibetans don't.

Has any reader ever drank homemade booze? The cops busted a 63-year-old North Carolina man this weekend for possessing 929 gallons of moonshine, which would mess up a lot of hillbillies. But that's not the state's concern. This is: you pay a draconian amount of invisible taxes when you purchase booze through conventional channels. More than half of the price of a handle of, say, Sobieski Vodka (which I mixed with Red Bull this weekend), is taxes. But the state gets nothing when elderly gentlemen from North Carolina sell homemade rotgut to their friends. To protect its take, rather than to protect you from white lightning striking you blind, is the impetus behind this bust.

Five hundred and seventeen years ago, Rodrigo de Triana shouted: "Tierra! Tierra!" The sailor aboard the Pinta spotted land--the New World--after more than two uneasy months at sea. "I," Christopher Columbus noted of his first encounter with the natives, "in order that they might feel great amity toward us, because I knew that they were a people to be delivered to our holy faith by faith rather than force, gave to some among them some red caps and some glass beads, which they hung round their necks, and many other things of little value." Columbus reported that the "Indians" were "pleased" and "became our friends." Columbus found the encountered pleasing too, describing them as "very gentle." The relationship between Europeans and Native Americans went downhill from there.

The Indians gave the Europeans syphillis. The Europeans gave the Indians smallpox. Despite the best efforts of countermythologists to make it so, Europeans did not introduce the Indians to slavery or war. Columbus found evidence of both within a few days of arrival and noted it in his journal. He found no sign of iron, the wheel, or a written language. Europeans would export such handy staples of post-Stone Age societies to the New World. But Europe's military superiority, alongside the white man's lust for gold, religious converts, and land--as well as the geographic isolation of the Native Americans that impeded their immune systems to combat fatal diseases--decimated the primitive people in the decades that followed.

One's view of the Americas, or more specifically the nation that bears that name, generally determines one's view of Columbus. "Happy Columbus Day," like "Merry Christmas," is increasingly heard as an insult. Enemies of the Italian sea captain celebrate Indigenous People's Day, protest Columbus Day observances, and compare Columbus to Hitler. Columbus kidnapped, enslaved, and exploited, his detractors exclaim. Indeed, he did. He also discovered the continent Americans live upon. Truth commands that we remember his misdeeds. Proportion suggests that we remember him first for his magnificent find. (FlynnFiles Flashback, 10-10-05)

It is perhaps fitting that Barack Obama wins a "peace prize" honoring the inventor of dynamite. The current president commands armies waging war in Iraq and Afghanistan. Though George W. Bush's partisans might have labelled these fights "savage wars of peace," it is remarkable that Obama's international fan club now believes this, or believes he is in the midst of ending these wars, or believes he is closing Guantanamo Bay. Is this the consolation prize for not getting the Olymics? Given that recent recipients have included Al Gore, Yasser Arafat, and Rigoberta Menchu, one wonders whether the award honors its recipients or its recipients discredit the award.

Say it, don't spray it. We want the news, not the weather. Say anything you want, while keeping you spit particles to yourself, in the comments section below.

Why do Neil Patrick Harris, David Schwimmer, Jason Alexander, and other girlie-men always get better looking women than they rate on the television shows on which they act? The answer, a new scientific study suggests, is the effects of more than four decades of The Pill. Dr. Rock's sixties scientific breakthrough enabled women to behave more like men, and, if this study is to be believed, empowered men who looked and acted more like women.

The Daily Beast lists 55 cities from smartest to dumbest. Raliegh-Durham ranks #1. Fresno is last. My metropolitan area, boosted my residency, Boston ranks #3. Bostonians won't feel so smart when they're not living in San Diego this January. Whoever put Baltimore at #10 might ask the denizens what's so smart about not being able to correctly pronounce the name of the city in which you reside. Most of the cities The Daily Beast considers the smartest cities also make my list of the smuggest cities: San Francisco, Boston, Denver, etc. If you talk with a Raleigh accent in the smuggest cities, they'll certainly think you are stupid. And in that case, you can just pull this list from your pocket to prove to the smug that you really are smart. They'll buy it because a list like this is just what a smart (smug?) person would fall for.

This sounded better in its original German, but nothing major, thankfully, gets lost in translation.

Ireland once made hell for foreigners seeking domination. Now they have voted for it. Ireland rejected the Treaty of Lisbon last year. But, like the kid who wants to play until he wins, the Eurocrats imposed another vote on the Emerald Isle. This time the bad guys won. The treaty creates a sort of United States of Europe, which is as dangerous to the sovereignty of the states of Europe as the United States of America was to the states of America! Also alarming is the wedge the union threatens to pry between America and various friendly European countries, now subsumed by a transnational body dominated by several continental nations less friendly to American interests. Nile Gardner expounds on this startling development @ NRO's Corner--read it, and weep. The soldiers of France and Germany never could quite conquer Europe. The bureaucrats of France and Germany are a more resilient bunch.

In neighboring New Hampshire, four teenaged idiots allegedly invaded a woman's home as part of a pact to murder at random. They hacked her to death with a machete and slashed her eleven-year-old daughter's throat. A friend said of one of the killers, "He was always wicked nice"--except, presumably, on Sunday morning, when he was too busy murdering a woman to go to church. Meanwhile, in Virginia, an enthusiast of "horrorcore" rap from California murdered a fellow enthusiast of the genre, her best friend, and mother and father. The twenty-year-old aspiring rapper, visiting his online friend/murder victim, rhapsodised of chopping people into pieces in his novice dittys. One is tempted to say who could have known, except that, well, who couldn't have known?

Just as the greatest thing that ever came out of England faded away, the second greatest thing that ever came out of England rose. Today marks the 40th anniversary of the first episode of Monty Python's Flying Circus. In the inaugural October 5, 1969 broadcast we learned the derivation of Arthur "Two Sheds" Jackson's nickname, awaited the sight of Pablo Picasso painting an abstract piece while riding his bicycle, and discovered the baroque stylings of Johann Gambolputty de von Ausfern -schplenden -schlitter -crasscrenbon -fried -digger -dangle -dungle -burstein -von -knacker -thrasher -apple -banger -horowitz -ticolensic -grander -knotty -spelltinkle -grandlich -grumblemeyer -spelterwasser -kurstlich -himbleeisen -bahnwagen -gutenabend -bitte -eine -nurnburger -bratwustle -gerspurten -mit -zweimache -luber -hundsfut -gumberaber -shonendanker -kalbsfleisch -mittler -raucher von Hautkopft of Ulm.

Join me over the airwaves tomorrow night on Boston's Talk Evolution 96.9 WTKK. I will be guest hosting the Michele McPhee Show on Tuesday, October 6 from 6 p.m. to 10 p.m. That's right. The show has been extended one hour (WTKK has tweaked their format to give listeners in New England even more--15 hours a weekday to be exact--live and local radio. In an age of one-size-fits-all piped in radio, this is outstanding.). To listen to the show live click on the "listen live" button at WTKK's website. So, loyal readers: What topics should I discuss with the loyal listeners?

To put Cal Ripken's "iron man" streak of 2,632 games played into perspective, Prince Fielder of the Milwaukee Brewers was the only player in Major League Baseball this year to play in all 162 games. Should Fielder do this for about fifteen more seasons, he will break Ripken's record.

What's the difference between this guy and Roman Polanski? Besides the famed director's rape viction being a year younger than Elizabeth Smart, the major difference between the two is that thirty-two years after his crime Roman Polanski was a free man celebrated by the artistic community whereas Brian David Mitchell will be imprisoned and studied by the psychiatric community.

Florida Rep. Alan Grayson is an embarrassment to his constituents. How dumb are Orlando voters to have fallen for this demagogue's used-car-salesman-meets-Michael-Moore schtick? Grayson's must-see "die quickly" speech on the floor of the House of Representatives is among the more amateurish and idiotic statements heard there. That's saying something. He proffered an apology--to the uninsured who have died, not to the Republicans whom he accused of planning their deaths. Given that oversized cardboard panels added visual confirmation that his claim that the Republican plan called for uninsured patients to "die quickly" was no gaffe, it is probably good and right that he didn't apologize for what he clearly meant to say. The Wall Street Journal has an interesting piece explaining "Who Is Alan Grayson, Anyway?" Who is he? A guy who will be thrown out of office in thirteen months, only to find more lucrative work at Air America or MSNBC.

I can't decide. Will you help me determine which example of litigiousness run amuk is most foul? A woman in Newton, Massachusetts is attempting to sue a sperm donor for child support. A mother-daughter duo donning swimming goggles and respirators (an updated version of the courtroom neckbrace) are suing their neighbor for smoking in his own home. The Michigan Department of Human Services has threatened a Middleville mom with fines and jail time for watching three neighborhood children for about a half an hour before school because she doesn't have a day care license. This is hard. Please help me to decide which example is the most egregious in the comments section below.

I sat for an extensive interview this week for the television program of the Berkshire County Republican Club. Topics in the wide-ranging discussion include ObamaCare, Ted Kennedy's legacy, and corruption in one-party Massachusetts. To watch the broadcast, click on the link here.