Statistics: Numbers with the tears dried up and the stench neutralized as not to interfere with the nose on the Chardonnay which lubricates the do-gooder gathering. Graffiti: Tons of paint applied in less than excremental applications pass our eyes with but a frowning yawn as reaction but when this afternoon I spotted a half dozen Hispanic middle school boys (origin, I think; education level----I am attempting to keep this civil) run out from a mail truck and it turns out they tagged it---I went berserk.

I felt the appeal of those who get away with wild statements made myriad times and repeated by so many. There is a popular right wing comic strip, and what's the name again? Dullard Stillborn? Malodorous Pillhead? Years ago he played to a popular elephant party dittoism concerning one very certain persecuted group showing another (alleged---his idea) one HOW IT IS DONE: in the usual imaginative way, he pictured an Asian adolescent boy reading a letter from a university. "Dear," it began, "...PING?" Stay with me, I implore you---or not. "While your SAT scores [were perfect] and have maintained an 'A' average in a rigorous honors program we regret to inform you that you have not been admitted because your essay did not begin with 'buenos dias'."

The power of a great crushing weight of the ignorant who lobbied this back onto one local paper's comic page certainly appeals to this bullied-in-childhood fellow in his hour of anger. Well, I've calmed down and want to go back to the ranks of the liberals. Or do I? There's another stereotype I find hard to shake, that of the liberal who gives me grief about little warps in my speech but solemnly assures me he has to march off to make sure that Johnny Rebel memorial concert at the institute of higher learning takes place and it is an immature act abetting fascism to question why.

As I learned supervising the cleaning of schools, it's easier to clean up after ten students sick to their stomachs than to deal with the subtleties and paper trail of a just below borderline subordinate.

I think those boys were less than vermin. Deal with it. What they did? See if you still can.