The Pantheon Outcast

Occasionally, when I’m not actively engaged in my daily responsibilities of whiskey-drinking, cigarette-smoking and guitar-playing, I like to do a little pro-bono work for the American public. When people, or groups of people, begin to make astronomically stupid claims that they are “owed” something from the rest of the population, I step in and make sure that there is some merit to their arguments. Here is the transcript of one such mediation: All rise. The honorable Judge Valannin now presiding over the case of Pure Logic vs. The People of the Incorporated Village of Hempstead, New York . This case will determine whether the people have any justifiable claim in their demand for a taxpayer-funded hospital facility in their vicinity. Ok, folks, you can take your seats. Before we get started, I need to know who will be speaking for the defendants. Your honor, I am Dr. Aubrey Lewis, I’m a Cardiologist from Merrick, Long Island. I’ll be speaking on behalf of the 65,000 people who live in ...

I know I'm a month late, but I finally made a New Year’s resolution: I’m going to stop being tolerant of things I cannot possibly tolerate. Quite frankly, I’m getting sick of the word and the abstract, often syntactically incorrect usage foisted upon us by the Thought Police of the American media and the educational system. You can’t watch a news program, or pick up a textbook without the word being flung at you from every corner, more often than not accompanied by a sense of shameful obligation. Religious tolerance, cultural tolerance; I’ve actually heard the phrase “gender tolerance” spoken more than once while at University. Because those in the aforementioned fields are typically of a one-sided, fanatical ambition – namely to strip the individual of the thought processes which makes one individual – journalists and educators co-opt words for their own purposes and reshape them to suit their own will and agenda. Incorrectly using the word “tolerance” to be a synonym for “accepta...