Warning - link to fatuous nonsense!

Like Dr. Forrester, I'm feeling particularly evil today - watching the NHL flush itself down the crapper has darkened my mood (see below). So I was in exactly the wrong humor to see this nitwittery in the comics page.

Amazing flash from the brilliant wit of Wiley. In fact, he manages to disprove his own argument - he thinks privatizing Social Security is a bad idea, because THE GOVERNMENT might misinvest the funds! One wonders what this incandescent genius' definition of "private" is. He also recycles the hoary old "Gramma will eat dog food!" lie, since his endless well of talent apparently comes up dry in the effort for original thought. (It's almost so you don't notice the subject-verb disagreement.)

I'll bet you everything down to the chair I'm sitting on that Wiley has a 401-k or some other private pension arrangement. Hell, I've got one, and I'd love to be able to add my refunded Social Security monies to it, rather than give it to Uncle Sam as an interest-free loan.

But why am I so upset, really? This is even yesterday's comic, right?

Simple. A comic reaches more people than a policy paper from a think tank. This is a cheap attempt to scare the oldsters, none of whom is at all likely to lose a cent of their benefits. It also purports to be funny - but who would laugh at this? If it's false, it's insulting, and if it's true, it's no laughing matter.

That's why I'm upset. This tosser amuses himself with (AND PROFITS OFF OF) the image of starving senior citizens, offering as indisputable fact a bunch of self-contradictory premises. In fact, his whole bailiwick is self-contradictory. The father figure in his recurring cast is a broadcaster increasingly muffled by the Cloaked Hand of Federal Censorship - an assertion, if true, that we could never have heard of from Wiley himself. In fact, he went from Sunday only to a daily run! Berke Breathed is a lefty funster, but at least he reminded himself to stay funny. He also managed to poke at both sides of the aisle.

Do yourself a favor and read something well-done.