When rabid beavers attack

(742 words)

When I read the story of the relentless rabid beaver I thought, man, the Steelers could have used a couple of them against Peyton Manning and the Broncos last night.

In fact, I urge the Steelers to consider changing the name of the team from The Pittsburgh Steelers to The Pittsburgh Rabid Beavers.

“Here we go, Beavers! Here we go!”

I’ve never heard of a creature so fierce. Allow me to summarize.

Lillian Peterson, a Falls Church, Va., granny, was finishing a recreational lake swim when she felt a sharp pain gnawing at her ankle.

According to Justin Jouvenal’s lively Washington Post story, “The 83-year-old woman twisted around to see what attacked her and noticed one thing: large, orange teeth.”

It’s gripping in every sense of the word.

It was the beginning of an ordeal that would last 20 minutes and leave Peterson seriously injured. It was beaver vs. Peterson, a friend and a nearby fisherman named Mike Korin who arrived with heroic intentions.

The story reads like the humans were the underdogs.

“I heard horrible yelling and knew it was the real deal,” Korin said. “She was saying, ‘I can’t get out of its grip! It’s got me! It’s got me!’”

I’ve seen movies where innocents were besieged by mindless zombies and horrific creatures like Glenn Close in “Fatal Attraction.” This one rabid beaver makes them all seem like pussycats.

Peterson and her friend were beating on the beaver with sticks, gouging its eyes and screaming for help. Then to their relief, I'm sure, Korin motors up.

What does the beaver do?

It attacks the boat!

If I’m Korin, this is where I flee, my pants full of crap. There’s just nothing in my experience that’s prepared me for dealing with a boat-attacking beaver.

But Korin’s made of sterner stuff. He began beating the beaver with a canoe paddle so savagely the paddle shattered.

The counter-attack seemed to stun the beaver enough for Korin to turn his attention to Peterson. It was a tactical error because the beaver regrouped and came at them again.

Again, Korin is waling away with the stump of his shattered canoe paddle. I imagine by now he realizes he is in a battle for his own life.

With a beaver!

An emergency medical crew arrived with a stretcher and a medical kit.

The should have brought a bazooka.

Both Peterson and Korin are raining blows on the enraged creature. In my mind, I imagine them timing their swings the way the old railroad men -- gandydancers -- did so that three strong men could strike a single spike with timed ferocity.

Finally, the beaver roles belly-up in the water and ceases all movement. For a relieved moment, a stunned hush falls over the crowd.

Care to guess what happened next?

“All of a sudden, the beaver flips over and comes back to life,” Korin said.

Yes, the beaver was playing possum.

Finally, five men and women use a strong net and subdue the 45-pound beaver. They lashed it to a light pole. The story said animal control officers arrived and euthanized it.

That seems insufficient. I’d have severed its head, its limbs and its paddle and incinerated them in furnaces in five different states. Anything short of that and I expect any day now we’re going to read about a rabid beaver on a bank robbing spree.

Always looking for a competitive edge, it won’t surprise me if some of our professional athletes start undergoing rabies shots.

Not to prevent rabies.

To acquire it. Having rabies sounds like steroids on steroids.

I worry that this isn’t isolated, but is a another drastic harbinger of climate change that has animals acting funny.

That’s usually a base plot line for many of the instant camp classics SyFy channel is producing.

They take two fearsome creatures and mingle their DNA and have the resulting monster terrorize some beach community where artificially enhanced blonds romp near naked amidst the dunes.

For instance, recent titles include “DinoShark!” “Sharktopus!” and “Piranhaconda!”

This Virginia beaver sounds part pit bull.

I think part of why the attack is so jarring is we’re conditioned to thinking of beavers in such cheerful terms. They’re industrious, they’re resolute, they’re listed in the Oxford English Dictionary since 1927 as acceptable slang for female genitalia.

Leave it to beavers. These powerful furry little creatures are ever-eager to find new and unusual ways to command our attention.

Related . . .

• Chimps gone wild in tabloid world

• Rabid raccoons: Gunnin’ for good neighbors

Re-run Sunday! Life's short, church isn't

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I haven't been going to church much lately, and part of me feels bad about that. But the part of me that's reclining on the couch relaxing feels good about it. I wish I felt less ambivalent about going to church, but that's a story for another day. And that makes today a good day to re-run this August 2010 story about how I felt when I was regularly going.

Hope to see you on Monday!

If it’s not the height of blasphemous hypocrisy then I can’t fathom what is: I’m in church to worship a man who died on the cross for my sins and silently complaining that standing for all six verses of “Thy Strong Word” is a real pain.

Of course, I don’t say that aloud, even though I know the entire congregation would agree. The service was in its 58th minute, another three minutes and even the Biblically patient Job would begin to fidget.

A good church service, much like a good sit-com, should never take more than 30 minutes.

Can I get an, “Amen, brother!”

Or at least a “Sit, Ubu! Sit!”

But does it matter if I complain aloud or just in my heart?

The preachers say God knows all, sees all.

(Theological aside: Does that mean He reads my blog? Most days, that would be really cool, but I wouldn’t want Him reading the days when I write about being prone to the seven deadly sins, something I’d do daily if it wasn’t for my rampant sloth).

Certainly, He must know this hymn drags on about three verses too long. Anyone within earshot knows that since verse four my graceless mumbling’s turned this 1969 devotional ditty into more hum than hymn.

It amazes me how much my mind drifts when someone’s preaching to me about the salvation of my everlasting soul. You’d think I’d be riveted.

But no, I think about golf. I think about the weather. I think about screwing the church organist.

I think the Lord is okay with that last one because the regular church organist is my wife and we were married right in that very church so it’s all on the up-’n’-up. But I could see how it’d be a bit of a gray area.

Val took the day off and so there was a substitute organist -- and if I wasn’t so danged slothful I’d try and conceive a lazy pun about organ transplants.

I don’t even need to look at Val to know what she’s thinking, something she expresses the instant we’re in the car headed home

“Guaranteed,” she says, “if I’d have been playing today, that service would have been over in 40 minutes!”

She’s right. She plays “Nearer My God to Thee” like it’s a John Philip Sousa march.

And the faithful love it. She plays beautifully. More important she plays fast. She is to the Lutheran hymnal what the heavy metal band Metallica is to thrash rock.

You can save a lot of souls with a speedy organist like that. Church attendance would rise proportionately to the reduction in worship minutes.

There’s parts of church I really love. I love the Bible readings, the gospel, and the dandy sermons our pastor delivers. He’s excellent.

And I love one really good, fast hymn. My favorite is “Just a Closer Walk With Thee,” but I can’t tell whether I like it because of its message or because an inmate sings a soulful version of it in “Cool Hand Luke,” and hearing it frees my mind to wander to great Paul Newman movies.

That could all be dispatched in about 35 minutes.

So how do I kill the extra 25 minutes when they’re talking about paving the parking lot, fixing the roof, the rote liturgy, etc.?

I resort to sacrilege and try to crack the kids up. Yesterday’s church bulletin featured an odd folk drawing of three identical angels. I took the little pencil and on the middle angel’s face drew a soul patch and showed it to Josie, 9.

She stifled a laugh and grabbed the pencil. On the first angel, she drew an eye patch and upped the hirsute ante by giving her angel a Satanic looking ‘stache and handed it back to me.

Soon the once heavenly trio looked like Hell’s Angels.

Josie asked me the other day why I pray so much, yet do a giddy little jig every time I get out of going to church.

It’s true. Every night, it’s me that gets down on my knees with the girls before Val tucks them in. And every night I say earnest prayers that God will help the lonely, the sick, the poor and all of those struggling in a world that too often seems godforsaken. I saw a picture of a young Filipino trash heap scavenger, showed it to the girls, and often include her for color in our nightly prayers.

I guess I’m more spiritual than religious, one being of God, the other of man. Many good people are like that.

Still, I think it’s important to give our children some religious foundation. Religious devotion provides much solace to many good people and I want my daughters to enjoy that option.

So if a little church can help accomplish that, so be it.

We all have our crosses to bear.

Maybe some Filipino trash scavenger will divine my plight and say a prayer that guys like me won’t have to stand for all six verses of “Thy Strong Word.”

Replacement refs? NFL must be joking

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The conventions are now history and neither party did a thing to address the looming national crisis that by Monday is destined to plunge the country into a real depression.

Not a financial one.

A football one.

Are you ready for some NFL Replacement Refs football!

It’s a certainty that the dominant Monday storyline of the first week of professional football will be ridiculously blown calls.

Understand, blown calls are a dominant story line every week. No sport suffers more from poor officiating than the NFL.

This is curious because no sport is more over-officiated than the NFL.

Each game is regulated by seven on-field officials and a replay official who has access to 20 different cameras.

That’s almost one official for every two players, all under constant hi-def surveillance.

Felons in our maximum security prisons aren’t as carefully monitored, and these are men who’ve committed rape, murder, assault and various crimes involving narcotics and motor vehicles.

Of course, to be fair to our felons, many of those crimes have been committed by superstar members of the Baltimore Ravens, too, but let’s try to keep this on topic.

Over-officiating wouldn’t bother me if it led to correct calls in a timely manner. It never does.

It’s infuriating to sit at home or, worse, in freezing rain in an $86 stadium seat for upwards of three static minutes watching the referees confer and then -- whoops! -- blow the call.

They say a ball’s not a fumble when replays clearly show it boing-boing-boinging along the turf, that a backward pass actually traveled forward, or that a malicious Cro-Magnon lineman is innocent of clotheslining a precious quarterback when we can all see his severed head spinning there along the sidelines.

Instant replay has made the on-field officials incapable of making firm calls on obvious infractions.

I thought I came up with the perfect solution last year: First, get rid of instant replay and all but two officials -- one for the offense, one for the defense -- and ask the players to agree to play under the honor system.

That means if a player commits a foul, he needs to raise his hand and confess his infraction. Then he needs to apologize to the player he’s victimized while one of the two referees steps off the penalty yardage.

I’m baffled that the NFL, an organization that earns in excess of $9 billion a year, is risking the integrity of its game and the safety of its players in a dispute that amounts to chump change.

Many casual fans are surprised to learn regular refs are part-timers. They spend their work week practicing law, teaching school and doing a variety of regular Joe jobs (I found no evidence any of them works in optometric fields).

Why anyone would want to officiate NFL games as a sort of hobby is a mystery. Death threats over blown calls aren’t uncommon. I guess the Kevlar body suits needed to join the local bomb squads are just too uncomfortable.

So the NFL’s too cheap to invest in more professional refereeing, blown calls are rampant, and the expensive games keep getting longer and longer.

What are we going to do?

Call Enrico Palazzo!

He was the combination opera singer/home plate umpire who saved the day in Leslie Nielsen’s “The Naked Gun” (1988). He didn’t just call balls and strikes.

He goosed the players. He played to the crowd. He moonwalked.

The game he umped was one of the most entertaining sporting events I’ve ever witnessed -- and that’s not even counting the part where he heroically stopped Reggie Jackson’s attempted assassination of Queen Elizabeth.

Clown NFL umpires could entertain the crowd during the interminable time when the ball’s not in play.

Fact: every NFL games includes just about 11 minutes of the actual action. The remainder of the afternoon is just a bunch of people watching a bunch of guys mostly just standing around -- as good an excuse to guzzle $8 domestic beers as any.

A squad of bumbling Enrico Palazzos would enliven the often tedious day.

The Catholic Church takes itself less seriously than the NFL. It could use some levity.

Clown refs would be hilarious.

Funnier even than the joke the NFL’s about to force us all to witness Sunday afternoon.

Related

• Solution to NFL over-officiating: armless linemen!

• NFL not rich enough: Needs ‘throwforward’ jerseys

GOP loves Clinton, 20 years too late

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I’ve argued in the past it’s an historic misuse of the phrase to call non-musicians who don’t dabble in drugs and groupies “rock stars.”

For instance, Jim Cramer isn’t a “rock star of the financial world.”

Jim Cramer’s just a dork with a schtick.

In fact, by my count, there are only two rock stars left on the entire planet.

One of them is Mick Jagger and the other’s married to Hillary Clinton.

Mick and Bill are the two most charismatic men in the world. When one or the other is performing, it’s impossible to take our eyes off them.

I wonder if Ken Starr watched Clinton’s speech. I haven’t seen the ratings, but my hunch is if the Democratic National Convention were a TV show it would be renewed by critical acclaim.

It’s been sensational.

On Tuesday, I fell madly in love with Michelle Obama. She’s vivacious. She’s caring. She’s married to Barack! That didn’t discourage me from thinking I ought to propose marriage to her. I’m just crazy about Michelle.

Then I thought, me being a supporter of same sex marriage, I’d better save myself for Clinton.

And he didn’t disappoint. All the political talk today is saying it was his best speech ever, a grand slam.

One poll pegs Clinton’s public approval rating at 70 percent. That’s incredible. In these divisive times you could get 30 percent of regular talk show listeners to disapprove of Mother Teresa.

They’re saying he’s a great leader, a bi-partisan thinker, a poised exemplar of how Washington ought to work.

And those aren’t Democrats.

Those are leading Republicans. Other than the sainted Reagan, Clinton was the second most sited historical figure praised by GOP candidates.

None were more effusive than Newt Gingrich.

Google “Gingrich on Clinton” and here’s some of what you’ll find: “This is one of the most charming and effective men I’ve ever negotiated with. He’s very smart, capable of focusing on you with enormous intensity.”

He says he’s so mesmerizing that intellectual giants like himself do things they don’t normally do because they want Clinton to like them.

Parts of that lead me to believe Gingrich would truly love to be on Clinton.

Yesterday it was marathon man Paul Ryan. Romney’s been at it, too. They’re saying Clinton’s a reasonable fellow and if, gee, Obama would just be more like him then maybe they could get things done.

The hypocrisy of this GOP Clinton revisionism is breathtaking. I think they hated him even more than they hate Obama, if that’s possible.

They said he was bad for the country. That he was poisoning our youth. That he was evil.

It’s basically what they said about Mick Jagger and the Rolling Stones in 1964.

The holier-than-thou Clinton impeachment trials turned me into a knee-jerk liberal whose knee jerks most liberally when it’s in the vicinity of a conservative’s crotch.

And now they’re telling us, whoops, never mind. Give the devil his due, he was a pretty damn good POTUS.

Sons of bitches.

We’re all about to be inundated with polls by Gallup, Reuters and Quinnipiac. Here’s the only one that’s going to matter: The Nielsens.

You’ll be able to gauge the outcome of the election by the number of people who watched the Democratic Convention over the Republican.

I predict it’ll be a landslide -- the ratings, the election’s bound to be close. But if I were a Republican today I’d be feeling what Krusty the Klown calls flop sweat.

After four years of Tea Party birther outlandishness, the Democrats are roaring back to life. They are making the compelling and, yes, charismatic case that the Republicans have been obstructionist mopes who’ll do anything to prevent the president from succeeding.

Sound familiar?

I think this will resonate with everyone other than the 30 percent who remain disapproving of Bill Clinton and think Mother Teresa was too flamboyant.

And the real star of this show’s still about eight hours from stepping on the stage.

Those of us who remain infuriated by the over-zealous prosecution of Bill Clinton today are getting us some satisfaction knowing even his enemies, many of them serial adulterers themselves, are acknowledging their mistakes.

I believe history will likewise vindicate those of us who’ve stood beside Obama through all the garbage they’ve thrown in his face.

I like it, like it. Yes I do.

Related

• Ken Starr, Harry Morgan & T*R*A*S*H

• Mick Jagger: An appreciation

Amish porn & word counts

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Astute readers will notice I’m introducing a new parenthetical feature. It’s not code. It’s not enigma. It’s another reader service designed to make your visit more efficient.

And let me be clear, I think anyone who stops by to read my stuff is very astute -- and that includes all of you who mistakenly stumble here based on search terms like “amish porn,” “amish breasts,” and “do amish can bacon?”

This happens on a near-hourly basis. Someone will land feet first and, I guess, pants down at www.EightDaysToAmish.com because some fraudulent search engine indicated this is a clearinghouse for things like Amish porn and lifestyle news.

It’s becoming frequent enough to at least have me considering trying my hand at Amish porn. Here’s a sample:

“Miriam arose from the stool beside her butter churn and approached Jacob with lusty intentions. She seized his stiff wick in her rough, able hands and gave it a good long dip.”

Needs some work, I know. But I thought I’d leave it up to sensitive readers to decide if Miriam and Jacob were engaged in Amish sex or merely making a supper table candle.

Back to the new feature.

It’s this post’s word count. From now on I plan to include right at the very top in parenthesis the total word count of that day’s offering.

Even though I’m unshackled by any artificial space constraints, I still try not to exceed about 750 words per post. That’s traditionally the length of one column up and down a broadsheet newspaper.

It’s a format still favored by the majority of newspapers. And that column includes enough space for just about 750 words.

Ideally, I think my blog posts should be about 600 words, but I can’t help myself.

That nonsense about the Amish sex? It consumed 92 words. I should probably cut it but it seemed like a good idea when it came to me, and I don’t have an editor to shout at me it’s too stupid to include.

That’s key.

I was raised in newspapers and remember deadline tyrants screaming at me about spacial concerns.

I remember the time I had a page one story about a major cocaine bust that required 1,000 words of crisp copy, a challenge because I only had about 600 words of facts and quotes.

I told him that was impossible. I’d exhausted the topic.

“Then write 400 more words on the chemical composition of cocaine, if it has any household applications -- some damn thing! Just give me 400 words -- and I need it in 90 seconds!”

It was very stressful.

So today I write as long or as short as I please with the understanding the internet’s not going to run out of room.

Sometimes, just for the playful spite of it, I’ll even write the very same sentence twice.

Sometimes, just for the playful spite of it, I’ll even write the very same sentence twice.

But I worry about you. I know how busy you are. You have work to do. You have kids to chase. You’re impatient to resume your search for authentic Amish porn.

The word count will let you decide if you want to invest in that day’s offering.

I thought about putting something like “2 mins, 40 seconds,” that being the average time it should take to read it.

But someone might feel boneheaded and sad realizing it’s taken them three minutes. Other hyper-competitive sorts might post comments bragging they read the thing in, say, 89 seconds.

And the idea of me encouraging anyone to engage in speed reading is as unappealing as encouraging my wife to engage in speed sex.

The two activities should be savored.

I understand adding a word count will present me with temptations to deceive.

If I see a trend of more readers checking out posts that are about 600 words, there’s nothing to stop me from putting (599 words) atop a post that’s 1,232 words long.

Or if I write something that seems particularly pointless to even me, I might type “4,430” in hopes it’ll discourage readers from investing the time.

I’ll try not to do that.

I’ll try, instead, to be honest, to keep my wick trim, my candle bright and to continue ever onward on my relentless quest to make every single word count.

Election '12: winners should jail losers

Here’s what I’d most like to hear President Obama say during his keynote address: That if he wins, he will instruct federal law enforcers to begin rounding up congressional Republicans, Limbaugh, Nugent, Trump and anyone else who’s ever doubted the authenticity of his birth record.

“They will spend the next four years in work camps where they will be forced under armed guard to make solar panels and windmill propellers. They will be stripped of their citizenship. They will be made to wear pink.

“And if I lose they get to do the same thing to us.”

I’m fed up. We need to see how well the country can run on pure versions of opposing visions unfettered by meddling partisanship.

Our politics is making our nation insane.

It’s become so bad I envy the apathetic. I had a drink with one of them the other night.

He’s not independent. He not leaning. He’s not considering.

He’s just not caring.

“Not even a bit,” he said. “Is it really going to matter one way or the other in my life who’s president?”

In his mid-50s, he said his accountant assured him doom will ensue if Obama is reelected.

“He said if I care about my finances then I’ll vote for Romney. He was all worked up about it. I told him I’m not voting for either of them.”

I know too many partisans who’d use his statement as a launching pad to try and persuade him that the stakes are too high, that his vote matters.

Instead, I told him I admired him and we began to talk about golf.

He’s one man who won’t spend any portion of the next 67 days wondering if November 6 will bring despair or euphoria. He won’t get worked up into an angry lather if someone says his guy did lousy in the debates.

He won’t risk saying something offensive to a perfect stranger.

He’s not like my new neighbor.

I met his wife at the school bus stop after the first day. She couldn’t have been more pleasant. She, her husband, and their two children  just moved here from New Mexico.

“We love it!” she said. “Everyone’s so nice!”

I told her if that’s the way she felt, she hadn’t met everyone.

She laughed like I was Chris Rock.

Then her 1st grade daughter got off the bus and gave our little Lucy a big hug.

“This is my new best friend!” she said. It was adorable in a perfectly wholesome way. I have a friend who’s always advising me to type “girls kissing” in the YouTube search line. This wasn’t like that at all.

I told Val and, boom, like that, there’s a Saturday morning playdate. Both husband and wife show up.

The girls go inside and I take the hubby to the back porch to bond. We talk about the area. We talk about New Mexico. We talk about football. I ask him about his job.

“We make machinery for the coal business. Things are really turning around. I think it’s going to be fine as long as Obama doesn’t shut it all down. You know, like he did with the auto industry.”

Even today I struggle to find a word more potent than flabbergasted. We’re so vested in polarization even basic facts are in dispute.

I feel the urge to correct him, to tell him that Obama’s bold Bush-sanctioned resurrection of the auto industry is likely to win him Ohio, Michigan -- the entire election.

Instead and with considerable restraint, I say, “So, you like baseball?”

If he brings it up again, I’m determined to say, look, our families are going to have a lot of happy times together. Let’s try not ruin it with any political talk.

Such awkwardness would be avoided if an Obama re-election meant he’d be incarcerated in a minimum security prison through 2016.

Think about it. Unemployment would be near zero. If you mistakenly pushed a button on a station that once broadcast Rush, you might be surprised to hear Karen Carpenter singing “Yesterday Once More.”

And Tex wouldn’t have a thing to worry about. He’d be surrounded by like-minded partisans biding their time to learn if they were right or wrong about Obama.

And he could climb into his bunk at night knowing my family will help take care of his while he’s away.

He’s a good neighbor. I know he’d do the same for me if the situation were reversed.

Tweets of the Month

I’m going to now try and adhere to a monthly ritual of posting a twitter round-up at the end of the month (missed it by that much!).

This way if you check in and regularly and see a tweet round up, it can be a reminder for you that it’s time to flip the calendars for those of you who cling to that still-charming wall media.

I have two calendars in my office: one from the Pittsburgh zoo, the other of lovely Mississippi folk art I was given during a visit there.

I always think of calendars whenever the Rev. Harold Camping predicts the end of the world, which he does every six months or so. I always wonder if my last thought will, “Well, there goes six months of great calendar art.”

I tweeted @8days2amish 125 times since August 9th when I posted this story about The Pond making me the official bar twitterist. Reaction’s been much better than I’d hoped. People seem to be enjoying the tweets Dave selects so that’s good.

He’s yet to pick anything controversial enough to provoke anyone to want to fight me. But no one’s bought me a drink for the free giggles so I guess it’s sort of a wash.

Enjoy your weekend. Happy Labor Day!

• If I limited my conversations to only intelligent people, mine would be a very lonely existence and I’d have to quit talking to even myself

• People who say not owning a computer is old school are wrong. Today, even all the old schools have computers.

• I'm sure he was a perfectly competent carpenter, but I think Jesus missed his calling. He’d have been one hell of a bartender.

• Asked daughter, 6, if she'd had anything healthy to eat today. She said her gum was strawberry. I surrendered to her logic.

• Too many people who bury the hatchet immediately start trying to remember where they put the shovel.

• Friend just sent $40 for two books directly to bar with instructions it be spent on beer. Saved me from rashly spending it on food for family.

• I take a back seat to no one when it comes to Stones fandom, but can’t fathom why when they see a red door they want to paint it black.

• Thanks to Rep. Akin, it now linguistically possible to have an illegitimate child who is the result of a legitimate rape.

• I strive to do things that would put proverbial feathers in my cap while avoiding at all costs wearing caps with feathers in them.

• Until there is a Jesus of Toledo it is religiously redundant to refer to Him as Jesus of Nazareth. Just say Jesus. We'll figure it out.

• Shrewd fortune tellers probably greet every new customer with, “I've been expecting you.”

• One of these days when I’m bored I’m going to try to walk through an airport metal detector wearing nothing but a suit of armor.

• Never make the mistake of sipping life. Sip wine. Gulp life.

• Grave diggers are some of the most down to earth people you'd ever want to meet.

• John Doe is a pseudonym for someone lost and unidentifiable, often for medical reasons. Someone who's lost and just stupid is a John D'oh!

• Wife asked 1st grader if she wanted for school snack Doritos, Cheetos or Rice Krispie Treat. She chose Doritos. Figures. Cheetos never win.

• It’s a troubling paradox, but you’ll never be someone others consider happy until you cease caring what others think.

• Daughter, 6, asked what a gigabyte is. I later apologized for turning it into a massive tickle fest saying I thought she'd said giggle-bite.

• Feel bad for Eastwood. Would have been better if Mitt had invited Mel Gibson and told him the empty chair was Jewish.

And, to conclude, here’s one I liked from Morgan Freeman: “I hate the word homophobia. It's not a phobia. You are not afraid. You are an asshole.”