He ain't pretty no more

Someone smashed Berlusconi in the grill, kid. My commentary on this thing that is so absolutely sublime will be glib, because there is nothing that I could say that would make it any more perfect. I will venture, however, that if he hadn't been spoiling for an emergency trip to the dentist, he certainly could have tried a bit harder to make that clear. Claiming, for instance, that it was he to whom credit was due both for preserving the world financial system and for ending hostilities between Russia and Georgia last year was just plain lazy--he might as well have paid the crowd to plum crack him in the gob.

My only complaint, really, is that more such incidents of spontaneous physical violence don't occur over here. Why hasn't someone caught Orrin Hatch on the steps of the Capitol building and kicked his colon out? It's not like we live in Taiwan, where furniture in parliament has to be bolted to the floor to keep it from being belted into someone's skull. We can't expect this kind of corporal justice to be self-applied. If the spirit of America truly is its manly opposition to the abuses of state, then let's really let the stars-and-bars fly and kick the living shit out of both the House and the Senate. And, as an added bonus, an extended stay in any DC area hospital might cast health care reform in a whole new light for our newly chastened political class.

A man can dream, can't he?