Saturday Olio: Shoot The Middleman Edition

• Matt Sedensky, "Laptop-shooting dad's rant draws raves, reprimands". February 17

So evidently half the nation finds nothing hinky about disciplining a fifteen-year-old (for griping!) with a handgun ("This here's my .45") and a YouTube video? On the grounds that parenting can be frustrating?

Th' fuck are you a parent in the first place? Th' fuck stupid were you sixteen years ago that you didn't realize you'd have a teenager on your hands before you knew it?

But thanks for having the good sense to move the lit Marlboro out of your shootin' hand. That woulda set a bad example for the kids.

(UPDATE: Extra credit for complaining to the Media--after telling the Media you would not be talking to the Media--about the effect "this kind of publicity" can have on a family. Wurzelbacher/Jordan 2016!)

• Mr. Foster Freeze apologizes:

"My aspirin joke bombed as many didn’t recognize it as a joke but thought it was my prescription for today’s birth control practices," he wrote on "Foster's Campfire Blog," where he posts along with other contributors. "In fact, the only positive comments I got were from folks who remembered it from 50 years back. Birth control pills weren’t yet available, so everyone laughed at the silliness on how an aspirin could become a birth control pill."

Listen, don't get me wrong; one solution to our current morass would be to require anyone who gives more money to a Super PAC than the average American earns in a year to be miked 24/7. Mr. Foster Freeze should be encouraged to shoot off his mouth as often as possible.

But a birth-control pill joke premised on the fact that birth-control pills didn't exist? (Which they did, of course; the point should also be made that the Pill was being marketed in 1962; if it "wasn't yet available" that was because Evil Statists prevented women from getting it.) Another bottomless pit of disinformation. There's a surprise.

• David Brooks, "The Jeremy Lin Problem". February 16

Jeremy Lin is anomalous in all sorts of ways. He’s a Harvard grad in the N.B.A., an Asian-American man in professional sports. But we shouldn’t neglect the biggest anomaly. He’s a religious person in professional sports.

We’ve become accustomed to the faith-driven athlete and coach, from Billy Sunday to Tim Tebow. But we shouldn’t forget how problematic this is. The moral ethos of sport is in tension with the moral ethos of faith, whether Jewish, Christian or Muslim.

I believe it is safe to say that there is no All-Knowing, Omnipotent God of the Universe. Else He'd never let David Brooks write about Him. Or sports.