The Mancunian Candidate

A newspaper is a device for making the ignorant more ignorant and the crazy crazier.
HL Mencken

Yesterday's Guardian TV pages seem to be proving the truth of Mencken's aphorism, with columnist Charlie Booker, letting his Bush hatred get the better of him, wondering aloud:

On November 2, the entire civilised world will be praying, praying Bush loses. And Sod's law dictates he'll probably win, thereby disproving the existence of God once and for all. The world will endure four more years of idiocy, arrogance and unwarranted bloodshed, with no benevolent deity to watch over and save us. John Wilkes Booth, Lee Harvey Oswald, John Hinckley Jr - where are you now that we need you?

Not surprisingly, the web is alight right now with outraged comment, such as those on the Daily Ablution.

Unfortunately for the Guardian, all those gentlemen and their deranged causes - the Confederacy, Castro's Cuba, winning the love of Jody Foster - are safely defeated, but they have a champion in the man most likely to carry out such an attempt on President Bush's life in Osama bin Laden.

Some of the responses are excessive*, but unlike P J O'Rourke, who never seems to overstep the boundary of good taste, this column is as clever and original as farting loudly for public amusement. A fatuous fatwa indeed.

*But, we have to ask, what are the ROOT CAUSES of their anger?