The Golden Wingnut

Kevin Drum announces the winners of the "Golden Wingut Award" and I was sad to see that Steven Den Beste didn't make the final cut. Kevin observed, however, that "a blogger who retired three years ago probably never had a serious chance of cracking the top five" and so decided to present him with an honorary lifetime achievement award.

Meanwhile, I've been amused to spend some time over the past couple of days scrolling back through the annals of Den Beste-ism and hopefully familiarizing new people with the work of one of the foundational figures of right-wing blogging. A friend reminded me, for example, of den Beste's classic post explaining that "Anglo Women are an Endangered Species". The argument begins with the observation that "Some strange disease has converted nearly all [women] into female persons" and " a male person is not allowed to notice that there is any difference between a female person and a male person" because "in a working situation, committing such crimes as complimenting her on her looks, or even worse, asking her out on a date, can get him fired for sexual harassment."

At any rate, as ever with den Beste you really need to read the post yourself (the link will work) to get a sense of the sheer scale, but after lamenting the global dominance of castrating bitches female persons, he discovers that there's one place a man can still find a real woman in this day and age: the strip club. Specifically, lap dances. By the end, though, it also turns out that Latinas have this same stripperly/womanly characteristics that Den Beste prizes. And then he laments his inability to score: "In six years since I broke up with my last girlfriend, I haven't been on a single date. Not one. I've tried a few times to ask women out, but somehow I sent the wrong signals or I'm ugly or something; I got refused each time." Not that he's bitter, though. It's just that "I want to be a man, relating to women, not a male person relating to female persons. I'm tired of being castrated."

Indeed. We've looked briefly at the connection between these themes and warmongering in the past.

Comments

lol...

Posted by Bill | November 6, 2007 10:04 AM

Man. Oh, man. I've truly never read anything like that before. Truly.

"I'm gallant and polite and friendly and respectful..."

Posted by Freddie | November 6, 2007 10:06 AM

It's just that "I want to be a man, relating to women, not a male person relating to female persons.

"I'm just a girl, standing in front of a boy, asking him to love me..."

Posted by Bill | November 6, 2007 10:08 AM

Oh, God, the "hugging" section.

I'm a teddy bear. I love to hug and cuddle. That's sufficiently common among men that you all know the term, but sufficiently rare to be worth giving a name to. There's nothing scandalous about that; you can do it in public without anyone getting upset.

OK, he's done. Right?

No-one ever hugs me because female persons don't do that to male persons, and I don't know any women who might consider doing it. It can be a genderfied act without being overtly sexual.

Please.

I might mention, just in passing, that every single stripper I patronized hugged me at least once and in many ways that was the part of it I liked the most, for I am starving for hugs.

Pages of this stuff. I'm shocked, shocked, that he is an anime otaku.

Posted by Dave | November 6, 2007 10:10 AM

What's wrong with you people? The Editors hands out The Kippies annually over at Thepoorman.net. And it's way funnier and inspired than this drummed up contest. Pay attention. Damn.

Posted by ed | November 6, 2007 10:11 AM

I don't see the connection. I'm as sex starved and misogynistic as anybody, and I thought invading Iraq was a dumb idea.

Real men would have marched on Beijing.

Posted by aleks | November 6, 2007 10:22 AM

Women don't like him and it's all their fault!

Posted by Smitty | November 6, 2007 10:30 AM

I'm all in favor of making fun of Den Beste, but let's draw the line at making fun of his looks--he looks (unfortunately) almost exactly like me.

(I haven't dated a woman in a lot more than 6 years, but that's probably a result of my sexual orientation rather than looks)

Posted by rea | November 6, 2007 10:36 AM

Matt: I think a big part of your future lies in humor writing. Perhaps a kind of P.J. O'Rourke of the left, of something.

Posted by Jasper | November 6, 2007 10:37 AM

Den Beste's fate is just another example of the evils of Darwinism. Natural selection in action, baby.

Posted by Boston Tom | November 6, 2007 10:39 AM

Honestly, I just thought this was kinda sad.

Posted by Just Another Greg | November 6, 2007 10:49 AM

(I haven't dated a woman in a lot more than 6 years, but that's probably a result of my sexual orientation rather than looks)

No, it's a result of the fact that you can't find any Men out there-- only male persons.

Posted by Freddie | November 6, 2007 10:55 AM

Den Beste sounds like he could use an intervention from the Queer Eye folks.

Posted by Pocket Rocket | November 6, 2007 10:59 AM

This is getting mean. The guy hasn't blogged about politics in a few years.

Posted by ibmcginty | November 6, 2007 11:03 AM

What aleks said. Except that, in my case, having a daughter tends to mellow out the "misogynistic" part, at least a little.

Posted by Captain Goto | November 6, 2007 11:11 AM

I guess I better tell my proudly feminist wife that she has to stop hugging me in public, and being much more affectionate in private. Funny thing is, she's not even a stripper.

Posted by Maximus | November 6, 2007 11:13 AM

I think that to call Steven Den Beste "right-wing" isn't quite correct. Of course, he was an ur-War Blogger, but to imagine that he's a man of the right wing, that is, Republican politics, is to miss his essential American character.

He's much more of the techno-libertarian, hacker crowd, which can feel quite right-wing at times (see: 2nd amendment issues, taxes, etc.) but are as likely to veer into anarchy as they are to touch upon modern Republican politics. The Ol' Perfessor has strong urges in this direction, especially when he anticipates the ninth level of his own nano-future, although I think he lacks the technical chops to get invited to the annual picnic.

Unfortunately, he shuttered his blog some time ago (which if I recall correctly would have contained several worthy nominations), but Eric S. Raymond is surely worthy of mention in this regard. Especially so as he has some deserved fame for his early contributions to the Internet. From his home page (http://www.catb.org/~esr/personal.html):

"In the real world, I live in Malvern, Pennsylvania, USA at 40 02 10 N, 75 30 51 W."

Notice the perfect combination of stark fact meets science fiction that you find in Steven Den Beste's star dating. I think this is a unique and essential form of wing-nutttery, not at all like that you find on The Corner. It's not essentially about political power, but about escaping the world to find the utopia that's right in front of our noses if only the rest of us were smart enough to see it.

The essays linked to on his home page provide more insight into the rich mind of Mr. Raymond, someone I think Steven Den Beste would have much more in common with than the Jonah Goldbergs of the world.

Just sayin.

Posted by pblsh | November 6, 2007 11:14 AM

Here is a Lightbulb joke I wrote for Ted Barlow's website a few years ago making light of Den Beste's argument style.

Q: How many Steven Den Beste’s does it take to screw in a light bulb?

A: As I watched, with some degree of excitement, the welcome news that the otherwise ineffectual Hans Blix, and his team of United Nations Weapons Inspectors, finally found the “smoking warhead,” I was reminded that in 6th century Arabia, the successors to Muhammad were in much the same position as the United States.

Q: Yes. But…um…what about that lightbulb thing?

A: Ahh yes, the lightbulb. I have abit of inside knowledge about the technological standards of the most wideley used lightbulbs on the market today. As many of my readers know, I used to work at General Electric designing improved carbon filaments to extend the length and candle-power of modern lightbulbs. We were, of course, mocked by the Europeans for using the Carbon filament standard, as they maintained that a silicon based standard was far superior.

And, to a certain extent, they were correct. For a while. They implemented the new silicon-based standard via the European Union, and left themselves vulnerable to the new Halogen, and Flourescent technologies furiously being developed in the United States because our Government regulators had the foresight not to pick and choose winners and losers.

As a result, the invisible hand decided. And now, energy efficient soft-white bulbs, flourescent bulbs, halogen bulbs, and a whole host of other lighting technologies have flooded the U.S. marketplace to the benefit of consumers. Just another example of why the purveyors of “Arab Traditionalism’ (a phrase I coined, of course) in places like Pakistan, and Turkey, despise the united States. Lightbulbs, in all their dizzying array, are anethema to Shar’ia, or Islamic laws. Mohammed got by with lamp oil, and torches. Therefore, artificial lighting is deemed an abomination against Allah.

A: Ummm….OK. But…how many…

Q: I know, of course, that Turkey and Pakistan are not “technically” Arabic countries, but that’s an artificial distinction. They act on the old Islamic empire notions first advanced by Muhammed in the 6th century, and therefore, my preoccupation with “Arab Traditinalism,” the only name I could come up with after much tortured introspection, is not merely an expression of my own ignorance and bigotry, as some of my critics suggest, but of a broader understanding of the enemies we are facing. Does it really matter that Pakistan in not an “Arab” culture? Certainly in some sense it does. But, by applying a deceptive, disingenuous label to the hatred many Muslims feel toward the success and virility of the United States, I am simplifying the terminology so that our necessary war against the threat that is Saddam Hussein (rational or not) will not be misunderstood.

A: Wha…?

Q: A good question. I wish I had all the answers. But, if I can digress for a moment. You have to realize that they want to destroy us. And by “destroy” I mean subsume our culture, traditions, freedoms, and even the style of blue jeans we wear, into a neo-Arabic empire the likes of which has not been seen on this Earth since the hordes of Turkic invaders conquered and co-opted the Islamic empires then extant in the 13th century a.d. This has a direct impact on lightbulbs, incidentally, as we wll no longer be able to perfrom the simple, sacred act of travelling to our local home improvment store, or Walmart, and buy a 4-pack of 75 watt bulbs. They would call this restriction “ilumination of the soul,” but we know that it would anything but that.

Q: My head hurts….

A: As does my heart, when I see the plight of women in the Arab world. Particularly in Pakistan and Indonesia.

Q: Arabic Indonesia? But I thought…

A: Yes. That’s what you’ve been led to believe by the appeasement cabal. But Indonesians are Arabs too. In spirit. All our enemies are Arabs.

Q: Even the North Koreans….?

A: Oh yes, Most especially them! They are even more Arabic than the Saudis, which is saying quite a bit. They are agressive. They are dogmatic. They want nuclear weapons. They even see the United States as an enemy. All the classic symptoms of “Arab Nationalism”. A virus that is spreading.

Q: Do you have any Alleve?

A: Nothing can alleviate the problem, save a large-scale war causing massive death and destruction in Arab lands. This will teach them a lesson in history they shall never forget. It will break their will. Their spirit. It is necessary. I wish it were not so.

Q: You mean we should go to war with the North Koreans?

A: Of course not! Where did you get that silly idea? To stamp out “Arab Traditionalism,” you have to stamp out Arabia. That means the nations in the Persian Gulf.

Q: I give up.

A: I see the appeasers have broken your will, my son. Fear not. We who are the soldiers of righteousness (and not in the religious sense, although it sounds like it) will prevail in this titanic struggle for history’s soul. The “West” triumphant. Now all we need is a very large body count.

Posted by Hesiod | November 6, 2007 11:14 AM

I didn't notice it at first, but here's Eric's best effort at tying up the post-9/11 world, "Why We Fight — An Anti-Idiotarian Manifesto (2.0)"

http://www.catb.org/~esr/aim/

Essential reading. I forgot to mention that McArdle sits easily among the upper branches of this tree.

Posted by pblsh | November 6, 2007 11:23 AM

Tsk, tsk! Poor Beste wants to get laid soo.. bad. Maybe he should give Sen Vitter a call for some contacts.

Posted by 2cynicalbyhalf | November 6, 2007 11:26 AM

P.S.

I think it is worth mentioning that Den beste supposedly stopped blogging for medical reasons.

"I've been suffering for years from a genetically-caused degenerative disease. For the last year or so, the only way I was able to continue posting was by taking increasing doses of very powerful stimulants. (Understand that they were palliative; there's no cure or treatment for the underlying disease, and no one knows what causes it. The only reason it's known to be genetic is because it is found in family lines. In my case it was my father's family.)

Those prescription drugs have serious side effects which I put up with in order to be able to keep writing for the site. But as that year went on, my enjoyment in writing for the site drained away." -- SDB.

Posted by Hesiod | November 6, 2007 11:27 AM

I'm with J.A.Greg. Being lonely and alone sucks, and it's a bit low to make fun of a guy for not being able to get a date.

The rest of SdB's oeuvre is utterly demented, sure, but I think you can make fun of his writing without taking personal pot-shots at him.

Posted by monkey.dave | November 6, 2007 11:28 AM

But he's blaming the fact that he can't get a date on all women. I would hazard to guess that it has a lot more to do with his personality, based on reading that post.

He warrants ridicule.

Posted by Smitty | November 6, 2007 11:38 AM

What aleks said. Except that, in my case, having a daughter tends to mellow out the "misogynistic" part, at least a little.

Posted by Captain Goto | November 6, 2007 11:11 AM
******************

And I have some awesome female friends and students and family members, but I just make a mental note exempting them and then my critique of hufemalepersonanity stands. Try it, I think you'll find that asterisk both convenient and empowering.

Posted by aleks | November 6, 2007 11:41 AM

> Notice the perfect combination of stark fact meets
> science fiction that you find in Steven Den
> Beste's star dating. I think this is a unique and
> essential form of wing-nutttery, not at all like
> that you find on The Corner. It's not essentially
> about political power, but about escaping the
> world to find the utopia that's right in front of
> our noses if only the rest of us were smart enough
> to see it.

I'll laugh at SDB's posts along with everyone else, but this theme (which I have seen at Drum's too) is a bit pretentious. I don't see any real difference between SDB's preferred world-filter and that of the intellectual sitting on the Midway down the street from Seminary Co-op Books reading his ultra-sophisticated literary analysis and sipping wine from bottle in a wicker basket (carefully hidden from the Chicago Police Dept of course). Everyone has their own world-filter and many of those used by the left, liberals, and progressives can be ridiculed as easily as SDB's.

Cranky

Posted by Cranky Observer | November 6, 2007 11:42 AM

monkey.dave: There's a difference between making fun of a lonely guy who can't get a date and making fun of a guy who's lonely because of his own behavior...and who actually blames women for not liking him instead of seriously examining his behavior.

He can't even stop himself from insulting the Latinas he's ostensibly praising for their womanliness: he assumes they see him as a "good catch"; he doesn't have access to "that culture" because he's "upper class and professional." Yeeeecccch.

Being alone does suck. But some people go out of their way to make sure they'll stay alone.

Posted by hooked on phonics | November 6, 2007 11:46 AM

pblsh: Reynolds is a serious authoritarian of the present. This basically excludes him from the libertarian categorisation entirely. Even nuts like Eric Raymond, who favour the authority of superior force in the Max Max-esque Libertarian utopia, rarely devote too much time to arguing how important it is for existing states to become more authoritarian.

As for Raymond, the "questionable comments" which led to his blog closing were due to his being a white supremacist. One of the key reasons this is associated with many of the basement-dwelling crowd (which I am technically a member of) is that they rarely interact with those outside their immediate families.

- Chris

Posted by Chris Cunningham | November 6, 2007 11:46 AM

From Den Beste:
Men use a very strong grip; it's a way of communicating health, strength, vitality and to some extent virility. A man with a very weak grip is suspect. In the old days, a weak grip implied that he was gay. Now it just means he's a wimp.

Sorry, Steve, but you're dead wrong. A man is supposed to use a firm but not excessively strong grip while shaking hands. Using a very strong bonecrushing grip is tantamount to hanging a sign around your neck reading "I am a douche bag"

Posted by Peter | November 6, 2007 11:56 AM

Being lonely and alone sucks, and it's a bit low to make fun of a guy for not being able to get a date.

Personally, I'm making fun of him for wishing "Anglo women" were more like strippers. If you were born with Treacher Collins Syndrome and you're desperately alone, I feel sorry for you. If you're a smart adult with decent looks and you're angry that women won't accede to your desire for hugs, you're just a loser.

Posted by Dave | November 6, 2007 11:57 AM

In all fairness, and as I mentioned when I linked this post in Drum's nomination thread, I think Stephen has Asperger's. He's got this tremendous, hyperactive intellect, and the social understanding of a three-year-old. It's really not all his fault. I think I'm somewhere in the autism spectrum myself, and while I've learned to connect with others thanks to the wonders of psychedelics, there are times when I project all sorts of terribly negative and terribly false emotions onto other people. I can fully comprehend SDB's world of shrewish women at home and mindless raging barbarians overseas. It stems from a fundamentally broken ability to emphathize.

Posted by scarshapedstar | November 6, 2007 12:00 PM

It's really not all his fault.

That may be true. But he has put himself into the arena, and so his ideas are subject to critical evaluation. Just like anyone else.

Posted by Freddie | November 6, 2007 12:02 PM

“He's got this tremendous, hyperactive intellect...”

Not so. At least, I've never seen any sign of this. What I see is someone who is of moderately above average intelligence who either hasn't been in the company of enough exceptionally intelligent people, or someone who has but has been too self-absorbed to reevaluate his own gifts accordingly.

I'd judge both he and Matthew Yglesias to be in the same ballpark in terms of general intelligence—the quite common moderately above average range. Yglesias, having attended Harvard, almost certainly has had a great deal of experience with people of whom he's had little doubt made him look imbecilic by comparison. Therefore, Yglesias is sharp but unassuming, genial and often enough self-aware when he moves into areas where his competency is questionable. SDB, in contrast, and like many bright people who have never really been challenged, has never learned to accurately take his own measure. He has little concept of the limits of his competency and routinely far exceeds it in his intellectual wanderings.

There are numerous indications that he's maladroit. He very well could be somewhere on the Autism Spectrum. Nevertheless, he has a responsibility to his own intellectual integrity and to enforce rigorous self-criticism—as, of course, do we all—yet he displays little of either. This is particularly so when one engages in the public sphere and doubly so when one has a substantial audience. Yet he quit blogging not because of an awareness that he was failing his audience, but because of a growing resentment that they were failing him. In this regard, his lament about modern women is sadly characteristic of his vices and, as in the case of his writing, his isolation is the result of his own choices, the inevitable outcome of a solipsism that measures the world against his own desire and finds it lacking.

He expects the world to come to him, with open arms and warm, motherly hugs, offering more of the unconditional approval and high regard that he's come to expect as his due. The world has failed him and he doesn't realize that, long ago, he was expected to do some of the accepting and approving, too.

Posted by Keith M Ellis | November 6, 2007 12:42 PM

I think that to call Steven Den Beste "right-wing" isn't quite correct. Of course, he was an ur-War Blogger, but to imagine that he's a man of the right wing, that is, Republican politics, is to miss his essential American character.

He's much more of the techno-libertarian, hacker crowd, which can feel quite right-wing at times (see: 2nd amendment issues, taxes, etc.) but are as likely to veer into anarchy as they are to touch upon modern Republican politics.

This has him pegged. He's kind of a classic caricature of the type. He actually started out on Metafilter before there was such thing as a warblog. He practically monopolized the place for a few months before he was politely and firmly (and then not so politely and more firmly) urged to get his own blog. Who knows, maybe he was all over usenet even before that? Then 9/11 came along, and well, you know the rest.

Posted by J. Dunn | November 6, 2007 1:14 PM

Frankly, I'd never heard of this guy. But if he was having so much trouble with women, maybe he should have followed Matt's tack of posting the occasional link to some piece of contemporary feminist ephemera with a positive comment, and otherwise staying dogmatically on the side of the lefty lady bloggers. It seems to have worked for Matt.

Posted by Fred | November 6, 2007 1:18 PM

"He actually started out on Metafilter before there was such thing as a warblog."

Are you sure he didn't actually start out by jotting down his thoughts on Big Chief tablets and hectoring his aging mother?

Posted by Shawn | November 6, 2007 1:22 PM

No, Den Beste is not ugly; he looks a lot like me, and I was never coldshouldered by 'female persons.' Maybe it's bad breath.

I'm sorry, however, that he's ill. Even clueless assholes deserve good health.

Posted by buddy66 | November 6, 2007 1:24 PM

I've been calling those crypto-authoritarian pseudo-libertarian conservatarians (from Instapundit on down) Heinleiners for years now, but did you listen? No!

Posted by xian | November 6, 2007 1:53 PM

I too feel sorry for him. You don't necessarily have to mock everyone who has technically, asked for through something stupid that they wrote. Especially when it's as sad as that. You can mock his political ravings, but I think that Woman post is something to leave alone.

Posted by cw | November 6, 2007 3:12 PM

What made Den Beste so entertaining in 2002 was that so many "warblogger" types took his 10,000-word babblings so seriously.

How this unemployed, tubby, and obsessive-compulsive goof who rarely left his Mom's basement (and who wrote his blog like a Star Trek "Captain's Log") was seen as an "expert" on military strategy, geopolitics, and other grand themes by the warblogger crowd still makes me giggle five years later.

If you were stupid enough to read one of his long-winded essays from start to finish, by the end you were either thoroughly confounded by what he wrote or completely disgusted for wasting that much time of your life reading such laughably inane piffle written by a bumbling boob of the highest magnitude.

If one were to peruse his 2002 archives and identify every prediction he made of how the "War on Terror" would fare that subsequently turned out to be ineptly wrong in so many different ways, one would have no doubt as to why this flabby goofball has faded into blogging obscurity.

And seriously, folks, I am being far too kind in my criticism of Den Beste here.

Posted by mat | November 6, 2007 3:17 PM

Den Beste is pathetic, in the old fashioned sense of the word, so mocking him does make me uncomfortable. OTOH, since he dresses all of his neuroses and shortcomings up as social commentary and trenchant analysis, ridicule is pretty much inevitable.

As noted above, he is not so much a wingnut as he is the prototypical example of the socially-aphasic, engineer-turned-expert-on-humanity war blogger that was so prevalent on the web a few years ago. Sort of the Bizarro World counterpart of Jared Diamond.

Posted by etoian shrdlu | November 6, 2007 5:02 PM

"that Woman post is something to leave alone." Noez! He said true women are hug dispensers and denying him hugs is castrating him.

It's a terrible thing not to be touched. In his place, I would have scheduled a weekly massage. Or gotten a dog.

Posted by gmanedit | November 6, 2007 5:30 PM

"Yglesias, having attended Harvard, almost certainly has had a great deal of experience with people of whom he's had little doubt made him look imbecilic by comparison."

Thank you for the compliment.

Posted by Richard Steven Hack | November 6, 2007 9:21 PM

"It's a terrible thing not to be touched. In his place, I would have scheduled a weekly massage. Or gotten a dog."

Isn't there a regular on here who married a woman from one of those overseas dating sites? Maybe he could pass the info on how to do that to SDB. As a matter of public safety, it's probably better to get this guy some tail before he goes postal like that Asian misfit from V-Tech.

Posted by Fred | November 6, 2007 9:30 PM

I do rather feel sorry for SdB because he does have genuine health problems and perhaps it is a bit harsh to blame someone for stuff that they wrote while on stimulants. However, historically, every time I have started feeling sorry for him, he has then done something extremely nasty to one of my mates, so I am holding fire on the sympathy this time round.

Posted by dsquared | November 7, 2007 4:22 AM

Besides anything else, so-called "gender gap" is well documented, and a corollary is that liberal men and wingnut women should have easier time finding mates of the opposite sex sharing their opinions than otherwise.

From what I heard, Jewish girls can be even more difficult than Anglo girls if you are a war enthusiast. For evolutionary standpoint, becoming a religious nut is a better choice than a secular libertarian or warmonger.

Converesely, a nymphomaniac should seriously consider becoming a wingnutess (wingnutine?).

About inteligence: sound judgement is rather weakly connected with "measurable inteligence" that can be reflected in test scores and grades. Wolfowitz is an example for good inteligence and bad judgement, except that he did not suffer consequences on the personal level. At least, not too much. I loved his use of George Constanza defence "If I were only told that this kind of things is being frowned upon...".

Posted by piotr | November 7, 2007 5:49 AM

Poor SdB. He seems to be caught in what I call the Joni Mitchell quandry:

"He don't like weak women,
he gets bored too quick,
And he don't like strong women,
cause they're hip to his tricks...

I spent an hour or so browsing around his blog, and was amused by his engineer's perspectives on life in general, and particularly his perceptive comments on evolution and why creation science is fantasy. However, his writings do seem to be colored by his relations with women, which in turn appear to be colored by his perspectives as an engineer. But then, he's not the only unmarried Qualcomm engineer we know...

As an engineer, we can speculate that his personal relationships are directed by utilitarian considerations, uncolored (deliberately) by emotion. Hardly the way to a woman's heart. Add to that his pro-war, pro-gun, and misogynist leanings, and he is not likely to have much success with female persons (professionals, feminists, and left-leaning women). And his perspectives on God (possibly malign AND a lousy engineer) and evolution aren't likely to foster strong relationships with female conservatives.

That leaves the pay-for-services group he praised in the blog extract cited, but even he doesn't think that is a sound basis for a permanent relationship. Wonder if he's checked the russian brides websites yet?

Nonetheless, his comments on science, evolution and creation science are original, entertaining, and worth a look.

Posted by mike | November 10, 2007 3:25 PM

A middle-aged man needs to take responsibility for his misogyny. He's not entitled to receive the respect he won't give female persons.

At least I don't have to worry about him smashing my hand, though.

Posted by Sara | November 13, 2007 9:05 PM

There's a lot of hilarious lunacy packed into this comment thread.

Posted by Tom | November 14, 2007 1:50 PM

Tell him not to come to Korea. This is not the place to get hugs unless you work with kindergarteners.

Posted by aleks | November 18, 2007 11:17 AM