Back in college, a good friend of mine had a name for people who were interminably stupid, annoying, arrogant, or otherwise insufferable. He called them "oxygen thieves."For Teddy, torture is when the servants are tardy in freshening up his drink.
The name always struck me as a wicked blend of humor and contempt, carrying with it the harsh implication that a person's very existence was not only wasting, but in fact robbing the rest of us of a valuable (though infinitely abundant) resource.
Needless to say, my friend didn't use the term often. It was always reserved for the worst of the worst, the sort of habitual offenders that made life unbearable.
The moniker came rushing back to me last night after hearing Senator Edward M. Kennedy on the floor of the United States Senate:"On March 19, 2004, President Bush asked, 'Who would prefer that Saddam's torture chambers still be open?What sort of dysfunctional moral compass must one have to make such a comparison?
"Shamefully, we now learn that Saddam's torture chambers reopened under new management: U.S. management."
Follow the link for much more, and while you're there, check out today's post on the reaction of the dung flies to Senator James Inhofe giving them a well deserved spritz of DDT. The NY Times is all atwitter, probably because they were busy freshening Teddy's drinkie.
