As it happens, I am writing this column on the day known to my bankers as Yum Kippered Salmon—or, in English, the Day of Atonement—and although I have some serious quarrels with the shoddy way the ancestors of these moneylenders treated Christ our Savior, I do find myself wishing that their holy day just once might be observed by these unrepentant sociopaths who murder journalism on a weekly basis and call it The Stranger. It could do them good—though, to be honest, I fear that a mere 24-hour period would not be enough for all the atoning that these damaged souls require. Perhaps we could begin with their known felonies and secret sex crimes, and then, if there were any time left, move on to their regular, and always heinous, acts of demagoguery.

A perfect example of which can be found in this issue, wherein LINDY WEST—once my favorite new voice among this otherwise incompetent rabble, now a hopeless drug addict who has squandered her gifts and is in need of immediate penance and/or hospitalization—rages against a business whose only crime is bringing much-needed jobs to an impoverished area of this city. That the new Hooters casino in the otherwise blighted neighborhood of South Park employs beautiful women who wish to speak simply about chicken wings and unseasonably warm weather—this is a crime against the female species? This deserves a shrill denunciation from the same woman who so callously objectified the great conservative icon Patrick Swayze (may he rest in peace) in her recent "column," aptly titled Concessions? Surely we can all see the intellectual and moral incoherence (and incontinence) of what is really just a screed exposing Ms. West's jealousy of attractive, gainfully employed women—a screed that is shamelessly sandwiched between large pornographic clothing advertisements depicting underage models wearing tiny swatches of polyester.

And surely no one truly believed that having the pendulously breasted eunuch known as PAUL CONSTANT add an array of footnotes to Ms. West's insecure ramblings for "balance" would right this terrible wrong. That Mr. Constant is supposed to supply the heterosexual masculine counterpoint for Ms. West's pathetic, bra-burning alarmism is laughable; the man is a known crossdressing homosexual. He does not speak for myself or for any other red-blooded American man. Our message for Ms. West is this: Grow up and marry a Republican. That will set you straight.

Speaking of delusional ladies with airs, my eyes next landed upon a poem by HEATHER McHUGH about... a tree. On behalf of myself and this paper's nearly half-dozen thinking readers, I now wish to issue a public apology to all the trees that had to die so that some "Stranger Genius" (a contradiction in terms unlike any other) could smear a jumble of nonsense words about trees upon a bunch of ground-up tree pulp. One can imagine Ms. McHugh throwing darts at a dictionary to "compose" her poem and snickering all the while, knowing that The Stranger would be willing to shell out at least 15 dollars for the exclusive rights to publish such pointless drivel.