Idiots

ISEE THAT Pepsi has a new patriotic can with a picture of the Empire State Building and the Pledge of Allegiance on it. But Pepsi decided that "they didn't want to offend anyone" by putting the words "under God" on the can. Well, I'm offended that they left it off. This is yet another case of hypocrisy in this world of ungodly creatures. Money, which is all anyone cares about, has a big four-word phrase on every single piece of currency that says "In God We Trust. " America: The country of idiots.

I FOR ONE have had it. I'm sick and tired of a bunch of idiots foaming at the mouth regarding President-elect Obama having no experience. Unless I've lost my mind, neither did Ronald Reagan. He was a Hollywood actor. Need I say more? Ann Townson Philadelphia

MEMBERS OF the flash-mob set may be idiots and misfits, but I don't believe they are overly stupid. The mayor, police commissioner and district attorney advertise that they - along with neighbors of the Queen Village and Bella Vista area - were going to walk along South Street to prove that it would be safe that night. Hello, it would take outright idiots to try something knowing that all these officials were going to be there that night. That makes no sense to me. What were they thinking when they advertised it?

RE CHRISTINE Flowers' op-ed on the generals: I usually don't spend time writing to idiots, but in your case I'll make an exception. A necessary war? The only thing necessary about it was to get boy George re-elected. Perhaps you've heard of an internal memo for the re-election strategy titled "All Iraq All the Time. " That's the only reason we are there. We had to take down a brutal tyrant? If that is the case, we should be attacking dozens of other countries throughout the world.

They wear pastels. They can't dance. They play golf. They definitely have no sense of rhythm. They're silly and selfish and spoiled. They're WASPs, the latest discovery in the movies' non-stop search for idiots and villains. It has been coming a long time, but in the wake of the big round of year- end film releases, the white Anglo-Saxon Protestant as cold, repressed fool has become so prevalent as to appear to be a cliche. But those depictions aren't likely to disappear anytime soon: they are too safe and convenient a target for filmmakers to give up on them.

Mayor Rendell yesterday promised that the city would protect Bridget Ward from further racist attacks in her new Bridesburg home, and said the "small group of idiots" who defaced her home with racial slurs Friday did not represent the community. "This city has some idiots and jerks," Rendell told reporters. "So does every city, but the good people far predominate in this city and the good people will come forward. " Ward became the only African-American resident on her Bridesburg street when she moved in Friday.

V.I. Lenin, the founding dictator of the Soviet Union, had a pithy phrase for the Western liberals who took the side of the Soviets in political debates. He called them "useful idiots. " Today we have a new and improved version of useful idiots; we call them "human shields. " These are the citizens of the United States and Europe who deliberately put themselves between the U.S. military and Saddam Hussein - or Slobodan Milosevic -in order to stop America from its "war of aggression.

SEVERAL months ago, there was a lively debate about whether someone was entitled to a parking spot they'd spent their time and energy shoveling out. Some people thought they should have the benefit of their work and labor and sweat. Others felt entitled to someone else's work, labor and sweat. While there won't be problems related to parking due to snow for a while, there are other problems that know no season. First are the people with car alarms that go off day and night. Nobody is breaking into the cars.

Not long after the two love-struck college students disappeared from Chicago under mysterious circumstances, one of their friends called and asked me to help publicize the frenzied efforts to find them. I declined, and the friend asked why. So I explained. If they had been kidnapped and murdered, which I thought was unlikely, my column wouldn't bring them back alive. But if they had run off without telling anyone, as I suspected they had, I considered them idiots. And I saw no reason to waste a column on them.

Movie director Jean-Jacques Beineix is on the phone to Paris, cursing and yelling something fierce. "C'est stupide," "incroyable," "absurde," "horrible" and the all- purpose "les idiots" flavor his conversation like garlic in a Provencal stew. While he protests, his right hand is going through maestro-like maneuvers, as if, perhaps, the urgency of his gestures might make his transatlantic argument more persuasive. After a good 15 minutes of frantic Gallic ranting, Beineix slams down the phone, raises both arms toward Manhattan's cold heavens and sighs in earnestness: "Oh zee Frahnch!

The first thing you learn about American Idiot , the touring Green Day rock musical that opened Tuesday at the Merriam Theater, is that the show has more middle fingers and impolite words in five minutes than you'd get in five hours on South Street. For the next 90 minutes, the it-sucks-to-be-young perspective roars out of about 40 video monitors, 20 thoroughly capable singing actors, and 21 articulate, mostly high-decibel songs authored by the band and performed in a plain, industrial basement full of junky couches.

I RIDE SEPTA's regional-rail system. The trains are clean enough and mostly on time.Conductors are polite and helpful, give or take a grump. So, I wasn't sure what to make of the clown of a conductor I came across the other night. Was he some jokester? A jerk? A disgruntled employee? I'm thinking all three. You tell me. I stepped onto the 6:43 p.m. Chestnut Hill West train from Market East and nearly plowed into the woman in front of me. Before I could give her the "tourist much?"

WHEN FORMER Philadelphia cop and convicted murderer Frank Tepper shot 21-year-old William Panas Jr. to death, did he do so in his capacity as a police officer, or, as the city alleges, in his capacity as "Frank Tepper, drunken idiot?" In a federal civil trial that began Monday against the city, the Police Department and Tepper, the attorney for the Panas family, Jimmy Binns, said that Tepper, who identified himself as a cop and flashed his badge before the shooting, was acting as a cop, even though he was off duty when he fired the fatal shots after a neighborhood argument on Nov. 21, 2009.

Jen Lancaster is up on her high horse again. Fans of the witty memoirist are delighted to see her back in the saddle. Her just-published book, Jeneration X (NAL, $25.95) is a plea for her contemporaries to stand apart from the willfully infantile generations that bracket them -- the boomers and the millenials -- by acting like adults. "We're differentiating ourselves by becoming the only grownups in the room," says Lancaster. "We're tired of seeing all these baby boomers running around talking about their feelings and these Gen Y kids that you have to constantly coddle or they'll have a meltdown.

BORDENTOWN - Asked Monday if he regretted calling a Rutgers-Camden law student and former Navy SEAL an "idiot" during an argument at a town-hall meeting last week, Gov. Christie's answer was a typical Gov. Christie answer: "No. " "He acted like an idiot, he is an idiot," Christie told reporters Monday at Bordentown Regional High School, where he was visiting to talk about his education policies. "Just because he's a Navy SEAL doesn't give him any reason to be a jerk," he added.

Could insult be good for you?   As long as everyone else is getting it, too? For the third straight year, Ricky Gervais hosted Sunday evening's Golden Globe Awards. He was more restrained (and thinner) than usual (oops - was that an insult?). But he still had a couple of good zingers. "The Golden Globes are to the Oscars what Kim Kardashian is to Kate Middleton," he said, comparing the reality-TV queen and the future queen of England. "Bit louder, bit trashier, bit drunker, and more easily bought.

THE TITLE RUBE in "Our Idiot Brother" will be tagged as an updated Forrest Gump, but his roots go all the way back to Voltaire's original dope, Candide. Candide, you'll recall, goes from naive optimist to shell-shocked pessimist to a man who says "we must cultivate our garden. " This is tellingly where Paul Rudd, as idiot brother Ned, starts out. He's a hippie on an organic farm, busted at a farmer's market for selling pot to a uniformed police officer. After a stay in county, Ned finds his rusticated girlfriend has a new organic beau, so Paul is off to the New York suburbs to live with family - passed from his dotty mom to his sisters in succession.

Paul Rudd interrupted his work on the untitled Judd Apatow project a few weeks ago (don't let anyone tell you it's called This Is 40 - Universal says it's not), to jet from Los Angeles to New York to drop in on Harvey Weinstein . The Weinstein Co. is distributing Our Idiot Brother , the new comedy in which Rudd has the title role, and the actor thought he'd pitch a few marketing ideas to the famously feisty mogul. "I flew to New York for about half of a day, and I was able to stop off in his office and defile most of the things in it," Rudd reports, deadpan.

SIX WEEKS AGO, when I heard that Curt Weldon and Larry Mendte, the dumb and dumber of politics and the media, had taken it upon themselves to negotiate with Moammar Gadhafi, I knew that Christmas had come early. The very image of these two washed-up wackos traipsing around Tripoli was too good to be true. I could just envision Mendte getting all giddy as they neared the presidential palace: "Curt. That's him! We found him!" "Uh, Larry, that's just a statue. " "I'm gonna ask him about the Phillies.

SEVERAL months ago, there was a lively debate about whether someone was entitled to a parking spot they'd spent their time and energy shoveling out. Some people thought they should have the benefit of their work and labor and sweat. Others felt entitled to someone else's work, labor and sweat. While there won't be problems related to parking due to snow for a while, there are other problems that know no season. First are the people with car alarms that go off day and night. Nobody is breaking into the cars.