Neither Arctic temperatures nor a blanket of snow was going to prevent me from grilling out last night. Like all red-blooded American men, I’ll start a fire and cook food over it no matter how stupid an idea that might seem to anyone with any kind of common sense.

Harvard president pays high price for his hypothesis

Why is it that conservative columnists are always such superior writers compared to their counterparts on the left? I find that generally I disagree with their opinions more often than I agree, but the mastery of language and tone exhibited by someone like George Will makes his column worth reading whatever your political leanings may be. Here’s an excellent example from his most recent column about the president of Harvard who is currently undergoing a public skewering for some recent comments :

“Is this the fruit of feminism? A woman at the peak of the academic pyramid becomes theatrically flurried by an unwelcome idea and, like a Victorian maiden exposed to male coarseness, suffers the vapors and collapses on the drawing room carpet in a heap of crinolines until revived by smelling salts and the offending brute’s contrition.”

Will’s comments on the bizarre world of academia seem to me to be right on target from my admittedly limited experience in that realm. The connection he then tries to draw between this line of reasoning and George Bush’s recent speech though, seems tenuous at best, and completely spurious at worst.

CNN.com – Two dead, two hurt in Jeep plant shooting – Jan 27, 2005

“Police also said he had strapped a stuffed animal to the back of his neck.”

Whaaa?!