Later I was passing the TV and saw Jerry Brown debating O’Reilly. Brown’s default facial posture always seems to be android-calm, as if his internal systems are in Sleep mode, waiting for the cursor to move. O’Reilly was quoting a “60 Minutes” story about PLO - Iraq links; Brown responded that since the Saudis fund radical mosques, shouldn’t we invade them?
      Thank you! I thought; there’s my column.
      “The proper response to this is a big wide grin: capital idea, old chap; why not, indeed? Let’s go! Glad you’re on board. We can liberate those American-born women our craven State department refuses to help; we can take the oil fields, set the pumps on “gush” and flood the world with sweet, cheap crude. We can defund the radical mosques, disband the religious police, and build swingsets in the parks they use for public hand-choppings. As an added bonus, the West will occupy the most holy sites of Islam, so we can photograph, fingerprint, and possibly detain anyone who comes for a pilgrimage. Invade Saudi Arabia? Dude! You are so hard core!”

In an extensive review of studies, . . . Dr. Nicholas Emler, a social psychologist at the London School of Economics, found no clear link between low self-esteem and delinquency, violence against others, teenage smoking, drug use or racism, though a poor self-image was one of several factors contributing to self-destructive behaviors like suicide, eating disorders and teenage pregnancy. High self-esteem, on the other hand, was positively correlated with racist attitudes, drunken driving and other risky behaviors, Dr. Emler found in his 2001 review. Though academic success or failure had some effect on self-esteem, students with high self-esteem were likely to explain away their failures with excuses, while those with low self-esteem discounted their successes as flukes.