MSNBC presented me with a panel discussion on moral values the other night that was moderated by Mike Barnicle, the famous literary grave-robber, that also featured Lawrence Kudlow, the famous cocaine-guzzling financier, and Joe Scarborough, the famous wife-dumping ex-congressperson. (Carl Bernstein was also there, running with a worse crowd than he ever did when he was hanging with Don Segretti.)

Anyway, this brood of B-list vipers blathered on from Hell until breakfast, driving me to one of the Internets on which I discovered this and then, this.

Consider: a plagiarist moderates a discussion on "values" with one guy who chucked the frau overboard the first chance he had, and a stock-market pimp who once put half of Medellin up his nose. The discussion is carried on further by a degenerate gambler writing on behalf of an institution that is giving its "Leadership Award" to a pill-popping creature of the strip-mall night who's currently working on Wife No. 4. Welcome to the mystical body of suckers, y'all.

As with most things, The Founder had a good eye for the likes of Bill (Sportin' Life) Bennett and the rest of the Green Room Sanhedrin: "Alas for you...you hypocrites! You who are like whitewashed tombs that look handsome on the outside but inside are full of dead men's bones and every kind of corruption." (Matthew 23: 27-28).