I watched Thank You For Smoking a few weeks ago, but I was so let down by the ending I didn’t know what to make of it. Surprisingly, the whole Don Imus scandal puts it into perspective.

Thank You For Smoking plays out as a well-produced, well-performed, cleverly-written story that seems to be building up to some incisive satire about lobbyists, politics, and the tobacco industry. It sets the stage, defines the characters, and takes a few detours for some really slick and well-done scenes that don’t really say anything remotely original. There’s a long and genuinely funny segment where the main character meets a fancy Hollywood movie executive and his fawning assistant; it ends having said nothing more than “Hey, aren’t LA people phony?” Afterwards is a scene with Sam Elliott perfectly cast as the original Marlboro Man; that results in the razor-sharp observation: “people are often motivated by money.”

The movie spends all this time with Aaron Eckhardt’s character, setting him up as a charming man who could talk his way into or out of anything, a man who’d built his entire life around the idea that there is no solid dividing line between right and wrong. And, like most smokers, he’s built elaborate networks of denial and self-delusion in order to maintain an addiction that he and everybody else knows is dangerous and lethal. As he explains to his son at one point: by changing the argument from “are cigarettes dangerous” to “do I have the right to choose for myself,” he moves the line, shifting it from an indefensible position to one where he’s the victim and he’s got the moral upper ground.

For over an hour, the movie builds sympathy for his character so that the line becomes blurred even for the audience. And then finally, one of his choices is turned on him, and everything in his life is ruined — his job, his only friendships, his relationship with his son, and he can’t even smoke anymore. We see a video segment where every thing he’d done in the movie up to that point is re-examined and described with a different spin — now, the actions and words we’d been led to believe were harmless seem cold, manipulative, and downright evil. He’d manipulated everyone, including the audience, and probably even himself, into believing his own spin. After seeing that, I became convinced that this movie was the best, most effective indictment of moral relativism I’d ever seen.

And then, of course, the movie works to undo every single bit of that. His friends and family come back to him, his son still idolizes him, those who had wronged him are shown getting their come-uppance, and not only is he offered his job back, he gets the greatest pleasure of being able to turn it down. I’ve said before that I don’t mind happy endings, and an ending that’s negative just for the sake of being negative or “edgy” is even more vapid than having Lassie show up and E.T. come back to life. But a happy ending is just deadly to satire. Without the edge — and especially the way this movie shies away from the edge so much you’d think it were a hemophiliac — you’ve just got a “character study.” Which is just a tactful way of saying, “a story with no point.”

So what does any of this have to do with racist comments from a radio shock jock? Not much, until you find this Time magazine analysis of the reaction to Imus’ comments, and in particular John Rogers’ response to that article.

The Time story is titled “Who Can Say What?” and asks the same question a lot of people are asking: where’s the line? Why is there such an outcry when Imus says the same things that [insert black celebrity here] has been saying for years? And why such a strong reaction to this incident, when Imus himself has been saying the same thing for years? Why is it okay for Sarah Silverman or Sacha Baron Cohen or “South Park” to say hateful things about blacks and Jews, but suddenly the offenderati comes out with White Liberal Guilt guns blazing whenever Don Imus, Isaiah Washington, Michael Richards, or Mel Gibson says them?

And the reason I like Rogers’ commentary so much is that he cuts through all the attempts at cultural analysis of a Very Complex Issue and says simply: it’s really not that complicated. (He goes on to describe it in terms of comedy and power brokering, which is fine but just a smaller part of the whole thing).

Like it or not, there’s still a line there, and it hasn’t moved all that much in the last 30 or 40 years. And shame on anyone who tries to make it out that it’s constantly in flux, being manipulated by some “cultural elite” of easily-offended liberals who, as part of their nefarious hidden agenda, are forever lying in wait to bait people into thoughtcrimes and discredit them.

You see that claim alleged over and over again, people forever asking, “So when exactly is it okay to be racist/homophobic/anti-semitic/misogynist?” The answer is pretty simple: “Never.”

“But wait,” they claim, “black/gay/Jewish/female people say that stuff all the time and they not only get away with it, they’re applauded for it!” And that’s the heartbreaking part. Because you realize you’re not just explaining comedy anymore. You’re having to explain basic human decency to a person who just doesn’t get it, and it’s like trying to explain algebra to a caveman. They don’t understand it, they’re never going to use it, but everybody keeps telling them that it’s important and they should be ashamed for not understanding it. And all they can ask is “Is this going to be on the final?” (Considering that intolerance and religious fundamentalism so frequently go hand-in-hand, I’m surprised more people don’t realize that yes, this is going to be on the final.)

One of the bits that the Time article seems to be bewildered by is from the Sarah Silverman show. There’s a scene in the pilot where she meets God, who’s played by a black actor, and she asks, “Are you God’s black friend?” Why is that acceptable, when Imus’ calling a bunch of college basketball players “nappy-headed hos” isn’t? Both are racist comments intended for shock value. And neither is coming from a black person, so you can’t say that it’s “taking back the word.” How can this be?

Some would say that it’s just because Silverman’s funny and Imus isn’t. Some would say that it’s because Silverman’s liberal and Imus isn’t (Silverman makes a comment against that in the article). Some would go into a long explanation about the political inequities of comedy and how it’s only acceptable when those of a lesser socioeconomic status are using words to negotiate an exchange of power with those who are traditionally in dominant societal roles, and because a Jewish woman can relate to a position of inequity better than a wealthy white male, Imus was perceived as a bully while Silverman isn’t.

Which is all just more White Liberal Guilt mixed with political correctness and pseudo-academic wankery. There are aspects of all that that are correct, but it all boils down to the same thing: Silverman can say racist words because she isn’t expressing racist ideas. One is saying, “look at how idiotic racist over-privileged white people are;” Imus was saying, “look at how scary and dirty those black people are.” It shouldn’t take a damn dissertation about “context” to explain that.

But why now? Why is “nappy-headed hos” such a colossal offense, when Imus has been saying the same type of thing for years? The problem is in thinking that the two are unrelated. That there’s some hidden dictionary only the offenderati have access to, where “suddenly” one phrase has been listed as objectionable, and the only way to know what’s offensive is to keep guessing until you get Al Sharpton to complain. A much simpler and more obvious explanation: maybe this shit’s been building for years. The context isn’t some weird imbalance of power between college basketball players, a radio shock jock, huge broadcasting corporations run by Rich White Men, and the liberal media. The context is that the guy’s been showing himself to be a racist for years, and he finally got called on it. Even shock jocks tend to have more intelligence than a puppy, but the media reaction to Imus’ case has been more like “you have to catch him in the act or he’ll never learn!”

The Time article has a quote from one stringy-headed ho in a passage about the escalation of offensiveness in the media:

Right-wing pundit Ann Coulter is probably the best example of this, playing a constant game of “Can you top this?” with herself, as in March, when she told the Conservative Political Action Conference that she would have a comment on Senator John Edwards, “but it turns out that you have to go into rehab if you use the word faggot.” Coulter is only the most egregious example — from Bill O’Reilly on Fox to Glenn Beck on CNN, offense is the coin of the cable realm.

As much as I hate to feed a boorish, skeletal lich with the attention she so desperately and transparently requires to feed her minions and wreak unholy vengeance upon this Earth, she makes it difficult not to, because she’s just such an obvious example of irresponsible evil in the media. Describing how to be a decent person without mentioning Coulter in contrast is like a game of Taboo where you have to describe “goodness” without mentioning the word “evil” or “badness.”

Coulter’s fans and fellow pundits — which is to say, “idiots” — would say that that one quote wittily and effectively counters so much of what’s wrong in today’s media: we’ve lost our edge and our honesty, we’re no longer able to say what we really think because the lines of acceptability keep being redrawn, and the weak and inoffensive are rising to power.

Bullshit. What that quote says is: “John Edwards is a faggot.” And if that’s what passes for incisive commentary from pundits on The Right, I don’t know why they’re crusing Beltway bars for cretinous sluts who’ll say anything you want if it means they get a sound bite and a book deal, instead of going directly to a fifth-grade playground.

I always assumed that Limbaugh, Coulter, and the others who I’m sure are every bit as offensive but don’t get as much media attention, were evil because they were so manipulative. They were just savvy enough to recognize what people are scared of and what they don’t understand, and were able to manipulate that to discredit the other side. But every time I see the outrage and bewilderment in the media over what should be obvious to anyone who had parents or a kindergarten that taught them how to treat people, I have to wonder — do they really just not understand? And which of those possibilities is worse?

The line is still there in plain sight to anybody with any intelligence. Contrary to what they’d have you believe, it’s not being moved by an unseen hand, and they’re not just saying what “everybody thinks” but is “too afraid to say out loud.” Most people can still see the line; the only question is whether they have the dignity or class or intelligence or have just plain earned the right to step over it. It’s not a case of “political correctness.” We matured past “political correctness” a long time ago, not long after it became a buzzword. And we didn’t do it by being proud of being “politically incorrect;” we did it just by being correct.

I think I missed the cut-off date for talking about this week’s episode of “Lost,” but it’s kind of difficult.

For one thing, I feel guilty. Maybe I’m seeing something that’s not there, but it feels like the show’s in desperate-to-please mode, like a dog that’s been scolded for getting on the couch too many times and now he makes a point of showing you all the time how not on the couch he is right now. This last episode was all, “hey look, see we’re getting away from the Others camp and we’re focusing on the main characters again and we’re answering big questions from the first season and isn’t that what you wanted?” and I have to wince and say, “I really just wanted you to be better!”

And for another, I’m in danger of turning into one of them. The people who really just don’t seem to enjoy the show anymore but still watch it, either out of masochism or a defeatist “I guess that’s as good as it gets” mentality. And I really don’t dislike the show, and I’m not even as frustrated with it as a lot of other people are; it just seems like it’s always a relatively solid show that keeps reminding you how much better it could be.

This week’s episode was all about Juliet, which is fine by me. She’s the most interesting character they’ve got going now; again, unlike every other character in the series, she somehow gets more intriguing the more you find out about her history. We found out even more about her this episode, but they were all fairly insignificant details, and still nothing about the three year gap where she received her ninja kung fu training. And we still don’t know her real motivations. I was saying last week how cool it would be if she turned out to be a villain — this week’s non-twist wasn’t so much a shocker as it was coming to a fork in the plot and nudging things in one direction instead of the other. I’ve still got hope that we’ll find out more about why she’s doing what she’s doing, instead of discovering she’s just another Michael.

And again, Elizabeth Mitchell just does a great job with the part. She’s the only member of the cast these days (apart from Terry O’Quinn, I guess) who gives the impression that there’s really things going on inside her head, and she’s not just delivering lines. Her best scene was the showdown against Sayid and Sawyer. I read somewhere that it was completely implausible she could make them turn tail, but I totally bought it. It’s that look. That look of “I’m not angry, I’m just very, very disappointed in you.” That’s some black belt manipulation right there. And as she was walking away, she had the perfect expression of “holy shit I never expected that to work.”

Still, my mind began to wander. I kept thinking about how the show could be more interesting if they played around with the flashbacks, introducing an aspect of the unreliable narrator to them. Actually showed us how these events were remembered, instead of how they really happened. Maybe what Juliet remembers as being browbeaten by Ben into staying on the island, he remembers entirely differently. So you’re not just given a villain and This Week’s Shocking Twist^TM, but you have to interpret what happened for yourself.

But then, that’s the kind of thing you’re left to think about when your mind is wandering. And when you’re desperately forcing yourself not to think about inconsistencies. Like it’s still weird that they didn’t just move into the Others’ camp, but accepting that, why didn’t they at least take a shower first? Instead of walking through the jungle with caked-on mud and being delighted to find a stream to wash off in?

I’m glad that the episode ended as it did, because the idea that Juliet was given a complete run-down of Ethan’s entire plan, down to where he hid the medicine stash, and she still remembered every detail after this time, was straining credulity. (And I never notice that kind of thing.) As it turned out, that part ended up making sense, but in the Never-Ending Jenga Game that is Lost Episode Plausibility, the explanation of Claire’s abduction doesn’t make sense anymore. Even though it was a complete, exhaustive, plausible, and well-thought-out explanation, and it’s now been replaced with “we were careful to insert a magic radio frequency hemmoraghing device for just such an emergency.”

Speaking of which, I’m less convinced now that Ben & Juliet’s Scooby-Doo style exposition from a few episodes back was the clever self-referential comedy I’d thought it was at the time. It seems like all they do is have clandestine meetings together where they clumsily remind each other of what’s happening. “Boy, it sure was nice of your aunt to let us use her island for top-secret experiments in fertility and electromagnetism!” “You said it! I just hope we don’t run into a… sm-sm–sm—SMOKE MONSTER!”

(WARNING: Yuppie-in-denial complaining follows. If you’re the type who’s offended by the petulant whining of the over-privileged, you’ll want to skip this post. And a couple of the next posts, too. For that matter, you probably want to skip this whole blog.)

These past few months have been kind of a test of will power for me. I’ve had this irrational jones to get a new computer, one that I haven’t been quite able to justify. I’ve got a behemoth of a Windows PC that I hardly ever use anymore, and it’s just taking up desk space. And because it’s one of those flashy black Alienware cases, it feels like it’s mocking me for not using it — it’s like having a pimped-out motorcycle in the garage that you don’t really need anymore because you actually just prefer driving the minivan.

So I want to get rid of it, and get a Mac desktop instead. Even though my laptop does everything I need, it makes me uncomfortable at an OCD-level using it as my one and only computer, for reasons that only years of therapy would be able to explain.

But I’ve been able to keep it under control, all this time. I figured I’d wait until it was time to get a new monitor, and upgrade everything at once. Then I found a deal on exactly the monitor I wanted, at almost $200 less than it normally sells for, so I picked one up.

Then I said I’d wait until Christmas-season unemployment situation worked out, and I started getting income again. Almost immediately, I got a check from a contracting job, which was almost exactly the cost of a new machine (after taxes).

Then I said I’d wait until Apple updated its desktop Mac line, to get in at the beginning of a product cycle instead of at the end, like I usually do. And literally the day after I said this, they announced their overkill model, which has way more processors than I’d need at a price there’s no way in hell I’d ever pay for a machine. So that was a wash.

Then I figured I’d wait until they released the new version of OS X, so at least I’d get that included in the price. It was coming out “in Spring,” most likely early June, so it was only a couple of months to wait and see if the feeling subsided. Tonight they announced that the next version of OS X has been delayed until October.

There’s no way I can hold out until October. I’m really tempted to just buy the damn thing now and be done with it. And reading the comments in response to that post on ars technica, a few other people are saying the same thing: “At least now I don’t have to wait to buy a new Mac.”

Now, that’s kind of creepy. The whole “Mac users are a cult” concept is tired and played out, but I’m kind of alarmed. They announce a delay in the release of their OS, and my first impulse was to punish them by giving them a lot of money for a new computer? And I’m not the only one! I really want to get a pair of those They Live glasses to see if my computer is projecting brainwashing images at me while I work and sleep.

And seriously: if anybody out there is still a Windows fan and would like a still-reasonably-capable (AMD Athlon 64 2.66 GHz, ATI Radeon X800 XT Platinum w/256MB VRAM) PC for a reasonable price ($800 or best offer), send me an e-mail at my name at this domain. Friends don’t let friends use ebay.

Maybe you’ve heard about Telltale’s Sam & Max games, and you’ve had your little mouse-clicker thing hovering over the “buy” button, but you’ve stopped yourself. “I’m tempted,” you say, “but I’m a strict adherent of post-modernism, and I would only play a game with self-referential humor about videogames and the burgeoning ‘internet’ phenomenon that all the kids are talking about.”

Well that excuse won’t work anymore, chump, because their latest episode, “Reality 2.0,” is available now. Here’s the trailer (higher quality version here):

What’s that? You’ve got more reservations?

But I hate adventure games!
Hey, so do I! But once you start playing these episodic games, it’ll be as if you’d rediscovered a long-dead part of yourself. “This… this is what adventure games are like?” you’ll stammer, a tear forming in your eye, “I’m sorry… I… I never knew.”

I’m recovering from recent surgery. Am I subjecting myself to physical harm from the non-stop side-splitting hilarity?
Calm down, you pansy. It’s still a videogame, and everybody knows they’re still not as well-written as TV sitcoms.

I hate Chuck Jordan and everything he stands for. His participation alone is enough to dissuade me from buying the product.
I told you to stop reading my website, Mom. But for Episode 5, all you have to do is grit your teeth and force your way through the first 15 minutes or so. Everything I wrote is at the beginning.

How do I know that Telltale, Inc. is a name I can trust? I’m wary of internet purchases and Digital Rights Management, and if I buy a game with my own money, I want to be sure that I can still play it ten years from now.
Dude, relax. It’s like nine dollars. I’ve spent that much on a copy of Wired magazine that ended up sitting in a recycle bin after a month. Plus, there are games that I’ve worked on that are less than 10 years old, and I can’t play them anymore. This is the information age! Stuff changes quickly! And the jokes aren’t going to be as funny 10 years from now, anyway.

I thought you were going to get me a free copy.
Yeah, and I thought I’d be married with a house and kids and my first published novel by this age. Life is full of disappointments. Get used to it.

Fans of Lore Sjöberg’s, especially the Book of Ratings, should take a look at his latest experiment. I’m a fan. It’s one of the only cases where adding all the new media internet video podcast hoopla actually improves the original material.

Apparently, it is possible to be too ignorant of the state’s rights vs. federal rights issue, and too complacent in the idea of a Democratic majority in congress magically making everything better. I was totally ignorant of the RealID Act and that it’d progressed so far.

Ars Technica has an article about Real ID and how some states are refusing to adopt the standard. According to the Wikipedia article, California is one of the states eager to adopt it, so it’s still unclear what can be done by those of us who live in CA and are just anti-Federalist enough to be annoyed by the bill, but apparently not so politically savvy that we did anything about it when there was still time.

This Snopes article refutes the more tinfoil-hat level conspiracy concerns, but seems nonplussed about the bill’s legitimacy. I can remember growing up and hearing people in suburban Atlanta freaking out about UPC symbols, ATMs, and even credit cards being either government plots or The Mark of the Beast. So it’s a damn shame that legitimate complaints about this inane bill could come across as similar paranoia.

Going back to the Ars Technica entry, I think the problem is best summed up by this observation:

When considering the potential security implications of the Real ID act, it is worth noting that the 9/11 hijackers were all legal residents with proper identification.

Personally, I tend to be so skeptical of conspiracy theories and privacy paranoia that it could even be called naivete. But even if you dismiss the privacy concerns, the idea of increased federal bureaucracy with no foreseeable benefit should be alarming. A centralized mandate for identification from Washington, forcing the states to modify their already-existing systems to comply? With absolutely no effect on terrorism or illegal immigration, the two areas that homeland security is supposed to care about?

You don’t have to be a libertarian to think that’s pretty stupid, if not downright scary.

Normally, seeing my favorite things come together three separate times in one week would be downright eerie, but I don’t think Hellboy: Sword of Storms counts. For one thing, it’s old news. It was aired on Cartoon Network back in October, and due to a TiVo mishap, I’m just now catching it on DVD. For another thing, nerdy white American guys who think Japanese stuff is just radical is hardly some eclectic, obscure branch of fandom — it’s basically a demographic.

It’s not that hard to find fans of Hellboy, either — start by looking at the production of the comics or any of the adapations or spin-off projects, and just about everybody involved will confess to being a Hellboy fanboy. So the people making these things really love the source material. In the case of The Amazing Screw-on Head, you end up with a slavish recreation of the comic. That was an admirable effort, but came out a little bit cold, and also revealed the problems that can come when you try to adapt a very graphic comic art style to animation.

The new series doesn’t do that; they made a conscious effort to give it an art style different from the comics. According to the documentaries included on the DVD, it had to suggest Mignola’s style but at the same time he wanted something that would be more modern and streamlined. On top of all that, it had to be animatable on a television production’s budget. Personally, I’m not floored by the result — I think it’s fine, but if they were going to simplify the characters anyway, I wish they’d taken them a little bit further. The character designs regress into Disney Television Animation mode more than I would’ve liked. There are hints of the comic style all over the place (especially the hands, which is a good touch), but the characters frequently look too traditional and too “safe,” like something you’d see on any other TV action series cartoon.

Of course, this is criticism from a guy who knows pretty much nothing about art. And my disappointment that it didn’t go further doesn’t mean I disliked the movie; I’d even say it’s about as good as a TV-animated Hellboy series could possibly turn out. Watching the making-of documentaries, you could really tell that they put a lot of thought into the production, and that they made the right choices all along. And throughout the movie, you can really see what they were doing, even if you don’t entirely agree with how they did it.

As far as subject matter, it was obvious that I was going to be all over it. Most of the movie works like a survey course of The Obakemono Project. (Of course, it also wipes out my plans for NaNoWriMo this year, even though I swear I had the idea a year before I even heard about this movie). Mike Mignola and Guillermo del Toro mention that the original idea just came from wanting to see Hellboy with a samurai sword, and seriously, who wouldn’t want to see that? There are plenty of cool moments taken from the comics, from Japanese folklore in general, and images from classical Japanese art — there’s a great bit with the Gashadokuro, a giant skeleton that was also referenced in Pom Poko.

Apparently the second in the Hellboy Animated series, Blood and Iron, came out last month. I can’t blame the TiVo for missing that one; I was simply unaware that it was coming out. If anbody saw it, let me know how it turned out, because I’m going to have to wait until June to see it.

I’ve wasted way too much time today reading the internet hubub about how a webcomic was ripped off by an art thief. Actually, “art thief” isn’t as good a description as “some dude who makes crappy drawings from internet catchphrases and puts them on T-shirts and paintings and has made obscene millions doing so,” but I feel obligated to do my part in the nerd fight.

The whole thread where it went down is on somethingawful.com, but it’s interminable and filled with your standard internet “nerd rage,” as the victim points out. The highlights for me were the truly awful company started by the guy, and this article about his gallery showing in Vegas. Even without the clear-cut plagiarism charge, I don’t see how anybody can read that article after seeing his work and not just be filled with an ill-defined rage and a queasy feeling about the state of humanity.

There’s been a good bit of this going around; charges of lying or plagiarism followed by an internet outrage. There was James Frey’s smackdown on Oprah, then more recently the stand-up comedian slap-fight between Joe Rogan and Carlos Mencia over Mencia’s stealing comedy material, and now this.

What gets me is that all the cases have one major thing in common, one that frequently gets overlooked: the perpetrators all suck. Everybody made a big deal about how Frey lied, and how Mencia, and Dane Cook, and now Todd Goldman all steal. But people don’t give enough attention to the fact that they all put out really terribly awful shit, and make millions and millions of dollars off of it.

It was hard to get too incensed about the Rogan/Mencia spat, because I’m no fan of Rogan outside of “News Radio.” But as was the case with all these stories, you start reading little bits about it on the internet, and then start digging deeper and finding out more about these talentless hacks, and it just gets worse. I’d never seen Mencia’s TV show, but of course I had to go on YouTube and see this god-awful stupid video of his catch-phrase song, which just raises the question “The dude makes this and people’s biggest complaint is that he steals material?” The only defense of Mencia I ever saw was this blog post from one of the series’ writers, where he says that Rogan was just jealous, and that the jokes in question were so obvious anybody could’ve made them. Seriously, that’s his defense. The guy gets paid to write this crap, and he justifies it by saying that it’s not plagiarism, it’s making completely obvious and uninspired commentary that absolutely anyone could’ve come up with first. In other words, he’s a total hack.

The T-Shirt guy fiasco is even stupider. Here’s a compilation of thefts and alleged thefts. What bears repeating: this is an intellectual property argument over novelty tees, and not even particularly clever ones. And the guy has made an obscene amount of money selling them. And his defense, at least at the moment, is that he “unintentionally” took the design from a submission and didn’t research it enough. Note that the guy isn’t just talentless and dishonest; he’s a total douchebag. But back up a step to really appreciate his “defense:” the guy takes drawings “submitted” by other people, paints them on a canvas with his name on it, and charges thousands of dollars for them. And they sell. I can’t help feeling like we’re all victims in this scenario.

Whatever happened to stealing and lying to come up with something good? Self-important hipsters have been saying for years that the only way to really make a lot of money in the arts and entertainment is to make stupid, non-challenging crap that’s been dumbed down for the mass market. Despite the overwhelming amount of evidence, I just can’t believe that’s true.

I’ve still got my theory, but I’m afraid it might be overly optimistic. I like to think that the reason these cases get so much attention is because there are still enough people who get it and recognize them as being talentless hacks. Once a revelation of lying or plagiarism comes out, all the anger isn’t just at the dishonesty, but at the idea of being such a bottom-feeder and still being obscenely successful from it. Outrage over the awfulness of the result material is what gives it its initial traction, and it snowballs from there. Most people really want to see good, original, intelligent stuff. The internet rage is really about quality, not just money or copyright.

And the fact that “Robot Chicken” is not only still in production, but it regularly gets some of the highest ratings on the Cartoon Network, is because people are just naturally inclined to be nice and give a helping hand to the mentally challenged.

Just humor me on this one. I want to believe.