Over 100 years ago the English, for entertainment, went to a local madhouse, Bedlam, to laugh at the loonies. Because it is my turn, I went to The York Times. Where, I presume, the premises are at least cleaner, after mortgaging their building and borrowing over $200 million from a Mexican financier. At 14%.

Bob Herbert has delivered himself of a column in which he is I think trying to be more of a feminist than Susan Faludi, a spoiled woman who who can explain away cold, hard facts by shooting the messenger.

Herbert leads with

"I actually look good. I dress good, am clean-shaven, bathe, touch of cologne -- yet 30 million women rejected me," wrote George Sodini in a blog that he kept while preparing for this week's shooting in a Pennsylvania gym in which he killed three women, wounded nine others and then killed himself.

One nut job provides evidence of a sick society. Well, if your reflexive mode is blame America first, it does. Mr. Herbert drivels on in this way until just a bit later we have

We have become so accustomed to living in a society saturated with misogyny that the barbaric treatment of women and girls has come to be more or less expected.

Proof, Bob? Give us some. The last two Secretaries of State were women. Two women have run for Vice President. One was just confirmed to the Supreme Court. Nearly 60% of law-school graduates are women. Over half the college and high-school graduates are women. Does any of this matter? No, not if you haven't been taking in any information except sound bites for the last several decades.

We profess to being shocked at one or another of these outlandish crimes, but the shock wears off quickly in an environment in which the rape, murder and humiliation of females is not only a staple of the news, but an important cornerstone of the nation's entertainment.

This he merely pronounces, ex cathedra, and I suppose that the NYT still thinks of itself as a cathedral. A mortgaged one. And, no, I won't stop crowing about that. It's too good.

To people of Herbert's mind-set, or prejudice-set, America is bad. We have a culture of violence. Guns shoot people. People are not sick until America makes them so. So we are the evilest nation on earth. Well, it's easy money for Herbert. He doesn't have to think, and evidently the readers of the NYT like it. The decreasing numbers of readers at the NYT like it.

In Infidel, Ayaan Hirsi Ali writes of the Muslim practice of female circumcision, and how it was performed on her. She describes how in Holland, where she worked as a translator for Somali, a Somali girl who was sewn up as a child, to keep her value (Muslim women are chattel) begged to be sewn up again after a gynecological procedure, out of terror that she would be killed by her relatives for bringing disgrace on her family.

Muslim women who are raped are often stoned to death. Sometimes their sisters are gang-raped by the religious police, because the raped woman was obviously bringing the rape on herself.

Mr. Herbert is wringing his hands over the only nation on earth which is trying to do something about Islamic excesses, while totally ignoring these excesses.

I nominate Mr. Herbert for Silliest Column of the Week. Walsingham, Shepherd, Ospurt, Vaughn, Site Admin, I've done my time in the barrel this week. Your turn for the next installment of Bedlam, er, The New York Times.

Just don't let Pinch see you laughing. Oh hell, why not? It might shake him out of his denial and there might be hope of paying back the loans. Wouldn't want Carlos Slim to lose his $250 million. At 14%.