I Apologize In Advance

Everyone, I guess, has a phrase or song lyric that strikes you as wrong. Some people have several. One of mine is the phrase "Last Best Hope." You hear it often, most recently in the subtitle of conservative douchebag Bill Bennett's new book. Here's what I don't understand. If a scheme, or idea, or institution is, in fact, the best hope of accomplishing something, then why do we save it for last? Why did we try our least promising prospects first? "OK men, we've got two ways we can do this. One is the best hope, we'll save it for last, the other is, frankly, our stupidest hope. We'll try that one first."

I don't believe in a "Last hope" anyway. It's kind of an oxymoron, the whole point of hope is to keep trying. Maybe our best hope didn't pan out, but now let's try "It's a crazy idea, but it just might work!" There's always hope.

And speaking of conservative douchebag Bill Bennett, why is it that "douchebag" is an insult? I can understand why a term like "asshole" is insulting, it implies that you smell of poo. But a douchebag performs a noble, cleansing service, and is generally considered to be a benign item. (Although this government website disagrees.) Why isn't toenail clipper an insult?

OK then. We now return to our regularly scheduled programming.