Welcome to the inaugural edition of “This Week in Failures”, where we’ll compile and excoriate all the biggest demonstrations of precocious, blundering human idiocy of the past seven day cycle. I intend on maintaining and endeavoring on this feature with regular and expeditious frugality every week, so you can be rest assured that even if there aren’t daily updates for a while, stupid-doers will not be able to escape my wrath. But enough with the protracted overture, let’s get to the show.

And this week’s biggest non-dietary losers are….

1. Jimmy Carter- Already my nominee for the worst president in American history (for his callous, shameless, disgraceful and unbelievably imbecilic betrayal and selling-out of the Shah of Iran, which resulted in the fall of secular free-market Iran, the United States biggest ally in the MIddle-East (even arguably bigger than Israel at the time) and subsequent insurgent of the Islamic Revolution and the rise of the Islamic Republic, the greatest enemy of the free world today and epitomizing bar none the most damning geopolitical miscalculation of the 20th century, an unforgivable gesture of gross ineptitude on Carter’s part), this senile old toad is now as we speak in warm talks with the leadership of the genocidal zealots of Hamas.

This absurd little publicity stunt is purported to being an attempt to open avenues of “diplomatic relations” with the Palestinians, but its plain as day what’s actually at play here: Carter is a long-time Islamist apologist and collaborator whom gleefully anticipated the insurrection of the “visionary and humanitarian” Ayatollah Khomeni, and has long expressed his disdain for Israel and has instead sympathized with the causes of such venerable statesmen as Yasser Arafat.

This latest manifestation of shoddy Carterian statescraft is just another extension of his inherent anti-American, anti-Israeli sensibilities. And lets be clear here, Carter doesn’t really give a damn about the plight of the Palestinians, by cirvumventing talks with moderates like Palestinian Authority leader Mahmoud Abbas and instead electing to collude with Hamas, the figurehead of Palestinian radicalism, Carter discredits and undermines the very people who are the only chance of a reasonable settlement in the lands of Jerusalem. This isn’t diplomacy, this is self-righteous, treacherous egoism, some more final sputterings by a deranged and squalid old fool seeking to sustain what importance he may attribute to himself. Jimmy Carter, the persistent international man of mediocrity, and today’s Biggest Failure of the Week.

2. J.K. Rowling- I have to say, I’ve always held a sort of admiration for Rowling. Not for her books per se, they’re entertaining but hardly anything to sensationalize about. But its precisely this factor that makes her so remarkable, as she was able to catalyze a body of fairly conventional childrens fantasy fiction into a sprawling, $4 billion hegemonic global media empire, going from an impoverished cafe-shop manuscript composer on welfare to one of the richest women in the world with an aggregate wealth far surpassing even her own Queen of England. Of course only a sycophantic Potterhead would dare suggest that the literary excellence exuded by the series is of such a high-caliber level to fully deserve the unparalleled wealth its attained. But that being said, she got two generations of kids reading again, and hers is the epitomy of the upward-mobility “rags to riches” success story, and htere’s something to be commended about that.

But this respect that I had long held for her has sharply plummeted as of late. J.K. Rowling has filed a legal injunction against one Peter Vander Ark, an ex-librarian and schoolteacher and the webmaster of a site by the name of “Harry Potter Lexicon”, one of the oldest and most widely-circulated Potter fansites in existence; it serves as a cumulative non-Wiki operating Potter online encyclopedia. The circumstances of the injunction capitulate a copyright infringement allegation, as Ark was intending on publishing his own book entitled “Harry Potter Lexicon” which would consolidate the information on the website’s databse into a hardcover reference index, an action Rowling deems illegal. She claims that is is her intention to release her own encyclopedic volume in the future, and the presence of Ark’s book would not only trespass upon her copyright-protected domain and curtail her sales, but also even completely stultify her creative faculties. As a matter of fact, Rowling was literally sobbing in New York court on Monday, woefully ruminating that Ark’s actions have rendered her writng capabilities incapacitated, preventing her from writing her next novel.

Now, this sounds like the stuff of a Pythonian absurdist sketch, that’s how nonsensical this is. There are two dimensions to this story that must be fully realized before truly appreciating the stark ridiculousness of Rowling’s conduct:

a. The Ethical Imperative- You have one of the most powerful literary moguls on the face of the planet threatening to impeach the character and free-speech rights of the quintessential unbeknownst “little guy”, the world’s most frothing and obsessive Potter fan, and all for publishing a piece of supplementary companion literature, what’s essentially a 400 page extension of devoted patronage. By Ark’s own admission the book is merely an “unofficial fan tribute”, simply arranging all the canonical material of the series into a compacted reference guide. And he is being besmirched for this?

The Legal Imperative- But more importantly than the shamefulne4ss of Rowling’s behavior is the sheer fact that she has no case. There is simply no such thing as intellectual property right monopoly, and this is precisely the sort of jurisdiction Rowling is attempting to wield. No court has ever given sanctioned this sort of copyright-authoritarianism, there’s no precedent for it, no case to be had. What we do have is a long history of ancillary companion compositions functioning as supplements to various literary texts, dating back centuries to days of Coleridge and Wordsworth and beyond. Anyone can stroll into a bookstore or library and find countless tomes acting as unofficial reference tomes for bodies of fiction: atlases for the worlds of Tolkien, indexes archiving the chronicles of Star Trek, the list is unending. These works are an established component of the literary macrocosm, and if Rowling’s ill-conceived legal maneuvers succeed (which I suspect they won’t, she’s got history and an elite team of Stanford Law mercenaries against her side), it could potentially consequent in the contravention and resulant utter dissolution of an entire sub-genre of fiction.

I know that many have charged in the past that Rowling’s effects on literature as a whole have been corrosive, that she has but these contentions pale in comparison to the terrible, almost sinister business she has now entrenched herself. Decided in her favor, the casualties incurred by these legal proceedings would not merely include Peter Vander Ark, but the entire framework of literary publication as a whole. Ms. Rowling needs to take a deep breath, bless God for the exorbitant and highly over-accentuated good tidings the world has delivered her, observe some code of humility and austerity and cease with her repulsively contrived and unprovoked and unconvincing blubbering, desist with this nonsensically frivolous legal gesture, return to Edinburgh and get back to the writing desk where she belongs. Until then, this whole laughable affair will forever remain on her record as a blemish of failure.

3. BitterGate- First, I have to say I find it hilarious how the word “gate” is so insouciantly employed as a suffix nowadays, basically attributed to any “controversy” of tepid magnitude. In any case, this whole business with Obama blathering on about small towns “clinging to their guns and religion out of bitterness” was less of an issue than the context from which it arose. Many are now adorning the mantle of “elitism” to Obama for these comments, and I can understand that, although the man is deserving of far more severe indictments at this point. Most people hold affiliations with their church because of the perceived sense of community, tradition, and moral cultivation. And people want to hold on to their guns because they have the constitutional right to do so, it’s as simple as that. Neither of these phenomena have anything intrinsic to do with resentment arising from economic downturns, and clearly Obama attempt to foment a salient correlation that isn’t there was just another demonstration of his opportunistic and manipulative nature. To be fair, it would be flagrantly fallacious to charge that there wasn’t an iota of truth embedded in Obama’s drivel, there surely are a number of people whom seek solace in religion out of disillusionment with the problems of the real world, but that’s about it in that regard. As for the talk about guns, that was self-evidently just more goonish pandering to the ever unimportant liberal anti-NRA vote bracket.

Further, its positively outrageous and the display of the height of the hypocritical that someone like Barack Obama, whom has maintained a 20 year affectionate relationship of comradery with insane, despotic religious fascists and frauds the likes of Jeremiah Wright and Louis Farrakhan, is now able to be placed on a pedestal, slobbering didactic drivel criticizing the religious practices of others. Another exemplification of the grand and gratuitous cosmic paradox that is liberalism.

Its also worth pointing out the mostly ignored, and probably most peculiar third arm of Obama’s babble, that small-town Americans are “harbor an attitude of antipathy and anti-trade”. This would be really curious if it wasn’t so ironically asinine an utterance. Sure, some small towns oppose free-trade, but who’s the biggest arbiter of anti-commerce mentality and legislation? Who can always be counted on to rally against Walmart’s presence in rural America, even though its been catagorically proven to be an overwhelmingly positive source of economic boon? Who is it that has struggled against NAFTA, even though its uncontestably been a vehicle for rescuing people from the thralls of poverty and overall economic enhancement? Who is it that has historically been the offical “anti-trade party”? That’s right, liberals. So what the hell is Obama talking about? Is anyone even listening to him? Does he even listen to himself?

But what’s really significant and revealing about this whole episode is not Obama’s words themselves, as stupid as they were, but to whom they were spoken to. Obama was entertaining his true flock, delivering platitudes to an audience of San Francisco latte-lapping liberal losers, high-society pseudo-intellecutal poseurs and sophisticated nihilists that comprise of the pathetic echelon of openly communist leftist wingmen that make up the core base of the Democrats, the loyalist wingmen whom are scarcely seen on national television for fear of the tumultuous media blowback that would be inflicted, but secretly puppeteer the entire operation of the party. The Marxist Mafia, the monkeys behind the curtain, these are the boorish, ravenous cannibals that Obama secretly is catering to and has the most affinity with.

It must be fully recognized that this occurrence was not explicitly staged or intentional, not the generic Obamaspeak substantively-devoid soundbites for the sheeple masses we are so accustomed to by now. This was recorded at a closed, untelevised meeting deep in the bowels of Californian neo-anarchist bohemia, the opposite of a deliberate press stunt. For once, we actually heard what Obama really thinks, speaking to people who think like him. The fact that so many Americans, even Democrats, were hurt by his comments only further exemplifies the fact that Americans don’t have the slightest clue who this political insurgent is. But as his meta-narrative of a racist, hard-leftist terror sympathizer becomes more and more illuminated, his prospects of electibility become more and more vaporous. Keep it coming Barack.

The most amusing thing about this whole development though was the unbelievable crassness and fabricated response of the Clinton campaign, wherein Hillary Rodham pretended as if she was deeply offended by Obama’s remarks because she was raised a small-town girl and cared greatly about the “rich traditions of gun ownership” in America, even though she was raised in an ivy-league family and has spent over 15 years campaigning against the right to bear arms. I guess in lieu of her vicious lie about Bosnia, where the lives of countless people were concerned, this latest convulsion of pathological untruth seems much more banal by comparison. But I guess her lying has gotten to the point where we’ve been desensitized, we can’t really see anything past this unscrupulous moron anymore, or leftists in general for that matter.

Phew, damn, that was quite an enumerated condemnation. Why are there so many failures? Why must I be the only one fighting the good fight?

Well, its a dirty job, but somebody’s got to do it. And this was only the first installment, let the fun begin.