Washington D.C. - A Dilbert comic last week offered this sage observation in the form of Dogbert’s First Law of
Business: “Reality is always controlled by the people who are most insane.” We find confirmation of this in recent headlines.

It was almost exactly a year ago in this space that we discussed “Hapless Headlines and Other Heady Happenings,” a tableau of Washington Post headlines such as “White House Admits Felons Not Appropriate Guests.” The Post’s subtle humorists in the headline-writing department have been working overtime lately and have produced some new gems. Back in January, on the eve of the Pope’s visit to Cuba, the Post turned heads with this howler: “Castro and the Pope: Opponents With Shared Values.” (Maybe they bumped into each other in the ethical dry goods aisle at “True Value” hardware store.) Just to make sure everyone got the joke, the subhead read: “While Differing on Religion, Both Embrace Altruism and Reject Unbridled Capitalism.”

Then last Saturday the Post did it again: “Atheists Assemble to Lobby and Share Beliefs.” Share beliefs?
This must be a short conversation: “I believe in nothing. You?” A solipsist’s convention would be more
scintillating than this tedious crowd. These are fairly tame compared to this recent headline spotted in a Sierra
Club tabloid:

“Family Flees Nazi Europe Only To Be Threatened By Unneeded Tollways And Sprawl In Lake County, IL.” The
visual images here are easy: Sport-utility vehicles are the Panzers of the 90s, the highway department the
analogue of the SS, and homebuilders the equivalent of the Gestapo. File this one in the “Get a Grip” folder.
But the clear winner of this year’s hapless headline award goes to Publius, a normally sober and
straight-down-the-middle academic journal devoted to the study of federalism.

The latest issue offers the following article: “The Last Suffrage Movement: Voting Rights for Persons with
Cognitive and Emotional Disabilities.” Can this article really mean what the headline suggests? You wouldn’t
believe me if I told you, so let the three authors of this article speak for themselves: “Many voters base
their electoral choices on emotional reactions or other ‘irrational’ judgments. Further, most voters have very
little knowledge about issues at stake in any particular election, candidates’ stands on the issues, or political
facts such as who holds specific elected offices. It cannot be argued, therefore, that people with cognitive
or emotional disabilities should be prevented from voting simply because they are presumed to be incapable of
gathering, comprehending, and applying the information necessary to act intelligently, given that the vast
majority of voters appear to be similarly ‘handicapped.’”

You might think of this as the Joseph Heller theory of democracy: normal voters are crazy people, too, so
perhaps certifiably crazy people can cast votes just as well as “normal” people. I suspect this is only a halfway
house to extending the voting franchise to trees, rocks, and animals, long a goal of the environmental movement. If you think I jest, please see the now very old but still famous law-review headline: “Should Trees Have Standing?”

-- Steven Hayward