OK, enough with the encomiums, and the nil nisi bonum portion of the proceedings -- and that goes for you, too, Mittens. Isn't there a longstanding and deeply held position somewhere that you should be changing? Aren't there four angry seniors on a mall somewhere to whom you should be truckling? It's not that long until 2012, dude, and your chance to remind all of America why it came to loathe you two years ago.

Of course, our former governor loved ol' Juan Antonio. Why wouldn't he? What we have here is a dead guy who had far too much of a sweet-tooth for actual fascists, who fancied himself royalty, who presided over the single most corrupt institution in the history of organized sports -- and one of the most corrupt institutions ever devised by man, at least since we stopped electing Borgia popes -- until the way that institution did business overflowed so garishly that a command decision was made to transform the International Olympic Committee from a vehicle of international bribery to a vehicle of old-fashioned international crony capitalism. (Hi, again, Mittens!) That this is considered upon his death to have been a major improvement in the way the IOC does business is the best measure of how truly rancid the whole Olympic "movement" is.

So, anyway, there I was today, listening to the preposterously reverential treatment this hopeless old grifter was getting on NPR, of all place, when the reporter tells me about how inconvenienced old Samaranch was when he finally got called to account by the U.S. Congress. Why he had to empty his pockets and go through a metal detector, just like a common person, the reporter breathlessly recalled. My only regret is that he didn't have to walk through in leg irons.