Overheard

Ben Shapiro, chairman of the nationwide Hillel House junior anti-sex league (it's a splinter group), on the Dennis Miller show (I wasn't watching on purpose, I swear):

"The youth are leaning towards Bush...The chances of bringing back the draft are about the same as the chances of John Kerry marrying for love."

Scuse me? Here's how it went down: Miller asked his guests to guess who was ahead among younger voters. So they guessed. Shapiro made a few asinine generalizations and deduced from them that Bush would win the youth vote unless Kerry could scare a sufficient number into believing that Bush would re-implement conscription. Since no one at CNBC bothered to inform Miller what the state of the race among younger voters actually is, I'll gladly do it myself: Kerry leads by 13 among college students (surprise!).

As for Shapiro's bitchy little swipe, there are two approaches I would have taken had it been me sitting next to Shapiro and not Tom Harkin's daughter. The first (and probably best, considering the audience), would be to straightfacedly ask Shapiro what he knows about Kerry's marriage, and how, and from whom, and continue the line of interrogation politely but firmly until Shapiro either admits that he's talking out of his ass or else soils himself with rage. The second approach---which I'd prefer in abstracto---would be to point out that Shapiro is a virgin, laugh at him until cut off by the host, and then gratuitously refer to him as "virgin" or "virgin boy" or "the guys who's never seen a real live vagina before" again and again for the duration of the segment. Bonus points for speculating openly about how often a 20 year old virgin must masturbate.