Granted, I didn't read the New York Times op-ed page during the Times Select era --- heckuvah job, Pinchy --- so I don't know what intellectual atrocities might have been committed there over the past couple of years. Granted, further, I don't have a very detailed sense of what the NYT op-ed page looked like more than a couple of decades ago. Granted, finally, that for all I know she may have been a fine editorial page editor. Still, Gail Collins' Thanksgiving Day Massacre of an op-ed is surely a contender for the title of most inane, shallow, self-obsessed, puerile, half-baked, insulting to readers, and downright unnecessary column ever to appear in the pages of the Grey Lady. And this is the paper that publishes Maureen Dowd.

Collins, you see, has two criteria by which she will judge the fitness of presidential candidates of any party for the office they seek, both arrived at upon reflection on the missteps of the Bush Administration.

Criterion #1: Candidates should not value loyalty over competence in their subordinates. So far, so good; it's certainly true that Bush let Alberto Gonzales, Donald Rumsfeld et al. stay in the cabinet long past their expiration dates, not to mention Bush's staffing of important executive branch agencies and foreign affairs posts with Republican party hacks and graduates of Pat Robertson's "law school." Collins devotes her first graf to criterion #1. The rest is given over to:

Criterion #2: Candidates should not exercise too much, and if they do exercise, they shouldn't enjoy it. Seriously. That's what she believes. Or pretends to believe, and wastes column inches in the most influential broadsheet in the country doing so. Because Bush exercised a lot, and seemed to like it. And we don't want another Bush. Ergo, Hillary, who doesn't go for much more than an occasional walk, would be an ideal president. Obama and Romney, on the other hand, are alarmingly fit. Therefore they'd be disasters.

Similarly, Hitler was a vegetarian painter. So we definitely don't want to elect any vegetarians or painters. Also, Kim Jong-Il claims to be a highly skilled jet pilot, opera composer, movie producer, and probably the greatest golf talent the world has ever seen. And though his claims can't be verified, we need to be extra-cautious in a post-9/11 environment (one percent doctrine and all that), so any presidential candidates who have partaken in any of these hobbies have an obligation to drop out of the race for the good of the country. (Bush was a jet pilot too, so that's double trouble.)

I'm really at a loss to excerpt anything. You'll have to read the whole thing --- and preferably from a distance, with your eyes crossed like with those 3-D puzzle books from the 90s --- to fully appreciate it. But beware, if you gaze for long into an abyss, Gail Collins gazes also into you. I won't be held responsible if reading the op-ed pulls down your IQ. One thing I'm very thankful for this Feast of Thanksgiving is that I took the GRE before reading Collins.