YOU KNOW, THIS LOOKS LIKE A PARODY — right down to the picture accompanying the column. And it is. It’s just an unintentional one.

UPDATE: Reader Chris Hall writes:

It looks like Daniel is taking the President’s successful handling of the War on Terror even harder than the recent break-up of Phish, which was admittedly a blow for me as well.

MathGirl, who is about Daniel’s age, I believe, is less charitable:

I’m sure that you have noticed the seemingly endless articles by leftist authors which begin,”There’s a madman with weapons of mass destruction, intent on destroying civilization with a unilateralist war. He has already committed genocide against thousands, if not millions of helpless women and children. He respects no U.N. sanction or international law. The world community must act to stop this dictator immediately! Saddam Hussein? No, George W. Bush!”

Given the number of times that the left has trotted out this chestnut in the last nine months, shouldn’t someone in the blogosphere attach a name to this type of slander? Anticlimax and bathos just don’t seem to cut it.

I suppose it’s a little uncharitable to pick on a young pseudo-intellectual such as Daniel Moore, but I surely wouldn’t go to a psychologist who posits wild and unsubstantiated theories about the metal state of someone he’s never even met while making up biographical details to support them.

Me neither. Finally, reader Matt Sitar sends this link and notes:

“Undeclared” was a short-lived TV show about a group of first year college students. Daniel Moore seems to bear more than a passing resemblance to the character ‘Marshall’ on the show (third pic on the top row). Marshall would best be described as a lovable doofus.

Not sure what to make of this one.

The unfortunate thing is that, thanks to the web, when you write sophomoric drivel for your college paper people all over the world can make fun of it. And via the magic of Google’s cache, it lasts forever. Oops.