And to the myriad of conservatives who sent me hate mail after the show claiming that I and Obama are imbeciles and included a list of every stupid thing our President has ever done I assure you that his day in monologue sun will come and all the whining in the world won't make the public ridicule him any sooner.
Archaic definitions for fool include "imbecile, idiot, mentally defective, silly, stupid devoid of wisdom".
Former President Nicolas Sarkozy famously lamented, for instance, that "La Princesse de Clèves," a 17th-century novel, had been included by a "sadist or an imbecile" in an examination for entry-level state administrative posts.
Those classed as defective could include vagrants, inebriates, drug addicts, prostitutes, perverts, imbeciles, deaf-mutes, the blind, the insane and epileptics — totaling, in one estimate, 9.5 million people, almost one-quarter of Britain's population.
Such laws were upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1927, with Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes writing the majority opinion that included the famous phrase, "Three generations of imbeciles are enough".
There are textiles and miniatures, tiles and musical instruments, and moralistic Iranian pottery from the 10th-century, including a plate with calligraphic script that reads: "Beware of the imbecile: do not socialise with him".
It was an irreverent introduction to all things Yiddish, including a crash course in the endless list of Yiddish words that mean imbecile.
These include two books about slavery, another about American racism, and Adam Cohen's "Imbeciles," about the eugenics movement, which Andrea DenHoed, on this Web site, called "a book full of shocking anecdotes".
