When Man's Laughter Becomes Manslaughter

From the "They Can Smell Fear and Weakness...and They Eat Their Wounded" file, the headline of the article in the sports newspaper the man next to me was reading in the train yesterday:

"For Members of the Media, It is 'Ahō Tarō' Now"

Aho being the Japanese equivalent of "jackass."

Then there was the judgment of The Middle School Student when she read the list of Asō Tarō's recent kanji reading mistakes published in today's Tokyo Shimbun:

"What? He misread that? Now, you gotta admit, for an adult, that's pretty sad. I mean, a sixth-grader is supposed to know how that word is pronounced."

The hip Ambassador from Mangaland Prime Minister is just not wowing them the way he was supposed to be. Indeed, more and more scribes are suggesting that the prime minister's reading habits and his wealth and high status, rather than making him "groovy," have instead left him in a state of arrested intellectual development.

The Middle School Student, on the PM, once more:

"I mean, come on, look at him. After he finally winds up his stint as prime minister, he will have an immediate job offer from TBS to play the bad guy in an episode of Mito Kōmon. "

Which, as anyone who has ever watched Mito Kōmon knows, means that the PM is dead meat.