The A-Word

Ladies and Gentlemen,

I want to apologize to my lawyer friends, of whom some are reading this, for my recent lawyers-are-assholes joke. Such jokes are unfeeling and unnecessary.

To give you an example, The U.S. Postal Service issued a series of stamps commemorating famous lawyers, but they had to withdraw it because nobody knew which side to spit on. I mean, who would tell a joke like that? You’d have to be an A-word.

Speaking thereof, I have noticed that men and women tend to use the A-word differently. When a woman calls someone an asshole she means he’s evil; a man usually means he’s a fool.

Toby’s a fool. If you’re not making a fool of yourself, he says in The Cad, you’re not alive.

Here he is getting unstupid, sort of.

Here’s Boccaccio’s The Stupid Friar. (And here’s the book.)

And here’s perhaps the best we can do under the circumstances.

Feeling my way,

Robert

Robert MacLean is an independent filmmaker. His recent The Light Touch is on Amazon Prime, Tubi and Scanbox, and his 7-minute comedy is an out-loud laugh. He is also a novelist, a playwright, a blogger, a YouTuber, a film reviewer, a literary critic, and a stand-up comic poet. Born Toronto, PhD McGill, taught at Canadian universities, too cold, live Greece, Irish citizen. No brains but an intellectual snob.

“Politeness is organized indifference.”— Paul Valéry

The Light Touch on Amazon Prime

The Natural Wish to Be Robert MacLean

The Devil's Pleasure Garden