The Platonic Ideal of a Michael Column

There are certain times where it makes sense to pull out the esoteric stops.  When Fisking a writer who spent a chapter of his polemic against the South arguing that SEC football is overrated, it comes in handy to drop C. Wright Mills, Sheeple, Jubal Early, and Joseph McCarthy.  If I’m defending a region against a writer who no doubt believes that we are slack-jawed yokels, it helps to dispel that notion quickly.  If someone came up with a drinking game for my columns, this one would check all of the major boxes:

• Using Sagarin and SRS to prove a point;
• Advocating the use of a big sample size over a smaller one;
• Mocking Gary Danielson for being a shill;
• Taking the position that Auburn should have won the national title in 1983;
• Deploying least one Latin legal phrase;
• Using numbered arguments;
• Making at least one ad hominem attack that I just cannot resist, in this case “I guess these are the rigorous research skills and commitment to precise language that one learns as the features editor of Maxim”; and
• Referencing World War II;

All this column was missing was a James Bond reference, an entire paragraph delivered in sarcastic voice, and at least one shot at Northeastern media figures.  My goal at some point in my life is to check every one of these boxes.