DUDS LOBBED FROM THE WEST COAST. This guy in California points to this guy in California, in a coordinated attack on New York legend Jimmy Breslin.

Guy #2, one Hinkle, claims Breslin "energetically supported the smoking ban" under which we suffer. Where does he get that? I can't find any citation, and it certainly rings dissonant with the lifelong rover-boy behavior of Breslin himself. (Might Hinkle be thinking of Albany County Executive and anti-smoking zealot Michael Breslin?)

Or maybe Breslin made a joke about it and Hinkle misapprehended. He doesn't seem to get Breslin in the main. In the article Hinkle does quote, Breslin affects to favor a ban on dogs. This is something he's done before, and to those of us who enjoy his work, it is obviously a joke, a way of filling the column inches on lazy days, a bagatelle. Yet Hinkle takes him quite seriously, in fact calls him "demented," says he "went over the lid" (? Is that California slang? Will I see it on sitcoms soon?)

I suspect they're really after JB for his continued production of articles like this, which are not about dogs, but about the kind of people some people treat like dogs.