Ok, given that Ghettoputer is staking out his ground as the all-seeing, all-loving, all-beneficent, Stuff White People Like® Gormogon lately, the Volgi must rule he’s dead wrong on Barbara Boxer and the general. Twice. And the Czar is right.

The Volgi was going to stay out of this, not really giving a damn, and figuring that ’Puter’s etiquette and the Czar’s psychology just happened to read the situation differently. Well, having watched the tape, the Czar is all over it. Boxer comes off horribly condescending and patronizing (to a brigadier general). She is the one displaying a disregard for etiquette.

She’s ignorant of the military practice in which “sir” and “ma’am” are deferential titles. She ignores his addressing her as “Madam Chairman” at the beginning of his remarks and apparently takes, seemingly out of nowhere, his use of “ma’am” as an insult.

Moreover, publicly correcting a person is an act of disrespect. The next time Ghettoputer is at his town council meeting, complaining about the aliens’ leaving scorch marks on his hydrangeas, and Councilman Smith says to him, “Don’t call me ‘sir,’ Mr. ’Puter, I am a Councilman and you will address me as such,” perhaps he’ll understand that the offense to politeness is on her side.

And compounding the offense to politeness, the wheedling, passive-aggressive tone she adopts (“I worked so hard…”) is insulting on its face, and the peremptory, dismissive tone in which she concludes makes it clear that she considers herself to have been the victim of lèse-senateuse.

GorT’s 23rd-century mind-reading device reveals that her pique is a mixture of

• 60% curdled ’70s feminism
• 30% boorishness and
• 10% Vietnam-era contempt for the military

But that doesn’t matter. It’s just rude.

Confucius, Œc. Vol.

Don’t ask impertinent questions like that jackass Adept Lu.