Why Patty can't read

I think Patty can read, he just prefers not to. And that includes the award-winning scribe's non-reading of his own hyperlinks.

The troupe says it got the name from a Che Guevara quote about how America is a monstrousness to be fought.

Well, no. They said they got it from the Cuban essayist José Martí, who was dead 30 years before Che Guevara was born.

Martí was astonished by the "inviolable right of freedom of speech which all U.S. citizens possessed." Martí applauded the United States' Constitution which allowed freedom of speech to all its citizens, no matter what political beliefs they had.

Monstrousness, that Constitution, whose fundamental democratic precepts José Martí felt should be adopted south of the border.

But Martí wasn't quite as enamored with U.S. foreign policy, imperialist as it was toward Latin America in the 19th century. Not that you'd ever hear Patrick McIlheran criticize government policy or even individual political leaders personally (except for always).

Or publish a correction, invented pagan gods forbid.

Here's a question: Would it constitute performance art if you went and, nauseated by the enormity of the waste [a $25K stimulus check], upchucked along the parade route?

Perhaps, but guess who would have to hose down the sidewalk.