In today’s news: “Cyberbullies.” Teenage girls are staging beat-downs of their classmates and posting them online so that they can become “famous.” My Yale classmate, Martin Kihn, has written a best-seller called “A$$hole: How I Got Rich & Happy by Not Giving a Damn about Anyone and How You Can, Too.” John McCain, whose nickname in high school was “McNasty,” has been overheard calling his colleagues “assholes”; a new report claims McCain called his wife a “cunt.” The war in Iraq rumbles on.

“Kindness is the golden chain by which society is bound together.”—Goethe