Self-imposed stupidity.

Fallen Pegasus once commented that if it were not for Arts & Letters Daily, I would have nothing interesting worth writing about.

Sometimes, though, a story so infuriating I just can't consider it dispassionately floats to the top of the pond and... I have no idea what to say. Just read Dereliction Express, the first essay in that collection, and tell me it is not profoundly sad and outrageous and infuriating all at once:

I'll tell you why these shops didn't work out, said the former ambassador [from Malawi], addressing the table at large. When Africans run businesses their families come and stay with them and eat all their food-- just live off them. As soon as an African succeeds in something he has his family cadging from him. Not so?

That is true, brother, the other man said.

And we are not cut out for this shop-keeping and book-keeping and (he winked at me) this number crunching.