Let’s start out by assuming Michael Jackson is guilty. OK? Yes yes yes, innocent until proven and all that. We’re talking theoretically here. We’re going to look at the circumstantial evidence before our eyes — past charges, eccentric lifestyle, an admission that he loves children and has sleepovers with them — and just say, works for me. We’ll stipulate it could all be a setup, yet another shakedown for a few million, but for now, let’s assume it isn’t.

And you know what? When I consider this, I can’t even get all that mad at Michael Jackson anymore. It’s like being angry at a hyena for biting you. Unless the hyena gained entrance to your home in a very convincing kitten suit, who else are you going to blame? “Shut up, silly woman,” said that reptile with a grin / “You knew durn well I was a snake before you brought me in.”

How do you pass out responsibility? How about the first family, who accepted what’s reliably reported to be an eight-figure settlement in exchange for a refusal to testify against Jacko? They accepted a big payday and, in return, allowed a molester to return to the street.

How about the surrogate mothers who, after Jackson switched to a grow-your-own strategy, willingly conceived and bore children for him, turning over their parental rights and effectively delivering defenseless infants into the hands of a man any reasonable person could see should be kept far, far away from anyone under 18?

How about the parents who, star-struck, allowed their children to cuddle up with Jackson during those sleepovers? How about the ones who thought a day at the Neverland amusement park was worth pushing their anxiety aside? How about the ones who never had any anxiety?

What about them?

Two things:

First, happy birthday to Deb (seen yesterday in the comments as “deg”), my bestest best friend, joining the pileup of November birthdays today. We won’t say her age, because she is ageless.

Second, those of you in the choir who’d like to hear more preaching about wussified newspapers might want to check out Romenesko’s letters page, where the “Boondocks” Condi Rice strips are being addressed in sort of a desultory fashion. If you control-F for “aregood,” you’ll read the best single take on the subject by the great and glorious Richard Aregood, the best editorial writer, like, ever. And y’all know it’s true because he sums up “Mallard Fillmore” in a phrase — “affirmative action for lousy cartoonists who lean to the right.” Word.

A friend of mine — just a teensy bit jealous of my eight months of relative indolence here in Michigan — said the weather forecast for the whole state, year-round, could be summed up thusly: “Cloudy, with increasing shittiness.”

Have it your way, Miss Thing. Of course, today (and many days) he would be absolutely correct. Today we had clouds and rain all day, with the relative blessing of temperatures in the 50s for most of it. I’m sorry that we have this rule about not talking about seminar topics, because tonight’s set me woolgathering on the drive home, which is probably the point. I started thinking about stories that get told and stories that don’t get told, and why that is. Most people don’t know that this country’s greatest defeat of a white military force by Native Americans occurred not at Little Big Horn, but in the heart of Fort Wayne, Indiana, a battle called “Harmar’s Defeat.” Miami Indians led by Little Turtle, the great Miami leader, slaughtered Gen. Josiah Harmar’s army on October 22, 1790, very nearly to the last man. The Indians, a historian told me, refer to that fight as the Battle of the Pumpkin Fields, because so many scalped skulls were left on the riverbank, steaming in the autumn air, that it looked like a field of squash ready for picking.

And yet, while every American schoolchild learns about Gen. Custer and his defeat in Dakota, only a bare handful know about Little Turtle and Kekionga. The same historian said that what happened in the northwest territories at the end of the 18th century was as significant in the history of this country as what happened at the end of the 19th in what we now think of as the American west. And now it’s little more than regional history. Why?

Oh, a short list: Hollywood, Custer’s PR staff, what you might call the Zeitgeist. How would we remember 9/11 if it had happened on a day like today, the towers upper floors hidden by low clouds? Differently, that’s for sure. The smoke would have mixed with the fog, the towers would have seemed to fall out of the sky itself. It would have a whole new set of images. We could say the attack came “out of the blue,” but it wouldn’t mean the same thing.

Sorry to woolgather so. I’m the world’s most boring student these days, immersed in the dative case, the complexities (or lack thereof) of my second act (which sucks sucks SUCKS, I tell you), the approaching OSU game and next week’s Fellows presentations, for which I have to cook for 30 or so people. Any ideas for a sophisticated but simple dessert? I’m open.

Thanks to reader Howard in Columbus for finding this story about out-of-control partying at Ohio State home football games, doubtless a contributing factor to the hostility to out-of-town fans there.

Two observations:

1) The drinking is not unique to Columbus. I’ve seen cup and can litter as bad as anything in the slideshow after home games here. The closer you get to the stadium, the worse it is.

2) The attitude, however, is. At least, the degree of the attitude. UM fans are as rabid as OSU’s, but when Dr. Frank and I went out for beers after the Notre Dame blowout, the bar we went to was packed with fans and the only thing any of them said to Frank, dressed in a UND polo shirt, was some shoulder-slapping version of “better luck next year.” Granted, they’d won by an absurd margin, but as Larcom’s column points out, a win is no guarantee of good behavior in Columbus.

I wouldn’t wear a Michigan shirt or drive a car with Michigan plates anywhere near the OSU campus on Michigan game day. It’s a “mug me” invitation. A marching-band member in one of my classes said they routinely leave Ohio Stadium under heavy security to make a safe getaway.

Which, I’d argue, is another reason the hometown columnist might be safe taking, oh, a teensy bit stronger stand when discussing the fan behavior of the school’s No. 1 rival. But hey — it’s his column.

Buckeye fans, you’re being gently chastised (the only way the Ann Arbor News chastises anyone). Wrote AAN columnist Geoff Larcom:

“It just goes beyond reasonableness now,” Bert says. “You can exchange friendly or unfriendly barbs on game day, but you don’t really mean it. They really mean it, 365 days a year.”

But the number of contentious fans who dislike Michigan in Columbus dwarfs that of any other Big Ten town. And it’s worse when the Bucks win. If they lose, the fans tend to cannibalize themselves, getting angry at the coach and team. But if Ohio State wins, watch out.

Yes, it’s nearly time for the big game (this weekend, here in A2). I have no tickets, opting not to freeze my ass on 15 inches of bleacher seating in the Big House. But for a rivalry this heated, wouldn’t you think a hometown columnist could get away with writing that the opposition’s fans are mean and nasty without having to put in that wussy “some of the nicest folks I’ve ever met” disclaimer?

One of the best things about our life in Ann Arbor is the international perspective — being placed in near-daily interaction with foreign nationals, foreign-born naturalized citizens, world travelers and others, many of whom bring not only a fresh perspective but a charming ignorance of American institutions with them.

Like, say, Rush Limbaugh. Alan had a lively interchange with one of the fFs, trying to explain the Limbaugh pill-popping scandal to him.

“Why don’t they just fire him from his radio program?” the fF asked.

“He is the radio program,” he said. And so they went, around and around — it took a while to explain the talk-radio cult-of-personality model to someone who had no reference point for it.

Anyway, it’s with this in mind that I recommend this, er, unflattering review of Peggy Noonan’s latest book, from the Asia Times Online. It’s a collection of Loopy Peggy’s columns in the year following 9/11, one I recall as being particularly nutty, but in her defense I guess you could say she had lots of company. I read them only hit-and-miss, which must explain why I didn’t recognize the passage that opens the review:

“This war happens to be the reason he is president: because something big and bad and dark was coming, and he was the man to lead us through it … My sense is that he walked into office knowing huge history was coming but not knowing when, what, where. Now he knows. I can quite imagine him thinking, This is the reason I’m here.”

No, the above is not an excerpt from some Halloween story told to a five-year old by her mystical Californian mother: It is, in fact, a passage from an essay written by a veteran journalist affiliated to a prominent publishing establishment of the United States. I regret to report that, between the covers of “A Heart, a Cross, and a Flag,” I had to slog through 269 pages of such poppycock from Peggy Noonan, a contributing editor of The Wall Street Journal and a speechwriter for former president Ronald Reagan.

Ah, vintage Peggy — goofy fantasy (“I can quite imagine…” “My sense is that…”) dressed up as portentous truth-telling. Read more to see how she plays on a wider stage.

Well, we survived BirthdayFest 2003 in good shape. I think I’ve found the secret: Birthdays are crap, and should be treated that way.

Of course every child wants to see their birthday honored; I’m speaking here of the birthday industry, which makes every natal milestone into an excuse to spend a bucket o’ bucks. I’m getting off that merry-go-round, not that I was ever really on it, but I seem to recall Year Five as the year I spent $45 for a Barbie cake that tasted no better than the $8 one I got from Kroger this year.

New readers: My husband and my daughter share a birthday, which was this past Sunday. This year, in keeping with our status as temporary residents, we had a new/old synthesis. Kate invited one friend from her class, and two friends from Fort Wayne, and they all had a sleepover. Pizza, pajamas, “Finding Nemo” on DVD — do good times require anything else? I don’t think so.

As for Alan, he got a pair of nice walking shoes, suitable for campus strolling, and, of course, half the cake that read “Happy Birthday Kate & Daddy.”

The worst of it was suffered by our babysitters, with whom we entrusted all four kids while we went out to the Scorpio Party at Wallace House, in honor of the four Fellows, one staff member, two Fellow spouses and one Fellow child who have November natal days. (One is actually October, but he’s a Scorpio.)

When I met Alan, he shared a birthday with my friend Adrianne, and they complained that, with the exception of Elvis Whitehead, a kid in Alan’s class who died young, no one else in the history of the world had a November 16 birthday. Now there’s Kate, and Amy’s husband (who reminds us the world’s oldest living human being, a resident of Lima, Ohio, is also 11/16), and Fellow Fatih, and Martin Scorsese’s daughter Francesca (Marty’s own birthday is today) and many, many others.

Happy birthdays to all.

…I’m looking forward to HBO’s adaptation of “Angels in America,” too, but not as much as Frank Rich.

The reason excellent newspaper Sunday magazines are better that the Parade/USA Weekend crap you’re probably being served today: The WashPost takes a look at the PG-13 rating, 20 years old this year and more profitable than all others. More problematic, too: After describing a scene in which a wealthy-looking woman in an expensive car drops off five children, ages 5-13, at a multiplex, just in time for the 10 p.m. screening of “S.W.A.T.,” writer Liza Mundy notes,

Afterward, I found myself often thinking of that late-night drop-off at Wheaton Plaza. The question seemed not so much what was wrong with it as what was most wrong with it. Small children dumped on the sidewalk of a crowded theater at a time when all but the oldest should have been in bed; taking their seats in a hormonal mass of older adolescents; put in this position by a mother or aunt or babysitter who couldn’t be bothered to get out of her car to see them safely inside. What movie they saw seemed almost inconsequential. Given even this limited evidence of their upbringing, “S.W.A.T.” was in some ways the least of these kids’ problems.

Yeah, but the rest of the story’s worth reading, too.

As bonus comic relief, Gene Weingarten interviews the operator of Capalert, one of the internet’s many guilty pleasures.

Last week, the Free Press had a story about the domestics’ eroding SUV market share; turns out that, given the choice, more Americans are choosing gas-guzzlers made by Japanese and European automakers. But the bombshell was buried within, a quote from a woman whose husband works for Chrysler, claiming that her recently purchased Toyota was “the best car I’ve ever owned.”

Ooh, that was the wrong thing to say. I don’t have to come up with an analogy, do I? Didn’t think so.

Well, they’ve been duking it out on the Freep letters page ever since. My favorite single quote:

I used to own a Toyota and was razzed by my buddies for putting 10 Americans out of work, so I bought an American-made car and put 10 American auto mechanics back to work.