Bring Back Mister Rogers

First thing this morning, happily chomping on my healthy non-gluten toast with peanut butter and half a banana, I read a disturbing article in the Wall Street Journal about a man who makes Jeffrey Epstein look like Mister Rogers. A multi-millionaire and married father of three by the time he was 40, the sick, twisted individual named Howard Rubin maintained a ritzy Manhattan penthouse apartment with two bedrooms, one of which was outfitted as a soundproof sex dungeon painted red. There he enslaved and tortured equally depraved women, using electric shocks and severe beatings, who were willing to offer him sexual gratification in return for a fat paycheck. 

The dungeon was stocked with whips, handcuffs, chains, manacles and worse. But here's my question: Not what's wrong with that guy, who is currently locked up in a Brooklyn jail awaiting trial, or his "secretary" who scheduled all of his dates with those misguided women willing to undergo his beatings and humiliation -- not to mention rape and sodomy -- but what's gone wrong in our society that such people are created by it?

There are so many sickos roaming our world, one wonders how and why they got that way. Surely we cannot blame "bad parenting" for Jeffrey Dahmer's desire to murder young men and then dismember them and eat their body parts. And he was just one of too many to mention here. Circa 2026, tales of horror and psychological depravity rule the day on TV and in books and films. No wonder so many people end up nuts. 

My advice is to stay away from all that shit. Just as you are what you eat, you are what you see, watch and hear. Treat yourself well, as if you are your own mommy. Unless your mommy was crazy because her parents were certifiable, in which case you're on your own. Maybe start watching reruns of Mister Rogers' Neighborhood.