And you thought Obama had a shitty name...

My good friends at the JTA are reporting that a Shop Rite refused to write "Happy Birthday Adolf Hitler" on a cake for an unfortunately named 3 year old New Jerseyan whose parents apparently have a really grim sense of humor. (Or -- more likely -- are really, really bad people.)

The parents didn't understand what the fuhrer -- uh, furor -- was all about.

"A name's a name," says the father. "The kid isn't going to grow up and do what [Hitler] did."

Well, let's hope...

Plus, the parents are defending themselves as unracist and un-Nazi because young master Adolf had several "mixed race" guests at the birthday party.

I have to say, you gotta feel bad for young Adolf. And you gotta wonder what life in the Campbell household is like (another child is named JoyceLynn Aryan Nation Campbell). I savor the day when he says to his dad, "Uh, what were you thinking, exactly?"

One of my favorite parts about this story is the fact that even though the New Jersey Shop Rite refused to write this on the cake, nobody in Pennsylvania seemed to have any qualms about it.

Pennsylvania: You ought to be ashamed!

Always good for a punchline...

Another article worth a look in today's Sunday Times is Virginia Heffernan's piece about how Hitler's rant in the movie Downfall has been turned into a mini-sensation on youtube.

If you haven't seen the movie Downfall, it's basically about the final days of Hitler in a Berlin bunker. The movie uses as its primary source Joachim Fest's book, Inside Hitler's Bunker and Albert Speer's Inside the Third Reich. (I haven't read Fest's book, but I can't imagine that it could improve upon the official British account by Hugh Trevor-Roper which was eventually published as The Last Days of Hitler. If you can get a hold of the Trevor-Roper book, buy it!)

To set the scene, all is pretty much lost. The Russian army is in the Berlin suburbs and will be in the city shortly. Hitler is meeting with his must trusted generals to discuss the situation. And somehow, this scene can be turned into really funny satire. How? Instead of translating Hitler accurately in the subtitles you sub in whatever you want.

I watched a few of these satires earlier this year and thought it was hysterical. The best one, of course, is Hillary Clinton discussing the fate of the superdelegates when it wasn't at all certain that she would concede defeat. Check it out!

WTF?

Jorg Haider, head of the extreme right wing Alliance for the Future of Austria party, was apparently having a homosexual affair with his deputy -- this story is almost too bizarre to believe.