Good King Matthias
And Vlad the Impaler
One was a meanie
The other, his jailer

Vladie's bad habit
Was puncturing peasances
Torching their villages
And other unpleasances

Matt, though, was a real prince
(That's besides being kingly)
He stood up for kittens
And butterflies' winglies

He banished the 'Paler
Down deep in a dungeon
Which earned him a plaque at
The Kiwanis' luncheon

Each man is quite famous
In his own milieu
The king for his honor
Vladimir for his e-e-www!

Matt's fame is Hungarian
And his rep is immacula
But Vlad made the big time
As the real-life Count Dracula

If I
Knew then
What I
Know now

I’d screw
It up
Again
Somehow

You’re starting to hear the question more and more these days: Who is the greatest basketball player of all time? Michael Jordan or Lebron James? You hear the question, but you seldom hear a definitive answer.

The “correct” answer for a long while has been MJ, with his high-flying acrobatics and multiple championships. But now Lebron has amassed such an impressive portfolio of performances and statistics that we can no longer fall back on that no-brainer response. As King James has caught up with the reputation Air Jordan, the evasions and weaseling by sports pundits has become more and more difficult to watch.

“You can’t really compare them” is the most common cop-out. The game has changed, these weaselers say, conditioning is different now, they come from two different eras, it’s apples and oranges, blah blah blah. It should be pointed out that the people making these excuses for not having an opinion are getting paid to have opinions. Don’t they realize that every time they hem and haw over this choice that their credibility takes a hit? This is sports we’re talking about, after all, not something of real importance.

This is not to say that passion for sport is without merit. Sports are a safe way to release our combative instincts in a peaceful world, and they should be honored for that. That is all the more reason not to go squishy when it comes to a question like this one. I am not interested in your caveats and your provisos and your it’s-too-haaard. I don’t listen to sports talk for reasoned debate and balanced detachment. I want strong positions, hotly defended.

Still waffling? I’ll make it easy for you. If you honestly don’t think you have a position, try this simple thought experiment: you’re down at the playground choosing up sides for a game of roundball, and the field of candidates includes every player who ever played, each at the peak of their powers. Who do you pick, Jordan or James? (And please, don’t give me Bill Russell or Oscar Robertson.)

You know very well what answer immediately leapt into your mind. But if you still need confirmation, let me ask you this: What if the game is just one-on-one, and you’re betting the house on the outcome…who wins?

Same answer, right? Lebron, of course.

Now stop wasting my time.

I may have been premature in my blog of October 11 last year. “President Moron” was the title. As I explained in that piece, it was not I who was calling our president a moron, but rather his hand-picked Secretary of State, the estimable Rex Tillerson. Who better, I suggested at the time, to judge the intelligence of his boss than someone who worked closely with him on matters of great import?

The answer could only be someone who had worked even more closely with the President over a longer period of time on a broader range of issues. His Chief of Staff John Kelly, for instance, might be able to give a credible, informed assessment of the Commander in Chief’s mental state. We learned this week that General Kelly has provided that assessment (repeatedly, according to sources), and for the record he considers the President to be an “idiot.”

Again, this is not my opinion that I am reporting. It comes from a person close to the President who was also hand-picked for his position by his boss. It is that person’s opinion we are talking about here. He is an ally and a servant of the man he is judging, and he thinks that man is an idiot. I don’t have any regrets about the “President Moron” blog. I was citing the most reliable information available when I wrote it. Still, I don’t like having to update such findings. I try to be accurate in such matters just in case someone’s feelings may be hurt somehow in the course of my eagerness to inform others.

Perhaps I worry too much. “Moron” and “idiot” are often used interchangeably in ordinary discourse — to mean deeply stupid. My guess is that Kelly and Tillerson, though they apparently had differences on matters of style and policy, would surely agree that the President is deeply stupid. However, it is possible that they were actually quite careful in their choice of words. There was a time when psychologists parsed IQ scores in differentiating between idiots and morons. Under this now-outdated system, idiots (whose IQs ranged between 0 and 24) were classed lower than morons. A moron’s IQ might go as high as 70.

As I say, psychology has moved on from these unfortunate classifications, but they might still be useful today in answering this question: Just how stupid is Donald Trump? If his two close associates were using their words precisely, then we can say that General Kelly thinks the President is a lot stupider than Secretary Tillerson does.

But who to believe? Is he a moron or is he an idiot? In the interests of even-handed reporting, perhaps we should split the difference. In that old rating system there was a third category between the other two that described those whose IQs ranged between 25 and 50. Such people were referred to as “imbeciles.”

So, I will henceforth refer to Donald Trump as “President Imbecile.” Just to be fair.