Recent events remind me how much I dislike liars, cheaters and those who aspire to victimhood simply so they can cash in.

To begin with, we have Ball State’s ex-basketball coach, Ronny Thompson. Even if we discount allegations that he violated a number of NCAA rules, including illegal recruitment, when he resigned he had a record of 9-22. Now, it appears he’s asking the university for additional money, alleging that he left because of racial hostility. Well, I don’t happen to live in Muncie, Indiana, but if there’s one thing I do know it’s that basketball is a religion in that state and, whether the coach is black, white, green or beige, any guy with a 9-22 record is going to find himself in a hostile environment.

Heck, if Ball State was so racially intolerant, they wouldn’t have given the ingrate a job in the first place and they sure wouldn’t have hired Billy Taylor, who just happens to be black, to replace him!

This brings us to Tennie Pierce. Mr. Pierce had been a fireman here in Los Angeles for many years when one night he sat down to dinner in the firehouse and was served what he assumed was spaghetti and meatballs, but was in reality spaghetti and dog food. He promptly got in touch with a law firm and sued the city for about fifty trillion dollars. The other day, his lawyers agreed to a settlement of roughly $1.5 million.

While I have no idea what his meal tasted like, I figure that so long as it didn’t contain poison or ground glass, he was rewarded far in excess to his pain and suffering. If I’d been on the city council, I’d have offered Mr. Pierce dinner for two at an Italian restaurant of his choice.

I’m not being cavalier about this because Mr. Pierce is black, but because what we all knew from the start is that he was the biggest prankster of all. For a long time, he had been the prime instigator of practical jokes at the fire station. I happen to despise practical jokes. It’s bad enough that they tend to be petty and stupid, but the victim then has to pretend that he thought they were clever and original, or he runs the risk that the ignoramuses who were involved will label him a spoilsport who is entirely devoid of the humor gene.

But the very idea that this fathead can indulge in similar horseplay for years on end and then turn around and collect a small fortune for no other reason than that he’s black, and is therefore entitled, strikes me as a prime example of reverse racism.

I’m sure that there are some among you who’ll accuse me of bigotry for daring to suggest that blacks should not automatically be regarded as innocent victims simply because they say they are. The truth is that there are far better reasons for holding people in contempt than their race. And these reasons, more often than not, have to do with their values and their politics.

For instance, how dare people such as the Clintons, John Kerry and Ted Kennedy, condemn George Bush for taking out Saddam Hussein when all through the previous decade they, along with all the other leading Democrats, gave speeches in which they insisted that Hussein was hoarding weapons of mass destruction, developing nuclear devices and subsidizing terrorism? All of them insisted that regime change was long overdue, but then did nothing about it. Then, when Bush took action, they condemned him for it!

The way I see it, if you disagree with Bush’s actions in Iraq, that’s your business. But when, like Harry Reid, you first insist that we’ve lost the war, and follow that up by claiming the U.S. military has killed a million Iraqi citizens, knowing full well that you’re lying through your teeth, it leaves me wondering why it is that one perverted politician is forced to resign for playing footsie in a men’s room while another gets to continue being the majority leader of the U.S. Senate.