"The only dicks of this size are made of silicone." You're forgetting that 1% who do have unusually large dicks. In this country of 300 million, that's 1.5 million stallions. If you travel in the right circles, you can definitely encounter them.

But the ladies I know are equivocal about it. The smaller the lady, the less charming a monster schlong is. Anyway, as the old saying goes, "It's not the meat, it's the motion." Along with an awareness of the extensive erotic nerve network radiating from the clitoris, including but definitely not limited to the labia. And since women vary greatly in how they like to experience sex, penis size is just one ingredient in the delightful but highly individual recipe of love.

Look: men and women are different. They process thought differently, science has shown that. They perceive things differently and communicate about them differently. The most enlightening book on the sexes in the 20th century was "Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus". Superheros are Martian, you don't get any more Martian than that genre. It's a male domain and women aren't supposed to get it entirely, and their comments about it are helpful only as the comments of women in a foreign domain -- just as the comments of men on soap operas are, vice versa.

So, apart from her style and standards of film criticism generally, Zacharek's review of "Hancock" should not be taken as serious film criticism, rather as a somewhat confused travelogue for women in the realm of men.

This does not mean that there is no woman who understands men well enough to write a good review of "Hancock" (or that there is no man who understands women well enough to write a good review of soap operas), just that Zacharek is evidently not that woman.

The dark side of democracy is that a lot of people get to vote who can't or won't vote on the issues, and McCain has their votes in his back pocket:

Hard-core Bush Republicans, who live in a sort of alternate reality: 30% of the electorate, and McCain owns all of them.

Racists: 30% of the electorate, and McCain owns 80% of them.

Sub-median IQs: Half the electorate, and McCain, with the assistance of the religious right, patriotic organizations, Rush Limbaugh and Fox News, appeals to 70% of them.

Fascists: 15% of the electorate. McCain will get all of them that vote because of his military background, but a quarter of them will not vote because McCain is actually somewhat anti-fascist. But if a fascist program can be cleaned up for public consumption, he can promote it and toss it after the election.

Big-money boys: 2% of the electorate, but not only does McCain have 80% of them, they also control, directly or indirectly a huge number of votes in proportion to their numbers; e.g., Rush Limbaugh and Fox News.

There is considerable overlap among these groups, but it should be obvious that the dark side of the American electorate is so strong that the election may not even be close. Only low turnout among the cretins and the dispirited will permit an Obama victory, together with a level of commitment by his supporters unseen among Democrats in many years.

The components of the Base are dependable, but as we review them, bear in mind that they overlap to some extent. I think the case can be made that together they guarantee any Republican 45% out of the gate, his to lose.

1. Republican partisans are a hard-core 30% of the electorate, and they are only concerned about one thing: winning.

2. Religious fundamentalists, defined here as those who believe Adam and Eve rode dinosaurs, comprise 45% of the U.S. population (20% in Canada, 10-15% in Europe). They are overwhelmingly Republican.

3. The Republican Party welcomed racists after Ronald Reagan spoke about states rights in Philadelphia, Mississippi, in his 1980 campaign. Racists are about 20% of the electorate currently, and about two-thirds of them are Republicans.

4. About 30% of American households have incomes over $70,000. Most of them are Republicans because they think Democrats are going to tax them unfairly. Some are upper-income pirates.

5. By definition, half of the eligible electorate have IQs less than 100. While many of them are low-income and thus tend to the Democratic Party, large numbers of them are also religious fundamentalists, and they are solidly Republican.

6. Fascist-leaning right-wingers aren't the least bit troubled by major erosion of the Bill of Rights, or dropping nukes on ragheads, or general international belligerence, or making the rich richer and the poor poorer, or lock-step partisanship based on lies and the word of the Leader. They love it. And all of them are Republicans. They are only about 15% of the electorate, but their influence among the low-IQ and religious fundamentalist segments is far out of proportion to their numbers.

With these factors at work, it's really amazing that Obama is ahead at all.

But how do they explain that huge numbers of Americans want "change"? That's easy. Fascists want to abolish the Constitution. Racists want to re-institute slavery. The aspiring rich want a banana republic. The fundamentalists want a sort of Taliban West.

And they have all made a lot of progress.