Max Fisher thinks the online lynching of Dr. Walter Palmer has gone too far. It probably has if you look on it as an attack on one individual. If you look on it as a mass revulsion against trophy hunting, maybe not…but I'm sure it wouldn't feel that way to me if I were Dr. Palmer. And it's unfair that his employees, family and even some of his patients are being punished to some extent.

Interestingly, the worst things I've read online about the man were when I cruised, just outta curiosity, some online forums where hunters post. I'd expected messages defending the man's actions and while I saw some, I saw a surprising number that said things like, "It's men like him who give all hunters a bad name."

When I'm writing, I like to be hit in the face. By air, I mean. (If I liked to be hit in the face any other way, I'd try to find a job like when I worked on MacGyver. The three worst weeks of my life as a TV writer.)

Anyway, I like a little breeze coming at me…not enough to ruffle papers or even my hair but just enough to keep the atmosphere moving. This is probably not unrelated to the fact that I have Sleep Apnea and must sleep with a device clamped onto my nose that forces air into it all night. I tend not to breathe normally when prone so I require a bit of an assist at night, and there's a teensy bit of the same problem when I'm perpendicular.

So as I sit here at my computer, I usually have a small electric fan hurling oxygen my way. For years, I had an adequate fan there but I recently replaced it with a real good one, the Ozeri Brezza III Dual Oscillating 10" High Velocity Desk and Table Fan. It's pretty quiet, it has plenty of different speeds and it has a nifty little remote control so I can turn it off or down when I'm on the phone and don't want the party on the other end to think I'm in a wind tunnel. The remote also lets you move the air flow from side to side or up and down so you can point it exactly where you want it.

I did not check out every possible option; just bought this one and decided I couldn't have done better. There may be others just as good or cheaper but I thought I'd tell you of my happiness with it. If you want to check it out, here's an Amazon link. It's $43, air not included.

Duane Hanson wrote me to say…

I understand why you don't get the idea of hunting. It was never part of the culture or reality where you grew up. While I am of a similar age to you, I was born into a lower middle class family in a very rural area of northern Minnesota. My family hunted deer, ducks and geese. If my dad got a deer during the fall hunting season, it meant the freezer would be full and we would eat better all winter. In addition, deer hunting in places like Minnesota provides a necessary service by keeping the deer population at a manageable level. There is a limited amount of forage available and during harsh winters many thousands of deer can starve to death if their numbers outstrip the available resources. Nature's population control can be pretty brutal.

I never became a hunter myself and moved to a bit more urban area eventually, but I have many relatives who still look forward to hunting season in the fall and the chance to fill the freezer with venison and game birds. That type of hunting is a far cry from the trophy hunting pursued by people like the dentist who killed Cecil the lion. I have never been comfortable with trophy hunting and I understand the opposition to it. At my place of employment there's a guy just down the hall who has the walls of his office covered with big game trophies. I know trophy hunters feel pride and accomplishment in what they do, but I find it a bit creepy.

I'm afraid I find it more than a bit creepy. I do understand the kind of hunting where you grew up. It's not something in which I can ever imagine myself participating but I get it. There are lots of activities in that category like skydiving or race car driving or watching Will Ferrell movies. (Well, maybe not the Will Ferrell movies.) I just don't "get" the rush of pride and excitement that some seem to associate with trophy hunting.

And putting the head of the animal you killed on your wall? I'm not sure I could even stand to be in your house if you did that. I have left rooms because of taxidermy.

By the way: A lot of folks directed my attention to the segment Jimmy Kimmel did on his show about this. Watching Jimmy Kimmel is close to skydiving or race car driving in my book but this was pretty good. So you see: I am open to new experiences. Sometimes.

Here we have several years worth of openings from The Muppet Show…in German. Looks to me like someone — aware of the value of the international market for these programs — made sure that when they shot the openings in English with title cards that said "The Muppet Show" made sure they also shot them with "Die Muppet Show" for Germany. I wonder how many other languages they did this for…

Nate Silver, who interprets political polls the way Jascha Heifetz played the violin, says Donald Trump ain't as popular as some people — chief among them Donald Trump — say. Yeah, 20% or so of Republicans say they want him as their nominee but you can't win the nomination with 20%…and Trump's negatives suggest he'll have a hard time driving that 20% much higher.

I would also add that it's still a long, long time until people have to cast a real vote. I think a lot of them are enjoying the show he's putting on and not listening too much (or caring) about what he'd actually do in office. Let's see where he is when it comes time to get serious.

Also, Silver doesn't mention this but I have it on excellent authority that Rick Perry, Carly Fiorina, Rick Santorum, Bobby Jindal and Lindsey Graham all now have lower favorability ratings than Dr. Walter J. Palmer. Perry and Fiorina are, however, polling slightly ahead of Bill Cosby.

A man named Jonathan Pollard will be paroled from prison in November after serving thirty years. Fred Kaplan says Pollard is one of the worst traitors of the twentieth century for selling U.S. secrets to Israel. And here I thought a traitor was anyone who voted for Obama…

Happy Birthday, Professor Irwin Corey! Congratulations on living to be as old as your stage wardrobe!

Folks on Yelp are posting scathing "reviews" of Dr. Walter Palmer, the Minnesota dentist who I think it's safe to assume now really, really regrets his decision to go Zimbabwe and hunt down a lion. He wanted to mount its head on his wall and now much of America is crying for Dr. Palmer's head to be mounted on a wall somewhere.

Yelp occasionally deletes a batch of these "reviews" but they apparently can't delete as fast as Dr. Palmer's detractors can report. Here's a typical one that's up at the moment…

I needed a tooth extracted, so Dr. Palmer shot me in the neck with a crossbow, chased and tracked me for 40 hours, and (once I collapsed from pain and exhaustion) removed my entire head and skinned me.

Best part, they accept my insurance!!

I dunno if Dr. Palmer can or will be prosecuted in this matter but it looks like at the least, his dental practice will suffer and maybe end, and that he'll have to go through life with a lot of people thinking he is a horrible, horrible human being. If the least is all that happens, I for one will not think he went unpunished.

This is news footage of Jack Benny's funeral, which took place on December 28 or 29, 1974 (accounts vary), two or three days after the great comedian passed away. The location was Hillside Memorial Park in Culver City, a place I have visited too many times, including for the burials of three of my closest relatives…

It's hard for me not to get incensed over this story of the Minnesota dentist who killed that lion in Zimbabwe.

In a letter to his patients, Dr. Walter Palmer writes, "I deeply regret that my pursuit of an activity I love and practice responsibly and legally resulted in the taking of this lion." No, no, Doc. You didn't take the lion. You killed the lion. Your choice of verb is indicative of the problem here. To you, it's like a chess game — "I just took your Queen!" — but the result is exactly the same as if you'd said, "I think it would be fun to kill a lion!"

And if you step back and look at that sentence as a whole, it roughly translates to: "I deeply regret that my goal of killing a lion and paying a lot of money to kill a lion resulted in the killing of this particular lion." Does he get that most of the folks calling for his head now would feel that way about any lion?

Part of me would like to see this guy punished in a way that might cause others to think it might not be great fun to kill a lion or a deer or any other animal out there. I would stop short, as PETA hasn't, of calling for his execution…but I think this guy needs to be spanked hard enough for others to feel it.

However, part of me is uncomfortable for two reasons about the response to this — mine, included — one being that I am a Carnivore. I eat animals. I have heard the arguments for why it doesn't make you a hypocrite to do that but to abhor hunting and I don't completely buy it, especially when you consider the inhumane treatment of so many of the animals who are "processed" (i.e., killed) for food. Yes, there is a difference between killing animals for food and killing them for fun. It just doesn't seem like that vast a difference to me.

I'm willing to admit I don't "get" hunting. There are certain things in this world that others love that are like that. Back when Dick Cheney shot a hunting companion, I asked a former hunter I knew what was so much fun about the activities of that day. My friend was quite upset that what Cheney and his pals had been doing was being passed off as "hunting."

He said (approximately:) "Real hunting involves skill and risk and discomfort and challenge. What Cheney was doing was going to this camp where they raise quail to be shot, clip their wings so they can't fly, sometimes drug them so they're easier targets…then the hunters are driven up in air-conditioned SUVs and they get out, point their $3000 rifles which someone else loaded for them at birds that are two feet away and blast them. That's not hunting. That's killing helpless birds and pretending you just went on a dangerous safari and displayed great bravery and marksmanship."

Okay, maybe so. But I still couldn't understand what was enjoyable about what he would have considered "real" hunting. He and others have tried to explain it to me and the appeal, like I say, escapes me.

I can't imagine standing over the body of a dead deer and feeling pride in having shot it. Then again, as I'm writing this, I've been eating turkey sausage and I don't want to think of how those turkeys were fattened for the kill and then killed.

So I'm upset that that lion was "taken" (i.e., killed) but I'm also aware I don't have the cleanest of hands when it comes to the subject of animals being "taken" (i.e., killed). That's part of the reason I don't feel wholly comfortable with my position.

The other part is the vast number of human beings who are killed every day in this world without this kind of outcry. Yeah, Cecil the Lion is dead but so are so many others for no better reason. Doesn't it bother you that there are persons out there who are more upset at the murder of a lion than they are at the murder of a fellow person — especially a fellow person with dependent children? Bothers me.

Eddie Cantor (1892-1964) was a popular entertainer. That's him in the photo above at right, entertaining his grandson, Brian Gari. Proving something about heredity. Brian has grown up to become a popular entertainer who sings and writes songs and books and plays and who is today paying his second visit to Stu's Show. He'll be talking again about Grandpa Eddie, who had a pretty stellar career and who was much beloved by America. And Stu Shostak's going to get Brian talk some about his own life, which of course involves encounters with some pretty famous people. Oughta be a good one.

Stu's Show can be heard live (almost) every Wednesday at the Stu's Show website and you can listen for free there. Webcasts start at 4 PM Pacific Time, 7 PM Eastern and other times in other climes. They run a minimum of two hours and sometimes go to three or beyond. Shortly after a show ends, it's available for downloading from the Archives on that site. Downloads are a measly 99 cents each and you can get four for the price of three.  If you know what's good for you, you'll do this.

Which airlines and airports are the fastest? When I fly from LAX to San Francisco, I usually go via Southwest. According to this little online database, the average Virgin flight would get me there in an hour and 31 minutes, whereas the average Southwest flight would take 1:59. If that kind of difference matters to you, check out where you fly.

• Minnesota dentist Walter Palmer just shot and killed Smokey the Bear, Tony the Tiger and Big Bird; swears he didn't know they were famous.

Jef Peckham writes to ask…

Your latest encore post reminded me of a question that I've thought about for a while. How do you come up with ideas or plot points on which to hang a story/script/article, and then expand it into a full story/script/article?

I'm not talking about "fat cat jokes about Garfield. Hilarity ensues," although after 37 years it may be difficult to find new ones. I'm talking about some new project using characters you may not be totally familiar with, or ones you create yourself.

I've had a few small ideas crop up from time to time that are not in my comfortable wheelhouse, and I'm lost when it comes to expanding them beyond a paragraph. It could mean these ideas may not be worth expanding any further, but since I've never made it beyond that point, I don't know.

Well, if I were you, I'd try an experiment. I'd pick my best idea and I'd commit to writing it to its completion. Don't worry about what might happen if it's not good. Nothing will happen except that you'll have wasted a few hours and probably learned something in the process. Too many new writers write like the minute they finish something, it's going to be read and judged by everyone they know.

They need to get over that. One of the emotional controls a writer requires is to be able to write something, spend days or even weeks on it and then to review it and say, "This isn't good enough" and toss it out and immediately start on a rewrite or something else. It's easier to do that when you're prolific but even if you agonize for hours on every word, you need to be able to do that. (I just wrote a long blog post about Donald Trump, then gave it another read and decided it didn't really say anything that was worth saying. So into the "Probably Not" folder it goes…)

Just write something — and here, I'll give you a push. If you don't have an idea, pick one of these…

1. Think of someone in your life you really disliked…someone who wronged you horribly. Then write a fictional story of that person getting punished, humiliated, arrested…whatever they deserve. And don't forget the scene where he or she comes to you and begs you for forgivance.
2. Think of someone in your life you lusted after…someone with whom you wished you'd had a romantic involvement. Then write a fictional story of that person coming to you, confessing that the feeling was mutual and the two of you do act upon your mutual yearnings. Make it as dirty as you like.

Pick one, write it and show it to no one. You can delete it once it's done…or for extra credit, leave it for a few weeks, then come back and read it and see if it reads better or worse to you then. The point is that you don't have to write for publication. You can write for yourself. Most of us spend a certain amount of time writing for ourselves whether we know it or not at the time.

I suspect that if you can't write one of the above stories, you can't write much of anything…at least of a fictional nature. But you can write something, Jef. You wrote me that message. You've written many to me and they all seemed reasonably intelligent even when I thought you were dead wrong about some political belief.

You had something to say so you said it in a message. If you have something longer and more important to say, you could use the same muscles and say it in an article or essay. That's what I do. I write messages and then I write essays and I write stories. The software differs and if I'm addressing a large audience instead of one person, I'll probably make an extra effort to be witty or funny or understandable…but it's the same me at the same keyboard.

A lot of folks who want to write but can't need to demystify the act. They think of it as giving a speech in front of the whole world when, in fact, a new writer's efforts aren't much different from writing a letter to a friend. You do that all the time.