Andrew J. Lederer

Ever wonder why criminal masterminds are often "assisted" by brain-damaged idiots?

As it happens, the underpinning of this theoretically fictional relationship type is reality itself.

When you're on the bottom or off to the side in life -- marginalized by criminality, finance, or whatever -- there isn't a large pool of competent, compatible associates from which to draw, professionally or socially. You gotta go to war with the henchmen you have, not the henchmen you want.

And that, dear readers, is -- as much as anything else -- the reason Superman and his ilk tend to prevail. It isn't only goodness and niceness or truth and the American way.

We in life's margin's simply don't have the help.