Billo!

Tiger Woods is undergoing treatment for sex addiction.

Which means nothing he did was his fault. It’s an illness. A syndrome. He couldn’t have kept his pants zipped if he’d tried.

I guess the thirteenth step will be suing Gatorade and all the others companies that dropped him as spokesman. Americans With Disabilities Act, y’know.

If I seem mildly skeptical, it might have something to do with his choice of partners: If you’re a sports hero, one of the most recognized celebrities in the world, and beautiful women throw themselves at you, there are two possible responses, neither of which involve a psychological impairment: You can say “Hell yeah!” or “No thanks.”

(Some might say the latter is the abnormal response, but I digress)

If he’s running onto the back room for sex with the 68-year-old, chain-smoking waitress at Denny’s who says “You want some dessert with that? Wink wink… wheeze…” then okay, we’re talking an addiction that needs professional help. But the supermodel types he’s been publicly linked to? That’s “hell yeah” territory. Bill Clinton should have done so well.

You’re disappointed. You feel you’ve been treated unfairly. Well maybe you have, but that’s the nature of the business: broken heart for every light, and so on. Actually, come to think of it, that’s the sort of thing that happens to all grown-ups.

And speaking of business, network television is a business: Leno had twice the Tonight Show ratings you have. Who wouldn’t want him back? And at a time when 10% of all Americans are unemployed, you’re going to be offered upwards of $30 million to walk away. How many times, over the last couple of years, have you mocked Wall Street and auto industry executives who were being obscenely rewarded for failure?

All we’re hearing from you now is how NBC is mistreating you — and you’re using the NBC airwaves to do it. You’re using your victim status to turn Jay Leno into a villain. If Leno’s return to Tonight does badly, well, that’ll show them. They’ll be sorry they were mean to me. Yeah, they’ll see, and then it’ll be too late.

“On a Fox News panel discussing Tiger Woods, Brit Hume said, perfectly accurately: ‘The extent to which he can recover, it seems to me, depends on his faith. He is said to be a Buddhist. I don’t think that faith offers the kind of forgiveness and redemption that is offered by the Christian faith. So, my message to Tiger would be, Tiger, turn to the Christian faith and you can make a total recovery and be a great example to the world.’ Hume’s words, being 100 percent factually correct, sent liberals into a tizzy of sputtering rage, once again illustrating liberals’ copious ignorance of Christianity.” -Ann Coulter

He didn’t rise from the dead on the third day after his death — which you wouldn’t know based on yesterday’s worship ceremony.

Apparently, the young man remains a celebrity. He’s got a bodyguard and a publicist, he’s doing talk shows, there’s a movie offer and a possible book deal. Yes, the media has found the one person who has done less to become famous than Paris Hilton did.

I’m thinking Bristol Palin’s previous boyfriend must be thinking, “Shit, I had the sense to use a rubber, and I’ll be pumping gas in Moosefuck Alaska for the rest of my life while this guy’s having dinner with Miss Oregon.”

Not a month goes by that I don’t hear from people asking when the Billo Page is going to return.

Those same two people, month in and month out…

A lot has changed since the site first appeared in January of 1997: For one thing, it was a daily blog before the word “blog” even existed. More disconcerting, “Billo” has become a derogatory nickname for Bill O’Reilly, the conservative talk show host and friend to abducted boys everywhere.

One site change this time around is that this software allows for comments. There was a notice on the old site advising readers that the ideas expressed here are Billo’s and he doesn’t really give a damn what you think. That part hasn’t changed, but knock yourself out.

Archives will be added to the site as time permits.

George W might not be the best president we’ve ever had, nor the brightest, but he’s a solid contender for President With the Biggest Cojones: He thanked U.S. troops today for serving extended tours of duty, saying in part “Some [of you] were boarding the plane home to return to your families when you got word that we’d extended your tour. I know that was a trying time. But no change in plans could shake your resolve.”

Actually, every last man and woman getting on those planes had resolved to go home. The government was extending their tours unilaterally, evoking the enlistment agreement’s “Once you sign this we own your ass” clause.

“As you know, you go to war with the army you have, not the army you might want or wish to have at a later time” -Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld.

Except that if the army you have isn’t large enough for the military adventure you wish to stage, there’s nothing wrong with acquiring the army you want by forcing members of the National Guard into active service overseas.

Am I the only person in the world who didn’t know that Sigfried and Roy were gay? I’m reading where a drive-by shooting at “their home” was originally thought to be “a hate crime”, and my first thought was “because they’re German?” and then came “D’oh!”

I asked my brother Davvo who confirmed that I was, in fact, the only person in the world who didn’t know. But, I mean… just because they work together? I mean, are Penn and Teller gay? Lewis and Martin? Bergen and McCarthy?

Well, he said, Bergen always did have his hand up McCarthy’s ass.

Damn it, I hate when people agree with me before I get a chance to really rant: Leonard Pitts Jr, in a syndicated article for the Knight Ridder Tribune (”Rules Are Different For Minorities” [article no longer available online]), bemoaned the fact that Moslem groups are expected to publicly condemn Islamic terror attacks, and black politicians are called upon to denounce the likes of Louis Farrakhan but, say, Billy Graham isn’t asked to condemn abortion clinic bombings by Christians. I’d read this sort of thing before and the fallacy has always annoyed me, so I e-mailed Mr. Pitts to point out that when (for example) somebody blows up a building claiming he’s doing so in the name of Islam, then if Moslem leaders don’t condemn it they appear to be, by their silence, accepting this claim. And “different rules” are not really applying here: Reverend Graham was not required to disavow Eric Rudolph’s fatal bombing of an Alabama abortion clinic, because Rudolph didn’t do it in the name of Christianity — but anti-abortion groups were asked to denounce his violent solution.

Mr. Pitt e-mailed me back before the day was out, agreeing with me.