I ™ By JAMES J. KILPATRICK

I ™ By JAMES J. KILPATRICK ££ UniwalPre* ■ “What,” asked my ever-loving . wife, “got you so upset?” ! I had just hurled a copy of Time ; magazine across the kitchen, break•mg a glass along the way, and in the < dead silence that followed the crash ■PC was cleaning up the mess. • Z “Avatars,” I replied, breathing I heavily. “Avatars.” ; Haying retrieved the mutilated ■ magazine, I read a paragraph aloud. I-The article compared Rush Lim■ baugh and Howard Stem. It said [,that the Rush and Howard people, J ‘like their avatars, have more in » common than they know.” i • “Like their what?” inquired my J Wife. J.',' “Like their avatars,” I said. “The • New York Times threw an avatar at me on Oct. 18. A book reviewer said John F. Kennedy and Billy Clinton “were hailed as avatars of a new gen; eration.’ When I read in Time about ; the avatars of Limbaugh and Stem, < if was too much. Sorry about the |/ glass.” T What is an avatar? I will give you • the whole definition, straight from Webster's new Tenth Collegiate. An avatar is: “1: the incarnation of a Hindu deity (as Vishnu). 2 a: an incarnation in human form, b: an embodiment (as of a concept or philosophy) often in a : person. 3: a variant phase or version trfa continuing basic entity.” There you have it. The Times’ critic was using definition 2b. Kennedy and Clinton were the embodiments of a new generation. What is otie to make of “the avatars of the Rush and Howard people”? I cannot make heads or tails of it. 1 Let us recur to fundamentals.