Two days ago it was announced that Hitchbot, the R2D2-sized hitchhiking robot with the GPS-like voice, has been murdered and dismembered in Philadelphia. Hitchbot had encountered nothing but kindness, wonder and fascination during solo trips across Europe, Canada and portions of the Northeast USA — Boston, Salem, Gloucester, Marblehead and New York City. But a Philadelphia animal or two or three (probably 12 or 13 or 14, either stupid or under-educated or both, most likely parentally-abused) decided to clock that robot bitch once and for all. Ain’t that America? Apart from the teenaged-animal element, I’m also sensing a metaphorical linkage between Hitchbot’s murder and Ted Cruz’s machine-gun bacon video. Eating bacon is…well, okay, I’ll eat a little bacon if it’s burnt like a cinder but cooking it with a machine-gun barrel? What kind of deranged beast even thinks something like this up, much less makes a video of it? I’m telling you that the seed of the Cruz attitude was a roundabout factor in the slaying of Hitchbot. There’s a massively ugly metaphor in both these acts that joins them together in infamy. Bill O’Reilly needs to write a “Killing Hitchbot” book…seriously. If he wrote it honestly and reportedly it thoroughly, I would buy it and pay to see the movie.