In part, it's about authority, which is the single biggest challenge of the new social media world of anonymous bloggers, of instant reaction and of ranting, splenetic comment threads.
In my as-yet-unwritten but splenetic parenting book, there are few sights more insufferable than the middle classes treating their babies as though they were proper human beings.
His splenetic impulses are organic, evidently immune to intervention or rehabilitation, and apt to burst forth in response to mild or mysterious provocations.