We're not the ones telling the joke anymore; we're the punchline

Note: I'm more than a little ashamed of myself for doing this, because this is a column I wrote more than seven years ago and then reworked and reprinted it in July 2015. All I can say about it is, it's getting scarier all the time.

I can't believe I used to take politics seriously.

Now I don't know if there's anyone left in Washington I can take seriously at all except for my younger brother, and he's too intelligent to be a politician.

 Ever since I saw Newt Gingrich shut down the government because he didn't get to sit up front on Air Force One on the way to Yitzhak Rabin's funeral, ever since I watched Bill Clinton ooze sincerity (at least I think it was sincerity; the dry cleaners got it out) saying he never had sex with that woman, it has been harder and harder to look at politicians as anything but entertainers.

Consider this: Who's the guy who seems to take being a senator the most seriously right now? Yup, it's Al Franken, D-SNL, who actually used to be an entertainer.

Or maybe we jumped the national shark when Sonny Bono, R-Cher, got elected to Congress.

Actually, we have also elected Fred Grandy, R-Love Boat, and Wilmer Mizell, R-Pittsburgh Pirates, not to mention Sen. Jim Bunning, R-Alzheimers. One gopher and two baseball pitchers.


In 1976, Paddy Chayefsky wrote what at the time seemed like an apocalyptic view of television news. These days "Network" just seems like something else we would find if we whipped through our 500 channels fast enough.

Yes, Walt Kelly, we definitely have met the enemy and he definitely is us.

Network

We're dumber than dirt, fatter than pigs and we elect people to office we'd love to share our pallet-sized nachos and oil tanker-sized beer with.

Whatever happened to being better off when people smarter than we were ran the country?

These days we're ready to turn the keys to the Ship of State over to Goober, who's only in the show because Gomer left for the Marine Corps when they told him about Show Tunes Night at the local Officers Club.

We've torched our economy so badly that we may have to settle for 8-9 percent unemployment for the near future, but hey, no problem. Your cable company is about one good jump away from giving you a new feature -- Virtual Sex.

Max Frost

And when you can sit in your recliner -- or recline in your sitter -- and make love to Megan Fox or Britney Spears 24 hours a day, all they've got to do is hook up an IV and a catheter and you, sir, are no longer a problem.

So what can we do about it, assuming that enough people still give a shit?

I'm figuring if we still want to be anything more than a wholly owned subsidiary of Deutschebank, we probably need to write off everyone ever 30 years old.

Oh, I know that's not fair, that certainly some older folks could be part of the solution, but it's too late. We need to go Max Frost on their asses and set up those camps where all the old folks can sit in the sun, stay high on LSD and get out of the way.

Of course, we probably need to write off about half the folks under 30 too. I'm thinking the deciding factors there will be body mass index and how many hours a week they play video games.

Let the ones with lean and hungry looks run things, and I'm betting they could get us back to the days when men were men and sheep were very nervous, the times when the only thing Chinese we had to worry about was whether our chow mein was any good.

John Prine, "Sam Stone"

When people looked at America and saw Audie Murphy and Amelia Earhart, that was one thing. When they look now, they see Rush Limbaugh and Rosie O'Donnell, and that's another thing entirely.

People around the world laugh knowingly when they see Americans spend thousands of dollars to "upgrade" from a 60-inch television to a 66-incher. When they see us super sizing everything from Freedom Fries to Cialis.

Is it any wonder that Europeans look at us and call us the teenagers of the world?

In his wonderful song "Sam Stone," the legendary John Prine wrote that "there's a hole in daddy's arm where all the money goes." He was writing about heroin, but our holes are in our hearts and minds and we try to fill them with food and toys.

Once we were the envy of the world, for our freedoms and our dedication to preserving them. Now we argue over whether Jay Leno or Conan O'Brien should have the "Tonight Show."

They're not laughing with us anymore.

That's because we are the punch line.