It's better than no laugh at all

Just when I needed a laugh Eugene Robinson supplied one or two. Ok, they were dark somewhat depressing laughs but I guess that's better than no laugh at all.

President Bush's misadventures with the dictionary are legendary, and they're the gift that keeps on giving. Perhaps my favorite classic came while Bush was trying to sell his Social Security program in Upstate New York, and he uttered this timeless sentence: "See, in my line of work you got to keep repeating things over and over and over again for the truth to sink in, to kind of catapult the propaganda."

The frightening thing is that we all understood what he meant. We even understood him when he made his recent assertion about the imprisoned evildoers at Guantanamo Bay, that they are "people that had been trained in some instances to disassemble." Before you could wonder where they were getting their hands on the screwdrivers and wrenches, he added, "That means not tell the truth."

No, it doesn't, Mr. President. But never mind.

Of course, the president's father waged his own battle against the tyranny of syntax and the dictatorship of grammar. His fumbles became a running gag on "Saturday Night Live" and even prompted gentle gibes from his peers: Once, the president of Uruguay welcomed George Bush the First to Montevideo and, as the two leaders stood together, the Uruguayan told reporters he would "answer any questions in my broken English, which is, of course, our common language here."

George W., however, makes his father sound like Seneca. He hasn't received the same kind of ribbing from other world leaders, but maybe they're afraid they might provoke an invasion or something.

That last paragraph really cracks me up....right before I start to cry of course. I heard someone say the other day that the art of political parody is dead because they can't top the real thing. Like how could you top Dick Cheney:

Then there's Vice President Cheney, who suddenly has a different problem with the language: He's taken to blurting out things that just manifestly are not true.

The Iraq insurgency is in its "last throes''? In all the damage control that followed that little outburst, functionaries found it hard to come up with a defense that didn't begin, "What the vice president meant to say was . . ."

Undaunted, Cheney then described the life of the hundreds of prisoners being held at Guantanamo: "They're living in the tropics. They're well fed. They've got everything they could possibly want." He made it sound better than most of the vacations I've paid good money for, although as a general rule I take a pass on constant interrogation and occasional abuse.

In spite of all of the Vice President's cardiac enhancements he is obviously not getting nearly enough blood to his brain.

Mr Robinson continues with some slime from Karl Rove but I prefer not to soil the virtual pages of Middle Earth Journal with that. You will have to go read it yourself.

So, I'm laughing tonight...right before I cry myself to sleep.