An Englishman in New England

If you hadn't guessed it before, I'm an amateur comedian. Amateur, because I'm still perfecting that one flawless joke that makes someone laugh so hard their wallet spontaneously opens up and pours cash into my awaiting palms. Any day now. . .

Anyways, I say this because I like to think I have a pretty good sense of humor. The advantage of being an Englishman in the New World is that I understand the irony that is the staple of english japery, and have inherited the american sense of humor also, which in my opinion are two of the best in the world (have you ever heard a spanish joke? Horrendous!).

Being able to see the comedy in many things means that I also understand what is not funny. For instance, the type that would have Enron executives guffawing about their accounting "standards" over a sumptious dinner paid for with their employees' livelihoods. Or a passenger in first class on the Titanic flippantly joking that they hope the wretched folk stuck in steerage "wrapped up warmly" as they met their watery end on the ocean floor.

These are jokes that ordinary people are able to bandy about because they had no hand in these situations, and they are satiricizing (real word?) the instigators, rather than those who suffered the usually horrific consequences. Those who were involved in these kinds of circumstances and joke about them are usually viewed as monsters.

I find George Bush lampooning his inability to find weapons of virtually any sort of widespread destruction in Iraq to be akin to these repugnant examples. While he light-heartedly narrates show-and-tell photographs of him lifting chairs and looking under desks in the oval office, ("nope, no WMD's there. . .maybe in Dick's office. . ."), American servicemen and women are chasing the same red herring, although with one important difference:

Bush is eating steak at his $2,000 a plate fundraising dinner, while these brave men and women are eating bullets. Through their active service, they have earned the right to use such gallows humor. Despite his Air Guard Reserve "attendance", I believe GWB has not.

Perhaps for his encore, Mr. President will make light of the number of funerals of the servicemen and women that he has attended. Or poke fun at the millions of unemployed, and workers who are doing two jobs to keep from losing their homes.

C'mon, it's all in jest right?