Djelloul Marbrook

I think any politician or lobbyist convicted of corruption should be sentenced to listen to Henry Kissinger and John Kerry for years on end. And if they’ve really been bad, they should have to watch them pontificate before morning coffee.

The difference is I have confidence that eventually, by the most tortuous route, Henry Kissinger will say something I understand. I’ll disagree with him, I’m sure, but I’ll get it. I have no such faith when it comes to John Kerry. He doesn’t talk circles around ideas, he ties ideas into loops. I don’t know if the Kerry people have noticed it, but when you Google the word waffles the first thing that comes up is the official John Kerry web site. I wouldn’t call the senator a waffler. It’s more like he reconnoiters an idea until it goes out of style.

The other day I heard Mr. Kissinger in the next room say we can’t win the war in Iraq. Ah, so that’s what we were trying to do? His thoughts eventually emerge from the ponderosities, but I rarely think it was worth waiting for, and I always fear I’m going to get sick and die before they arrive.

I know CNN and Fox know why we’re in Iraq. But I think they’re withholding the information for security reasons. They’ve been using scarlet visuals and war-drum sound tracks for years. I think it’s called telegraphing the story line, as if they already knew the ending. But I found it passing strange nobody bothered to ask Mr. Kissinger, who had given the war his seal of approval, just what victory was supposed to look like. But now that it has slipped away, I guess it doesn’t matter any more than it mattered to the hawks in the first place.

As for Mr. Kerry, well I sometimes think I know what he thinks because the pundits tell me what he thinks. It’s as if they’ve been listening to the real Senator Kerry, whoever he is. But without the pundits I’m not sure any of us would know. He had a much better education than I did, but somehow Yale failed to convince him that simple, declarative sentences mere humans can parse are Ivy League hallmarks.

That’s why I admire John Murtha these days. I know he stands on the wrong side of many things I hold dear, but the man can get a thought out of his mouth without mutilating it.

On general principle I think we should vote against anybody who hews to a party line, anyone who is clear only about which fence he’s sitting on, anybody who can’t say I don’t know, and anybody who panders to the right, left and middle. That would leave us with a fairly level playing field.

Arizona thinks everybody should be required to speak English. Good for you, Arizona—start with the politicians.

I also think we should start electing comedians to high office. True, a lot of bad comedy acts are already playing in government, but they’re not comedians, they’re wannabes. Real comedians know how to talk straight. If they didn’t, we wouldn’t laugh.

That’s why I loved Frank Gorshin, the late impressionist. He always made me understand just how I felt about public figures, for better or worse. Can you imagine him doing John Kerry? I can. But I’m not sure how he’d do Henry Kissinger. I know he could, though.

And oh how he’d do the President! He’d have us remembering every pugnacious, condescending schoolyard bully we ever met. But would we laugh? I don’t know. It’s too close to home. John Kerry is funny, if you’re not desperate for a Democrat in the White House. Henry Kissinger is funny in his own way, mellifluating inexorably like molasses towards a conclusion everyone but you calls brilliant. But George Bush? Ah, well, we’ll never know, because Frank is gone. But there’s Steve Bridges. He makes us realize that presidents, if they do nothing else for us, are good for a laugh or two.

There’s actually something Frank couldn’t do. In fact, it’s pretty hard for any comedian to do. How do you make us laugh at all those fathead ponderozos who solemnly assured us going into Iraq was a great idea and now appear nightly on television just as if they’d never said it? How can they look at themselves in the mirror? We believed them. How can we look at ourselves in the mirror? And how are we going to eke out a laugh at our folly? They owe us some big-time apologies, but we won’t get them. What’s so bad about saying: Yes, I said it, and I was wrong, I apologize? Do they think maybe CNN and Fox would kick the soapbox out from under them? Not a chance. Without them, there would have to be more reporting, and that would cost a whole lot more than these nightly bafflegabbers.

We need a whole bunch of Frank Gorshins and Steve Bridges. We need a Comedy Party. The Greens are a long way off from taking over, but I think a Comedy Party would sweep into office on a tidal wave of guffaws. Americans have always enjoyed a good joke, even on themselves, but we seem to have reached a point where we need to remember to laugh.

And may I suggest one humble plank in the platform of our new majority party? Ban from the airwaves all the pundits and retired generals and self-serving think-tank flounders.