Funny Girl

"The humor-challenged media is tripping all over itself to to praise the First Lady's appearance before the White House Correspondents' Association. Apparently their funny bone twitches uncontrollably at the sight of Laura being able to read from a sheet of prepared jokes. The talk in the television press has ranged from, ' Get this woman her own show .' to, ' Maybe she should run against Hillary .'. . . .

"I suppose it's too much to ask that the people who brought us Monica Lewinsky, Chandra Levy, Michael Jackson, Terri Schiavo, the Old Pope, the New Pope, and Jennifer 'Runaway Bride' Wilbanks, would suddenly chose to avoid blowing things up beyond all sense of proportion."

American Spectator's Wlady Pleszczynski isn't backing the White House on this one:

"I'm not sure about Laura Bush. Imagine if Hillary had pushed her husband aside to deliver the presidential address at the annual White House Correspondents' Dinner. Then we'd have had two impeachments for one. As it is, her elegance, grace, and lovely elocution aside, Laura's Saturday surprise was appalling. How many scores did she settle -- with her own side?

"She mocked Dick Cheney's tricky health. She depicted Mrs. Cheney as a male strip club tipper. She described the three architects of the Iraq war as butchers and brutes. This is what passes for humor while we still have soldiers dying in Iraq? Her clincher of a laugh line -- 'George, if you really want to end tyranny in the world, you're going to have to stay up later' -- reduced her husband's singular goal to nothingness. Either that, or Laura confirmed she was on MoveOn's payroll.

"As it is, her description of her husband as a bore of a man who's asleep by nine each night should keep the Tina Brown/Maureen Dowds in business well into their retirement. Soon enough we learned that Laura herself actually has never watched 'Desperate Housewives,' but heard about the show from her two daughters, who just love it. That's reassuring: to be reminded of the twins' and their ghastly performance at the 2004 GOP convention. Which in turn reminded one of Laura's speech to the delegates, in which she joked about a father turning his children's clothes pink in the wash while their mother is off serving in Iraq. It simply is amazing how complacently accepting the princely Bush first couple is of all the cheapness and rot in our culture. (And I won't begin to analyze the Bush milking the male horse joke and what it says about the Bushes' cynical use of the religious right.)"

Aw, why not?

President's Intern (no, I don't think it's that one) has "never been so disappointed in anyone as I am in the First Lady, Laura Bush. Mrs. Bush, speaking at the recent Correspondents Dinner took it upon herself to embarrass and humilate President Bush in the eyes of the entire world.

"How can President Bush stand up to those North Koreans and Iranians now that they know his manhood is suspect? Mrs. Bush made it clear that the President goes to bed every night at 9 p.m. without doing anything 'exciting'. Well, perhaps saving the Free World from terrorism all day long just makes a man tired. Perhaps Mrs. Bush in her dowdy nightgowns just doesn't appeal to a man who can have any woman in the world -- assuming he weren't a righteous Christian.

"So what if President Bush isn't interested in sex. He's got other interests like putting tinpot dictators in their place. You don't need a big penis (excuse the expression) to invade Iraq. In fact, if President Clinton hadn't been having sex with anything that moves, maybe he would have had the time to invade a country or two. . . .

"You can bet that back home in Texas, when a wife says she's out watching male strippers, those concealed weapons Texans carry become unconcealed quick enough. If my Momma ever said anything like that about Daddy in public, you can be sure I'd be half an orphan with a father on probation."

But I'd bet the prez signed off on the monologue in advance.