Some people say the best comedy is on TV. We say it’s in Washington, D.C.
“Concerned that ‘the pickup owners of this nation might get screwed in all this gas-guzzler talk about SUVs and vans,’ Zell Miller (D-Ga.) introduced an amendment to keep pickup fuel economy requirements at 20.7 mpg. He also co-wrote, sang, and recorded ‘The Talking Pickup Truck Blues.’
“A sample of the lyrics: ‘Sure, an SUV is classy travel, / But it ain’t much good for haulin’ gravel, / Or hay or seed or bovine feces. / So please, don’t make my pickup truck an endangered species.’”
—Fox News
“A controversy started September 11 when Brian Kerns (R-Ind.) gave the Indianapolis Star a harrowing account of watching a hijacked plane slam into the Pentagon during his commute on George Washington Memorial Parkway. ‘I’m in shock,’ he said. ‘I still can’t believe it. I drove into the office and told my staff to go home.’
“The Indianapolis Star reported, however, that the plane in question never flew over that parkway. And an American Legion official said he remembers being in Kerns’s office with the congressman when networks reported the Pentagon attack. Kerns’s response when pressed on whether he was mistaken about what he saw: ‘Who knows?’”
—Associated Press
“Patrick Kennedy (D-R.I.) was accused of causing $28,000 in damage to a rented yacht on a Y2K booze cruise. He later appeared at a political roast dressed in a sailor suit and capped off the evening by singing ‘Patrick the Sailor Man.’ At the same roast, the admitted former cokehead joked about Senator Lincoln Chafee (R-R.I.), another admitted former cokehead: ‘Now when I hear someone talking about a Rhode Island politician whose father was a senator and who got to Washington on his family name, used cocaine, and wasn’t very smart, I know there is only a 50-50 chance it’s me.’”
—Mother Jones
Bess Truman is the only First Lady to have a hurricane named after her.
“Answering questions about whether his recent election was helped by nepotism (after receiving $1 million from the Republican Party’s coffers), Bill Shuster (R-Pa.), son of Pennsylvania representative Bud Shuster, insisted ‘This is about Bill Shuster…and Bill Shuster standing on his own two feet.’ Maybe. We wonder if Solicitor of the Labor Department Eugene Scalia, son of Antonin; Health and Human Services Inspector General Janet Rehnquist, daughter of William; FCC chair Michael Powell, son of Colin; and President George W. Bush feel the same way.”
—Roll Call
“In September 1996, Mickey Kalinay (D) was defeated in the Democratic primary for the U.S. Senate in Wyoming…despite his tantalizing proposal to make the space program more efficient by constructing a 22,000-mile-high tower so that space stations can be accessed by electromagnetic rail cars.”
—News of the Weird
“The last time former Vice-President Dan Quayle (R) lived in Washington, his words were parsed almost as closely as the current president’s. He still lets off the occasional zinger; during an appearance on MSNBC’s Hardball, as he tried to ‘set aside the Middle East peace situation’ from the war on terrorism, he asked: ‘How many Palestinians were on those airplanes on September 9? None.’”
“In 1988, Tom DeLay (R-Tx.) explained to reporters his lack of service in the Vietnam War, despite being eligible and healthy. ‘So many minority youths had volunteered,’ he claimed, ‘that there was literally no room for patriotic folks like myself.’”
—online columnist, Ted Barlow
Bad news/good news: Friday the 13th comes at least once every year, but never more than three times a year.