Still waiting for an Iraq War apology

The interview could have taken place on any number of cable news programs involving any number of Capital opinion mongers. This one happened to take place Saturday on MSNBC with Pat Buchanan.

I agree with almost nothing the far right Buchanan ever has to say, but I listen to him because he’s thoughtful, witty and unafraid to challenge GOP dogma, as evidenced by his lone wolf opposition to the Iraq War.

The weekend was awash in poignant recollection of the 9/11 attacks that so unified the country as few of us had ever seen.

What happened to that unity, Buchanan was asked.

“I think you started to see it come apart on the night of the 2002 State of the Union address when President Bush started talking about the Axis of Evil and began laying the ground work for war with Iraq,” he said.

Is there anything that can be done today to restore that national unity?

Buchanan immediately began to descend into Beltway babble. He began spouting nonsense about middle grounds, shared interests, blah, blah, blah. A 1988 GOP presidential candidate, he couldn’t come up with a sensible answer.

Or maybe I just tuned out when he didn’t blurt out an answer so obvious it goes unaddressed.

Just apologize.

Somebody needs to say they’re sorry. Say you made a mistake, a real whopper.

I think it would be beneficial to the national unity if even just one of the cheerleaders for the $3 trillion Iraq War would just say, “Oops!”

By now, they’ve all -- Bush, Cheney, Rove, Rumsfeld, Tenet, Rice, Wolfowitz, that whole smarmy gang -- published their blame-shifting books. But no one’s said they were sorry.

This may seem a precious sort of point along side the grim statistics (4,400 U.S. soldiers, 32,000 injured; more than 100,000 Iraqis dead), but my feelings are still hurt over what was said about those of us opposed to the war.

John Ashcroft said anyone who dared to question the Bush administration about the motives for the war was a traitor.

Chicken hawks Cheney and Rush Limbaugh hinted that anyone who opposed the war was what hard men in locker rooms call a “pussy.”

I don’t think I’m a traitorous pussy.

Ten years ago today I was consumed with blood lust. I wanted vengeance. I wanted Osama bin Laden’s head on a stick.

We all felt that way. Hell, the whole world felt that way.

The tragedy of the Bush administration is how it never chose to finish the one job with which the entire country entrusted it.

Imagine how Bush would be viewed today if he’d have kept his eye on the ball, killed bin Laden and cleaned up Afghanistan before dividing the armed forces in another treasure-sapping foreign conflict.

Bush’s speech at Shanksville was marvelous. It made me recall when he stood atop the rubble vowing revenge we all craved.

The only conclusion I can come to as to why they got so far off track was Karl Rove needed a 2004 re-election strategy.

And war in a Iraq was a dandy because a still-scarred nation would rally around our soldiers and woe to anyone who said whoa to politically manufactured war hysteria.

So it would be nice if someone would apologize for calling us stooges for believing Hans Blix, Scott Ritter and the United Nations when they said they needed more time to verify WMD were in Iraq.

I’d like to hear someone apologize to Valerie Plame for ending her career at the CIA because her husband was disputing Cheney’s murky contentions about yellow cake uranium from Niger.

I’d like to see Toby Keith go on the air and say, you know, in the heat of the moment maybe it was a little crass to beat up on the Dixie Chicks for expressing a heartfelt opinion.

I’d like to hear anyone who made fun of anyone like me who said it just might not be the cakewalk they’re saying it’ll be say, man, you were right. It’s been a bit of a bitch.

I really think that would help elevate the national discourse, because I’m ready to forgive you.

But without that apology, it just seems like you all went from cheerleading a historic fiasco and straight into Tea Party birther movements without acknowledging you were dead wrong on the single biggest issue to face this entire generation.

The Iraq War has been a disgraceful mess from the start and it was all your fault.

And if I’m coming on a wee bit too strong at a time when we’re all straining to recover the unity and common ground of post-9/11 America, let me say I’m sorry.

Try it some time. You might feel better.

Exploding heads? Cheney wrong again

Capital police have yet to report an epidemic of exploding craniums in Washington. Thus, the man who more than anyone assured America that Iraq abounded with WMD is wrong again.

Dick Cheney said the release of his self-indulgently titled “In My Time” would cause “heads to explode”

It’s typical bravado from a trigger-happy chicken hawk who sought and received five deferments to duck duty in Vietnam, yet never personally drew human blood until 2006 when a Texas lawyer forgot to duck when Cheney nearly cooked his goose.

And to further add to the fowl coincidences, both men were hunting a bird whose name is pronounced exactly the same as a previous VP under a previous Bush.

It stretches the credulity of all the old birds-in-the-bush aphorisms.

I nearly had a vested interest in the release of the Cheney book and exploding heads would have certainly goosed up sales in a fanciful project over which I still feel sentimental.

It was 2009 when Cheney was becoming so visible I suggested he replace Simon Cowell as a take-no-prisoners judge on “American Idol.”

Remember? Obama had just taken office and Cheney was predicting so much imminent doom I was surprised anyone was still bothering to peruse the seed catalogues.

He hinted bin Laden was probably chortling over having such a rank amateur as Obama going after him.

And Cheney may have been right about that. We’ll never know.

So Cheney seemed a natural to step in for Cowell. Who wouldn’t have tuned in to hear him tell some “Freebird” mangling hillbilly, “You can’t sing, you’re ugly and you smell like Detroit during a garbage strike.

“I’d advise you to go back to welding bent tailpipes, but I’ll be happy to shove you out the window if you’re just going to stand there and pout. It’s up to you friend. I don’t care one way or the other.”

He remains one of the most fascinating political characters of our time and is certainly the most frightening.

Besides being an uber-war monger with that fistful of deferments, he’s a dour moralist with two DUIs. He’s the leader of the far right movement that rails against gay marriage, yet he’s the doting grandfather to two children who are being raised in an alternative lifestyle loathed by his many ardent supporters.

I through tightly clenched teeth found psycho-analyzing him irresistible.

I wondered if my bitter partisanship was blinding me to a side of Cheney he sought to conceal.

Like perhaps the presence of a soul.

I had so much fun with it I decided to dash off a jiffy book proposal called, “The Audacious, Startling True Adventures of Pvt. Cheney -- Stealth Superhero!” It’s marooned at the orphanage section for unwanted stories at www.chrisrodell.com.

I was sure I had a smash hit on my hands and pitched it to some publishers who -- and this is symptomatic of my many failures -- said, wow, this is a great, hilarious, if only you’d have thought of this about six months ago!

What’s funny is whenever I’m invited to speak to high school or college journalism students, the story that gets the most enthusiastic comment is invariably the one about Pvt. Cheney and it’s always from the students who look the most thoroughly burned out, God bless ‘em.

Makes me hope burn outs gravitate to the publishing world before it’s too late for me.

I’m sure the book would be enjoying a nice little run right now.

It’s bound to have been more entertaining than Cheney score settling bore, which reviews are saying is just his way to kill time.

And, hey, I’m all for that.

It’s a vast improvement over all that Cheney was responsible for killing from 2003-2008.

The good, the bad & the repaired TV

Gone 19 days, the TV is back home where it belongs and I am diminished by its return.

The welcome home lavished upon it dwarfed any reaction I’ve ever received, even the times when I come bearing gifts.

The children did euphoric little cartwheels across the carpet and Val’s relieved expression matched the look on Livvy’s face when John Walton came through the door after the harrowing winter evening that was the dramatic catalyst for the Walton’s Christmas special, “The Homecoming.”

It’s understood. My presents are trinkets compared to the evergreen gifts of a really good hi-def TV.

It has nearly 1,000 channels that bestow comfort, laughter, suspense and hours and hours of Disney wisdom.

The TV never scolds. It never corrects. It never tells the girls it’s time for bed. It never grosses them out with a really loud fart.

How can your average father expect to compete with that?

The TV plays so many leadership roles. It settles disputes. It unites us. It is our Speaker of the House.

Actually, with surround sound, it is our Five Speakers of the House.

No one would give a damn if the refrigerator or the washing machine went on the fritz. It wouldn’t tear at the social fabric of the family (but if the washing machine went down it would likely diminish some of the family’s other fabrics).

So when the TV goes down, we all feel it’s pain.

Worse, I knew the cure for the suddenly black screen could kill -- not the TV set.

Me.

That’s because once again I’d be dealing with Daryl, a man so mean he makes Dick Cheney seem cheerful.

I’d dealt with the old man before. He was rude, abrasive and tactless, a self-contained Axis of Evil so malevolent I felt like alerting the FBI.

I knew the broken TV meant he’d be poisoning my otherwise sunny days.

That’s just one sacrifice I make to support America’s Main Street businesses over the town-killing big box stores.

If your Best Buy TV breaks, you just drop it off at the store and two weeks later they tell you it’s fixed. It’s like sex with a hooker only without all the warranty issues.

But if you bought from a local reseller, you’re dealing with Daryl.

I wasn’t there five minutes when he insulted me.

“You’ve got a B.O. problem,” he said.

Impossible, I said. Old Spice has never failed me.

He explained he meant “back order.” He was messin’ with Sasquatch.

With atrocious bedside manners, he said, “This could take a long, long time.”

Still, it’s a hostage situation. I’m entirely at his misanthropic mercy.

I walk out of there dumbfounded how any man who spends his days healing sick TVs can be so unfeeling. Doesn’t he ever tune any of his myriad sets to the Lifetime Channel?

How can a man skilled at repairing 72-inch hi-def sets fail to see the big picture?

The situation was saved by one of life’s nifty little symmetries.

It was because of our dealings with the world’s most dyspeptic TV man we also got to better know one of the industry’s friendliest.

He’s Vince Zaccaria of Premiere Audio/Visual Services in Mt. Pleasant. It’s guys like him that are the reason I’ll always buy from local independents.

He’s so well regarded his home theater construction skills have been showcased with meathead ex-jock Tony Siragusa on the DIY Channel’s Man Cave shows. He’s done a bunch of them all over the East Coast.

So he’s a busy man. But when he heard we were without a TV he reacted like Ike Godsey did when one of The Walton kids got sick.

He brought medicine.

“I just felt so bad when I heard you were without a TV,” he said. “I couldn’t let you go all that time without one.”

He gave us a spiffy loaner and when Daryl finally said the TV was fixed, Vince was there within hours to hook it all up.

So an event that began with me confronting human nastiness ends with my family having the opportunity to bask in goodness, generosity and dazzling magnificence.

And I’m talking about the TV, not Vince.

Vince is nice and all.

But he’s no TV.

Our mansion vacation

We’d finished our meals at a place so sumptuous it makes Dick Cheney cheerful when Lucy became momentarily agreeable and said she wanted to return to our mansion.

There, a line that seems so strewn with lies and exaggerations, is 100 percent truth.

We did have a mansion, Lucy was momentarily agreeable and, yes, Virginia, there is a place where Cheney’s cheerful.

It’s St. Michaels, Maryland. We just spent the last three days there.

I don’t know which of the aforementioned truths is more surprising, so let’s get to the one that’s most monumental.

Let’s get right to the mansion.

It was Far Away Point (homes have addresses; mansions, like pets and people, all have names and personalities).

It just sold for $6.1 million and rents for the week for $6,500. 

Far Away Point has six bedrooms, six baths, library, pool, bath house, 81 acres, boat dock, guest house (sleeps 8), and a shoreline overlooking the same Chesapeake Bay eastern shore waters as recent retirees Cheney and Don Rumsfeld.

I was there to research a story about mansion rentals in a place that’s home to two men who think they’ve never been wrong and how with their selection of St. Michael’s as the perfect place to retire they got at least one thing right.

Doesn’t quite make up for the whole Iraq War thingie, but let’s give the devils their due.

I remain amazed I was able to stay there without having committed any crimes.

We didn’t break in. We were invited.  I didn’t pretend I was someone else. I was legit. We weren’t supervised. We were so all alone the girls spent most of the time there skinny dipping.

As our host drove up the mile-long driveway, I had the uneasy sense I was about to become Jack Torrance from “The Shining.”

That disquiet was only heightened when after a full 25-minute tour, Lucy, 4 (5 next week!) looked with dead eyes at me and said, “We’ve been here before.”

Far Away Point is 93 years old.

That’s Lucy. She has just three speeds: Spooky, sweet or Satanic (nickname, Lucy-fer).

Then, as soon as the realtor departed, Josie got locked in Far Away Point’s elevator, or as we now call it, the “hellavator.”

It was one of those old, rickety, self-operated three-story numbers that are kid magnets. Both the outer and sliding doors need to be closed for it to run.

Josie, naturally, thought it would be the perfect toy. She took it from the second floor to the first.

Then the outer door wouldn’t budge. Then the light went out.

She started screaming. I yelled, “Don’t panic!” and immediately commenced to panic. I yanked with all my might, I twisted coat hangers, I looked around for a fire ax.

She was in there about 10 minutes. We called the caretaker and the realtor and got no answer. Val finally persuaded her to push the buttons again. The lift had been off the landing. It needed to descend two more inches for the doors to release.

We were off to a frightening start.

But it got better right away.

If there were malevolent spirits in the house intent on retrieving our souls for eternal damnation, I think we won them over. They saw we were friendly. They saw we had no ill-intentions. They saw Val naked.

The girls were naked nearly the whole time. Me, a veteran skinny dipper, was envious.

It soon became one of our best vacations ever. It was magical.

The mansion soon felt like home. It embraced us. We all relaxed and just reveled in the opportunity to have such freedom in something so regal.

In the end, the girls decided they preferred our own home for perfectly 21st century reasons.

For all its glories, it’s many books and lavish places to relax and read, Far Away Point has but one measly TV and it’s about the size of a chess board.

Our home may be tiny and under-furnished, but it has three glorious TVs, one of them a real whopper, and all three could kick the butt of the one in Far Away Point.

Who needs mansions when you have hi-def?

For me the best part was overcoming our initial fears and learning to love this big, old beautiful house on the shore. Our memories of it will never fade.

And to think I for even a fleeting moment believed that true evil lurked in the heart of the home, an evil so malignant that it could possess our very souls.

How wrong I was.

I must have been confusing Far Away Point with down the street at Cheney’s place.

When black men spike balls

We are witnessing a fascinating sociological phenomenon where a president many Americans despise because he’s black is taking flak from these very same people for not acting black enough.

President Obama doesn’t want to release the photos of bin Laden’s ventilated head.

“We don’t trot this stuff out as trophies,” he said. “We don’t need to spike the football.”

Good enough for me. Besides, I’ve already seen the rendition of the assault by the genius Taiwanese animators at Next Media Animation who not only envisioned every aspect of the secret raid, they posted animated insights of what happened to bin Laden when Satan welcomed him to hell.

(The uproarious video was removed for confounding reasons of cultural sensitivity, but check out their stuff).

Many of the people right now screaming for releasing the gruesome pictures to convince radical Muslims bin Laden is really dead, are the same Americans who refuse to believe the authenticity of the Hawaiian birth certificate of the man they’re imploring to release the real pictures.

It’s classic twistedness.

Releasing the picture has become another issue upon which to gauge or belittle Obama’s manhood.

Sarah Palin, god love her, injected the word “pussyfoot” into the debate.

Interesting historical aside: The origin of the word “pussyfoot” tips its hat to Prohibition. 

It was the nickname of  W.E. “Pussyfoot” Johnson (1862-1945). He was a staunch prohibitionist who used underhanded -- maybe underpawed -- methods to further his truculent and, I say, brain-dead opposition to Demon Rum.

Comment that a man named Johnson was the inspiration for a word featuring what is now an anatomical vulgarity will be left unsaid.

I’m no football historian, but I think you can trace the touchdown spike back to a black man known as White Shoes. That would be Billy “White Shoes” Johnson, who played professional football for the Houston Oilers in the mid-1970s.

Whenever he’d score a touchdown, and he often did, he performed a spike-punctuated gridiron version of soul singer Rufus Thomas’s dance, the “Funky Chicken.” 

Since then, the football spike has been elevated to an art form by diva receivers like the peerless Chad Ocho Cinco -- and, hey, Happy Cinco De Mayo, fair readers!

My favorite was his “Lord of the Dance” impersonation. This gold-toothed, 6-foot-1, ebony-skinned gazelle for just a moment convinced me he was a plucky little leprechaun.

I thought it was marvelous, but stoic traditionalists were outraged. 

They want flashy African-Americans to play football and attract that demographic, but when they score points they want them to act like pro golfers do after they’ve sunk a long par putt.

The men who are now running the NFL (and that’s “running,” not “ruining,” although the words are right now interchangeable) have even instituted penalties aimed at curbing what they call “excessive endzone celebrations.”

They might have even tossed a penalty flag on the euphoric crowds that gathered outside the White House on Sunday evening.

They are men who look and probably act like John Brennan, Obama’s chief counter-terrorism advisor. He’s a 55-year-old New Jersey kid who’s spent 25 years working with Republicans and Democrats in the CIA.

He looks like the mirthless kind of man who if he got into a staring contest with Dick Cheney dinosaurs would re-evolve and start devouring fast food joints before either blinked.

He’s pictured in that already classic photo of tense Situation Room where the current Decider and his team where watching the drama play out in real time (and I can’t wait for the movie).

He came close to chortling in admiration when he described Obama under pressure. Here’s what Brennan said: 

“There was nothing that confirmed that bin Laden was at that compound and therefore, when President Obama was faced with the opportunity to act upon this, the president had to evaluate the strength of that information and then made what I believe was one of the most gutsiest calls of any president in recent memory.”

Brennan, who looks like a man who favors salty talk, was probably sanitizing his true feelings.

What he’d probably meant was Obama has balls.

And that brings us back to the picture and another sound reason why Obama will not be goaded into releasing it.

A man who’s already proven he has real balls will wisely conclude he has nothing to gain by spiking imaginary ones. 

In praise of, yikes, winter?

I endured a skin-crawling moment of awkwardness last week when I felt forced to say nice things about something I fear six months of the year and loathe the rest.

I had to point out the finer aspects of a really nasty winter.

It was like reading aloud affectionate sonnets about Cheney.

Hating winter is a core component of my existence. That’s why I was surprised to hear myself -- sober, even -- defending bitter winter to three Southerners who talked about the joys of doing things like deep frying turkeys in shorts on the porch at Thanksgiving while I’m up to my nose in snows.

And, to be clear, the chefs were in the shorts, not the turkeys.

They were three women from Florida, a state for which I have an instinctual contempt.

I’ve long suspected it was home to the stupidest and laziest people in America, a belief confirmed during the 2000 presidential election whenever the nightly news focused on that guy who self-hypnotized staring at dangling chads.

It’s always struck me as ridiculous that anyone would choose where they live based solely on a weather forecast.

It’s a clear sign of weakness. I’m convinced if we sanctioned a tug of war between Florida and Pennsylvania we Keystone Staters could drag their sad, skinny asses clear to Maryland where they’d perish the instant the first drops of sleet splashed their bronzed skin.

Understand, too, I probably have more good friends in Florida than in any state in the union -- and that should prove my point. Stupid and lazy are an essential criteria for friendship with me.

If I wanted smart and energetic I guess I’d vacation someplace like Vermont with Ben and Jerry, and I’m talking about proper same-sex couples and not high-caloric tubs of ice cream.

But to hear three Floridians deride a big part of my very existence was too much.

“I hate snow! I hate cold! I spent one winter in Boston. I’ll never go back!”

Good points, all. Winter can be perilous.

But there is no summer equivalent to cuddling loved ones at home in front of a  warm fire while the snows fall outside.

It’s magnificent. One of my favorite days each winter is geared to a weekend when no one in their right mind would leave the house unless they were low on liquor.

We stoke the fireplace and pop “Gone With The Wind” in the DVD. It’s a full day of marvelous pageantry and entertainment. The girls just love it. Me, too.

Plus, it gives me the opportunity to talk about the history of cinematic profanity and make swearing in front of the children seem educational.

Then there’s the soups. Cooking a big pot of aromatic soup is one of life’s most soulful joys. It nourishes. It lasts all week. It fills the house with heady scents.

As much as I love spending an hour around the Weber Grill with a beer and a baseball game on the radio, it simply doesn’t equate to all winter cooking has to offer.

And I contend Florida is at least as inhospitable as any northern winter.

The four summer months in Florida are a time when even committed sun worshippers admit they never leave the house, choosing instead to stay inside either watching Jerry Springer or doing things that earn invitations to televised appearances with Jerry Springer.

It’s true. Nearly ever goofy news story involving dysfunctional families originates in the Sunshine State. Why do you think National Enquirer is headquartered in Boca?

Understand, too, I’m referring exclusively to Florida and not the many other splendid Southern states like South Carolina, Georgia and other titans of the confederacy.

Those are places rich in heritage with proud people who’ve lived there for generations. It’s been said north, east and west are directions, but the South is a place.

That doesn’t include Florida, a geographical oddity that would be the national drain if you ever tipped America up on its side. It’s the state where so many lost souls swirl around like so much soggy lettuce before they congealing at the bottom of the American sink.

If that seems unduly harsh, so be it.

It’ll be something you Floridians can think about when they're deep frying your turkeys next Thanksgiving.

Just don’t come crying to me when hot grease scalds your exposed skin.

Frankly, my dears, I won’t give a damn.

I say nice things about Republicans

It’s a measure of President Obama’s humility that he won’t reveal the healing role he played during his visit to Gabby Giffords.

And being a partisan Democrat, I can’t help but wonder what miracles would stem from a Bill Clinton visit.

If Obama can restore vision to traumatic head shot victims (well, sort of), then certainly the sight of Clinton sauntering into intensive care would cause the ladies to spring out of their hospital beds to start applying party make-up.

Say what you want about his politics, but the man’s got charisma.

It’s been five days since the tree of liberty was refreshed by the blood of patriots. Anyone feeling better about it yet?

I have to think that’s one gem Thomas Jefferson wishes he could take back. I can’t imagine he meant the bloodletting to apply to someone like Giffords.

Could she be a more becoming patriot? No fair-minded observer would describe her as tyrannical (the full Jefferson quote applying to blood from both patriots and tyrants).

She is beloved for being collegial, intelligent and even-handed about difficult issues. Sure, she may have favored prudent health care reform, but she was married to an astronaut. That’s so cool.

Is she the kind of patriot to whom Jefferson was referring?

Was 9-year-old Christina Green?

If I may be so bold, I’d like to edit Jefferson to something more in tune with common sensibilities.

It should read: “The tree of liberty is magnificent to behold in all seasons, but it looks best when patriots of all political persuasions come together to nurture it and hang red, white & blue bird feeders from its majestic boughs.”

There! Now, isn’t that better?

Being a liberal I’m, of course, politically correct. Words matter. 

They matter when you’re talking about patriotic bloodlettings, Second Amendment solutions, and emphasizing the need to re-load rather than retreat.

And I hope the ones that matter most are the eloquent ones President Obama spoke in Tucson.

Our 10-year-old daughter had heard vague details about the shootings over the PA system at school. That pleased me. In football terms, the principal there called an audible. He decided on the fly the event was relevant enough to turn into a mini-civics lesson.

Bravo.

I didn’t want her to see the footage of the mayhem, or the demonic pictures of the madman. I didn’t see that doing her any good.

But I wanted her to see how we grieved.

“America suffered a tragedy on Saturday,” I said. “I want you to watch how America heals.”

It couldn’t have been more moving.

From the native American invocation and the steely poise of intern Daniel Hernandez to Obama’s stirring speech, it’s something I’ll never forget.

Of course, it means nothing if we don’t act on his admonition to care more for one another, to civilize our rhetoric and elevate the political discourse.

Let it begin with me.

I’m going to say a bunch of nice things about prominent Republicans I used to blast for knee-jerk reasons.

Because I’m so new at this, please forgive me if some of it sounds sarcastic.

Here goes:

• George W. Bush! -- He was the right man for the right time on 9/11. I felt exactly the way I do now about Obama’s speech in Tucson as I did when Bush spoke after 9/11. The people who know him best all love him. He’s raised two beautiful and vivacious daughters. He loves baseball. He presided over the presidency during extraordinarily difficult times and he didn’t let it defeat himself or the country he loves. He enjoys a good laugh and isn’t one of those childish sorts who can’t laugh at himself. He doesn’t hold petty grudges. His post-presidential years will be dignified and free of taint. He’s at peace with his actions and is deserving of the happy respite he so enjoys in the Texas he loves.

• Dan Quayle! -- In 2003, I wrote a book called “Hole in One! The Complete Book of Fact, Legend and Lore of Golf’s Luckiest Shot.” The New York Times cited it in 2009 as the Bible on the topic. If The Times says my book is The Bible about holes-in-one, then I can rightly declare I’ve written a holey book. I interviewed dozens of celebrities about their golfing perfection. Quayle was one of the nicest. We talked for about 45 minutes and he couldn’t have been friendlier. He was such a good sport he didn’t even mind when I asked him about his wife Marilyn’s saucy response when someone asked her about reports he’d had an affair while on a golf trip (“Anyone who knows Dan knows he’s much more interested in golfing than sex.”) He just laughed and said she was mad when she said it. He’d had two aces though 2003 and I hope he gets a bunch more.

• Tom DeLay! -- The man’s got balls. Even while under indictment for the crime of which he was just convicted and sentenced to three years, he still went on “Dancing With The Stars” and whooped it up. And before he went into politics, I hear he was a fine exterminator.

• Newt Gingrich! -- He has a true and abiding love for animals, zoos and history. He’s a thrice-married man who still has the buoyant audacity to court family values voters. Did you know he’s a Pennsylvania native? Go Keystone State!

• Rush Limbaugh! -- He loves golf and smoke cigars. He’s indifferent to what people think about him. He had Elton John sing at his recent fourth wedding. When National Enquirer busted him for drug addiction in 2003, he didn’t weasel out and call them a bunch of liars. He said, yup, you got me, thus another monumental victory for tabloid journalism.

• Dick Cheney! -- Now, this is getting tough. Okay. When he shot that guy -- anniversary alert! -- five years ago February 11, he didn’t let his instincts get the better of him and just go finish the poor bastard off.

• Sarah Palin! -- Uh, Sarah Palin! . . . Sarah Palin? . . . Hmmm . . . Okay . . . Sarah Palin is wonderfully childlike in her approach to complicated problems!

That’s enough for now.

President Obama said we needed to start being nicer to one another.

He didn’t say it was always going to be easy.