Story of the roofer who was wasp stung up the nose and 14 other mostly seasonal/political observations

I was sipping suds last week with a friendly roofer who in the course of our conversation told me the single most horrific sting story I’ve ever heard. He was nailing a tarp to an old lady’s roof when his hammer nearly nailed a wasp. He missed, but the wasp wasn’t relieved at the narrow escape. No, it was pissed. It reacted like the Randy Quaid fight pilot character in “Independence Day.” In its impulsive rage, it decided to turn kamikaze. It flew straight up his nose. Once embedded deep in the roofer’s booger barn, it stung. “The pain was excruciating,” he said. “My whole body immediately began to swell.” Lucky for him, he was on the roof of a quick-thinking old lady. She didn’t wait for an ambulance. She drove him to the ER herself and even had the foresight to immediately load him up with Benadryl. Docs said she saved his life. Had I been blogging like I used to, I’d have written 1,000 lavish words on his story and concluded by saying the only way the story could have been more gruesomely compelling was if the wasp had flown straight up his penis.

• Only 49 days till PyeongChang Winter Olympics! I love everything about the games and hope the Korean peninsula is still inhabitable come Feb. 9.

• Val and I staged a holiday intervention for our 11-year-old earlier this month. Fearing 6th grade meanies might tease her about her darling innocence over the existence of Santa, we exposed the fraud. We told her Santa wasn’t real, that it was all a fairytale, all make-believe. Then we took her to church and instructed her to worship God in heaven.

• Something very odd happened with the blog this week; it became a global phenomenon — at least readership-wise. In nine years of blogging on average 17 times a month, I only four times reached more than 10,000 readers in one month. My stats page says I’ve already this month reached more than 30,000 — and that’s in just the last two days. Thousands of readers from around the world with France, Belgium, the Philippines and Kuwait leading the way began binge-reading like it was the night before finals. I’d seen lesser bursts from individual countries, but never anything this widespread and sustained. Of course, it being my blog, 30,000 new readers earns me as much as if it were zero and things have already returned to normal. But I’m struck by the realization that the less I write the more impactful I become. That’s a dangerous lesson for a man already prone to laziness.

• I’ve been bee/wasp stung on my back, thigh, forearm, neck and once on the tip of my left pinky, which hurt the worst and led to a painful aftermath. I didn’t tell my roofer friend about the pinky sting.

• This random item post is being composed to the sound of “Brothers in Arms” by Dire Straits from 1985. Mark Knopfler’s band’s just been voted into the Rock ’n’ Roll Hall of Fame. I just love Dire Straits and if forced to be picky I’d take Knopfler’s nine solo recordings since ’96 with me if someone decided to maroon me on Mars. It’s the kind of argument that ought to be settled in a bar with a great jukebox, but I contend are two greatest living artists are Knopfler and Van Morrison.

• Contender for most controversial tweet of the month: “Conservative whites livid when wished Happy Holidays instead of Merry Christmas think blacks overreacting about unarmed blacks getting killed by conservative whites.” A newish Facebook friend wrote: “Well, Chris, I discovered you a year or so ago, and enjoyed your wit. Learned over time you are leftist in your thinking. But this post goes too far. Goodbye.” I said goodbye, good luck and wished her a Merry Christmas.

• We’ve reached a point in our national political discourse where it’s impossible to argue with people with whom you disagree and you risk infuriating those with whom you do, in fact, agree if you do not agree loudly enough.

• The teen angst flick “Lady Bird” — it’s not about Mrs. LBJ — is on every top critic must-see Top 10 list I’ve seen. It will not be on mine. It’s another reminder of how if you want to succeed in the American arts today, your best route is pandering to the crowds eager to patronize boring mope-fests with murky endings. Looking for some feel-good entertainment? Skip “Lady Bird” and see “Coco.”

• To be clear, my habit is to wish everyone the omnibus “Happy Holidays!” I do this because it covers all the holiday bases. And just to be safe, I avoid shooting any unarmed blacks.

• So Todd Palin told police he needed his gun to protect his family and was going to achieve this by shooting one of ‘em?

• Movies I’m interested in seeing include: “The Shape of Water,” "Molly's Game," “The Greatest Showman,” and especially “Darkest Hour.”

• Once again, our holiday highlight included a visit to the Jimmy Stewart Museum in the star’s Indiana, Pa., hometown. The visit includes a free screening in the cozy theater of “It’s A Wonderful Life.” I wrote in ’15 how seeing this movie should be a national obligation.

• Thanks to one and all who came to the memorial service for our dear Mom last Saturday, three days before what would have been her 85th birthday.  Most moving part was what I called my trifecta of love: My wife playing piano accompaniment for Josie singing “Supermarket Flowers” in honor of her Nana. There’s a video link on my Facebook page. I spoke for about three minutes and feel deserving of credit for not turning the eulogy of my mother into a bombastic sales promotion for “Use All The Crayons!”

• Funny thing about near-death experiences. As the roofer told me how he was nearly destroyed by the wasp that flew up his nose, we were both roaring with laughter over the near-fatality. Just goes to show you, what doesn’t kill you can only make for a really great bar story. 

• Merry Holidays!

Related …

A bejesus of a wasp sting

I say nice things about Republicans

Save Olympic wrestling: bring back Harding vs. Kerrigan!

Joyful new (musical) additions to our musical family

RIP Mom: why feeling sad is so elusive

Farewell, Sarah Palin, America’s flirt

Defending, sheesh, Sarah Palin

(659 words)

The comments an X-rated rapper is making about a prominent mother are so vile and disturbing I wish there were legal solutions that could turn a woman named Azealia Banks into a woman named Azealia Failed Savings & Loan.

They are so disgusting, vulgar and violent they stirred my long-buried chivalrous nature. I reflexively wanted to comfort the victim of her vituperations.

This is all surprising even to me because the fair damsel is none other than Sarah Palin.

I disagree with everything Sarah says or stands for and understand she’s become expert at dealing with personal attacks.

But what Banks tweets? Wow.

I won’t even repeat any of it here, but it is true hate speech.

Palin is suing, which seems like a reasonable reaction by someone who doesn’t understand that even hate speech is protected by the First Amendment.

Still, of course, it’s all fascinating.

On the one hand we have a public figure now famous for saying hateful things that offend the moral decencies of millions of Americans.

And on the other hand . . .

Wait a second. I think I’m describing the same person.

Who is Azealia Banks?

She is a 24-year-old NYC rapper prone to outlandish pronouncements. Her most impressive credential to me is her monumental twitter feed. I don’t think she ever sleeps. She tweets like you and I respirate.

She says she’s an atheist on one tweet and then 30 seconds later purports to be something of a religious scholar when she tweets Asians won’t be in heaven because not a one of them is mentioned in the Bible.

So your fears of heavenly overcrowding should be at least a bit eased.

She has nasty things to say about Hilary Clinton, corn syrup, ignorant hillbillies, food stamps, Ted Cruz, paunchy rednecks and mutant chickens.

It’s wacky. It’s offensive. It’s unrelenting. It’s like a stream of consciousness from a woman who seems to have been unconscious while the teachers instructed others about civics.

So in some ways she’s the blacker, filthier, bi-sexual version of Sarah Palin.

The fight began when Banks fell for a satirical post that claimed Palin said black folks were better off as slaves, proving once again parody is best when it masquerades as what Colbert declares is “truthiness.”

Palin orates in a style I call provocative incoherence.

Her every utterance seems designed to provoke in every listener either adulation or animosity. It’s the only red meat over which even devout vegetarians drool.

And she’s the kind of gaffe-machine that reminds me of a line from an old Stephen Bruton song: “Just enough brains to outsmart herself.”

Happens every time.

It even happens, gloriously, in her make-peace response to Banks’s barrage.

“In this life, you have been blessed to be given an influential platform. So have I. Why don’t we work together to strengthen both our platforms and together do something worthwhile — like condoning racism!”

I like to think she meant “condemning” racism, but with Sarah you just never know.

I think with Banks Sarah is learning it’s easy to provoke a reaction by those who oppose you, but it’s impossible to control who or what you provoke.

There’s a lesson in all this.

Let’s, for God’s sake, tone it all down.

Banks has said, c’mon, she was just joshing. She doesn’t really think Sarah should enjoy being gang-raped by big black men.

And maybe Sarah should realize “real America” is always going to include, like it or not, people like our X-rated rapper.

Banks is wrong to say those things about Sarah or anyone. She should through her art try and elevate, although that might be a lot to ask from a woman who in the song “212” raps the line, “I guess that (vulgarity describing female body part) is gettin’ eaten!”

Of course, it cuts both ways.

Maybe Sarah can find a less less incendiary way to channel her rhetorical passions, too.

I suggest pantomime.

Related . . .

Sarah and the Zombies

Farewell, Sarah, America’s flirt

I can’t even pretend to like rap

I’ll be wrapping tonight at Barnes & Noble

I hate the snooze alarm

Re-run Sunday: Fake boobs to confound real ones

This one enjoyed a mini-surge this week. It charms me whenever readers revive some of these old stories. This was from March 2009. I re-read it and thought, you know, you don't hear foreign policy arguments like this on "Meet the Press." It's a pity. Read on and I think you'll agree.

This is bound to be controversial, but here goes: for the good of our national interests, Hillary Clinton needs a boob job.

I’m not talking something that will enhance the Secretary of State’s already womanly figure. I’m talking about porn tits. Major league yabos. Ta tas ‘til Tuesday.

And, yes, she needs to do this for Uncle Sam, and to be perfectly clear, I’m referring to the symbol of our shared national interests here and not the lecherous uncle who used to make you fish through his pockets for bent Tootsie Rolls.

This diplomatic overture occurred to me after I skimmed a recent story about how Sarah Palin’s voluptuous looks may have actually worked against her during the 2008 election -- and let’s again take a moment to revel in the marvelous reality show of a race that was.

It wasn’t too long ago that every national election involved four uniformly boring white men. The introduction of an unknown babe like Palin was a sensation that just keeps on giving. It’s impossible for her to say something that doesn’t enliven each and every news cycle when she manages to pry herself away from the tedium of North Pole politics.

We can all be grateful that she, her whack job family and pill-popping in-laws are going to be electrifying the national news for at least the next 30 years (and those of us who lean liberal can be grateful she’s a solid conservative).

Whether her dynamite looks cost her votes is disputable. But no one can argue the impact she had on the global politics when she made a memorable show biz visit to the United Nations.

To me, it was the highlight of the whole election. Palin handlers ushered her through a day of drive-by meetings with leaders from hotspots around the world.

It may have been the first time in history a push-up bra was deployed to demonstrate gravitas.

Fox News immediately trumpeted the predictable reaction of these dour men from mostly authoritarian countries to being greeted by the jiggly Palin: “Foreign leaders enthusiastically endorse Palin. . .”

Typically, Fox only gave half the headline and left out ". . . for their harems!”

No reaction was more comical than that of Pakistani president Asif Ali Zardari, the still grieving widower of assassinated premier Benazir Bhutto. He used his face time with Palin to gush on camera, “You are so gorgeous! Now I know why the whole of America is crazy about you.”

When an aide suggested the two shake hands, Zardari beamed boyish sunshine and said, “If he’s insisting, I might hug!”

He did regain enough focus to talk some strategy.

“And how does one keep looking that good when one is that busy?” he asked.

Yes, love was in the air.

It occurred to me that Zardari and men like him are still living in the ‘60s. The 1360s. They’ve never had a chance to enjoy lusty relations or bawdy ambitions with someone like the comely Sarah. It’s a pity and I think the unnatural repression is a reason that many fundamentalists around the world become so kill crazy. They’re stuck home alone on weekends with their religious studies while everyone else is out getting some.

It sort of reminds me of the unfulfilled longings from my own adolescence, except my internal frustrations boiled to the surface in the form of, not homicidal mayhem, but sprawling fields of unsightly facial pimples.

Make no mistake: We are at war with fundamentalists who resent our way of life, our exuberant liberty and the fact that they can’t put women like Palin in a drab burqa and a stifling muzzle (in reflective moments, John McCain probably shares half that sentiment).

That’s why Hillary needs to get some massive new boobs, some low cut dresses and a bra that’ll shove those hooters right up under the noses of our fundamentalist enemies.

She needs to look them in the eye, dare them to maintain eye contact and say, “This is who we are. Like it or not, this is the future and there’s not a thing you can do about it. And maybe you should loosen up that turban and think about giving it a try, big boy.”

It would make Hillary an historic feminist icon around the Muslim world and might eventually lead to seismic changes in how Arab males treat women.

Now, if I could just find a powerful politician with enough international respect to articulate the wisdom behind this groundbreaking diplomatic initiative . . .

I wonder if Bill Clinton would think this is a good idea.

Farewell, Sarah, America's flirt

I’ve spent the morning hearing moving tributes to Steve Jobs and am disappointed no one’s mentioned what will surely be his last great contribution to mankind.

News of his death bumped Sarah Palin right off the front pages, clear back to page A-10 in my morning paper.

Any minute I expect to read she’s tweeted a foot-stomping cry for attention blaming Obama for the loss of Jobs, Steve.

I wouldn’t want to be Todd today.

Let me clarify: I’d never want to be Todd. It seems like a lot of work.

Like most every man who puts his libido above petty politics, I remember the Alaska governor making a terrific first impression.

Great hair, flirty expressions, curves in all the places shallow men like me like to see them -- she looked nothing like Dick Thornburgh, Milton Shapp or any of my Pennsylvania governors.

I didn’t think, hey, she’ll probably make a competent vice president. No, I remember thinking, man, I’ll bet it would be fun spending a steamy afternoon melting the walls of the old igloo with Sarah.

It was an utterly alien political sort of thought. I’ve never once felt similar yearnings about Dick Cheney or Joe Liebermann when they were running for vice president.

It was a welcome distraction. For much of the past 10 years it’s been much more fun thinking about screwing our politicians than realizing how they’ve all been screwing us.

But then Sarah made an critical mistake.

She began to speak. Her voice had a nasally, shrieky quality to it that had me instinctively reaching for the WD-40.

She’s spent the last three years reminding me of what it’s like to sit right in front of a woman who talks the whole way through a movie that’s about three years too long. She just doesn’t know when to shut the hell up.

I don’t know any serious political commentators who in the past two years felt she was going to run for president. In fact, I think she achieved her ambition after quitting her governorship to star in her own reality show where she could determine every aspect that was seen and heard.

She has no interest performing in a venue where she can’t control the content.

It’s like all those come-on winks were really just a big tease. No one was ever going to get what they wanted from Sarah.

So what’s next?

Her scorched supporters, those who poured so much devotion and belief into her, will now turn elsewhere. That’s just what they do.

I don’t understand why so many people who so loudly claim to love one savior are always so restlessly seeking another.

Sarah will continue to write books, support fringe candidates and make shrill statements to keep reminding us she’s way up there in Alaska with that extended family that more and more reminds me of uproarious episodes of “My Name is Earl.”

And what about Todd? What’s next for him?

I haven’t seen a man on television that looked that unhappy since Kate Gosselin’s shrewish behavior forced her dumpy husband Jon into a mid-life crisis that happened about two decades too soon.

He’s surly. He growls at photographers. He looks miserable. It’s like he’s spent the last three years auditioning to be Tiger Woods’s next caddie.

Maybe I’ve got him all wrong. Now that the pressure to be perfect is reduced, maybe he’ll emerge from his shell and let the world know he’s a bright and witty guy.

Maybe he’ll open up in an interview and let us all know there’s an unseen side to Todd. Maybe the first words to emerge from his mouth will be welcome wisdom.

Of course, that’s when it all started going south with Sarah.

And that’s the direction from Wasilla from which I hope she never again ventures.

Newt, the alien & me

I’m rooting for Newt Gingrich to overcome his myriad stumbles and do well in his run for the GOP nomination.

Gingrich and I share a natural affinity.

We both grew up in Pennsylvania. We both enjoy history. He loves zoos and I’m a party animal.

The Gingrich campaign is in the news today because a whole bunch of people I don’t know and certainly wouldn’t like have abandoned Newt.

Gingrich has vowed to press on. I hope he does.

The race for the GOP nomination promises to be one of the most odd, shrill and self-defeating political events any of us has ever witnessed and a bombastic gasbag like Gingrich only adds to the folly.

Really, in this race with no clear favorite, absolutely anything could happen.

An unknown might emerge. Strange alliances may be fostered. An alien endorsement could vault an underdog straight to the nomination.

And when I say alien, I’m not talking Sarah Palin.

Many people have forgotten the pivotal role a politically motivated extra-terrestrial named P’lod used to play in American politics.

That was back in the 1990s when the Weekly World News was still a supermarket staple setting brilliant new standards in news gathering.

“When a woman calls and tells me her toaster is talking to her, I don’t diagnose a mental health disorder. I tell her to put the toaster on the phone.”

To me, that may be the most succinct statement of journalistic purity ever uttered.

I heard it from an actual Weekly World News reporter in a tavern in Lantana, Florida, where both the Enquirer and the Weekly World News shared a building (it was the building that was poisoned in the surreal first anthrax attack in 2001).

I was an Enquirer correspondent from 1992-2000. It couldn’t have been more fun and every six months or so they’d fly me to Florida for two weeks. There may have been some practical reason for the junkets, but it wound up being purely social.

Each and every day reporters from all the various tabloids would gather at the same divey bar and try and outdo each other with stories from the world’s most raucous outlaw publications.

Hands down, the winners were always guys from the Weekly World News (sample headline: “Baby Born With Wooden Leg!”).

There was BatBoy, Bigfoot, and the alien P’lod and his uncanny ashtray-sized eye for picking presidential winners. For years, I had a WWN t-shirt featuring the 1992 cover of the one where P’lod correctly picked Bill Clinton who exalted, “I’m glad he saw through Bush and Perot!”

I always think of that wise alien anytime Gingrich’s name pops up.

It was 1995, just after Gingrich’s late mother Kathleen made headlines for whispering to Connie Chung that Newt thought Hillary Clinton was -- shhh! -- a “bitch.”

It ignited a huge controversy.

It was into this hornet’s nest I was thrust. The Enquirer had a tip that a family housekeeper was seducing Momma Gingrich with a wacky religion as a way to steal thousands of dollars.

It was one of the most hostile interview situations I’ve ever endured.

Not because of Kathleen, who was perfectly pleasant. No, it was because of Gingrich’s step-father, Robert, who’d become an impromptu media critic.

He kept glaring at me and asking insinuating questions about my background, my politics and who the utterly apolitical Enquirer’d endorsed the previous election.

I began to believe he’d never read a single newspaper when he asked if The Enquirer was the paper that had run the picture of Newt with an alien.

“No, sir,” I said. “That was The New York Times.”

The tip we had turned out to be untrue. We never wrote anything about the rumor.

Kathleen Gingrich died in 2007. I don’t know what happened to Robert, but Newt everyday does something to, well, alienate conservatives who for more than 25 years have been assuring us that Gingrich is a genius exemplar of the whole movement.

As for P’lod, who knows?

I hope he still has something to say. I hope he has guidance to offer. I hope there’s at least one journalist out there who’s not so cynical as to disregard the insights of a savvy old alien.

And I hope the talking toaster lets him get a word in edgewise.

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. 

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.