"Dying is easy, comedy is hard" goes the old saying. Even while Stewart, Colbert and SNL struggle, politics are making parody impossible.
Standup routines at Washington's Gridiron Dinner are tame as the weekend Oscar goes to a British think tank, which unveils (?) Jihad Cosmo magazine with beauty tips, mujahideen dating advice, complexion care and a guide for suicide-bomber child-rearing.
My friend and fellow octogenarian Helen Gurley Brown may have something to say about that, if it isn't a spoof. Still overseeing international Cosmo clones, her lawyers will not take kindly to infringement.
After the limp Peter King hearings on threats posed by American Muslims, however, any direct word from terrorists themselves, bizarre as it may be, would be welcome.
Back home, President Obama opens the annual comedy fest by asking the orchestra to follow up "Hail to the Chief" with Bruce Springsteen's "Born in the U.S.A," in a nod to the Birthers ("Some things just bear repeating," he says), but it's pretty much downhill from there.
Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels, who insists he is not running next year, shows up with his arm in a sling from rotator-cuff surgery to claim he was injured while flying to the Governors’ Conference in an airplane seat between Chris Christie and Haley Barbour, the first fat joke of the campaign.
Perhaps the best in vino veritas moment comes from Gridiron president Susan Page of USA Today who tells carousing attendees, “Just another Saturday night in Washington...exactly as the Tea Party suspects.”
Maybe someone should start a life-affirming Cosmo for them.
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