The Donald, Apprentice President

How can you satirize someone who does it himself every day?

Today's Trumpery is a letter to the New York Times attacking columnist Gail Collins, which malicious pencil pushers there have left unedited: "Her storytelling ability and word usage (coming from me, who has written many bestsellers), is not at a very high level."

Collins responds evenly, noting, "I once got an aggrieved message from him in which he misspelled the word 'too.'"

Literacy aside, the issue is Trump's embrace of the "Birthers" in his phantom pursuit of the Presidency, undeclared so far in order to protect his network exposure on "The Apprentice," even as polls begin to show him being taken seriously by potential Republican primary voters.

"More power to him," says another undeclared TV candidate, Sarah Palin, about Trump's "investigation" of Barack Obama's Hawaiian birth, while attempting to stay "credible, rational and moderate" on what she calls a "perplexing" issue.

In this pre-2012 jockeying, credible, rational and moderate are long gone in the rear-view mirror as the self-promoting Empty Suit of all time completely erases the line between politics and buffoonery to make Ronald Reagan's Hollywood background look like Jeffersonian scholarship.

For a small taste of what his candidacy would do to American society, roll out the recent Comedy Central roast, in which Trump sits complacently as show business has-beens and never-will-bes raunchily critique his relentless self-promotion, bankruptcies, hyperactive sex life and hairdo.

The height of wit is attained by social critic Snoop Dogg, observing, "Donald's saying he wants to run for president and move into the White House. Why not? It wouldn't be the first time you've pushed a black family out of their home."

If this candidacy flies, network TV's surrender to cheap reality shows will have infected American society to its core. Trump-Palin? Palin-Trump? Whatever. The ratings will be high.

Update: NBC, Trump's "Apprentice" home, shoots down his Birther baloney with an interview of the Hawaiian official formerly in charge of the records he disputes, pointing out, among other things, that a Republican governor in 2008 was backing McCain and would surely have disputed her verification of Obama's certificate if there had been any basis for doing so.

There is also the small matter of his birth announcement appearing in Hawaii's two newspapers, but that presumes that Trump and the Birthers can read.