for 12 January 2001. Updated every WEEKDAY.

Tim Cavanaugh
Special Guest Editor

Terry Colon
Art Director

Heather Havrilesky
Senior Editor

Joey Anuff
Publisher

Dear BB:

Have you considered changing your suckname? The more I find out about the real BB, the less attractive he becomes. Anyway...

Normally, I'm reluctant to comment on Friday's Suck, since it generally serves as an excuse to let Terry loose and all comments probably should go toward him. But you're onto something; "political humor" has become an oxymoron in this country. Part of it is laziness, or course, and part of it is cowardice: it's easier and less likely to cause problems if our official court jesters use fat jokes and dumb jokes and predictable jokes that pretend to be about politics but are actually about nothing. (Tim has a funny bit a few years ago with pulldown menus and do-it-yourself "political" humor.) But none of that is new. What is new is the inability of legitimate, opinionated, literate humorists to maintain anything approaching a sense of humor. We've just gone through eight years in which what passed for anti-Clinton humor was nothing but irrational bile; we're about to go through some 4 or more years with similar anti-Bush jokes. The country has become divided into those who don't care at all (and thus think fat jokes are political) and those who care too much to be able to laugh at themselves. There are the rare exceptions, of course, but they're...well, they're the exceptions. It's unpleasant, and it's not funny.

Good piece. Thanks. And thanks to Terry, of course.

Alan Kornheiser
<askornheiser@prodigy.net>

Have you ever considered changing your name, Alan? The more I find out about the Kornheiser clan the more I want to change your name. Horse thieves, wife beaters, Superbowl Sunday bet welchers, lotto cheats — you could change your name to Alan Stalin and it wouldn't hurt any, pal.

So you've broken your long standing silence in critiquing Friday Features, eh, Mr. President? Well, thanks for finally recognizing all the hard work we do and giving Terry free rein. Nope, political humor isn't political anymore. But like it says in the last panel, we don't elect these guys on politics anyway. Likability, debate performance, sound bites, insults — that's what people vote on and that's all they have for a reference point if you want to make jokes about these guys. What's the point in cracking a joke about Bush's foreign policy until he mispronounces Valdimir Putin's name as "Puta" in front of the Mexican Ambassador's wife?

It's a vicious circle — just like the Kornheiser family tree. Change my name because you don't like the original BB? I haven't even begun to tell you what I think of people named "Alan."

Hmph.

Bert

I got Mark Russell's phone number out of the DC phone book and tried to pitch him lyrics for a Condoleeza Rice song, to the tune of "Thumbelina" — the Danny Kaye one, not the one by the Pretenders: "Condoleeza, Condoleeza, tenured Stanford wonk/Condoleeza, teach/Condoleeza talk/Though the Cold War's over, and the button you can't push/you can rattle sabers now for Junior Bush." Unfortunately, when Russell called me back, he claimed to be some other Mark Russell who doesn't play the piano, gently joshing politicians in this manner that some would call tuchis-kissing to the extreme. In fact, he pretended to be some guy that works at a Sam's Club in Anacostia who just happens to have the same name as Mark Russell. What's the mathematical chance of that? If he wasn't the real Mark Russell, what was he doing in the DC phone book? Anyway, if you see the next Mark Russell special on PBS — what am I saying, what satirist worthy of the name would miss it? — and he does my song, I just wanted you to know that I wrote it. Me, not him. I know that most people have forgotten the Danny Kaye song, but for those who do remember it, it's a classic!

Your brother in Christ,

Richard von Busack
<regisgoat@earthlink.net>

Richard,

Of course he "claimed" he wasn't the real Mark Russell, sucker. Just wait'll his next PBS special and see what happens. Don't you know that tape-recorded phone messages are copyrightable material? You gave away pure gold! I'll tell you what the mathematical chance of there being TWO Mark Russells in DC is — a big fat donut hole, that's what. That's why we're running your letter, to screw Russell out of his ill-gotten gains Suge Knight-style and own it ourselves.

And I don't think Christ has any brothers as gullible as you, Richard. At least not any that rhyme "talk" with "wonk."

HAH! We've got to go cash a royalty check, now. See ya!

Bert

Lissen here, I don't know what to make of this spoiled priss who just scammed his way into the oval office, but I do know that I'll be able to buy assault rifles again when he gets things going. It's a small consolation, but sometimes you just have to take what you can get.

Cisco
<ciscov@avaya.com>

Forget the spoiled priss, Francisco. The only real President for men like us is Chuck Heston and you know it.

Bert "Shotgun" Blecht

We Love Our President

I think thesuck.net is a great site, that gives news in a more straightforward perspective, that leaves out the bullshit that any other website, or news column would.

I think suck should give a tribute to our much beloved out-going president, silly Billy...

Don't we owe the big lying bastard that much? I mean the entire sex scandal thing gave us allot of laughs, and since the old guy is on his way out, why not honor him and his whole cabinet for their much esteemed leadership? (*CwOaUcGoH*)

I mean, don't we owe them that much?...

(have fun with that idea...)

- Billy Pelfrey (suck reader for 2 years)
<armand@thefragile.com>

Thanks, Billy. Since some time in 1999, Suck has been trying to compose or commission a send-off worthy of Bill Clinton, but unfortunately nothing we've seen has met the exacting standards we feel a leader of Bill Clinton's stature deserves. This goes for both submissions we've received and articles we've read elsewhere. At this stage we've pretty much given up hope of his ever receiving a fitting tribute — and we refuse to serve him anything but the best. Bill Clinton is just such a gigantic figure in American history that to treat him to tired japery or standard cheapjack political hagiography, as if he were merely another Ronald Reagan or Gerald Ford, seems like an insult. All of which tends to confirm something we've suspected for some time — that a puny country like the United States could never really have measured up to a towering leader like Bill Clinton.

Conan O'Brien wrote a pretty funny Clinton eulogy. Beyond that, we'll just count ourselves blessed to have had these eight years.

BarTel d'Arcy

"We're all in the gutter press, but some of us are looking at the stars!"

Polly, Peter Bagge, and lines like this are why I spend far too much of my time at your site every day, instead of being productive.

Who knows what I could have accomplished by now if it weren't for you?

One of us has got to go,

John Harvey
<jharvey@irving.lib.tx.us>

Who knows, indeed? By now you might have made it onto the Irving Library's employee Wall of Fame, perhaps more than once! Right now, instead of reading a bunch of lazy news riffs in Hit & Run, you could be doing some speed shelving in the 300's. Every minute you spend chuckling at Filler is a minute you could have spent getting the Gov Docs section straightened out. Next time you're waiting for the fourteenth page of a Bagge feature to load, the good people of Irving will be waiting for you to explain why Fort Worth: Our History, Our People isn't on the shelf.

Better stick with Suck.

Sucksters

Greetings form the sticks.

It should be greater Caddo/Bossier/Desoto PARISH area.

I guess if I'm still here 15 years after coming for the grit of sand to start my oyster (shit, you said it so much better) and I still here, I'm fucked, right?

Chris Frink
Westside bureau chief
The (Baton Rouge) Advocate

<cfrink@theadvocate.com>

Don't take it so hard, Chris. There's not a man-jack of us who hasn't dreamed of heading down to some quiet parish in the Sportsman's Paradise and whiling away our careers in a haze of whiskey, crawdaddies and spot reporting on bloody automobile accidents. Color us green with envy!

Sucksters

The Shit

Physical Strength and How to Obtain It, by Eugen Sandow

Bamboozled, A Spectacular New Film by Mr. Spike Lee

G. Beato's all-new Soundbitten

William Demarest, Sultan of Snarl, in The Lady Eve (1941), The Palm Beach Story (1942), and The Miracle of Morgan's Creek (1944)

George Wallace: Settin' The Woods On Fire, directed by Daniel McCabe and Paul Stekler

1995

Bobby Darin, Darin at the Copa (Atlantic)

Shinji-San in the floating world of indeterminate duration, by Peter Richardson

American Pharaoh: Mayor Richard J. Daley: His Battle for Chicago and the Nation, by Adam Cohen and Elizabeth Taylor

Neutral Milk Hotel, In the Aeroplane Over the Sea (1996, Merge)

45, by Bill Drummond

Cliff "Ukulele Ike" Edwards, Singing in the Rain (ASV)

Do you know of stuff that doesn't actively suck? Things so good they deserve to make the Shitlist? Send your suggestions to us.