Political Funny Business

Tonight, I happened to be at a restaurant that had their TV turned to the news. One of the big stories was the breakthrough on the Chandra Levy “cold” case. While I’m glad that the family finally gets some closure, I was more interested in one little tidbit the reporter included in the story.

It seems that when Democratic rep Gary Condit – who had had an affair with Levy – left politics, he moved to Glendale, Arizona and opened two Baskin-Robbins ice cream parlors, which later failed.

Excuse me? How the fuck do you run two ice cream stores into the ground in Glendale, Arizona, where the average summer temperature is 101 degrees Fahrenheit? That’s way beyond ordinary incompetence; you have to be actively trying to fail.

This explains a great deal about the state of our economy, because I am confident that Condit is not an aberration. If our elected representatives had any business sense at all, they’d stay in the private sector and make more money. Think about this, too:

If you owned a business that was losing profits to the point where you had to lay off a good portion of your staff, do you think spending more money would help you recover?

The answer’s obvious, right? Not to our elected idiots in Washington, D.C. Every day, they prove the old bumper sticker right: If the opposite of Pro is Con, what’s the opposite of Progress?

And it’s not just on a national level, either. Iowa’s House of Reps is considering a bill that would categorize parents whose children are exposed to pornography as child abusers, opening them up to Social Services intervention, as well as getting them placed on an Offenders Registry.

That means if your 14-year-old sneaks a Playboy into his room, you can be haunted by the label “Child Abuser” for the rest of your life.

Iowa state law defines obscene material as “any material depicting or describing the genitals, sex acts, masturbation, excretory functions or sadomasochistic abuse which the average person, taking the material as a whole and applying contemporary community standards with respect to what is suitable material for minors, would find appeals to the prurient interest and is patently offensive; and the material, taken as a whole, lacks serious literary, scientific, political or artistic value.”

There are a whole lot of soft definitions in that definition – Who’s average? What community? Suitable for what? – but it’s the last part that makes lawyers lie awake at night, hoping they’ll get a porn case. Who gets to define “serious?”

How about this?

Two Italians, Luigi and Antonio, met on the street.

"Hey, Antonio," said Luigi. "Where you been for the past two weeks? No one seen you around."


"Donna talka to me, Luigi," replied Antonio. "I been inna da jail."


"Jail!" exclaimed Luigi. "What for you been in jail?"


"Wella, Luigi," Antonio said, "I was lying onna da beach, and the cops come, arresta me and throw me inna jail."


"But dey donna throw you in jail just for lying onna da beach!" Luigi countered.


"Yeah, but dissa beach was ascreamin' and akickin' and ayellin'."

See? This joke violates Iowa state law by describing a sex act, and by definition, jokes aren’t serious. However, using the exaggerated Italian accent to provide an alternate definition of “beach’ and provide the punchline of the joke is a form of artistry. So who wins?

You could also make the case that jokes provide sociologists a way to chart prevailing attitudes or public perceptions. That sounds like a serious application to me.

Actually, the whole point is moot, thanks to the First Amendment. And a ton of legal precedents say that if I categorize the Iowa Legislature as a bunch of jerk-offs, even though I’m violating their laws by referencing masturbation, they can’t do anything about it.

Ha! Jerk-offs.