DAVE BARRY'S ELECTION MUD, AND MAKE THAT TO-GO

I'm not a politician, though I did once announce and withdraw my candidacy for President on the same day, and all for the sake of a humor column. I also submitted that "B. EL-WIN Or Lose," was a ready-made rallying cry.

I quickly came to my senses, however, mud deep in the big waste, realizing that in order to be taken seriously I'd have to be taken, seriously. There but for the grace of a comma, went your host, as reason got the better of me.

But, a humorist, given the choice of lighting a candle or cursing the darkness, will instead take a nap 'til dawn and wait for the natural solution.

Daybreak, and I've got it:

With habeas corpus now a dead duck in this country, the last thing we need is another law. Why -- when we already have laws on the books preventing Floridian men from carrying monkeys in public, or New Jersey women from watering flower beds in the nude -- do we need a law restricting the contents of political ads?

For the same reasons we need the following:

A law banning any underfed waitress from saying: "Hello! I'm Christy, and I'll be your server today!" I don't want to get cozy with anyone about to bring me food. I don't want to know anything about them, and would prefer they not speak at all. A series of grunts and hand signals are sufficient. Menus have all turned into huge pictorial foodscape folios, anyway, so let me just point to that mountain of shrimp scampi, grunt, and send Christy packing.

A law prohibiting Christy from returning five times in as many minutes after I'm served, demanding to know: "Is everything okay?" This is not only annoying, it's dangerous. I risk aspiration by speaking with a mouthful of seafood, and a 68-pound fashionably malnourished Christy couldn't Heimlich me if she had a pneumatic winch.

A law providing severe penalties for anyone asking me, when I enter a restaurant alone, if I am a "party of one?" No, oh ye with no numerical savvy. Counting my other personalities, I'm a disgruntled encounter group of six, and we'd like a booth.

A law declaring that any eatery must equip me (if I ask for them and I am the only one in my party) with a "kiddie menu" and a booth. When I'm feeling small, I need a lot of space to eat a little food. And, before the food industry lobbyists get ahold of it, I'll concede that this law can have administrative provisos.

It can read that if I'm willing to act like an unsupervised six-year old in order to be fed like one, I must be served from the juvenile fare, but I can be charged the grown-up price. But, Christies of the world take note: I'll then tip in dead frogs and half-chewed gummy bears.

This is why "negative" political ads, like lobbyists, need to be expunged. The solution is as simple and absolute as the sunrise.

Accept right now that lobbying cannot be "reformed," it can only be made unlawful. Influence peddling and peddling influencers cannot be moderated. Mark Twain said that a cat who sits on a hot stove will never again sit on a hot stove ... but it will never sit on a cold one, either. That's it, folks. Either we throw out the stove or we throw out the cat, and replace them with dogs and/or microwaves.

Likewise, these trash-heap political ads need a judicial bulldozer. What if humorists acted like this, as we sought to enlarge our readership?

Consider:

(Set against a backdrop of an alternating mushroom cloud and Playboy bunny montage, we hear a Looney Tunes soundtrack and a basso profundo male voiceover):

" ... Dave Barry was once arrested when the monkey he was carrying broke free and ran up the back of a Hoboken sun worshipper. He thinks that 'The North Korean Atom Smashers' is a good name for a rock band. Do YOU?"

"B. El-WIN Or Lose. It's time to laugh either way."

(Fade to black & white)

Paid for and approved by B. Elwin Sherman, candidate for America's premier humorist ... and a party of one.

Copyright 2006 B. Elwin Sherman. All rights reserved.