Today's Hoot

Daniel Henninger at the Wall Street Journal keeps us up to date on the Nine Dwarves with 'The Democrats!': Beloved Series Nears End of Run. I'd like to quote the whole thing, but here are some excerpts:

There is a school of thought in the newspaper business that this is the least read day of the year. If there is any truth in that, then it's the perfect day to ponder the nine men and women running for the Democratic presidential nomination.
...
The kind of Democrats who wonder how the members of their party suddenly came to be known as "progressives" don't seem to believe this is happening to them, that some magical event will save them from this calamity. They'll awaken one morning to a clear sky, and all this weirdness will have gone away because across the top of every morning paper it will say: "Hillary's Hat's in the Ring."
...
As an old high-school debate judge, it appeared to me that the only thing resembling an authentic debate took place in a remarkable exchange between Al Sharpton and Tom Brokaw over the Tawana Brawley case, for which Mr. Brokaw sought an apology. Instead, Mr. Sharpton deftly dumped the entire history of the Confederacy, lynching and racism down upon the startled head of Mr. Brokaw who finally said "we'll try to leave it at that," only to get punched around some more for venturing into Mr. Sharpton's neighborhood.

It is getting more difficult by the debate to resist Rev. Sharpton's ineffable charms, as when months ago, he summed up the evening as "seven politicians, an officer, a lady and me, a gentleman."

The Rev is certainly a piece of work. But then so are they all.

My fave though is:

There were as well many closely harmonized choral pieces on Medicare and Iraq, but my favorite song was "Negotiate With North Korea." Howard Dean, the middle tenor: "I think the offer that the president of North Korea has on the table has real promise." Mr. Gephardt, after noting from the upper registers that Kim Jong Il "is half nuts anyway," said President Bush "should go and get a negotiation going and get to the bottom of this." And Mr. Kerry, the basso profundo, urged "greater cooperation with North Korea."

You wonder if these guys ever met a moonbat they didn't like?

And, of course, the punchline:

The effect over time has been corrosive. Messrs. Dean, Kerry, Gephardt, Lieberman and Clark--serious individuals in private, away from this burlesque--have come to look and sound ridiculous. They make the clowns--Messrs. Kucinich and Sharpton--seem endearing by comparison.

Republicans could care less. But serious Democrats, claiming fealty to the more robust legacy of FDR, Harry Truman and LBJ, must cringe at the infantilizing of their party. They may hope that all this will be forgotten next year. But the whole whacky cast has been performing on television for months. Nobody forgets a good show.

It's like one of those awful reality TV shows - you can hardly wait for them to all get voted off the island.