Maureen Dowd, "Come Back, Sarah Palin!": How to Get Your Jollies in 2012

I recently received an e-mail from a friend, informing me that her husband, Jim, a California computer wizard who is twice as smart as I am, is again unemployed and seeking funds for a start-up. The reality for persons such as Jim, who, like me, are over 50 years of age, is that if they're jobless, there is not much waiting for them work-wise. Times are grim, no matter what skills you bring to the table, and those out of work can certainly use some comic relief from their leaders in Washington. After all, they're not getting anything else from them.

In her New York Times op-ed "Come Back, Sarah Palin!" (http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/15/opinion/sunday/dowd-come-back-sarah-palin.html?_r=1&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss#), Maureen Dowd laments the lack of comedy material apt to arise from this year's presidential election. Dowd quotes one of Saturday Night Live's writers to prove her point:

"'I don’t think it’s going to be as much fun as 2000 and 2008,' Jim Downey, the show’s inimitable satirist, told me. 'When you have an incumbent president, it’s not wholly new. And because of the long Republican primary debate stretch, I’m already tired of Romney. I wish there could be a crazy brokered convention with someone we’ve never heard of to keep it fresh. But you don’t get a gift like Sarah Palin very often, and I’m sure it’ll never happen again.'"

Well, I agree with Dowd: If Romney doesn't choose Christie as his running mate, there's not much fun to be poked at the likes of Paul Ryan. But who says there is nothing humorous about Obama? Even as unemployment in the US hovers at some eight percent and Obama makes a mess of foreign policy around the globe, Danish television found jocularity in the president's glib chatter. See: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=erYpXzE9Pxs