The humor-challenged media is tripping all over itself to to praise the First Lady’s appearance before the White House Correspondents’ Association. Apparently their funny bone twitches uncontrollably at the sight of Laura being able to read from a sheet of prepared jokes. The talk in the television press has ranged from, “Get this woman her own show.” to, “Maybe she should run against Hilary.”

Here’s some excerpts.

The impotent husband bit:
I am a desperate housewife. I mean, if those women on that show think they’re desperate, they oughta be with George.

The stupid husband bit:
I was the librarian who spent 12 hours a day in the library, yet somehow I met George.

The mother-in-law gangster bit:
People think she’s a sweet, grandmotherly, Aunt Bea type. She’s actually more like, mmm, Don Corleone.

And, of course, the old jerking off a horse bit:
I’m proud of George. He’s learned a lot about ranching since that first year when he tried to milk the horse. What’s worse, it was a male horse.

It seems that what is really making news here is that she can read while her husband cannot. I suppose it’s too much to ask that the people who brought us Monica Lewinsky, Chandra Levy, Michael Jackson, Terri Schiavo, the Old Pope, the New Pope, and Jennifer “Runaway Bride” Wilbanks, would suddenly chose to avoid blowing things up beyond all sense of proportion.

In 1994, John Bolton, nominee to be the U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, said the following about the institution he now seeks to join:

“The Secretariat building in New York has 38 stories. If you lost 10 stories today it wouldn’t make a bit of difference.”

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With the selection of Cardinal Ratzinger as the new Pope, The Vatican is announcing the launch of PopeTV. This new media venture will exploit the assets of existing television news networks by piggy-backing on their programming. They have already demonstrated the effectiveness of this business model with their application of the ubiquitous VaticanCam.

Fox, CNN, and MSNBC, featuring the VaticanCam inset smokestacks.

The Republican Party pioneered this strategy by attaching itself to the Fox News network. They have been expanding their reach in the last few years to other networks, but now will find themselves competing directly with the Vatican for screen space.

Amongst the recent milestones for PopeTV, is that coverage of the election of the new pope logged more on-air time than did coverage of the election of the new US President.

The confidence exhibited by the Vatican in launching this enterprise at this time illustrates their faith in their ability to compete against other media heavyweights. The aforementioned Republicans, Michael Jackson, the war in Iraq, and minor players like Tom DeLay and genocide in Darfur, are all vying for attention in this sparsely populated media wasteland marketplace.

It remains to be seen who will prevail, but insiders warn against underestimating the Vatican. The corporations that dominate and control the media are motivated largely by cash. The Vatican, of course, has plenty of that.

With the passage by Congress of the Terri Schiavo law, we have successfully completed our transformation from a nation of free citizens to a collection of Politi-borgs whose most personal and private affairs will now be dictated by government institutions.

The feeding tube is securely fastened and the capital drips are gushing. The media environment is plugged in and transmitting soothing platitudes by day and fear-inducing threat-level warnings by night. We can now all rest easier while we tremble in our paranoid stupor.

God Bless Amerika