Washington Post decides to compete with Mad Magazine

The Washington Post has chosen to run on their opinion page this morning, in advance of tonight's State Of The Union Address, an apparent attempt at humor from someone named David Atkins. It's a mocking, snarky piece, that is, unfortunately for the Post, not close enough to reality to actually be funny. Written in the first person voice of President Bush, though strangely lacking in malaprop and grammatical errors, it purports to be a "fact-check" on things in the SOTU that aren't strictly accurate. Some of the "highlights" include:

Attorney General Alberto Gonzales has alerted me that the line, "No person is above the law" should instead be "One person is above the law." My comment that "we have carefully listened to critics of our domestic surveillance program" should have read "listened in on..."

7. My reference to "hard lessons I learned during two tours of duty in Vietnam" was never meant to imply that they were my tours of duty.

9. The statement that "our administration has always respected the importance of checks and balances" is not, as has been implied, a reference to disgraced lobbyist Jack Abramoff. I have no recollection of ever meeting Abramoff ("Injun Giver," as I used to call him) nor his lovely and charming wife, Pamela, and their cute and rambunctious twins.

Anyone's sides splitting yet? Not mine, either...

Of course, this is typical behavior from the Post, rather than evidence of bias, I'm sure. Certainly, if I were to go back and look at the Post's opinion pages on the mornings of President Clinton's SOTU addresses, I'd see similar mocking pieces setting the tone, right?

Or maybe not...