First of all, isn’t five thousand dollars a lot for sex?  No, really.  That’s the first thing I thought.

I may not be a porn star with hour-long stamina and foot-long — well, stamina, but five grand is, come on, a vacation somewhere, or a good used car, or a new kitchen, or the fanciest bar-mitzvah in 1976.  But one orgasm?  Even two small ones.  Are you kidding me?  Never mind right or wrong, I just think it’s an awful lot of money.

Even for the prettiest girl in the world — and, frankly, what are the odds his “date” was that –  she’s just a woman and you’re just a middle-aged man with thin hair, and the whole thing is over and done with, and she’s getting dressed while you’re standing in a shower pretty much like the one you have at home.  I know what I’d be thinking:  “Five grand.  Whoa.  I may be the dumbest guy in history.  Lucky for me I’m the governor of a big state.”

Second, if there’s a cheesier name in the history of hooking than “Emperor’s Club VIP,” I’d like to know what it is.  A team of comedy writers could work for a month and not beat it.  Eucchhh.  It even smells a little right through the TV, doesn’t it?  “Emperor’s Club VIP” is so low it makes Telly Savalas for “The Player’s Club” look like Twelfth Night.

Third — and this is really the only important thing to me — I’ve had it with these guys forcing their wives to stand up there with them.

Seriously.  There’s no reason for it.  It doesn’t help the family, it doesn’t help the state, it doesn’t help the country or the culture, and it surely doesn’t help the wife. 

Actually, there is one reason for it:  The self-absorbed son-of-a-bitch is still in such deep denial of what he’s done, he actually thinks showing his shaken wife might salvage his career.

You know what I’d like to see?  Just once?  I’d like to see the wife interrupt his limp, stupid attempt at grandeur and step forward and say, “Excuse me, folks, but there’s something I’d like to say here.”  Then I’d like her to whip around and punch him right in the nose.  Bang.  It doesn’t have to knock him down, and probably wouldn’t, but the look on his face would be worth it.  Then she could shout, “You want to lick your wounds?  Why don’t you get your whore girlfriend to do it?  What’s she get for that, ten thousand?”

Then she could straighten her pearls, raise her chin and walk off stage.

I don’t think there’s a man or woman, young or old, left or right, gay or straight who wouldn’t want to see that.

Hey, here’s a better idea.  If Hillary Clinton becomes president, and has an affair while in office — I’m not saying she should, I’m just saying if — I think this is the way to guarantee her election.

Think about it:  If, in the next big speech or debate she says, “I promise to have an affair in my first hundred days — or a hundred affairs on my first day — and then hold a big press conference to apologize, where my husband has to stand a few inches behind me with his hands folded looking hurt but supportive.  Further, I promise it won’t be a fast statement with no questions where the guy turns tail and darts off stage, but I’ll answer every question from every reporter — print, TV, magazines, foreign press, cable access, stringers, free-lancers, bloggers, C-span, hobbyists, amateurs, escaped mental patients, everybody — including follow-ups.  I’ll even throw in a bathroom break.  During that, everyone can leave their cameras on Bill’s face and show me just staring at him.  Then we’ll all adjourn to the bar at the Mayflower for drinks.  On Bill.  One of those road speeches of his could keep the press corps drinking for a year, even if you throw in congress.  If it goes really well we’ll do the whole thing again the next day.  Maybe once a week.  Invite regular people from every state who aren’t even writers.  And at the end of every one, I’ll smile at him sweetly and say, ‘What’s the matter, honey?  Sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander.’  Then I’ll stroll offstage whistling.”

Forget health care or terrorism or the economy.  There isn’t one voting American who wouldn’t get a kick out of seeing that.

And, by the way, the rest of the world would be terrified.

Now that’s what I call unity.

LARRY MILLER   Friday 3/14/08

The Man Who Came to Dinner is a play from the thirties and a movie from the forties that is well worth checking out sometime, for its pedigrees as well as its pleasures; but for now the essential bones of the plot are instructive, I think, for our contemporary politics.

It’s about an annoying man who comes as a guest to someone’s house for dinner and, for one reason and another, just doesn’t leave.

Speaking of Mike Huckabee…

Seriously, though, it’s about all of them.  Every one of them.  Every democrat and republican for the last two years, left and right, everyone running for president; and senator, and congress, and state house, and dog catcher.

But let’s start with Mike.  He’s the last one standing, in a way, the last one with no chance in the world, who’s still out there dancing up a storm and singing Doo-Dah.  Our synecdoche that indicates the whole with a part.

First, here’s what you could say about the ex-governor of Arkansas if you wanted to be kind, or worked for his campaign, whichever comes first.

You could say, “With Romney dropping out, he’s articulated some kind of conservative landscape that’s been unserved by McCain.”  Okay, but that’s not why he’s still running.

You could say, “He’s a Baptist minister who accidentally makes commercials with radioactive crosses floating next to his head, and that resonates well in our most religious regions.”  Okay, but that’s not why he’s still running.  (By the way, I hate to be cynical, but sometimes I get the feeling that a lot of ministers these days get a degree and have never preached, and just use it to impress people.  Like lawyers who’ve never seen the inside of a courtroom or even passed the bar, or after-dinner speakers who call themselves “Doctor” just because they spent a couple of extra years out of the work force writing a paper about the history of television for Spunk Bunny College.  As I said, though, I hate to be cynical.  I really, really do.)

You could say, “He’s lost a lot of weight, and wants to give hope to our thicker brethren.”
Okay, but again, that’s not why he’s still running.

It’s not why he ran in the first place, and it’s not why he’s still in.  I’ll give you a hint:  He’s still in the race for the same reason Al Sharpton ran when he did; the same reason Ralph Nader is, at this very second, actually considering running again.  Give up?

You see, folks, the reason these people run is because they have nothing to do.  Think about it.  They have no jobs, they don’t make anything, they don’t carve anything, they don’t sell anything, they just start foundations that hire other people with nothing to do.  The only thing in the world they’re any good at is walking out on stages and waving.

If you could yell “Cut!” on life and speak to Mike Huckabee honestly, and he spoke honestly in return — both, I realize, low probability items — But if you could, and asked him why he was still running, and he answered from the heart, he would say…

“It’s a great way to fill the day.  Without it, I’d have nothing to do.  With it, the days are jammed with things that look important.  They’re not, but they look that way, and that’s good enough for me.  See, when I get up in the morning now, I come downstairs at whatever Four Seasons I’m staying in for free or on ‘The Campaign’ or paid for by the loans everyone knows I’ll never pay back, and when I get downstairs there are twenty or thirty reporters waiting for me.  Someone on my staff hands me a cup of coffee, just the way I like it, and a bowl of melon balls — I miss the donuts, but you know all about that
 – and they ask me questions and I get to use hunks from my speech or let my fancy wander about Iran, and the economy, and life in general, and no one interrupts, and they write down what I say.  Then, I’m whisked away in a Town Car with ten Suburban’s behind us to a junior high or a factory or a bridge club and everyone there fawns over me and smiles, and I say a lot of things again, and they don’t interrupt me, either.  Then, more often than not, people come up to me with moist eyes and thank me for what I’m doing, or say they agree, or just yak.  I usually can’t tell, really, because there’s just so much you can listen to people without tuning out, but who cares?  Then there’s lunch, and the owner and the chef and the waitress all take a picture with me and insist there’s no way I can pay, and we drive off to another event.  I hate passing the fried chicken places, ’cause I can’t have that anymore, either.  Anyway, wherever we go people listen to me and applaud.  The rest of the day is like that, and my staff and I will usually gather in my suite after dinner for some Yahtzee.  And the next day is the same.  So it’s all great.

“See, without that I’d have nothing to do.  If I leave the campaign, there’ll be no one waiting for me downstairs to ask questions.  In fact, there’ll be no fancy hotels.  No speeches, no photographs, no meetings, no teary-eyed hugs, nothing.  I’ll have to go home and sit around there with my wife, and she’s sure as hell not going to bring me any coffee.  She’s not going to listen to me go on and on about this and that, she’s heard it all before, plenty of times, more than she can stand.  If I even comment on an item in the paper, she doesn’t even look up from her needlepoint, but just raises one hand and opens and closes it in the ‘Yeah, yeah, blah, blah’ gesture we all know and keeps doing it till I stop speaking.  Then I probably have to pick things up from the cleaners or something.  Then I spend a half hour or so making faces in the mirror.  Then I pretend to be aiming at people walking by on the sidewalk outside.  You know.  Stuff like that.

“And you want me to go back to that faster than I need to just because I have no chance of winning?  Are you out of your mind?  The only thing I care about is that for another few weeks I get to strut around and pretend I actually have something to do in the world.  What the hell do you think Romney is doing now, counting his money?  Posing with those kids?  I’ll bet that wife of his isn’t smiling so much anymore.  They’ve been married two hundred years or something, so she’s way past smiling, believe me.

“Anyway, this honesty session is over.  I’m running for president, and you can’t stop me.  I’ve got three or four places to go today, and then we’re flying to Indiana tomorrow, or New Mexico.  Hell, I don’t know, who cares?  All I know is, it’s another day I won’t be sitting in my den drumming my fingers on some stupid table my wife got.”

YOU AND I ARE FLAWED, folks, but we have our jobs and our passions, and we create or sell, or watch the tube, or go to little league, or out with our friends.  And if we ever went to someone’s house for dinner and broke our leg, the last thing we’d want to do is stay with them.  We’d want to go back home immediately.

Look for Mike Huckabee up in a booth on TV in a few months after he’s finally called it quits on the campaign.  CNN or Fox if he can swing it, but he’ll take MSNBC or C-Span.  Then maybe his own show, if he has enough juice.

There’s always the Food Channel.

LARRY MILLER   Sunday 2/24/08

I’m sure you’ve all heard the old saying, “It’s better to light one candle than to curse the darkness.”  It’s one of those classics whose wisdom we’ve all accepted for a long time.  You know, that it’s better to take action, even a small action, than to get mad and do nothing.  That it’s better to move forward a few steps, or one step, or a tiny step, or even a good lean, than to be rooted and not move at all.  That it’s better to chop through the underbrush with a machete, inch by inch, vine by vine, than to give up and wrench them impotently and sit down and cry.

That it’s better to set a goal, fix your eyes on it, feel it right in the center of your soul, imagine it, know it, feel it, than to get lost in desire.  That it’s better to pull yourself and the world forward, yard by impossible yard, than to get mired in angry mud and spin your wheels, that it’s better to carve out precious chunks of the day and not waste time, that it’s better to stand foursquare and tall, unafraid, than to slump and curl and wither, that it’s better to shout with pride than to spray self-righteous saliva all over the place and childishly stamp your feet.

In other words… “It’s better to light one candle than to curse the darkness.”

Then it dawned on me:  But I like cursing the darkness.  I often find it very satisfying.  Don’t you?  There’s almost nothing I can do directly to attack and eradicate the seemingly infinite number of injustices around us every day, but I can certainly (and easily) sit on my couch and talk back to the TV; or pace around the bedroom muttering, or stand frozen in a fugue state of imagination, spiraling down into the fantasy chance to upbraid and chasten some particularly hated, but prominent, peacock.

Talking back to the TV works best, though, I find.  “Oh, shut up.  You’re just an idiot anyway, so why don’t you just shut up.  Honey, I’m sorry, but don’t look at me like I’m the one that’s crazy.  This guy’s a rat and a jerk, and you know it.  I’m sure even he knows it.  Oh, there he goes again.  Hey, how can you say that with a straight face?  You don’t even believe it yourself.  Yes, you.  I’m talking to you.”

I’ve done it alone, too, if the last paragraph isn’t nuts enough for you.  I think most of you have, too, or at least that’s what I hope.  If you haven’t, try it out right now.  Pick whomever you hate (You all knew it was correct to use “whom” there, didn’t you?  Come on, now; object of the verb), and get your hands wet.

There’s nothing to it.  Pick someone in the public sphere, locally, regionally, nationally, internationally, interplanetary, universally…  (That would be a kick and a new wrinkle, wouldn’t it?  “Honey, quick, get in here!  That jerk from Rajal 12 is speaking to the Federation of Planets again.  They still haven’t owned up to causing that dimensional rift that sucked in your Uncle Lou.  Ooh, look at him.  He’s such a liar, this guy.  I can always tell when he shrugs his gills.”)

The beauty of this is that it works for the left, right and everywhere in between.  Maybe this is the kind of unity Senator Obama is talking about.  If not, it’s certainly the kind I’m talking about, the chance for all Americans to find common ground in the pleasure of hating someone we think is an idiot.

To paraphrase Dr. King, I have a dream, too.  That one day there will be storefronts all over the country dedicated to nothing but cursing the darkness.  Sort of like Fight Club, except that the first rule is not that you never talk about it, but that you always talk about it.  Admittedly, there’ll be enough chubby people so that it might be closer to Sam’s Club, but let’s not quibble before we’ve even begun.

There would be a tiny stage and you’d sign up and everyone would get five minutes.  (Good Lord, so far it sounds like a comedy club, doesn’t it?  Is it possible that’s how they started?  I should know this, shouldn’t I?  Anyway, it’s not a comedy club.  The last thing this is about is laughs.)  And then each person would let if fly.  Obviously a certain amount of salty language would be expected, so this is not for the faint of heart.  And then the purge-partner/confessor would say the name of the one he particularly hates that day and why, and go to it.  Have at it.  When he or she is done — this is going to be the hard part, by the way — the rest of the crowd (you, too; all of you; me, you, everyone) would have to embrace and congratulate the guy no matter whom he cursed.  (Whom again.  I know, it’s starting to annoy me, too.)

Maybe you’d agree with the purge-partner, and maybe you wouldn’t, but the point is not what you think until you get your turn.  The last guy might hate someone you love, or love someone you hate, but you have to love him for hating who he wants for that five minutes.  You have to love being there with him and with everyone else.  You have to let him vent.  You have to let him curse the darkness.

Look, if you really hate what someone just said, and he hates what you just said, you can always go next door to a bar and yell at each other the civilized way, over a drink.  The same people could own both places.  Then, if the drink doesn’t work, it’s still early enough for the two of you to go out back for Fight Club.

I GUESS IT WAS just one of those weeks for me, where the news is unremittingly shattering.  The great cop with a great family, who starts charities with his own money, who gives and gives and gives his whole life, and then gets killed trying to rescue someone from a maniac who turns rotten (or a rotten guy who turns maniac).  A massacre in Mexico in 1968 that goes uninvestigated again and again and again despite pledges from every president, including Vincente Fox, and finally gets some attention from an art exhibit in Mexico City (Yay, art!) and turns out to be far worse than anyone thought.

By the way, what is it about presidents and pledges?  Or senators or governors, or council members or mayors, for that matter.  Whenever they purse their lips and nod gravely and say, “I give you my word, we will get to the bottom of this,” does that just, by definition, immediately mean, “As soon as you all leave here I will never think about this again”?

And then that guy at Northern Illinois State steps out from behind a scrim in a lecture hall with a shotgun and a Glock, and starts doing what guys who step out from behind scrims with shotguns usually do.

Have you noticed that, as crazy as these guys are once they’re off their meds, they’re always sane enough to dress in the “uniform”:  the black shirt, black pants, black shoes and black trenchcoat?  How crazy can it be to have a color scheme?  He never dressed like that before.  Isn’t that telling in some weird way?  Are they drooling and snarling and hallucinating and glazed, and then suddenly snap out of it and say, “Ooh, wait a minute.  What am I going to wear?”  Do they wear the black clothes into the gun store, or do they make sure to have a crew neck sweater and khakis and blazer?  Would it matter?

And then rapes in West Africa in several countries are brought to light as a horrifying commonplace, far worse than anyone could imagine, but the U.N. is already there, whatever in the world that means, and the young “soldiers” who do the raping and beating and killing chat and smile with reporters, and shrug and say, “Well, you know, it’s a war, and what the heck, and I’ll stop when it’s over.  Probably.”

And then… and then…

Come to think of it, it’s just like any other week, isn’t it?

Light a candle?  Thanks but no thanks.  Not right away, anyway.  I’ve got a little cursing to do first.  Why don’t we change that saying a little bit?

How about, “It’s better to curse the darkness a couple of times and then light a candle.”  I know it doesn’t solve anything, but a little primal screaming never hurt anyone, right?

Hey, how about this one:  “Okay, curse the darkness, have a little fun, then go vote for someone you like, the one you really believe will make a difference.  Then, the first time he or she steps up to the podium, purses his lips and nods gravely and says, ‘I give you my word, we will get to the bottom of this,’ throw a magazine at the TV, turn it off, go get a drink, and start cursing again.”

Yeah, I think that’s the one.  After all, that’s the way it’s worked for regular people for ten thousand years.  Why end a good thing now?

LARRY MILLER   Sunday 2/17/08

We’re a couple of weeks past Super Tuesday-just the name of which is an insult to both the Super Bowl and Superman by the way, and anything genuinely super, like glue. But never mind that now.

Before we leave the political world of what’s super and what’s not, let me add it’s also offensive that there is such a thing as super-delegates, who exist only to counter the effect of plain-old regular delegates. (You know, the ones that were elected.) Super-delegates are the crassest kind of machine politics. The ignorant and naive voters cast their ballots for delegates they want in the childish belief they’ll actually be represented by them. That’s the way it should stand in a republic like ours, which is what we are, a republic, not a democracy. In a republic, you see, we vote for delegates and electors and congressmen and senators, and then they go off to do for us what we don’t have time to do for ourselves. Like fly to France.

Oh, what do I know? Maybe backroom wheeling and dealing and jaw-dropping corruption have taken an unfair black eye over the years, and The Powers That Be are right. (Who are “The Powers That Be,” by the way? They’ve probably always been around, but I don’t think anyone actually ever meets any of them. I’d feel better, though, if they called themselves something more interesting, like “The Powers Boothe That Be.” In any case, it’s the “be” part of “Powers That Be” that puzzles me. I always want to say, “that be” what? And isn’t that Ebonics? Good Lord, I wonder if they know…)

Ironic that the same people who want to maintain such grim sway over the smoke-filled back rooms of politics are the same ones who gleefully ensure that it’s now illegal to smoke in back rooms to begin with.

ANYONE WHO WANTS to be President first has to ask him- or herself, “Hmm, I wonder if I can spare every waking second for the next 43 months and only sleep in Marriotts? More important: Is it humanly possible for me to smile that whole time?”

I think that’s why Fred Thompson looked so cranky to people. He wasn’t cranky. He was just the only one who refused to smile like a donkey 23 hours a day. No matter whom he stood next to at the debates, it always made him look like mean old Mr. McCready. (”Oh, no, the ball went into Mr. Thompson’s yard! Now we’ll never get it back.”)

For whatever it’s worth, I worked with Fred Thompson on Necessary Roughness, and he was the nicest guy with the greatest laugh. These were real laughs, too, not political ones. Strange: I’ll bet all the guys running for President who get their hair done and their sweaters matched have no problem laughing endlessly for no reason at all on political shows but can’t laugh for real in their lives, while Fred Thompson had the best, most sincere laugh in real life and just couldn’t bring himself to do it for no reason in politics.

I love seeing those politician pictures with two of them shaking hands and laughing to beat the band. They all do it, you know, even in Europe. I remember seeing a news item of the German president and the French president a couple of years ago enthusiastically shaking hands (not Hans) on the steps of some building in Berlin that had to be slightly rebuilt in late 1945 over some minor mischance or other, a time when I’m guessing neither of them was spending an awful lot of the day laughing.

But this one was almost loony. They were laughing so hard for so long over nothing I thought they were both tertiary syphilitics. We just accept these idiotic pictures and news clips as if they actually meant something, and without noticing their breathtaking insincerity. This one, though, on the steps of the Reichstag (or whatever the hell it was) was when I first realized something about all this was screwy.

You see, folks, I spend my life-my whole life-every minute of every day, with some pretty funny people, and our business is trying to be funny, and sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t; but the point is that a lot of these guys are awfully good at it, and their batting average is pretty high; and we spend far more time than the average person howling and rolling around on couches and slapping desks with tears coming down than anyone, anytime, anywhere in life…

And WE don’t laugh a fiftieth as much as these maniacs do in their pictures. No one does. No one laughs that much. No one could. Nothing in life is as funny as these hyenas pretend it is.

You know why they do it, don’t you? It projects an air of ease, of safety. Of hope. Hey, everyone, don’t worry. Look! We’re laughing! Everything’s OK. Go back to your simple stalls. Have a demitasse. Go shopping. Ignore the man behind the curtain.

A few presidents ago there was a shot of one of them on the cover of Newsweek or Time (not U.S. News And World Report) in the Oval Office signing something. He was in his pajamas with a bathrobe and slippers and a couple of advisors looking over his shoulder. In other words (the picture says to us) this document was so important we woke the President up to sign it. We’re really on the job. Twenty-four/seven, but that’s the way we like it, and that’s why you pay us. My father and I were looking at it together and then realized…

It’s not real. They didn’t wake him up. They’re not wearing suits at two in the morning. There’s never been a bill that was so urgent it had to be signed that second. They don’t have photographers ready with the room perfectly lit. It’s not even possible. The President was as posed with his pen for that shot as the head of a furniture store for a p.r. glossy in 1970. They all might as well have been looking at the camera and smiling.

Folks, if anything ever really happened (God forbid) that was so urgent they had to wake the President up, you and I wouldn’t be around a week later to see it on the cover of Newsweek. Because I don’t know about you, but I wouldn’t be in the group they saved in the bunker in Colorado. I mean, let’s be honest. At that point they’re probably not looking for storytellers who dwell on minutiae.

By the way, it wasn’t too long after that magazine cover that another President actually took to wearing his pajamas-metaphorically-into the Oval Office. And I swear, I don’t know which one made me sadder.

LARRY MILLER  Monday, 2/18/08

Great news Larry Miller fans! Larry has been busy working on several projects including the upcoming film, “National Lampoon’s Bag Boy,” which will be released in select cities on February 22nd. He will also be seen in an episode of “Dirt,” starring Courtney Cox on the FX Network.

Recently, Larry started writing for “The Huffington Post” and CNN. We posted his last four stories in the Larry Miller Humor blog. Check back weekly for updates.