THE EARMARK

America is down in the dumps. More than ever, we need a good laugh, and yet where is the comedy?  TV is showing repeats, Al Franken is trying to be serious, and Joe Biden has been put in cold storage until campaign season.

Fellow Americans, the time to act is now.  Is there anybody out there willing to lay down his dignity, his personal reputation, and his grip on reality to make us hoot like jackals until we hyperventilate?

Thankfully a martyr has stepped forward for the sake of comedy, and to him we offer our gratitude.  That said, we had no idea said martyr would be a United States Senator…

Illinois Sen. Roland Burris announced last month that he would not run to retain his Senate seat next year, but in his first television interview since making that decision, Burris told ABC News he could change his mind.

“You never say never,” Burris told ABC News… “What I’m still hearing,” Burris said, is “people from all over the country and they are saying, ‘Don’t give up that seat.’”

Now if you read our earlier report that Burris had withdrawn from the race to raise bail money for Rod Blagojevich, we stand fully prepared to issue a retraction right here.  And we’ll do so with utter glee.

See, while we hate to get a story wrong, how could we pass up a chance to cover a 2010 Senate campaign where an incumbent polling 5% among Democrats and 0.6% among independents runs because he thinks it’s the people’s mandate.  Can Burris be serious?  Even Patti Blagojevich polled higher on I’m a Celebrity… Get Me Out of Here!

We also can’t wait to see who Burris drags up to introduce him at rallies, given that everyone from Gov. Pat Quinn to Sen. Dick Durbin to the Daleys, has told him to resign.  Maybe the late John Wayne Gacy will do the honors, given that he’s the only remaining Illinois Democrat that hasn’t issued a statement condemning Burris.

Now Burris could try to bring in a heavy hitter from the national party to drum up excitement.  We understand that John Edwards has an open schedule.  So does Mike Gravel. But even those guys are going to be pretty tough to rope in when your entire campaign budget is $845.

Ah, comedy.

So Alaska governor Sarah Palin is stepping down on July 26, and pundits are struggling to figure out why.  Is she running for president?  Is she going to cash in Mike Huckabee-style with a show on Fox News?  Or will she ride her VP loser status to international acclaim, just like Joe Lieberman and John Edwards?

The answer is no, no, and no.  If you ask us, Palin is obviously stepping down in anticipation of a major scandal becoming national news!   The only question is what scandal?  We’ll get the ball rolling with a couple speculations, but feel free to add your own in the comments section!

To hear Elizabeth Edwards tell it, her husband’s former campaign aide, Andrew Young, abetted more bad behavior than anyone this side of Rush Limbaugh’s pharmacist.

Although she opts to not identify Young by name in her bestselling book Reslience, Edwards still considers the ex-staffer guilty of everything from enabling husband John’s affair with a hack filmmaker to stealing her dead son’s baseball card collection.

Further stirring the pot is the fact that Young himself has a book coming out, and in it he claims to have viewed a sex tape made by his former boss and the aforementioned hack Hunter.  (Well, we’re just glad she successfully completed at least one film in her directing career.)  Comedy Central’s Mary Phillips-Sandy suspects the onscreen pillow-talk contained a lot of sultry references to regional health care markets.  But we won’t cite specifics because this is a family website.

What Young doesn’t mention is whether or not he personally was in those sex videos, as he has previously claimed to have knocked up Hunter himself.  Perhaps the two of them acted out a stolen baseball card fetish.  Or maybe they engaged in auto-erotic asphyxiation with one of those LiveStrong bracelets the campaign seemed to stock by the gross.

Either way, that baby has a lot of awkward family reunions awaiting her.