A BIG SHTICK

Weapons to Khomeini! What’s next? Crack to Boy Scouts?

Ed Meese? A man who confuses the Constitution with the Koran. In comparison, John Mitchell seems like St. Francis of Assisi!

George Bush? Mr. Cliche! Quitters never win! Winners never quit! I before E! . . .

Reagan claims that the media puts the hostages in danger. What did his bombing mission in Libya do, mellow things out for them? No, that was just a PR demonstration of some of the weapons we’re selling in the region.

Did you see his State of the Union? I can’t believe he didn’t have a sweat shirt, a clipboard and a whistle, and put Congress on one knee. But he did have a major reversal of policy. He came out for Freedom of the Press.

For most of the 1980s, Boston stand-up comic Barry Crimmins’ political satire--much of it aimed at the Reagan Administration--was restricted to anything-goes nightclubs. With his shirttails hanging out over his former football player’s body, wild-eyed, chugging from a beer bottle, he railed against the Washington Establishment, often in Lenny Bruce purple language.

Now, thanks to Iranscam, the 33-year-old comedian is suddenly in demand--and cleaning up his act for the mainstream. Though his political material remains sharp--jabbing Democrats as well as Republicans--the beer bottle is gone, the swearing has been toned down and he is wearing a jacket and tie for TV.

CBS’ “The Morning Program” allowed his monologue attacking Reagan’s Libyan offensive to play uncensored. (“We bombed civilians in Libya. What was their crime? They lived under a tyrannical despot. What gall!”) Crimmins’ answer to the Libya bombing: “Let’s create a Tomb of the Unknown Civilian!”

In March, he’s being flown to Britain for the BBC’s “Saturday Live,” where he will complain about another unfavorite, Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher: “Leave it to the British to put a dress on Ronald Reagan!”

But Crimmins says he’s still too outspoken for late-night American talk shows. He related that a rep for “The Tonight Show” was “very nice” but told him, “Johnny can talk about President Reagan because the audience knows him, but they don’t know you.”

And “Late Night With David Letterman,” Crimmins learned, “has a flat-out policy of no politics, and that’s more disappointing than Carson.”