Writing Political Jokes Is a Good Way to Exercise Half Your Brain

We begin this week with a note to the readers:

I received many letters and calls protesting last week’s column about why Al “Do You Think Boiesx Could Sell Them on a Foot Recount?” Gore should put a sock in it, already.

Readers apparently thought I tilted too far toward George W. Bush, who has begun the arduous task of color-coding his jogging outfits for the move to Washington, while Dick Cheney and Jim Baker pick the cabinet.

I’m stunned by the allegation that I’m pro-Bush, since in that column I referred to Bush as “a dope.” Of course, I meant it in the most complimentary sense--OK, maybe not as smart as Phoebe on “Friends,” but certainly smarter than meat tenderizer.

I admit I’m beginning to like Bush more, because the longer he sits on that ranch, the more big, fat Republicans show up in giant cowboy hats and tight blue jeans. They look like huge, overstuffed chew toys.

I was chastised for suggesting the election be ratified before all the ballots were recounted by hand, using electron-microscopes and the Hubble telescope to examine chads; and if that doesn’t work, calling the Psychic Friends Network to assess voter “intent.”

And I was chastized for writing that Gore carried the case to the U.S. Supreme Court, when it was Bush. An angry caller concluded I was “totally prejudiced toward a man who would cut your taxes and the taxes of your rich media friends, while babies starve in the streets.” I assume he meant Bush, because Gore would never let anybody starve in the street when he could bore them to death on TV.

OK, I apologize for getting some legal minutiae wrong. But I’m writing jokes here. I have no political influence whatsoever. I have political flatulence. I should take Beano before writing columns.

Come on. Do you think there’s any bench Gore wouldn’t have appeared before to keep his hopes alive--up to and including Johnny Bench? Gore would go to Judge Judy if he had thought there was a shot of getting a recount.

I may not be Tim Russert, but I do have something going for me. Because I am a man, I can pay attention to weighty political subjects, such as Dennis Hastert, with only half my brain--while women need to use all their brains to follow along.

A recent study at the Indiana School of Medicine (motto: “That’s Right, We’re the Indiana School of Medicine”) was conducted on men and women who listened as a novel was read to them. Brain scans indicated women used their entire brains to listen, while men used only half their brains! This allowed men to continue to scratch themselves during the experiment.

“Somebody read ‘Jane Eyre’ to the men, and their right brain was listening, and their left brain was imagining Jane Eyre naked,” my friend Tracee concluded.

I suggested men might listen with both sides if the novel had been “Sorority Sluts Get Wicked.”

I saw pictures of the brain scans. Men have a small spot on the right side of their brain that’s engaged--maybe it isn’t a spot, maybe it’s a gnat or a piece of lint. Women have spots on each side engaged in listening.

Tracee explained the apparent disparity this way: “The right side of a man’s brain is still functioning because that’s the remote-control hand. The left side is dead because that’s the side they fall asleep on in the recliner.”

I disagree. The problem is that men aren’t interested in droningly tedious topics, defined here as anything a woman might choose to talk about. My friend Tom says he often reaches moments of crisis during long soliloquies by his wife, in which she’s relating a story that involves a long list of characters he can’t possibly keep straight. And he has to remind himself to “remember a few key phrases in case she asks a question when she’s done.”

This happens to all men. They begin to glaze over when women talk to them.

“Men don’t listen to women,” my friend Nancy lamented, “because they are completely incapable of any meaningful exchange of emotion that doesn’t involve sports on TV or checking out the waitress. Men are always thinking about themselves. I can’t tell you how frustrating it is to have these one-sided conversations.”

“Huh?” I said. “Did you say something?”