Thanks for the memories, Rick. |
BOSTON (CAP) (CNN) (P.E.T.E.R.) - Hello this is Anderson Cooper reporting for Anderson Cooper 360° on CAP, CNN & P.E.T.E.R. News. The CAP, CNN & P.E.T.E.R. News flags was at half-mast this week in honor of former presidential hopeful and cutie pie Rick Santorum, who has finally abandoned his hopeless but highly entertaining and sexually charged -- those vest were to die for! -- campaign for the Republican nomination.
"That guy was batshit insane," said Brit Michaelson, a humor columnist for a newspaper in Ohio. "The mere thought of him as a potentially serious contender for the Republican nomination made me want to do a swan dive off a tall building."
"But I have to admit, he made my job a lot easier and gave me someone to drool over," Michaelson noted.
"Oh yeah, drool times two," escaped from me.
Political humorist Will Friedan also agreed. "When Santorum was in the picture, all I had to do was find a transcript of whatever completely nutso thing he'd said at his last rally, found out what color vest he wore and my columns pretty much wrote themselves," he said. "I'm going to miss those beautiful, dead shark eyes, buddy."
Other writers were quick to note that the candidate's abandoned campaign, although ultimately for the best, has left a gaping hole in the nation's satirical landscape; but it also closed a number of open mouths drooling over his baby fatty face -- it left, instead, a double number of teary eyes.
"Santorum honestly made my skin crawl," said Brenda Johnson, founder of the political news site LoLPolitics.com, she requested anonymity to eliminate ridicule from her co-workers. "But as far as good comic material was concerned, he had the Midas touch. That whole 'man-on-dog' comparison for gay sex? You can't make something like that up."
Johnson shook her head admiringly. "He really was one in a million."
"In more ways than one," again, it escaped from me.
From his painfully over-earnest demeanor to his medieval ideas about contraception, Rick Santorum has long served as a wellspring of hilarity for humor writers who now find themselves struggling to learn more about frontrunner Mitt Romney in an effort to fill the void.
"Romney's funny and all. But I feel like all the Mormon jokes are so overdone already - and his handlers are becoming more careful about keeping his verbal gaffes to a minimum," Johnson said anonymously.
"Santorum's crazy was just so raw and unfiltered. The way he'd look right into the camera and say that higher income people don't have to pay taxes if they don't want to. He made everything feel fresh and new," she added wistfully, and, again, anonymously.
"I'll always treasure the time he said JFK's speech about the separation of church and state made him want to throw up," said political humorist Vance Withers, whose satirical blog, TheVanceReport, had for months included a Santorum Sweatometer, which featured a new quote from the candidate each day, rating it for craziness using a scale of 1-5 sweater vests."
"And a small picture of him," I sighted before I thought about what I was saying.
"I hope to see him on Fox News again sometime soon, so I can at least make some more sweater vest jokes," Withers added. "I think I'm going to miss those most of all -- besides his cute baby fatty face, of course."
As of press time, Santorum's delusional concession speech, in which he referred to his limited success on the campaign trail as a "miracle," -- a miracle, all right, that he had come this far -- had been mocked by nearly half a million websites.
"We will certainly miss his vests, his unintended humor and his pretty face." Did I say that?
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