Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry, who some folks may remember as the Democrats' losing 2004 presidential standard bearer,always so funny before he wasn't, had a good one the other night at a party gathering on Capitol Hill.
The buzz at the time was the then-weird disappearance of South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford.
(Now, of course, it's all been fully explained as an intercontinental romantic affair with an Argentine woman that began via e-mail, involving a Father's Day weekend on which the married father of four sons dodged his security detail to flyto Buenos Aires for nearly a week, trying to cover it all up by implying he was going nude-hiking in the woods. Nothing weird left in that story.)
Anyway, before all that became clear, Kerry spoke to party supporters. To be topical, according to Rachelle Cohen of the Boston Herald, Kerry said the funniest thing.
He said: "Too bad if a governor had to go missing, it couldn't have been the governor of Alaska. You know, Sarah Palin."
Cohen reports that Kerry earned partisan chuckles for that one. Must have been a cash bar.
Palin is, in fact, nowhere near Argentina. She's currently visiting Alaskan troops in Europe and Iraq, where her oldest son has been stationed with the National Guard since last fall.
-- Andrew Malcolm