Obviously, I'm not going to be the first to do this, but this morning I want to send my congratulations to the people of America.

Over the last eight years you have conducted the largest, longest, and certainly the most far-reaching wind-up practical joke in history. Over here, in the non-US Rest of the World, we laughed, we cried, and when you re-elected him in 2004, we quite frankly cried again. Like all of the best practical jokes, it had just the right balance of realism and absurdity: real enough to be believed, absurd enough for you to feel like a fool when you realised it was a joke. As we watched the car-crash of history through hand-covered eyes (two wars, a flooded city, "Yo Blair!", total global economic meltdown, Sarah Palin... I mean come on, Sarah Palin?) we constantly second guessed ourselves. Was it real? It couldn't be, could it?

But now the joke's run its course, and I want to congratulate you for something else: for knowing when to stop. Too many practical jokes outstay their welcome, their status revealed, their appeal now tiresome. I feared that you might do this to us, this time, taking your existing running joke and piling on further levels of absurdity with a senior-citizen with anger management issues and his "Backwoods Barbie" running mate.

But you didn't. You knew when the joke was no longer funny. So I salute both the jape that you played, and your maturity in now ending it.

Bravo America!





It was all a joke, right guys? I mean you didn't seriously mean to elect him, right?

Tags: bush, jokes