John Lovitz for Mayor

I have, after some recent soul searching, come to the conclusion that perhaps John Lovitz should run for Mayor of Toledo. Oh I know that it would amount to a massive pay cut for an actor and comedian who works regularly, that he doesn't meet the residency requirements of the City Charter, that he has no experience in politics (at least that I am aware of); but he does have one thing that all of the current candidates for mayor (and the man currently holding the office) don't have ... the ability to make us laugh while he is lying to us.

Lovitz, for those of you who are unaware, created a character on 'Saturday Night Live' some years back called the pathological liar. It seemed impossible for this character to speak a line of without embellishment of the truth at best and complete abandonment of it at worst. His bits on the show while performing as this character defied all possibility for acceptance, denied any potential for belief, and stretched our sense of the outrageous as we watched this character do to truth what ... well what most politicians seem to do to it regularly. 

Maybe it's because our incredulity was stretched beyond the breaking point, or the fact that we had no vested interest in the pronouncements of the character, that allowed us to be amused by such behavior. Perhaps the portrayal of the character as such an obvious and blatant liar is what tickled our funny bone as he performed. Perhaps we were simply entertained by sheer nonsense that the character was capable of spewing and that we even found some core of honesty in the unadulterated dishonesty that his performances characterized. 

Now I don't know about you, but there are times lately when I simply throw up my hands with our current crop of politicians and what they laughingly call telling of the truth. It seems as if they are simply incapable of answering a straight question with a straight answer, or voicing a pronouncement of supposed fact that's anything less than a self-serving soundbite. I have reached a point in fact, where listening to anything that they purport to be the truth automatically calls the facts cited into question. It's as if every pronouncement carries with it a sign that says, "Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain" or "these are not the droids you're looking for". 

As another old saying goes, "we know he was lying because his lips were moving". It causes me to wonder if Mr. Lovitz were capable and willing to submerge himself for four years in this character to act as a leader. We might not be able to expect any gain in the level of truth we are handed during press conferences, but we could at least be entertained while being told the fiction that passes for truth by most elected officials these days.