I remember reading about a comic bit performed by George Bush at the ’04 or ’05 Gridiron Club dinner about looking around for WMD’s that didn’t exist, like he was looking for a lost wallet. The fantasy rationale Bush had used for starting the Iraq War and causing the deaths of thousands of Iraqis and U.S. troops and bringing untold pain into the lives of millions had devolved into joke material. By admitting he’d been full of it he won people over…hilarious.

In the same vein Hillary Clinton tried joking her way out of telling that whopper about dodging bullets in Bosnia on Jay Leno last night. Is that how it works now? Sell a lie as fact and get nailed for it, but all you need to do to turn it around and improve your public standing is deliver a “funny” mea culpa in the right forum? Does this mean Iran’s President Ahmedinjad could theoretically go on Late Night with David Letterman one day and make a joke about having been a former Holocaust denier? Why not, given the system we clearly have in place?