Hillary Clinton was elected senator that year, and she announced that the first thing she would do was to get rid of the electoral college. A few years later, as a columnist for the New York Press, I sent her a letter asking about the status of that promise. She didn’t reply.
     On November 8, 2016, a crooked businessman, liar extraordinaire, bragging pussy-grabber, make-America-white-again, anti-choice, anti-Semite, false Christian, climate-change hoaxer, Nobamacare, homophobic, apprentice politician, fascist tweets, and Vladimir Putin’s “useful idiot,” namely Donald Trump, who was elected as an insanely narcissistic dictator based on the electoral college, whereas his opponent, Hillary Clinton, won the national popular vote by “more than three million” individuals.
     Irony 	lives.
     But an incredibly mean monster inadvertently awakened a sleeping population to counteract the essence of evil with love, laughs, and law, fueled by the aid of true news. Incidentally, Putin had 88 journalists murdered. No wonder Trump told him, “It’s an honor to be with you.” Now Putin wanted Obama’s new sanctions on Russia to be reprieved.
     National Security Adviser Michael Flynn had discussed it with the Russian ambassador a month before Trump took office. Although General Flynn joined his campaign and shared criminal secrets, he denied them to the FBI. It was a felony offense. The Justice Department warned Trump that Flynn had misled Mike Pence, and that Flynn could be vulnerable to blackmail. Trump asked Flynn to resign, and yet he offered his job back when he got out of prison. Why? Because Flynn was the scapegoat, taking the fall for the president and vice-president. He preferred a trial with immunity since they knew all. Pence said Flynn lied and that was a lie. 
     If Trump and Pence were both to be kicked out of the White House, the next in line would be the Speaker of the House, Paul Ryan. Steve Bannon described him as “a limp-dick motherfucker who was born in a petri dish at the Heritage Foundation.” In turn, Trunp’s communicator Anthony Scaramucci boasted, “I’m not Steve Bannon, I’m not trying to suck my own cock.” Ah, but Bannon said he wanted to destroy Ryan.
     Hallelujah!
     Trump once tried to patent “You’re fired.” Professional hater Bannon resigned. Back to running his Breitbart News. He had taken over the original right-wing website, Breitbart.com, after the death of editor Andrew Breitbart, who ironically was adopted and raised as a proud Jew.
Orson Bean is my oldest living friend. He became a Christian libertarian conservative, and we’ve had an ongoing email dialogue about religion, but he’s still a Christian and I’m still an atheist. Not a militant atheist, as I used to be, though. I changed when I realized that Martin Luther King was a Christian, yet I was inspired by his actions, and George Lincoln Rockwell, head of the American Nazi Party, was an agnostic, yet I abhorred what he stood for. It no longer mattered to me what anybody’s religious belief was, only how they treated others. Either kind or cruel. That simple.
     I decided to email Orson: “If you can arrange for me to interview Andrew Breitbart”--his son-in-law--“I’ll believe in God.” Orson must’ve forwarded my email to Breitbart, because he sent me an email saying, “Apparently there is a God,” with his own phone number. I called, we spoke, and he agreed to do an interview. My only ground rule would be that neither of us would interrupt the other. I contacted Steve Randall, my editor at Playboy, and I got the assignment. I immediately sent an email to Orson with the good news. The Subject line was “Praise the fucking Lord.” Amen.
I Played Thomas Jefferson’s Violin


At a unique Heroes Convention, I met Lindsay Wagner, star of The Bionic Woman. She was unaware that the CIA served as technical adviser to her series, but she spoke poignantly of the positive influence that her TV alter-ego had on young amputees she visited in hospitals.
I also met Tom Laughlin, of Billy Jack movie fame. A couple of years later, he and his wife Delores Taylor invited me to a large dinner party.
     They were Thomas Jefferson enthusiasts. In their home, there was Thomas Jefferson's furniture, Thomas Jefferson's silverware, Thomas Jefferson's recipes--we started with peanut soup--and even Thomas Jefferson's violin.
     I mentioned playing the violin as a child, and Laughlin invited me to play this one. I hadn't held a violin for twenty-five years, not since I had used it as a prop when I started doing stand-up comedy, and four decades had passed since that concert in Carnegie Hall. It felt like a previous incarnation. But now Billy Jack himself was handing me Thomas Jefferson's violin. How could I resist?
“I'd like to dedicate this to Thomas Jefferson's slaves,” I said.
And then I played the only thing I felt competent enough to perform--“Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star.” While I was playing, I stood and, as unobtrusively as possible, balancing on my left foot, I scratched my left leg with my right foot.
     It was a private joke between me and the god of Absurdity.