-- Fred Thompson, Sacha Baron Cohen, and Jar Jar Bush

by Michael Jahn

Fred Thompson is running for President of the United States. At 6'6" and with an authoritarian demeanor, he at least looks presidential.

That's unlike George W. "Jar Jar" Bush, who looks like a cocker spaniel trying to get of out being whupped for leaving a pile on the carpet.

Thompson is more likely to be elected President than he was to have been elected Manhattan District Attorney, as was his character, Arthur Branch, in "Law & Order." A Southern senator with a drawl getting elected district attorney in New York City? How about Sacha Baron Cohen being elected president of the Southern Baptist Coalition?

Robert Morgenthau, who at last sighting was not a Southernor with a drawl, has been the real-life Manhattan DA since 1974. He was supposedly the model for the first "Law & Order" DA, Aaron Schiff, played by Arthur Hill.

Fred Thompson as Manhattan DA is not the only bizarre notion on "Law & Order." Another is their constantly threatening suspects with the death penalty and, further, the suspects and their attorneys keeping straight faces about it. The last time that the death penalty was carried out in New York State, the man in the White House was John F. Kennedy, not Fred Thompson. It's not likely to be carried out again until another Kennedy is in the White House, and we've kind of run out of them, haven't we?

If Thompson is elected President, it will be just the latest in a series of strongmen he has played, including presidents. I'm not counting his role in the 2005 Albert Brooks comedy, "Looking for Comedy in the Muslim World."

Unable to find weapons of mass destruction, the United States sends someone out looking for laughs. But we already know what makes Muslims laugh -- what makes Al Queda laugh, anyway -- George W. Bush.

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