Pun Salad

As predicted last week, the phony hits for Senator Obama have fallen back to earth, and Senator Clinton has reclaimed her proper place:

• I couldn't keep my eyes open for Saturday Night Live last night, but this sounds pretty funny:

  John McCain is 71 years old, and his age has provided late-night comics with some easy punch lines. On "Saturday Night Live," he joined in.

  "I ask you, what should we be looking for in our next president?" McCain said. "Certainly, someone who is very, very, very old."

  The certain Republican presidential nominee appeared in a phony campaign ad in which he promised to put an end to runaway government spending, claiming he had never sought money for his home state, Arizona.

• The phony musings at HuffPo are occasionally good for a giggle or two. Here's Nina Burleigh purporting to weigh in on the Obama/Clinton choice, but is actually much more insightful on how lefty women sound when they're drunk:

  I have a white female friend so passionately supportive of HRC that she screams the Tina Fey line "bitch is the new black" after a few glasses of wine at dinner. And accuses me of being a bad mother and sister for not feeling the pain of our not getting a female president elected this time around.

  The fact is, as the UN reported some years back, women world-wide are five hundred years from parity with men. So why should we expect to get a female president right now? Furthermore, and not to make the perfect the enemy of the good, this particular female is not the best candidate anyway - she de facto offends many working women because, even though she did work herself, she really did get to where she is thanks to her husband. And, as has been repeated countless times, she's playing the game the old way.

  She's phony Beatlemania in the age of the Clash.

  It's the battle of the bands! Between one that broke up 38 years ago and one that broke up 22 years ago!

• Our very favorite phony candidate, John Edwards, was back in the news briefly, endorsing Barack Obama.

  Political scientists said Edwards' timing had advantages for both Obama and for Edwards if he's angling for vice president.

  ''It's a story that tackles the biggest problem Obama faces,'' said Julian Zelizer, a history professor at Princeton University, speaking of Obama's trouble attracting the working-class white voters who like Edwards as well as Clinton.

  ``And it's a nice reminder for the Obama team of what Edwards might bring to the ticket. Obama needs to get these voters. There's a real fear that [presumptive Republican nominee John] McCain could pick up Democratic voters in states like Ohio and Florida, white working-class voters that are not enthused about Barack Obama either for racial reasons, elite reasons, whatever.''

  Still, Zelizer said, Edwards' delay feeds a perception that he's a self-serving phony.

  ''The timing of his endorsement is classic Edwards,'' Zelizer said. 'One of Edwards' greatest problems is that he doesn't seem authentic. He made his whole campaign about populism, but I think a lot of people see him as a traditional senator who'll say whatever it takes to win and who cares about his hair. He comes out after the race is basically over. He doesn't have to take any risk; he's endorsing the winner. It's always good to get an endorsement, but if this is about a running mate, there's a lot of serious thinking the Obama campaign would have to do before they go with him.''

  Professor Zelizer is also a contributor at HuffPo, but a cursory scan of his articles do not reveal his stance on the Beatles-vs-Clash controversy.