This Just In: Wacky meets crazy in the news

2009 was a year of bank bailouts, tanking auto giants and the great abyss known as health care reform.

It was a year of Bing, Hulu, Facebook and Twitter, dollar stores, “Glee” and the Rosetta Stone.

And then we had the news.

I don’t know when reading the daily paper involved a whiplash-inducing double-take. These days, you don’t have to look very hard to find the silliest of the silly in your news.

Apparently, it’s time to put on your drinking cap, as someone has devised the “2010 State of the Union Drinking Game.”

The rules are simple: If a catchphrase or word is spoken during President Obama’s speech, then you drink the corresponding amount. For example: “Let me be clear” (sip); “Make no mistake” (sip; if he actually makes a mistake, then pound); “health care” (sip); Scott Brown (finish six-pack).

“The Daily Show’s” Jon Stewart offered his thanks to South Carolina for mining comic gold, from Gov. Mark Sanford to Rep. Joe Wilson to a guy who performed some flagrante delicto with an equine (twice). The most recent random act of stupidity is by Lt. Gov. Andre Bauer, to whom Stewart referred as “a nightmare.”

Recently, Bauer compared public school students who receive free lunches to stray animals. He blamed this rhetoric on the education he received from his grandmother who, Bauer said, “brushed her teeth with a rock. She taught me everything I know.”

Stewart responded by saying, “You keep giving them a chance and they keep (bleeping) that same horse.”

Ah, South Carolina: The Catherine the Great State.

Meanwhile, my boy Glenn Beck clotheslined Brown, who stated in a nationally televised speech that his two daughters were “available.”

Beck re-channeled himself by saying he wanted Brown to wear a chastity belt. “This one could end with a dead intern.”

He really spouted this. And for the record, I never de-Beck Glenn Beck. He’s a train wreck all by himself.

“Hardball” host and Ellen DeGeneres groper Chris Matthews stepped in it when he announced on his show that he forgot our president was an African-American. Matthews meant it one way; unfortunately, it came out the other (end, that is).

Back to Obama: Political pundit Stephen Colbert said conservative analysts “like Sean Hannity and Glenn Beck complained that President Obama is somehow simultaneously doing nothing and actively doing everything he can to destroy the country. Here I thought Obama was supposed to unite us, but he can’t even get these guys to agree with themselves.”

Spotlight lover Beck and newly minted Fox analyst Sarah Palin offered to co-host “Saturday Night Live.”

“How could they say no?” Palin asked. “They will,” Beck insisted. Palin wanted to do a Tina Fey impersonation. Another missed DVR moment.

Also, Levi Johnson, who’s showing off his johnson in Playgirl and is the baby daddy of Palin’s grandchild, told US Weekly,“ I just get naked. That’s what I do.” And to think Bristol Palin let this Rhodes Scholar get away.

For fellow late-night warriors, Conan O’Brien put “The Tonight Show” up for sale on Craigslist. The ad was titled, “4 SALE BARELY USED LATE NIGHT TALK SHOW.” O’Brien was seeking the best offer, but was “willing to trade for Coldplay tickets.” Sadly, the listing has since been pulled.

Former New York City Mayor Rudy Guiliani recently suffered a major brain cramp when he said, “What Obama should be doing is following the right things that George W. Bush did. We had no domestic attacks under Bush. We’ve had one under Obama.”

Hello? McFly? Guiliani made the 9/11 attacks (which happened under Bush’s presidency) the central point of his failed bid for the White House.

Even Vice President Joe Biden made a funny during a presidential debate with Guiliani: “There’s only three things he mentions in a sentence,” Biden said. “A noun, a verb and 9/11. There’s nothing else!”

Unrelated, the U.S. Transportation Security Administration recently announced plans to buy “full body scanners,” to be installed in airports across the country. (Thanks, guy who tried to blow up a plane with a bomb concealed in his tighty-whities.)

These X-ray-like scanning machines generate a black-and-white image of the individual’s body, and you can see everything. Strip searches are just a latex glove away.

Rep. Jason Chaffetz, of Utah, called the machine-generated images “TSA porn.” Happy flying. And let’s hope the airport terminal isn’t too chilly.

Finally, in the cup runneth over department, 2009 brought us the Gas Mask Brassiere, a bra that doubles as a pair of gas masks – one for the wearer, the other for a friend.

According to Dr. Elena Bodnar, who developed the bra-turned-gas masks, “You have to be prepared all the time, at any place, at any moment and practically every woman wears a bra. Each cup fits perfectly over the nose and mouth. And it’s pretty, too.”

The Last Retort runs every other week. George Pelletier can be reached at geotripp11@comcast.net.