Today’s required reading

Gail Collins offered up a heaping pile of hilarious sarcasm this morning, mocking John McCain’s ever mutable persona for everything it is worth. Hell, even her use of exclamation points made me laugh. If this doesn’t at least make you chuckle a bit, you are either dead or a Republican.

“The people of Ohio are the most productive in the world!” yelled John McCain at a rally outside of Youngstown on Tuesday. Present company perhaps excluded, since the crowd was made up entirely of people who were at liberty in the middle of a workday.

Folks were wildly enthusiastic as the event began. That was partly because Sarah Palin was also on the bill. (With Todd!) And when McCain took the center stage, they were itching to cheer the war hero and boo all references to pork-barrel spenders.

Nobody had warned them that he had just morphed into a new persona — a raging populist demanding more regulation of the nation’s financial system. And since McCain’s willingness to make speeches that have nothing to do with his actual beliefs is not matched by an ability to give them, he wound up sounding like Bob Dole impersonating Huey Long.

I don’t care who you are, that’s funny.