Wednesday, September 22, 2004

This Week's Dreyfus

This week's Dreyfus award, named for Inspector Jacques Clouseau's superior officer in the Pink Panther movies, Charles Dreyfus (Herbert Lom), who was driven mad by jealousy and hatred of the totally inept Clouseau (Peter Sellars) who bumbled his way to sleuthing success and fame. Last week the award went to Robert Kuttner for a column he wrote for the Boston Globe.

This week's prize is awarded jointly to two men, one of whom is clearly unbalanced and the other of whom was driven to professional suicide by his looney attempt to politically assassinate his own Inspector Clouseau (George Bush). This week's winners are William Burkett and Dan Rather. See here for more on Mr. Rather's strange career.

Each winner will receive a Dreyfus doll which is clothed in a white strait-jacket and which twitches uncontrollably.