As last Saturday's White House Correspondents' Asso- ciation Dinner again remind- ed us, there's always a place because there's always a need for comic therapy. Too much is always going wrong in the world, and the crucible chroniclers and enablers need the diversion. As do consum- ers. The annual event now an overly long, overly celebrity- laden, C-SPAN staple calls for a professional comedian. Some are safely lame, as was the case last year with Jay Leno. Even worked in an Obama mother-in-law joke. Some are a bit too per- sonally edgy; think Wanda Sykes. And some are flat-out disrespectful; recall Stephen Colbert hammering President George W. Bush. Not that GWB wasn't hammer-able. Of course he was. But the office of the presidency, if not its oc- cupant, deserved more than an onslaught of wince-able material. The trick is to be funny and relevant without sound- ing like an extension of the cheap-shot, uncivil public discourse that all of us are all too familiar with. So, nice work Seth Meyers, of Saturday Night Live fame, and nice work, President Barack Obama, of world's toughest job fame. Meyers took potshots with- out being off-putting or offen- sive. The practitioners of poli- tics and the media from Fox News to NPR to SNL's NBC - were prime targets. To wit: Donald Trump: "Mr. Trump runs the Miss USA Beauty Pageant, which is great for Republicans because itll streamline their search for a V.P." The obvious physical toll the presidency has taken on Barack Obama: "...Has gone from looking like the guy in the Old Spice commercial to Louis Gossett Sr." Jon Hamm, who plays a handsome, advertising-exec hunk in "Mad Men": "Looks like what every Republican thinks they look like. Chris Matthews, the high- decibel, interruption-prone host of MSNBC's Hardball: "Sounds like an auctioneer in a wind tunnel." Juan Williams, the black journalist known to have con- troversial misgivings about Muslim airline passengers: "The least likely man to get a cab in New York." As for the president, "My fellow Americans" has never been a laugh line before. Nor an appropriate segue into commentary on the depths of America's polarizing politics. Before he moved on to the release of his "official birth video," that looked not unlike Lion King clips, the president acknowledged the obvious. "No one is prouder to put this birth certificate matter to rest than The Donald," he quipped. Everyone laughed, save a certain petulant harlequin. The target appeared per- turbed, if not constipated. Even feigning graciousness must be a character flaw. Obama later pointed out that Trump manifested nigh on to presidential acumen on a recent Celebrity Apprentice episode by "firing" actor Gary Busey instead of singer Meat Loaf. "These are the types of decisions that would keep me up at night," noted the presi- dent. "Well-handled, sir." At the end of the night, those on-hold crucibles had resumed and Obama went back to monitoring Osama bin Laden. Laughs had been provided at the usual suspects' ex- pense. As for Meyers, he was humorous without embar- rassing any but the terminally thin-skinned. As for Obama, he ironically reminded viewers that he appears more comfort- able with a witty than a bully pulpit. And as for Trump, he remained a running joke. No Veepstakes for Rubio Not that we needed remind- ing, but Sen. Marco Rubio has again indicated that when he comes to town next year for the GOP convention, it won't be as part of a presidential ticket. He has again reiterated that, tea party buzz notwith- standing, he doesn't want to be vice president. But once again he passed on a more candid rationale. For the re- cord, he did not say: "Look, I've been a senator for all of a few months now and this is all, to be sure, very flattering, but I'm not, frank- ly, qualified. Being on a ticket should mean more than add- ing, say, demographic attrac- tiveness and glibness to die for. It should mean that you're fully capable of being next in line to succeed the president. "That's way beyond my pay grade right now. So, no, I'm not the man for that job. Hell, Dan Quayle was better pre- pared. But in the event, God forbid, that fate would inter- vene and something were to happen, then someone better qualified will be in position to succeed President Bach- mann." No Rail Rival It's official. Enough is enough. The Hillsborough Area Rapid Transit board vot- ed this week to phase out the planning of light rail routes O'Pinions To Ija BIn ny Joe O'Neill C Intentional Comic Relief in DC and stick to the business of buses. Can't blame HART in light of regional voters' reluc- tance to pay for rail. The de- cision was smart. But it still smarts. Literary Context Chances are the names of Dick Greco and the late Pope John Paul II will not often if ever again share the same sentence. But after witness- ing Greco's final mayoral run and seeing the beatifica- tion ceremony of John Paul, I'm reminded of two literary works worth consulting for relevant context on the afore- mentioned. Plus, they're just memorably great reads. Edwin O'Connor's The Last Hurrah should have been must-reading for Greco and his advisers. Obviously it wasn't. An iconic, undefeat- ed politician and a genuinely good guy who had done good things for his home town go- ing to the well one last time - although the times had in- evitably changed. This time it was going to be generational. And societal. And recessional. But it was still eminently win- nable. As to the Pope's road to canonization, there is an in- triguing process at work, even if it's being fast tracked. It in- volves, in effect, the vetting of a would-be saint. It involves playing the devil's advocate. Scrutinizing an esteemed life for signs of un-saintliness. For God's gauntlet, the bar should be heavenly high. So the perfect complemen- tary read: None other than The Devil's Advocate by Mor- ris L. West. No, Karol Jozef Wojtyla wasn't foreshadowed by the fictional beatification of Giacomo Nerone. But he could have been. Haridopolos Update What a difference nine months makes. For Florida Senate President (and U.S. Senate GOP candidate) Mike Haridopolos, it's the gestation period for a viable, Republi- can-primary, oil-drilling posi- tion. Last summer, in the after- math of the BP oil spill, Hari- dopolos was telling fellow Flo- ridians that it was time for the Sunshine state to "turn the page" away from Gulf drilling. Of course it was. It's no secret that America can't drill its way to energy independence, espe- cially in the Gulf of Mexico. The risk-reward ratio, includ- ing jobs, is an unimpressive non-starter. Even a number of Republicans had no choice but to agree with Haridopolos' page-turning epiphany. But that was then and this is clearly not. Gas prices have been spiking. So has Harido- polos' energy rhetoric. "We have to start drill- ing, we need to become more self-dependent," he said in a recent interview. "We need to open up those new opportu- nities in the Gulf and ANWR (Arctic National Wildlife Ref- uge). ... America needs to lead by example." Apparently the example of 200 million gallons of oil in the Gulf of Mexico is no longer S)(3aspar's