PAUL RYAN HAS A COOL SENSE OF HUMOR, riffing on somebody else’s remark that his future political career will require that he “wash the stench of Romney off of him.” He’s saying things on the campaign bus like “If Stench calls, take a message” and “Tell Stench I’m having finger sandwiches with Peggy Noonan and will text him later.” But he has political antagonists, and if they get humor they’ll pretend not to. It’s a shame. I like quirky humor!

We’re seeing the same thing with those who are acting like Romney’s an idiot for saying Michigan “trees are just the right height” and why is it that airplane windows “don’t open.” Politicians can’t come right out and tell you you’re dumb if you don’t get their joke. They’ve got too much to lose, and they can’t play cute games with your mind like Madonna with her “Black Muslim in the White House” remark. (That last link is a self-link to my blog, which means I’m self-promoting — self-promoting in the context of talking about the Grande Dame of Self-Promotion, Madonna — and which also means we’re carrying on a conversation about all this in the comments section.)

ADDED: I misread that. Ryan didn’t make those jokes. The report that he said that was itself a joke. I like those jokes! Oddly, the point of the writer at the first link — Tobin Harshaw — is that Ryan’s antagonists are so eager to attack him that they don’t recognize that fake quotes are fake. But they aren’t that fake. They could be real humor. Obviously, there’s trouble processing humor. Isn’t Harshaw missing the humor of that kittens-on-Mars letter writer?

AND: I like the way Drudge is putting it: “MEDIA ‘SATIRE’ HIT PIECE ON PAUL RYAN BACKFIRES…/O’Donnell, Krugman ‘fooled’…” Drudge is, I think, insinuating that Politico’s Roger Simon intended to be misunderstood, for the Ryan quotes to be believed, and then to reveal that it was satire after the damage was done.

PLUS: Fake quotes once released take on a life of their own. Think of “I can see Russia from my house.”