No Laughing Matter

Ghana won. That's OK, though; we've decided to move to Iceland, specifically Reykjavik, where the newly-elected mayor, Jon Gnarr, has promised free towels at public pools and a drug-free parliament by 2020.

Gnarr, you see, is a comedian. His election marks the culmination of the most successful protest campaign since Jesse Ventura won the Minnesota governorship. Gnarr, however, who representes Iceland's "Best Party," seems more refreshingly liberal--and certainly funnier--than "the Body." Selected highlights:

"No one has to be afraid of the Best Party because it is the best party. If it wasn't, it would be called the Worst Party or the Bad Party. We would never work with a party like that."

"With his party having won 6 of the City Council's 15 seats, Mr. Gnarr needed a coalition partner, but ruled out any party whose members had not seen all five seasons of 'The Wire.' . . . The Best Party. . . formed a coalition with the center-left Social Democrats (despite Mr. Gnarr's suspicion that party leaders had assigned an underling to watch 'The Wire' and take notes)."

“'Just because something is funny doesn’t mean it isn’t serious,' said Mr. Gnarr, whose foreign relations experience includes a radio show in which he regularly crank-called the White House, the C.I.A., the F.B.I. and police stations in the Bronx to see if they had found his lost wallet."

"Mr. Gnarr, born in Reykjavik as Jon Gunnar Kristinsson to a policeman and a kitchen worker, was not a model child. At 11, he decided school was useless to his future as a circus clown or pirate and refused to learn any more."

If nothing else, Gnarr's elevation provides hope for those of us who have long agitated for a Jon Stewart-Stephen Colbert ticket in 2012. Actually, make that 2016: Obama's got a pretty good sense of humor.