{mosimage}‘Tis the season to be fake. You can tell that the presidential election is getting close by watching the tadpoles of craziness metamorphosing into full-blown frogs of fakery in America’s political ponds. The rip in the time/space continuum has unleashed a phalanx of phonies onto the Earth. In short, it’s the most wonderful time of the year. If you are bored with reality, consider our candidates for Fake of the Year. Ponder this year’s worthy charlatans.
    How do I love fakes? Let me count the ways. The first nominee for the coveted Fakey trophy is Joyce McKinney. Joyce is the delightful lady who spent about 50 grand at a South Korean lab to clone Booger, her dead pit bull. Why anyone would want to clone a dead Booger is beyond the scope of this column. Let us just accept that Joyce did it. She has cloned pit bull pups who are cuter than Madonna’s bunions. There was a lovely picture of Joyce in all the papers holding up a Booger clone. With fame comes unintended consequences.
    An eagle-eyed reader contacted British law enforcement after noticing a startling resemblance between Booger Cloner Joyce and fugitive Mormon Kidnapper Joyce. Way back in 1971, alleged Mormon Kidnapper Joyce was overcome with passion upon seeing a 21-year-old Mormon dude wearing a white shirt and skinny black tie. Joyce allegedly kidnapped Mormon dude and made him her sex slave complete with mink-lined handcuffs in a quaint little cottage in England. At first, Booger Joyce denied she was Mormon Joyce. Eventually she admitted it. Joyce was charged criminally but was never convicted as she left England before the trial could be held. According to Joyce it was all a misunderstanding. The Mormon dude consented to whatever they had done. British authorities have declined to extradite Mormon Joyce.
    Unfortunately, even more troubles arose for Joyce due to the Booger clone picture. Joyce had a third secret identity as Three-Legged Horse Owner Joyce. TLHO Joyce had been charged in Tennessee with planning a burglary with a teenage boy to raise money to buy an artificial leg for her three-legged horse. Tennessee authorities are still deciding whether to try TLHO Joyce. The three-legged horse did not return numerous telephone calls for comment.
    For the first time there are joint nominees for the Fakey. Consider Matt Whitton and Rick Dyer who brought us Bigfoot on ice in August. The boys claimed they had found a dead Bigfoot in Georgia. They had him chilling like a case of Pabst Blue Ribbon on ice. At a press conference they produced a picture of Bigfoot which showed our hero looking a bit peaked with some of his internal organs grooving outside his skin. America gasped a collective “yuck,” but like Scully and Muldar we wanted to believe it was really Bigfoot. Unfortunately, when Bigfoot was thawed out, he turned out to be a rubber gorilla suit. What a gyp. Matt and Rick went missing. Once again we’re collectively disappointed that Bigfoot had escaped our grasp. Extra style points are awarded Matt and Rick for using the old gorilla suit gag.
    The third nominee for the Fakey is the government of the People’s Republic of China for having one little girl sing and another little girl lip sync at the opening ceremonies of the Olympics. The People’s Bureau of Childhood Personal Attractiveness determined that while 7-year-old Yang Peiyi could really belt out the chart topping “Ode to the Motherland,” Yang Peiyi wasn’t cute enough to appear on camera. How does Yang Peiyi’s self esteem recover from being officially certified as too ugly to sing? Lip synching Lin Miaoke was attractive enough to meet Chinese government cuteness standards but couldn’t carry a tune in a bucket of river eels. Perhaps the South Korean cloning lab could mix some of Yang’s vocal chromosomes with Lin’s cuteness chromosomes and create a Chinese Shirley Temple to sing at the London Olympics. As evidenced by the Chinese women’s gymnastics team, Chinese little girls grow up so fast it would be no problem for a 2008 model cloned Yang/Lin to be 16 at the 2012 Olympics.
    The nominees for the 2008 Fakey award are all outstanding. It is a difficult to pick the biggest fake of the year from our three highly qualified contenders. Each one seems more artificial than the next. However, this is the 21st century and choices must be made. The envelope please.
    The winner of the 2008 Biggest Fake of the Year award goes to John Edwards and his alleged baby momma Rielle Hunter. See you on Father’s Day.