A. Barton Hinkle on Making Fun of Politics
When the Obama administration launched the We the People petition initiative—which lets anyone start a petition on the White House website—it set the response threshold at 5,000 signatures. In the digital era you can collect that many signatures for a petition to make navel lint the official textile fiber of the United States. So the White House bumped up the threshold to 25,000. Turns out that's a pretty easy bar to clear, too. Just look at the Death Star petition, which asked the administration to start building a Star Wars-like Death Star by 2016. A. Barton Hinkle explains why it's encouraging to see so many Americans using We the People to have a bit of fun. Sometimes laughter is the best medicine for dealing with the unpleasant world of politics.
