You Can’t Make Me Care About Benghazi

And, uh, GOP? America agrees with me.

Last week was supposed to be a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad week for President Obama. The IRS was doing something terrible. The Justice Department was doing something horrible. And in Washington, Republicans held hearings in which they stripped Hillary Clinton naked, tied her to a pole in the Capitol Rotunda, set her on fire, and danced and sang while she burned. No, actually, they threatened to shoot her in the vagina. (That part’s real.) And you know what happened after that? America just liked Hillary Clinton even more.

Note to Rand Paul, John Boehner and the rest of the guys: This strategy isn’t working! Nobody cares about Benghazi except some Americans too stupid to even know where Benghazi is! You know who cares about Benghazi? Glenn Beck. You know what else Glenn Beck cares about? All those white people who got lynched by the KKK.

There were emails about Benghazi! People said stuff! Other people said stuff back! Then the first people said something else again! Hillary knew something! Obama knew something! Lies! Birth certificates! The Boston Bombings! A vast left-wing conspiracy! This Benghazi thing is just like Watergate! No, wait—it’s 10 times bigger than Watergate!

Only, inevitably, the only conspiracy so far has proven to be Republicans making up fake emails purporting to be smoking guns proving a scandal. The more that Boehner’s party tries to whip this dead horse, the more their case implodes. Meantime, the search for new and dirtier scandals continues: Shame on the President for not holding his own damned umbrella! Let’s get it over with and get the man impeached!

Meantime, America shopped for new shoes and made some burgers on the gas grill and watched the NBA playoffs and didn’t pay attention to the Republican dog-and-pony show at all. In fact, the President’s approval rating even inched up a little during his terrible, horrible, no good, very bad week. Which means that while the public by and large agrees with what he said yesterday—that there’s a shortage of common sense in Washington—there’s more than enough of it out in the real world. Keep up the good work, Mr. Rand, Mr. Boehner et al.!