A few years ago, when Governor Bobby Jindal was still a congressman representing the First District, he – along with Kip Holden (who was still a state senator), me, and a couple of other media types – was on a political discussion panel. Although I was the one designated to provide comic relief during the show, I quickly found out I had some competition in that department, and no, I’m not talking about Kip. Sorry, Mr. Mayor, but your stuff is usually a bit corny.

I was amazed at how funny and quick-witted Jindal was, especially for a notoriously nerdy Rhodes scholar. And he did this in a roundtable setting sans teleprompter.

This begs the question: Who the hell kidnapped that Bobby Jindal and replaced him with the rogue Jindal we all saw give the Republican response to President Obama’s congressional address? There’s no way that caricature I saw on national television last month is the same human being from that night at Sullivan’s nearly five years ago, at least not without a couple of lobotomies.

Before his speech, Jindal was the bright, rising star of the Republican Party. Twelve minutes later, that brilliant luminary had been transformed into a brown dwarf.

Probably the worst part was all the hype leading up to it. For weeks, we heard Jindal being touted as the future of the GOP. He was supposed to be the fresh face to resurrect the party after eight long years of George Bush and four longer months of Sarah Palin.

Unfortunately, Jindal’s meteoric rise tragically became a nationally televised meteorite crash. I wouldn’t be surprised if there’s a smoldering crater in the Governor’s Mansion. (By the way, why the hell is it called a “meteoric rise,” anyway? When was the last time you saw a meteor go up?)

The fallout from that crash kept raining down for days after the speech. Pundits, bloggers, satirists, and comics alike have panned Jindal’s address. Even The Soup included a clip from his speech. How infamously horrible does a political speech have to be for it to be shown on a network whose lineup consists of shows that star Denise Richards, Kim Kardashian, and Hugh Hefner’s girlfriends?

Meanwhile, the folks at VH1 – the network that brought you Flavor of Love, Hogan Knows Best, and Celebrity Rehab – proclaimed that the governor of our great state was having the Best Week Ever! Jindal joins a pantheon of countless other great contributors to society whom have been bestowed this same honor, like William Hung, Dramatic Chipmunk, and Filipino prisoners dancing to “Thriller.”

In fact, in my 39 years on this ball of mud, I don’t recall a Democratic or Republican response to a presidential address ever drawing so much criticism, for content and/or style. Truth be told, most, if not all, of the disparagement is rightly deserved.

Let’s start with Jindal’s entrance. Much has been made of what he did before uttering a single word, including The Daily Show comparing the governor’s gait to that of Mr. Rogers.

Entrances are important, especially when you’re introducing yourself to millions of Americans for the first time. After all, they say you don’t get a second chance to make a good first impression. Sadly for the Jindal administration, the first impression he gave with his entrance was anything but presidential.

It was so bad and the pucker factor seemed so high, I’ve composed a short list of similes to describe Jindal’s walk before addressing the nation:

1. •He looked like a newbie taking his first shower at Angola.
   

2. •He looked like he was trying to keep something from oozing out of his rear end.
   

3. •He looked like Shaq was about to examine his prostate.
   

4. •He looked like every black comic that has ever made fun of the way white people walk.
   

5. •He looked like he was going to introduce us to Miss Yvonne, Cowboy Curtis, and Jambi. (Personally, I’d kill to see the governor say “Mecca-lecca hi, mecca hiney ho.”)
   

Actually, kids’ show references are rather appropriate, given the speech that followed sounded like a pre-K teacher reading Dick and Jane Go to Washington. Maybe Jindal was anticipating his upcoming trip to Disney World just a bit too much. Either that or he was auditioning for a tour guide position there.

My friend Adam Wilson theorized the reason the GOP was positioning Jindal as the point man to lead the party through the wilderness is because he’s a nice guy. He proposed: “Most people think Republicans are a–holes, but they can’t think this about Bobby; he’s the nicest guy in history. I haven’t seen a man on TV this sweet since Conway Twitty. The Republicans lost when they pimped a ‘maverick,’ so now they’re gonna give it a try with the nicest guy in the world and say, ‘Go ahead. Talk sh–t about THIS guy.’”

I responded with, “Yes, being a nice guy and likable is a huge plus, but it’s hard to like someone who’s talking to you like you’re a mentally disabled 6-year-old.”

It wasn’t merely the way Jindal delivered his speech that drew criticism. The content was worthy of some ridicule as well, like his repeated use of the sugary phrase “Americans can do anything.” Six times he said that, in twelve minutes. It was so syrupy, it was enough to send a diabetic over the edge.

I could tolerate such a Pollyanna sentiment maybe twice before regurgitating my supper, but he said it six times in that condescending, bedtime-storytelling tone. I subsequently threw up a little in my mouth.

He cited “$140 million for something called ‘volcano monitoring’” as an example of wasteful government spending. Perhaps the reason the president has no problem with appropriating $140 million for volcano monitoring is because he was born in Hawaii, a chain of islands created by thousands and thousands of volcanic eruptions!

Now, I know, we in Louisiana don’t have to worry about such threats, but you’d think Jindal might be aware some states actually have such sleeping giants, and that they could suddenly awake and unleash untold devastation on their populations, especially since he spends so much time traveling around the country. It seems someone might have shared this little tidbit with him during his extensive travels around our great land.

Of course, almost every state facing the specter of a volcanic eruption is either a blue state or has only a handful of electoral votes, like Alaska. But I’m sure Jindal wouldn’t want anything bad to happen to Sarah Palin’s home state before 2012.

Maybe I shouldn’t be so hard on Jindal. He admitted his party has lost the American people’s trust. Maybe the GOP is just so desperate to regain favor with the electorate at large, they’re willing to try just about anything, including nationally televised experimental theater. Unfortunately for the Republicans, Jindal’s performance didn’t go over as well as Joaquin Phoenix’s.

I’m just glad I’m not a member of the Republican leadership. Trying to sell the virtues of trickle-down economics right now is harder than selling ice to Eskimos. (At least many of the Inuit people acknowledge the polar caps are melting, even if their governor doesn’t.)

Besides, if I had to take my marching orders from Rush Limbaugh in this economic and political environment, I’d blow my brains out.

Don’t get me wrong, though. I’ve always been a free-market kind of guy. However, when you continually see reports about how the people that are supposed to facilitate the trickle-down effect have chronically screwed the pooch with impunity, it’s hard to remain a devout laissez-faire economics freak. Empirical data trumps theory eight days a week.

Every time I see another negative report, it’s like I have a little guy on each shoulder whispering in my ears. On one side is Milton Freidman (life-size, because the man was that tiny) and on the other is Robert Reich (again, life-size, because he’s even tinier than Freidman was).

As I get my daily dose of sour economic news from the talking heads on the tube, I hear Freidman insist, “Keep the government out and let the market right itself.”

Reich responds with, “Why? So the idiots and thieves on Wall Street can push our economy further down the crapper?”

Then Friedman yells back, “I’d rather have the idiots and thieves on Wall Street ruin our economy than the idiots and thieves on Capitol Hill, you Keynesian poser!”

That’s when Reich asks Freidman if he wants to throw down, they wrestle to the death like a couple of rabid midgets, and I wake up after having fallen asleep watching CNN’s Ali Velshi.

Sure, that’s a bit silly, but honestly, is it any sillier than the term “zombie banks”? From what classical, fiscal philosophy is that term derived? The Ed Wood School of Macroeconomics? Moreover, when you combine “zombie banks” with “voodoo economics” (a term coined by the elder George Bush), you get something that sounds more Haitian than American.

On a more serious note, a free market populated by both ingeniously unscrupulous financial gurus, like Bernie Madoff and Robert Allen Stanford, and economic illiterates, like those that ran AIG and Merrill Lynch into the ground, does not exactly inspire hard-core belief in true trickle-down economics. It also doesn’t help matters when the federal government fails to enforce laws designed to protect us from others’ greed as well as our own stupidity.