Since The New Yorker's a double this week, and Andy Borowitz has been spreading himself a bit thin lately, I'm gonna take bad comedy matters into my own hands.

Here's something twice as unfunny as you're likely find on The Times op-ed page or in The New Yorker's 'Shouts & Murmurs' and you can read it for free.

If you ask the White House what President Bush is reading these days, the press office will call back with the official list: "His Excellency: George Washington" by Joseph J. Ellis, "Alexander Hamilton" by Ron Chernow and, not least, the Bible.

What the official list omits is Tom Wolfe's racy new beer- and sex-soaked novel, "I Am Charlotte Simmons." The president, a fan of Mr. Wolfe, has not only read the book but also is enthusiastically recommending it to friends.
- Bush's Official Reading List, and a Racy Omission, by Elisabeth Bumiller, The New York Times, Feb. 7, 2005.

Also on George W. Bush's reading list:

The Five Thousand Dead Iraqi People You Meet in Heaven

Beats, Shoots & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Abu Ghraib

Baby-killers' Club Friends Forever # 12: Wolfowitz and the Disaster Date

Me Talk Pretty One Day

Blank : The Power of Thinking Without Thinking

He's Just Not That Into You: The No-Excuses Truth to Understanding Gays

Dreams from My Father : A Story of Golf and Inheritance

This I Believe: An A to B of a Life