"No respect for Kucinich, even though many agree with him"

Las Vegas Sun:

In the 'Rock the Vote' presidential debates Tuesday night Democratic candidates Howard Dean, John Edwards and John Kerry admitted that they had smoked marijuana, while candidate Dennis Kucinich admitted that he was high right now."

- Tina Fey, "Saturday Night Live's" Weekend Update, Nov. 8, 2003

Rep. Dennis Kucinich opposed the Iraq war from the beginning, voted against the Patriot Act and has drawn up articles of impeachment for Vice President Dick Cheney.

Compared with his rivals, he's been far closer to the views of his party's base, and on issues that matter, he's been years ahead of his competitors, who are frequently dragged along - kicking and screaming - by the grass roots.

And yet Kucinich, who ran in 2004 and is campaigning in Las Vegas today , is more often viewed as comedy fodder than party leader or contender.

The mockery extends from highbrow - a New Yorker cartoon depicting Kucinich winning the Mars primary - to lowbrow - with jokes about his height, ears, veganism and so on. "Snicker and Kucinich" returns 50,000 hits from Google, with a Web site or two tracking the mockery. (Mockery that's no stranger to the pages of the Sun.)

At a spring Culinary Union event for candidates, a union official ducked her head inside the press room and said, mockingly, "Dennis Kucinich is shaking hands outside." The assembled press snickered, and continued writing.

Kucinich backers, such as spokesman Andy Juniewicz, seem resigned to this view of Kucinich's public persona, a great truth-teller wrongly thought the fool.

And perhaps the Kucinich supporters have a point. Perhaps Kucinich is The Fool of Shakespeare, the classic character of "King Lear" who often speaks the most profound and wittiest lines, especially after Lear has given up the kingdom, and the Fool makes Lear look the fool.

now thou art an O without a figure:

I am better than thou art now;

I am a fool, thou art nothing.

Stephen Fallon, a professor of literature at the University of Notre Dame, said the fool was a necessity of Renaissance-era drama because someone had to tell the king hard truths without fear of reprisal. The fool's ridiculousness and batty appearance insulated him from kingly violence.

(If the analogy holds, Kucinich can rail away at the Bush administration without having to fear that his wife will be outed as a CIA agent, his ears a kind of talisman of safety.)

For Kucinich supporters, here's another comforting explanation of the incessant ridicule: Kucinich is the candidate with the most coherently liberal agenda and marginalizing him is a way to marginalize his ideas, said Paul Lewis, a professor of English at Boston College and author of the recently published "Cracking Up: American Humor in a Time of Conflict." (Although, Lewis conceded, this wouldn't seem to explain the late-night apolitical cracks on Kucinich, which focus on his elfin appearance, among other things.)

Sure, the media can be blamed, but the fact is that the public isn't rallying to the notion of a Kucinich presidency, even when it agrees with his ideas.

At a spring Las Vegas health care forum, the major candidates spoke first. Just before Kucinich started discussing his bill for a single-payer, government-financed health care system - which the majority of Americans support even though Democratic front-runners don't - the crowd streamed out as if their team had a three-touchdown lead and they wanted to beat the traffic.

As if to emphasize this point, Kucinich fans point to a Web site, www.dehp.net/candidate, which offers a kind of "blind taste test" of candidates, allowing users to mark where they stand on issues, and then pairing them up with the candidate whose views are the closest match.

Kucinich is winning this unscientific poll overwhelmingly. In other words, the less people know about him, the better.

It's also possible the Kucinich campaign is steering supporters to the site. Presumably their views match his, which might pad his totals. Juniewicz denied any such effort, which seems altogether too, well, savvy for the Kucinich campaign anyway.

Alleen Nilsen, an English professor at Arizona State University who specializes in the study of humor, said Kucinich and his backers should recognize his persona as an advantage because he can throw out ideas, such as starting a "Department of Peace" without fear, just as a courtier might make a flirty joke to his date and be insulated from embarrassment because it's "just a joke."

"If someone has a reputation as a fool, they can play the role of the innocent, because humor tests people's reactions without committing yourself," Nilsen said.

What does Kucinich make of all this?

Well, the Sun tried to reach him. But Kucinich, who drove Cleveland into bankruptcy as mayor, who disappeared to New Mexico during the '80s, who received 1 percent of the votes in the 2004 Iowa caucus, and whose wife has her tongue pierced and was born three decades after her husband, wasn't available because he was busy campaigning in Hawaii.

That makes him the first candidate to campaign in Hawaii, which will certainly be important in the race to secure the all-important South Pacific states.

For a campaign with so little money, it seems like an odd use of resources.

The Sun priced out a round-trip ticket from Cleveland to Honolulu, and it seems it can't be done for less than $500. He could have driven to Iowa for much less.