From The Seattle PI
By Martin Schram

Satire, at its best, is an artful blend of subtlety and wit. But often it plunges into heavy-handed ways. Then it becomes insufferably witless.

Live from New York, we’ve seen satire suffer under the “Saturday Night Live Syndrome” of ham-fisted un-funniness. Now this: Live From Washington — it’s the Bush White House.

Unwatched and uncovered in these lame duck days, the Bush White House was just revealed to have performed a heavy-handed takeoff of an old “Saturday Night Live” skit. It’s the one featuring a petulant child who doesn’t want to hear anyone giving do-this, do-that orders — and childishly covers both ears while screeching, “I can’t hear you! I can’t hear you!”

On June 25, The New York Times’ Felicity Barringer unearthed a front-page-type scoop that wound up on page A15 (perhaps it was played way back because it left the Washington press corps about as red-faced as the policy-makers we cover, as it was about a story that happened in December and was missed by all until now.)

The next day, The Washington Post’s Juliet Eilperin followed the competition’s exclusive and added a few fun details. Piecing them together, here’s what we know happened:

In December, the federal Environmental Protection Agency responded to a U.S. Supreme Court ruling by drafting a rule setting limits on greenhouse-gas emissions and stating this was being done because the emissions constitute a threat to public welfare. (In April 2007, the Supreme Court had ruled that the Bush EPA violated the Clean Air Act by refusing to look into whether emissions contribute to global warming and should be limited.)

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