Farce

Parental Advisory: The set's turrets and towers are reminiscent of a fairy tale. The theme music will set many members of the audience to humming a beloved nursery rhyme. And the title seems tailor-made to titillate the curiosity of 6-year-olds. But, moms and dads, leave Junior at home. Nothing in the production of The Underpants currently running at the Olney Theatre Center is even remotely childlike. No, this 1911 German sex farce (receiving a modern adaptation by that wild-and-crazy guy, Steve Martin)

Low farce confused with high crimes and misdemeanorsIndependent counsel Kenneth Starr stands exposed as a modern-day Inspector Javert. Like Victor Hugo's character from "Les Miserables," he seems to trumpet that "I am the law, and the law is not mocked."But in his sugar-coated zealotry, Mr. Starr has lost all sense of proportion, seizing on low farce and confusing it with high crimes against the state. In doing so, he has squandered the people's money and the people's attention in his win-at-all-costs strategy.

WASHINGTON -- Greece is the birthplace of democracy, tragedy and comedy, and all three are elements in the political struggle now under way to replace the country's ailing prime minister, Andreas Papandreou.Hospitalized with failing lungs and kidneys nearly a month ago, Mr. Papandreou, 76, remains critically ill and with little hope of resuming his duties. But his hold on his party and, in a sense, on the country remains so strong that no one has made a decisive move to oust him; the inevitable transition to new leadership has stalled.

The Berlin Wall came down in the bicentennial of the French Revolution. It called up Wordsworth's lines about his memories of the fall of the Bastille:Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive,But to be young was very Heaven!But less than four years after the Wall fell, we can appreciate the disillusion with terror and chaos that had turned Wordsworth, by the time he wrote those lines, into a bitter Tory.In the '50s and '60s, America seemed to be on the edge of a Golden Age; we wound up with AIDS, crack and children having children.

From: Roger D. CassellElkridgeOn Jan. 24, 1992, in the Circuit Court for Howard County, the citizens of this state and county were subjected to a farce of the greatest magnitude.Francisco Rodriguez was allowed to plead guilty to first-degree murder in the shooting death of Cpl. Ted Wolf of the Maryland State Police, which took place in March of 1990. Rodriguez was given a life sentence for the crime, subject to the terms of the pleaagreement.Then, to the dismay of all, the judge had the terms ofthe plea agreement sealed.

FOR a long time the bumper stickers said, "Virginia Is For Lovers." This was silly. Virginia for lovers? Surely it hadn't come to that for the Old Dominion.For lovers? Virginia, Mother of Presidents, was being advertised as just another piece of hot-mattress geography like Las Vegas?As a Virginian, I found the slogan distasteful. A pleasure of being Virginian is the right to find distasteful things distasteful. People of other states feel obliged to admire their states' worst features even when they don't.

Some insiders suggest that in his forthcoming city charter revision, Mayor Kurt L. Schmoke will call for replacing the school board with a cabinet-level education czar. Perhaps that is why he is letting the school board exhibit a humiliating impotence at a time when the whole school system is scheduled to shut down for a week to save money.Not only have all the nominated school board members' terms expired (they are serving at the mayor's pleasure), but the board has yet to address the school-closure issue -- even though it presents an unprecedented education trauma for Baltimore City's students, parents and teachers.

SOMEWHERE J. Edgar Hoover must be getting a hoot out of this: FBI officials under congressional investigation for intelligence failures want to strap members of Congress to lie-detectors to ask if they are leaking details of their bungling to the press. The only redeeming feature of the FBI polygraph request is that it highlights the absurdity of this whole leak investigation. Surely, with the war on terrorism still under way and no suspects in the anthrax attacks, the FBI has better things to do than ferret out congressional blabbermouths.

Boston -- It happened just in the nick of time. Monday morning, the United States Supreme Court came down unanimously on the side of parody. The justices ruled that 2 Live Crew's sendup of a classic that turned ''Oh, Pretty Woman'' into ''Big Hairy Woman'' wasn't necessarily an infringement of the copyright laws.This is an enormous relief to everyone who has ever imitated or ridiculed somebody else's style. But it also must be a great source of comfort to those creative forces in the capital who are busily trying to turn Whitewater into Watergate.

CAN ANY member of Congress honestly say that decision-making in the White House will be improved, that systematic wrongs will be righted, that the American people will gain enhanced respect for their leaders or that any other gain will be achieved from holding hearings on the Whitewater affair?The idea of a "serious examination of the issues" by Congress brings a smirk to the face of anyone over 12 years old.Such is the result of media-driven politicians and scandal-driven media, which together dominate and corrupt the political process in the United States today.