Taking up the slack

James Taranto (Best of the Web, Opinion Journal) sees the following lil
epigram by Hillaire Belloc as applicable to Arafat:

Here richly, with ridiculous display,
The Politician's corpse was laid away.
While all of his acquaintance sneered and slanged
I wept: for I had longed to see him hanged.

Hmmm... can anyone think of a few others that would fit? ("Git the rope, Ma.
A buncha us guys are going down to 'welcome' that  politician who came to
town, today.")  Brings to mind one of my favorite quotes by a famous Missourian:

"Suppose you were an idiot and suppose you were a member of Congress.
But I repeat myself". Mark Twain

Of course, congresscritters do not, in the 21st century, comprise the sum total
of the class, "idiots," in our society, as Twain impies they did in the 19th century.
We have the rest of the LLMB and the MMPA to take up the slack, there.