PHIL HENDRIE COMMITTED CAREER SUICIDE WHEN HE DRANK THE BUSH KOOL-AID LONG AGO. BUT HIS SHOW OFFICIALLY ENDS FRIDAY

I remember once laughing so hard that I had to pull over to the side of the road. And as soon as I did, my cell rang and it was a friend who was laughing so hard in a different part of town that he had pulled off the side of the road too. That was a long time. It was a time when Phil Hendrie's radio show was appointment-radio for me, a time when I'd make sure to be coming and going so I could hear Hendrie's insanely hilarious characters. A long time ago... I stopped listening to Hendrie years ago when he lost it entirely and a brilliant and irreverent satirical show became nothing but a hysterical right-wing hate fest and nightly Bush rally. His short-lived blog, georgebushisgod.com, was the last straw for most of his listeners and, although he has tried to back away from his overt partisanship, his ratings never recovered. My theory is that you needed a three-digit IQ to "get" Hendrie's humor. The slackjawed mouth-breathers who make up George Bush's fan base might have appreciated Hendrie's slathering adoration for their dim-witted leader but they could never grasp the abstract concepts necessary to understand what Hendrie was talking about.

His listenership plummeted, right along with Bush's approval ratings and as station after station dropped what had turned into a dull and pathetic Limbaugh-wannabe slot, it became clear that Hendrie would be looking for another job. Tomorrow's his last show. I won't be listening. Neither will my friend who pulled over to the side of the road that same night I did. Neither will Adam, the DWT Art Director in West Palm Beach all the way on the other side of America. But Adam got a letter from Hendrie a couple days ago and asked me to alert our readers. His take is that Hendrie's ruin-- he's going into "acting" now-- is a warning to Democrats (like Hendrie, Zell Miller, Joe Lieberman, Ben Nelson...) who sell out to the siren call of fascism. I was going to print the letter but when I re-read it I realized there wasn't a single sentence worth quoting.