Should O.P. Honors Get the Mark Twain Prize?

Facing national bankruptcy, we expect our cash-strapped citizens to dig into their empty pockets and cough up enough money to fund a fleet of 12 aircraft carriers. This single American military expenditure, alone, is greater than the total military budget of any other nation on earth. Then we outfit the carriers with nuclear-tipped weapons, and send them out on the high seas to bully and intimidate any other nation that opposes or even mildly disagrees with our national objectives (whatever the hell that means). And nobody, absolutely nobody, in this country ever says that anything about this is distasteful or offensive or inappropriate. But if the commander of one of those carriers (albeit a commander with an adolescent level of maturity) tries to jump start a new career for himself as a sketch comedy writer and producer, the nation rises up in indignation. I wonder if Cleopatra held the crew of her royal barge to a similar high standard of conduct. Or maybe Cleopatra recognized that the whole idea of maintaining a royal barge to project a power-image was absurd, so absurdity on board should be tolerated as just a natural part of the bigger picture. If this was the case, then Cleopatra was smarter than any of us.