Remember, answering "jumping the shark has jumped the shark" is so 2002

While I was on vacation something very significant happened. On the virtual pages of Slate, Bruce Reed begged the question "Is our president French?"

He legitimizes the premise of his seemingly outrageous cyber-inquiry with a presidential summer-reading list led by Camus and something about Marie-Antoinettish tax cuts.

Clearly Reed jests -- but behind every joke is truth and behind every truth a deeper meaning.

In search of that meaning, I've drawn up a few questions of my own and arranged them into a single, multiple choice offering:

Now that a Bush-as-French line of argument is legitimate comic fodder it means:

A) Criticism of George W. Bush has "jumped the shark"
B) George W. Bush has "jumped the shark."
C) Criticism of the French have "jumped the shark."
D) The French have "jumped the shark."
E) All of the above

The answer, of course, is E.

One could argue these were all sharks jumped long ago. Still, it took Bruce Reed, writing on a lazy Friday in August, to remind us that they have been, and to draw out the undeniable relationship the jumping of these sharks share.