Flack falls on sword, will miss out on the prison sex

These days, when the bells of resignation toll, the beleaguered party -- whether it be Alberto Gonzales, Paul Wolfowitz or Ehud Olmert -- is much more likely to stubbornly stick around, wagons circled, and keep deflecting the blame for as long as he can, than he is to flash the double victory sign for the last time and allow the helicopter to take him away.

But there is still one man who still understands the way things once were:

Elliot Mintz has been a high-profile flack for over thirty years, representing such luminaries as Bob Dylan and Yoko Ono. Mintz, who looks and sounds like a really gay version of Dick Cavett, is the fellow you've seen in various John Lennon/Beatles documentaries saying things along the lines of "who's to say Yoko Ono's contributions to the Beatles didn't match those of Paul McCartney."

Lately Mintz has undertaken the unenviable task of spinning the simple life and times of lazy-eyed celebutant Paris Hilton. As you've probably heard, last Friday Paris got slapped with a shockingly harsh 45 day jail sentence for driving on a suspended license -- to be served in its entirety in a prison for common felons.

According to court testimony, Mintz took responsibility for the "misunderstanding," stating he reads all of his client's mail for her and had incorrectly told Paris she was still able to drive for work-related reasons. The judge rejected his testimony as "worthless," even though a tearful Paris made the thoroughly believable claim that "I just sign what people tell me to sign."

Now Mintz has accepted his fate and is no longer representing Paris Hilton. Maybe the Japanese-born Ono schooled Mintz in the ancient samurai art of falling on one's sword, or hara-kari.

Whatever it was, it's too bad the dutiful Mintz won't be around to control the media auction when Paris emerges, tales of sapphic-tinged horror in tow, from what promises to be a prison term as lucrative as it is real.

Idle threat of the week

After four days of football and tryptophan, the panel of judges met Sunday night. Not surprisingly it was a hazy affair and we quickly decided to institute the "holiday rules," which encourage the panel to go after the lowest hanging fruit possible.

Fortunately for the sluggish panel a small, shrieking Asian women reemerged to fit that bill.

Yoko Ono Lennon, as she now calls herself, finally adopting her husband's surname 26 years after his death, has threatened to heal the world.

From a full-page ad she took out in New York Times yesterday she implores her fellow travelers to use the anniversary of her late-husband's assassination to achieve world healing by begging forgiveness from the world's poor and suffering.

What world-healing advocates don't realize is that, over time, a fully-healed world would become naive to the darkness that lurks in the depths of humanity. Like a home-schooled Jehovah's Witness unleashed during senior-year spring break in Mexico, the fully-healed world would eventually find itself lying in a pool of vomit with sharp pains in odd places.

But don't worry, Ono Lennon's plan for world-healing has a zero percent chance of having the slightest impact. Among many other things, it seems to require direct contact with the poor and suffering. Even if the panel knew where to find these unfortunates, it was generally agreed their noxious smell would melt away any enthusiasm for presenting them with an apology.

Ono Lennon does owe the world something for contributing to the break-up of the greatest band of all-time, and nudging the Fab Four towards a tragic path that has led to 50 percent of them being dead and another 25 percent suffering the wrath of a vengeful one-legged former prostitute.

But Ono Lennon's harebrained plan for world-healing is further proof this always misguided goal should be left only to the standbys: Prayer, dinner toasts, and the ruthless detachment of James Baker.

On the bright side Ono Lennon, whose album drops in February, has already charted Idle Threat of the Week for November 20-26.