e's brash, he's young, at least in comparison to some other congressman, and he's dangerous. Really dangerous. Seriously, he was recently charged with manslaughter in the death of another motorist. He's South Dakota Representative Bill Janklow, and he's emerging as one of a new breed of rebellious new legislators everyone's talking about.

Authorities charged Janklow Friday with second-degree manslaughter following an Aug. 16 accident when the congressional hellion ran a stop sign traveling at speeds in excess of 70 mph in a 55-mph zone. Whether Janklow was speeding to a hot-to-trot lobbyists' convention or fleeing a savage pack of political paparazzi could not be discerned at press time, but rumors abounded.

Janklow is one of a bold new wave of congressmen creating new political fads. In modern America, where the average fair-weather voter is stuck in the middle of the road and too overweight to drag himself out, Janklow and his posse all have their staunch far-wing opinions—just don't ask them what they are! In fact, Janklow has refused to even identify where he stands on major issues to his own constituency—preferring to sell them the new favorite platform of improved standards of living and honesty and integrity in representation, as long as they don't want details on how we get those things. But make no mistake, his voting record demonstrates he's a Republican—hardcore, motherfucker! Janklow may be the quiet, shy type, but he's not afraid to tow the party line when it comes to the voting floor.

The South Dakota legislator has earned the nickname among associates as "Bad Billy" for his spotty driving record, his pro-GOP voting record, and his hygiene. Consumer activist and delusional Green Party presidential candidate Ralph Nader sent a strongly-worded letter to Janklow requesting his resignation. The incident was described by Nader as "the taking of life by a driver relentlessly bent on turning his vehicle into a lawless, dangerous missile," the Unsafe at Any Speed author wrote in his trademark prose bursting with sensuality.

"Dangerous? Definitely. Boring? Never!" sassed Belfront Herb, responding to questions no one asked. The gossip columnist and Washington (D.C.) insider is also the editor and only contributor to the underground political scandal zine Filibuster, and they've made Janklow their "Hunk o' the Month."

"He's not all talk like those stodgy old senators, and he may not be on the popular committees, but he's hot stuff in the 108th!" claimed the girlish fop. "A lot of naysayers will tell you he's another blend-into-the-background representative, and all his misbehaviour is a failed attempt to stand out. But I'm telling you, and you heard it here from me first, Boomer—we've got another Ted Kennedy on our hands. A future Bob Dole or Jesse Helms. I would say one day the name Bill Janklow will hang in the Congressional Hall of Fame next to Henry Clay. But since they're all in alphabetical order that will really throw the whole scheme out of whack."

This reporter attempted to remind the funny-but-not-in-a-ha-ha-way Washington insider the congressman is facing felony charges with a 10-year minimum sentence, but he refused to address the issue. Unwanted sexual advances forced the interview to conclude early, and the calls at the commune offices have yet to stop.

he 20th Annual M-TV Video Music Awards, held last Thursday night at New York’s Radio City Music Hall, served up its usual yearly helping of toned abs, wild costumes and music playing somewhere in the background, as expected. But viewers and M-TV executives alike were also treated to a surprise that few could have anticipated.

The show’s highlights were many and varied, including Madonna swapping STDs with Britney and Christina, rapper 50 Cent being shot 15 times during the ceremony but still returning for his musical performance, and Johnny Cash pulling a no-show, doing little to dispel most viewers’ assumptions that he died ten years ago. Host Chris Rock kept the show moving along at a rapid clip, and kept it funny by refusing to pretend that any of the nominated acts were any more than marginally talented.

In fact, the show took on such a party atmosphere that few even noticed when a diminutive Arab man named Sheik Omar Bakri accepted the award for Best New Artist for his album “Magnificent 19,� peppering the crowd with epithets during his acceptance speech in an accent so thick it could’ve shrouded an iceberg from an ocean liner. Many assumed Bakri was simply rapper Eminem’s newest protégé, failing to recognize him as the head of the radical Islamic group Al-Muhajiroun.

“That Sheik Omar was ate up,� gushed Smurf-like crooner Justin Timberlake. “Boy was so drunk he was talkin’ in tongues and shit. I can see why his fans is mad for him, that was righteous.�

In actuality, Sheik Bakri’s speech was the culmination of several months of planning by Al-Muhajiroun, whose members had infiltrated M-TV as interns and were able to slip Bakri’s non-existent album in as the Best New Artist winner in a tribute to the 19 hijackers who died on September 11th.

“The word magnificent is to attract if you like really the attention of the people to those particular 19 Muslims who in our eyes we see as Muslims what really they are — they are more than magnificent,� Sheik Bakri said, sort of in English. “In our eyes, they are the people who sacrifice their own life and that’s the most valuable thing and they offer it. It must be for a good reason. It must be for divine reason.�

Bakri may have misinterpreted the Video Music Awards crowd’s reaction to his remarks during the show, saying “the many Muslims present celebrated the comeuppance of the U.S.A.,� when in fact the crowd was cheering because Britney Spears’ cooch was momentarily visible on the big screen.

Bakri also considers his Best New Artist win to be sanctioned by God, explaining “If God did not permit that to happen, it would never happen,� and has thus far refused to return his moon-man statuette. Sheik Omar did, however, express regret that there was no Best Cover Art category, which could have honored the bizarre “Magnificent 19� album cover he had mocked up at great personal expense.

Network executives at M-TV seem alarmingly unphased by the incident, claiming that most of its viewers are too young to remember the September 11th terrorist attacks.

Few things get the public juices juicing like a good celebrity scandal. Seeing the rich and famous throw up on themselves on the national stage is like an instant cure for our collective Attention Deficit Disorder, sweet candy straight to the brain. The phenomena is so marked, in fact, that inner-city schoolteachers have begun to couch difficult lesson plans in the terms of celebrity scandal, quizzing children on riddles like "If it took OJ three stabs to cut off Nichole's head, how cut-off would her head be after two stabs?" Or, for example, "If car A left Paris going fifty miles an hour, and car B entered Paris going sixty-five miles an hour, how fast would car A be going when it ran over Princess Diana?"

It's the ultimate junk food of the news world, with one celebrity scandal upstaging another almost daily, blowing the old salacious headlines right off the newspapers and proving how quickly the public can forget who stuck his what where. Millions of desperate losers cling to their wretched lives for one reason only: sticking around in hopes of witnessing the ultimate, the most embarrassing celebrity scandal ever. And since losers make up the bulk of the commune readership, we're on the case to settle this national quandary once and for all.

So what is the most embarrassing celebrity scandal ever? Needless to say, the pack of challengers is thicker than Alabama backhair, and no pedestrian Hollywood fuck-ups need apply. It's got to be more embarrassing than Christian Slater kicking a pair of LAPD officers down the stairs because he was so coked up he thought he was filming Kuffs 2: More Kuffs!. And even more embarrassing than JFK Jr. being egged into a bar bet that he couldn't fly a plane without taking any lessons, and then getting his ass killed in the ocean like John Denver high on asshole powder. And I'm not talking about Jack Paar giving a titty twister to the Queen of England back in 1965 because he thought the queen mother was his buddy Merv Griffin playing a joke on him in drag, either. We're looking for really embarrassing celebrity scandals here.

Right off the bat we can eliminate the first time President Bush met with the UN and tried to buy a hot dog from Secretary General Kofi Annan. That would fall into the "crippling political embarrassment" category anyway and regardless, the president is so far off the public gaffe charts that an incident which would kill a normal politician is, for him, roughly on par with Roseanne Barr farting at a ballgame.

Few things are more embarrassing than accidentally setting yourself on fire, just ask Michael Jackson or Richard Pryor. Even worse is photographic evidence of the same, like the time Samuel L. Jackson's hair caught on fire right before the photo shoot for the Pulp Fiction poster. No one knows if freebase or the highly flammable Jeri-curl wig that Tarantino had on loan from Weird Al Yankovic was the culprit there, but either way moviegoers were left wondering about Jackson's schizophrenic bald/afro hair and if maybe that was his wig on fire inside Marsellus Wallace's mysteriously glowing briefcase.

Getting caught having sex with the wrong person in the wrong place can be even worse than setting yourself on fire, if you do it right. Having sex with any member of Wham anywhere certainly qualifies, as George Michael learned after being caught having sex in the park with George Michael. Hugh Grant kept the English penchant for embarrassing public sex alive when was busted in Hollywood having sex in his car with a poorly-disguised man in 1995, which says all you'll ever need to know about English women.

The last ten years of Robert Downey Jr.'s life would set some kind of "ironman" record for prolonged embarrassment if it weren't for the existence of escaped man-sized Muppet Michael Jackson, who scripts his own life as if he were writing for TV's Bloopers and Practical Jokes. But nailing Jacko on a public disgrace is about as tough as falling off stilts in a hurricane, so I'm afraid he's out of the running at least until he gets pantsed by an alien some time next year.

The most embarrassing celebrity scandal ever wasn't Zsa Zsa boxing the cop, Jack Nicholson going Caddyshack on his fellow motorist, or Errol Flynn accidentally having sex with a loaf of raisin bread. Nor was it Kelsey Grammar's tip for the babysitter, Richard Gere's alleged tab at the pet store or America finding out that Milli Vanilli didn't even sing the shitty songs on their album, which technically should have helped their career.

No, I'm afraid the ill-fitting crown belongs to none other than Paul Reubens, a.k.a. Pee-Wee Herman, the children's TV star who was caught waxing his wane in an adult theater in 1991 and fell straight off the face of the earth promptly thereafter. Few celebrity arrests have inspired such "soaring eagle into the jet engine" career-trajectory imagery, and whether the death blow was Reubens being caught in the wrong place at the wrong time, or the resultant mug shot photos where the beloved children's entertainer appeared looking like Charles Manson on crack, the effect was Godzillian. Is that a word, Godzillian? Should be.

Sorry, Pee Wee. I was hoping it would be J-Lo.

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