Let a smirk be your umbrella

I usually like smirks. Sometimes they're mean and malicious, but more often it's the inner child revealed: how am I going to explain that grape jelly smeared all over my face... and the kitchen?

Which is why I watched Rush Limbaugh before he started to listen to his inner bully. With just an expression he was letting his faithful know what was coming: 'I'm about to twit those guys. Let's see if it gets a rise out of them.' He was so good at it you suspected him of being a double agent: 'I can say anything and these guys will buy it.' It's sad. Now I feel like he trashed the kitchen, isn't sorry and doesn't care about it anyway.

Bill O'Reilly was also good in the beginning. He could be so outrageous you had to pay attention. Nobody would say that, would they? Before it became another trick in his bag, it forced me to examine ideas I might have just dismissed.

In his glory days at Comedy Central, Bill Maher was the best: 'Look how naughty I am.' He would shift from foot to foot and look like he was trying to make himself disappear. There was a purity, an innocent anarchy in the way he talked. How did that turn shrill, combative and confrontational?

Is that just the way it is? Do smirks have a short shelf life, or is this connected to the reason most bands can't do more than two or three good albums? Maybe nobody can avoid the self-importance that comes with too much attention and too many press clippings.

Whatever the reason, I'm looking for The Next Great Smirk. Let me know where it is; I've got to catch it early before it gets away.