Speaking of infantile amusement, I happened to listen to a podcast on Slate.com about President George Bush's fixation on fart jokes. Before one senior staff meeting, according to the report, Bush arranged to have a special pillow placed on the seat of his election strategy guru, Karl Rove (no, this was not to punish him after the Republicans lost heavily in the mid-term elections). When Rove sat down, an enormous fart sound was heard, followed by guffaws in a room full of the most powerful men in the world. What was even more amusing than this added proof of presidential silliness was the wry tone of Slate's report, as if the writer was simply analyzing White House group dynamics, which in a way he was.

According to Slate, Bush's flatulent obsession may even have medieval roots. To wit:

A robust tradition of fart jokes exists within Anglo-Saxon culture, going back at least as far as Chaucer, and the fart joke holds a venerated place in English politics.

So we shouldn't be too condescending about Bush and his fart jokes. Why, even our national hero occasionally indulged in them. One of historian Ambeth Ocampo's favorite hallmarks of Jose Rizal's humor was his comic strip of a formally dressed young man courting a lass and upon bowing to kiss her hand emitted an enormous gust of wind.

I'm not sure the cerebral Rizal would have placed any whoopee cushions on the seats of his Cabinet members, if he lived long enough to become our first president. Or maybe he would have -- he was undoubtedly familiar with Chaucer.