“The Bush administration is beginning to look like the fourth season of Saved by the Bell, ” says Jace Monteith, a self-described “Jump the Shark” expert in an article on the Truthdig website.

Jumping the Shark — as bleary-eyed TV fans know — is when a long-running series runs dry and starts resorting to off-topic storylines. Examples:

• the Fifties greaser Fonzie on Happy Days suddenly goes watersking (in his leather jacket) and jumps sharks.
• The abrupt discovery of gigorgeous Patrick Duffy, alive and naked, in a shower on Dallas and its preposterous explanation: that the entire 7th season, in which Duffy had died, was Pam Ewing’s dream.
• Or, simply, the appearance last year of Faye Dunaway as a judge on a reality show — a warning sign, as if we needed one, of just how far into left field reality has moved. Each week on The Starlet, our Faye got to deliver her very own ice-cold tagline. “Don’t call us,” she’d say with leaping eyes and rictus leer. “We’ll call you!”

Thanks to the strong leadership of our President, Lion of Baghdad, Defender of Marriage, Savior of New Orleans, Protector of the Brain-Dead and the Unborn, who has improved us all with his manly resolve — as exhibited recently in this thoughtful statement: “Free societies are hopeful societies. And free societies will be allies against these hateful few who have no conscience, who kill at the whim of a hat” — yes this Man, this Man for All Seasons, has taken us all up and over that last and ultimate shark:

America is now an international punchline.

Writes Andy Borowitz in Truthdig:

Mr. Monteith points to Vice President Dick Cheney’s recent hunting accident as a sure sign the White House has jumped the shark.

“If you were reading TV Guide and it said, ‘This week, trouble ensues at the White House when the Vice President shoots a man in the face,’ you’d be like, oh, man, they’re running out of ideas,” Mr. Monteith says. “What are they going to do on next week’s episode, give the ports away to Arabs?”

Mr. Monteith thinks that recent calls by Senate Republicans for President Bush to bring “new blood” into his administration are yet another ominous sign the White House has jumped the shark.

“That’s something always done to make a show last for another season or so,” Mr. Monteith says. “I don’t know who the White House has in mind, but I hope it turns out better than Scooby-Doo did.”

Elsewhere, the Sony Corp. said that production delays for its PlayStation 3 console would mean that for the next six months computer game players would have to get a life.

Well, our President sure has a life, a surreal one, now in its 6th season. Perhaps his whole administration will turn out to be another of Pam Ewing’s damn dreams.