Does Babs Have Soul? Ask Dubya

Normally, I don't go back to the same well week after week, so George W. Bush should be safe for a while. But did you see what Bush said after his recent meeting with Russia's President Vladimir "Ras" Putin? Bush met with Putin for 90 minutes and declared the former KGB agent a righteous dude. Bush explained, "I was able to get a sense of his soul."

See, right there is proof of the high quality of a Yale education. All Bush needed was 90 minutes to go metaphysical. Imagine if he'd hung out with Putin the whole afternoon. We all might be levitating. What's next, the Vulcan mind meld?

I'm delighted that Bush could peer into Putin's soul. Maybe he was like Woody Allen, who said he once was charged with plagiarism on a metaphysics exam because he'd peered into the soul of the student next to him.

I'm curious about the size of Putin's soul. How much soul does he have? More than, say, Sam & Dave? More than Luther Vandross? Barry White? As a kid growing up in the Soviet Union, did his homeys say to Vladimir, "What it \o7 is\f7 , bro?"

(I interrupt this column to bring you this item. I quote from the wire service account: "Viagra has been banned from greyhound racing in Ireland after reports that it can make dogs run faster by speeding up their heart rate." Like my friend Denis says, "Man, if they catch that rabbit now, watch out!")

I hope I'm not the only one besides Crazy Ol' Jesse Helms who finds it uncomfortable that the president of our United States meets with an elite commie spy for an hour and a half and pronounces him "honest, straightforward and trustworthy." I mean, it's one thing for Bush to get out of a meeting with Putin and say, "I met with Mr. Putin, and we reached consensus on a wide range of aims.

True, we still have some serious cultural issues to bridge. Like that hideous beet soup the Rooskies eat. One swallow of that slop, and I'm all over Mr. Putin like my daddy was all over the prime minister of Japan a few years back. But on a personal level, Vlad's my dawg; ya know what I'm sayin', boyyyyyee."

But for Bush to say, "I was able to get a sense of his soul." Excuse me--who did we elect president, Shirley MacLaine?

Of course, the president wasn't the only one with unexpected insight this week. A check of Barbra Streisand's Web site revealed that America's Diva is urging Californians to conserve energy by hanging their wash out to dry on a clothesline.