A NOTE FROM 40 YEARS IN JOURNALISM:

If a city councilor in the city where you work as a reporter proposes a city budget that guarantees the city will go bankrupt in five years, and you write a long story explaining the math, diving into state aid, the residential/commercial property tax split, money spent per student in the school system, and the possibility of firefighter and police layoffs, the councilor will be mad but will know that you can't be attacked with facts. The councilor will also know that the likelihood of any voter reading all those numbers is small.

However, if you write an opinion column and you nickname the councilor "Magic Math Malone," that councilor will be angry for months, particularly if people start to shout the nickname at them in the grocery store.

Eventually, the councilor will say that what you wrote was a "cheap shot."

In political writing, comedy or satire, a cheap shot is writing or speaking the truth as a joke. Facts don't sting. Comedy stings. Also, people forget good facts much faster than they forget a good joke.

If you're one of those people who had an embarrassing nickname in high school, you know exactly what I mean. You were National Honor Society and your doctor dad bought you a car the day you got your license, but if your nickname was "Gorilla," that will stay with you forever, particularly if you're female. You can grow up and move to another state, but "Gorilla" will always be with you. Even after you own three hugely successful laundromats, the thought of "Gorilla" is gonna make your head duck down between your shoulders like you're trying to get under a slap.

That's kids, though.

Every time the subject of kids pecking each other to death like chickens is brought up, some pious fool sighs deeply and says, "Children can be so cruel."

And the rest of us who maybe had an embarrassing high school nickname duck our heads down just a little. Thirty years later, and the slap still whistles in the air.

Politicians, though, they're grown-ups. They volunteered. Also, they've got a hundred mouths behind them, each one bellowing praise.

"She'll fight for you!" the candidate's flyer says when it arrives in your mailbox.

"Standing up for your rights," the email says, showing the incumbent holding a bazooka in one hand and a copy of The Constitution in the other. The trouble with that picture is that the candidate doesn't have a third hand to hold a copy of The Bible.

That's the little terrarium where all politicians live, a sealed environment where the compliments ricochet off the walls like soft bullets.

So, it's no surprise when an elected mediocrity ducks like there's a slap in the air when a comedian in a skinny suit starts making with the jokes, or a columnist starts dealing nicknames from the bottom of the deck. Hell, your bought-and-paid-for press secretary told you how brilliant you were three times this morning and then went out and told the press. It's impossible for you to be a dope! Can't happen!

In 1941, The Three Stooges made a short film called "I'll Never Heil Again." It isn't difficult to figure out who the three whacky brothers were satirizing. Stooge Moe played a dictator named "Moe Hailstone," and Stooge Curly was "Field Marshal Herring."

The film's opening statement read, "The characters in this picture are all fictitious. Anyone resembling them is better off dead."

All three of the original Stooges were Jews. Imagine what would have happened to them if the wrong side had won.

It takes guts to write a declaration of independence. Sometimes, it takes guts to write a joke, too.

To find out more about Marc Dion and read features by Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit www.creators.com. Dion's latest book, a collection of his best columns, is called "Mean Old Liberal." It is available in paperback from Amazon.com, and for Nook, Kindle, and iBooks.

Photo credit: Darren Halstead at Unsplash