Chin-stroking idea muppet Thomas Friedman has written and published a nationally-distributed newspaper column again today. Has he told you his door handle story? I think you will find it very instructive.

Today's column is about the recent security lapses by the Secret Service, allegedly?

Just look at Washington these days and listen to what politicians are saying and watch how they spend their time. You can't help but ask: Do these people care a whit about the country anymore? Is there anybody here on a quest for excellence, for making America great?

Take a look in the land of Old Hickory. Do these jokers have a single cat in the caboodle? Is there one bit of pride in the prejudice? Where's the old American butter churn, of freedom?

Tell me that doesn't filter down to every department, including the Secret Service. When so many above you are just cynically out for themselves, it saps morale, focus and discipline. If so many above you are just getting theirs, well then, why shouldn't Secret Service agents doing advance work for the president's trip to Colombia in April 2012 take prostitutes back to their rooms and have some fun on D.C.'s dime, too?

Politicians thinking only about reelection? Time to fuck some hookers. A dime? A dozen. The whore the merrier, I say. Heh. I am a very special agent, Thomas Friedman The First.

I can't put my finger on it exactly, but you feel today in Washington a certain laxness, that anything goes and that too few people working for the federal government take pride in their work because everything is just cobbled together by Congress and the White House at the 11th hour anyway. It's been years since anyone summoned us for a moonshot, for something great. So just show up and punch the clock.

I can't put my finger on it. There's just something about that moon. Eclipse? Of the national soul, maybe. The only good moon is moonshine, that's what I say. Prostitutes?

In December 2010, I went to the White House for an interview. I entered through the Secret Service checkpoint on Pennsylvania Avenue. After putting my briefcase through the X-ray machine and collecting it, I grabbed the metal door handle to enter the White House driveway. The handle came off in my hand.

"Oh, it does that sometimes," the Secret Service agent at the door said to me nonchalantly, as I tried to fit the wobbly handle back into the socket. People who take pride in their work don't just let the handle come off a White House door like that.

People who take pride in their work don't just let the handle come off a White House door like that.

This is America. [NOTE TO ED.: PLEASE CHECK- T.F.]

[Photo: Getty]