“Politicians and diapers,” says one clever joker, “have one thing in common. They both should be changed regularly, and for the same reason.”

Half of all comedians’ jokes are put-downs of politicians. I think that’s unfair and I’ve decided to stop repeating them. Not  just yet though, not until I share the following  good ones with you.

• We hang petty thieves and appoint the great ones to public office.  (This one from Aesop,  ancient Greek storyteller, same opinion thousands of years ago it seems.)

• Politicians are the same all over. They promise to build a bridge where there is no river. (This from, believe it or not, Nikita  Khrushchev.)  That reminds me, it once was common for politicians to promise to pave roads and parking lots if elected. One farmer put up a sign on a road going by his place: “Please don’t pave this field.”

• Preston Manning  once explained the difference between a catfish and a politician: One is a wide-mouthed, bottom-feeding slime-sucker. And the other is a fish.

Now Manning is a politician himself. Indeed  the best jokes about politicians come from members of that profession.  They seem to like making fun of their own faults.

On the other hand Peter Mansbridge in a recent interview had a good word for politicians. There are definite “bad apples” among them, he said. But having got to know and interview many hundreds of them,  he insists most of them believe in their policies in hopes of bringing about a better world.

I’ve often said the same thing. There are terrible exceptions of course, witness the  sordid current situation down below our southern  border. But these are eventually, as a rule,  brought back to some level of sanity by a disgusted population. Even the politicians I’ve often severely criticized on these pages do, I believe, try to make a positive  contribution.  (Some exceptions

But you can’t please everyone on every policy and as a result there will always be thousands or millions who don’t have nice things to say about you.  Some people, unfortunately, want every policy to support their pet benefits,  not caring that other citizens have other needs. If the government in power doesn’t always favour their wishes it must be crooked, corrupt or incompetent. May be the world’s most thankless job, but an absolutely essential one.

Surveys in Canada always show politicians near the bottom of the list of trusted occupations.  And journalists, who keep an eye on  the politicians and point out their wrongdoings for some reason don’t get much respect either. Here are a few one-liners at their expense:

• Robert Stanfield, a Canadian politician, made this complaint after much media criticism: If they  heard I was walking on water they’d say oh, so Stanfield can’t swim.

• What passes for investigative journalism is finding somebody with their pants down--literally or otherwise.

• Journalism is a low trade and a habit worse than heroin, a strange seedy world of drunkards and failures.

• I wannabe a fiction writer later in life, so I’m studying journalism.

And here again I disagree  with the survey subjects. There are indeed incompetent and dishonest media, reporters, commentators and editors. But around the world every year hundreds of journalists are killed, injured and tortured because of their determination to expose corruption, deception and tyranny. In democratic countries they’re less likely to be attacked violently. But they can have their careers, reputations and finances ruined by treading on powerful toes. Seems like sometimes we do want to shoot the messenger.

Without the journalists we would be an ignorant and uninformed lot, unable to properly perform our duty as  making the judgements necessary at voting time, which is the foundation of all our democratic and personal freedoms.  The secret is to look for your information on long-term, traditional sources of good reputations for investigative facility. Avoid the ones with obscure names who specialize in spectacular conspiracy theories, those are 99% false.

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