TOWN WITHOUT PRETTY?

The editors at People magazine apparently subscribe to the theory that
politics is show business for ugly folks. Their new "50 Most Beautiful
People" list, the annual compendium of the comely, has no representation
from the nation's capital.

Zero. Zilch. Nada. Snake eyes. Beady snake eyes.

"Sorry about that," said People's assistant managing editor, Liz Sporkin,
who oversaw this year's travesty. "But we do have Mitt Romney. He's running
for governor in Massachusetts. He's gorgeous."

Sporkin grew up in Chevy Chase and graduated from Bethesda-Chevy Chase High
School, so it might not be going too far to accuse her of treason. "But I
like Washington," she claimed. "I'm no traitor."

Can she offer any solace to dissed Washingtonians?

"I'm afraid I have nothing to comfort you with," she replied. "But there's
always next year." She added that her father, former federal judge Stanley
Sporkin, is "stunningly handsome."

Laugh? We'd Rather Think! As Sigmund Freud once said, "There are no
jokes." So what are serious students of human nature to make of Esquire's
collection of favorite jokes told by Sen. Joe Lieberman (D-Conn.), Dan
Rather, Deepak Chopra, Pat Robertson and Al Sharpton, among others?

Probably not too much out of Lieberman's -- about a child pulling a wagon
- -- because he told this joke so many times on the 2000 vice presidential
campaign trail that we wanted to put the child, the wagon, and possibly
even Lieberman, into one of Al Gore's famous lockboxes. But it's certainly
worth noting that the reverend-politicians Sharpton and Robertson both joke
about speeders who are chased and pulled over by the cops, only to try
talking their way out of arrests with made-up stories. A shrink could have
a field day.

Chopra's joke: " President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney went out for
lunch after Mr. Cheney's coronary angioplasty. Dick Cheney ordered fruit
salad, and President Bush whispered in the ear of the waitress, 'I would
like to have a quickie.' The waitress was shocked and walked away confused.
Dick Cheney leaned over and said, 'George! It's quiche!' "

The joke told by the 70-year-old CBS anchor Rather, meanwhile, is rich with
psychoanalytic possibility: "The viejo Pancho was on his deathbed. He had
only hours to live when he suddenly smelled the scent of tamales wafting
into his room. Aaahhhh. . . . He loved tamales more than anything else in
the world. . . . With his last bit of energy, he pulled himself out of bed.
. . . Down the stairs and into the kitchen he went. There was his beloved
wife, Chepa, spreading the masa for a new batch. As he reached for one of
the freshly steamed tamales, he got smacked across the back of his hand by
the wooden spoon his wife was holding. 'Leave them alone!' she said.
'They're for the funeral!' "

Freud was right.

THIS JUST IN . . . Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy Thompson's
younger brother, the owner of the Tee Pee supper club in Tomah, Wis., is in
town this week trying to drum up support for his campaign for governor --
the job his 60-year-old brother held for 14 years. On Tuesday 57-year-old
Ed Thompson, a Libertarian who is Tomah's mayor, lobbied Tommy in support
of the legalization of medical marijuana. "He's opposed to it," Ed told us
accurately yesterday. "I gave him a letter and he quickly stuffed it in his
coat pocket without even reading it." Candidate Thompson reluctantly
answered our question: Has he ever used marijuana recreationally? "That's a
personal question, so I'd rather not," he began. "But the truth is, I have.
And when I did, I inhaled." Thompson added that he hasn't smoked or drunk
alcohol in the past eight years.

In more marijuana news yesterday, Ed Henry reported in Roll Call Daily that
11 teenage House pages -- sponsored, he wrote, by Republican members --
were fired Tuesday after their keepers learned they'd been puffing away on
the stuff. Late yesterday NORML, the marijuana legalization lobby, put out
a news release offering jobs to the Stoned 11. "If they're good enough to
serve as congressional pages and their proclivity is to smoke marijuana,"
NORML Foundation executive director Allen St. Pierre told us, "then they
sound like intern material to us!"

Washington developer Mark Kaufman yesterday dropped out of the bidding for
Rosedale, the Revolutionary War-era Cleveland Park property being sold by
the nonprofit group Youth for Understanding. Kaufman told us he now
supports the plan of hedge fund manager Peter Brown and blue-chip lawyer
Jonathan Abram -- who recently referred to Kaufman and his ilk as
"rapacious developers" -- to buy the 6.5-acre parcel and donate most of it
to a conservation group. We hear the two are preparing a bid in the $8
million range.