Best Lead of the Month

'At midnight on Monday, when Labor Day ends, the summer of 2009 will officially pass into the annals of history. Good riddance. If there is a less scintillating summer on record, it's hard to remember it. By any standards—cultural, horticultural, political, cinematic, jurisprudential, meteorological—this is the least eventful summer since 1491. It started raining in June and never stopped. Health-care reform didn't get anywhere. The tomatoes were uneatable. Congress accomplished nothing. All the movies stunk. There were no good summer reads. The Jonas Brothers maliciously tried to pass themselves off as entertainers. Kate and Jon ruled the roost. As the summer slogged toward its sad, ignominious conclusion—just when the nation needed some bucking up, some leadership, perhaps even a few good chuckles—the president retreated to Martha's Vineyard, where he made a point of getting himself photographed acting really, really cool for a change. That left Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi to provide all the last laughs. If it hadn't been for the exploits of the peregrinatory Lothario Mark Sanford and that prickly cop up in Cambridge, there would have been no fun at all this summer.'
--from literary bad boy Joe Queenan's rollicking good read in the weekend Wall Street Journal, his uniquely gimlet-eyed take on the "hegemony of dreariness" that has marked the summer just now coming to a close. You can review earlier best leads here.