In a rare development that outstrips my ability to make up goofy theories that might explain it, 2008 is threatening to be remembered as the year when all the washed-up action stars in Hollywood summoned their last remaining traces of testosterone for a concerted, multi-media assault on the fourth wall. First, Chuck Norris allowed Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee to prove that he, Huckabee, had a sense of humor, by using the uncomprehending but game Texas Ranger as an all-purpose punch line at rallies and in campaign ads. Then Jean-Claude Van Damme agreed to star, as a sadly diminished version of himself, in Mabrouk El Mechri's JCVD, currently on its knees begging for a cult in selected markets. (New York Times reviewer A. O. Scott hails it as "almost clever.") Now comes word that the logiest lummox of them all, the pony tail in search of a personality, Steve Seagal, will be starring in a new reality series on A & E. This surprising development raises many questions, the most pressing of which may be, just how many middle-aged Neanderthal hulks can one cable network afford to support? At least, that's probably the most pressing question now surging through the rickety brain of Dog the Bounty Hunter.

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Iowa voters (and anyone with an Internet connection) have just begun seeing this campaign ad, in which Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee reels off a few of the more family-friendly and less pretzel-twistingly surreal "Chuck Norris facts" while Norris sits beside him assuring potential voters that the Huckster will protect our Second Amendment rights and "put the IRS out of business." Taken strictly on an aesthetic level, and reminding everyone that any time we use that term in reference to political commercials we're grading on a curve, it's a smart piece of work. Discussing the ad in Slate, the site's "Trailhead" campaign blogger writes, "It's unclear to me why he would base his first Hawkeye State TV campaign on an outdated Internet meme that might not have trickled up to most caucus-goers," thus paradoxically implying that the "Norris facts" angle is all played-out, yet at the same time suggesting that it's too hip for the room. What may really matter is that in a contest where all the other Republican candidates have been concentrating on establishing their grim-manliness bona fides, Huckabee has unexpectedly demonstrated a sense of humor. What's more, he's dared to suggest there's something comical about macho icons, and maybe, by extension, something comical about a bunch of middle-aged rich white guys competing in a "Who Is Most Macho?" contest. Huckabee's delivery in the ad is pretty good, too; he doesn't ham it up, but unlike, say Richard Nixon, whose last words might well have been, "Explain to me again what I was doing on Laugh-In", he does make it clear that he gets the joke. If Huckabee gets anywhere in the primaries, it'll be because he manages to establish himself as the preferred candidate of religious conservatives, but if he builds on that base, it'll be because he manages, as George W. Bush did in 2000, to strike voters who might be inclined to see conservative holy-roller types as kind of scary as reassuringly normal. (How Bush ever pulled this off we still don't understand. Were we all drunk that year?) If nothing else, Huckabee has already pulled off a major comedy coup by inspiring the complaint, "Mike Huckabee has confused celebrity endorsement with serious policy," to pass the lips of his rival Fred Thompson, currently running for president on the basis of his record as New York City's pretend District Attorney. — Phil Nugent