COLUMN: The Wicked Witch and the Wizard of Laws

Call me Dorothy, and please get me out of “Kansas” — NOW!

It’s supposed to work like this: Click your heels together three times and say, “There’s NO place like home! There’s NO place like HOME! There’s NO PLACE LIKE HOME!

Darn it, I’m still stuck here in this grotesque alternative reality where the Wicked Witch of the East (aka Hillary Clinton) is worshipped by a sizable contingent of little people (not to be confused with Munchkins) and protected by the Wizard of Laws (otherwise known as the director of the FBI).

How exactly is it possible for FBI Director James Comey to act like the good witch Glinda for 20 minutes and then turn into nothing more than one of the wicked witch’s flying monkeys? Did you watch his press conference on Tuesday? First, he exposed the black heart of Hillary Clinton in detail, condemning her “extreme carelessness” with state secrets, and sympathizing with the innocent American people (we are all Dorothy!) that Clinton had failed to act like “any reasonable person” in her handling of classified data — and then suddenly he tells us that it was all a big mistake.

Forget about the evidence of wrongdoing. Forget about the false statements. Forget about national security. Like Gilda Radner’s invariably mistaken Emily Litella character from “Saturday Night Live,” Comey told the American public and Congress to “Never mind!”

But that’s not the half of it. Remember that Comey’s sideshow on Tuesday was just intermission in the comic opera being orchestrated by Hillary Clinton.

First, her husband, Wild Bill Clinton, stalled his private plane from taking off at the Phoenix airport on June 29 just long enough so that he could have a chance to mix and mingle with Loretta Lynch, the United States attorney general who had been investigating his wife’s reported (and repeated) violations of national security.

When the nation expressed its outrage at this improper meeting of the ex-president and the woman who had the power to prevent his wife from reaching the White House herself, Lynch “solved” the problem by announcing that she would (sort of) (most likely) accept the recommendation of the FBI about whether to prosecute Hillary or not. Then on Sunday, the New York Times reported that Hillary, if elected president, would most likely (sort of) (probably) re-appoint Loretta Lynch as attorney general. (Can you say quid pro quo?)

But before anyone had a chance to properly register shock, outrage or even dismay, here comes Comey’s triple reverse flying swan dive off the high board into a cup of lukewarm tea when he announced that Hillary was guilty of being “extremely careless” but not of “gross negligence” in her handling of classified information, and even if she were negligent, it didn’t matter anyway because the FBI doesn’t like that law, so phooey!

Finally, we cut back to Attorney General Lynch, who tied things up neatly in a “get out of jail free” card which she handed to Hillary (with a personal note to Bill scribbled on the back that may or may not have included the words “Call me, big guy!”), and thus we fade to black while a Bach fugue celebrates Hillary’s great escape and leaves us desperate for the sequel (“White House Down”).

Let’s face it, if this scenario were written by a Hollywood screenwriter, it would be labeled absurd fantasy. Yet the American news machine can barely be bothered to lift an eyelid from its deep slumber before closing its eyes once more and uttering a satisfying snore of self-satisfaction.

To complete the “Wizard of Oz” metaphor, is it any surprise that many Americans who are tired of the bullying witch and the media’s sleep-inducing poppy fields are now rooting for the Scarecrow whom Hillary tried to burn? Donald Trump may be singing “If I Only Had a Brain,” but in the popularity contest between a scarecrow and a witch, the scarecrow has pretty good odds. Besides, remember the scarecrow was smart all along — he just didn’t have a diploma, and as Donald Trump reminds us often enough, he graduated from the Wharton School of Business.

Watch out, witch! Because if you’re not careful, the White House is going to land on you!

(EDITOR’S NOTE: Some of the characters in the preceding column are composites. I know the Wicked Witch of the East died at the beginning of Dorothy’s journey in Oz, for instance, and that it was the Wicked Witch of the West who was Dorothy’s nemesis and who burned the scarecrow. Chalk it up to literary license.)