NEWS ITEM: Last Sunday, The New York Times ran a story that began, "Does the White House feel like a frat house?" According to the story, President Obama "has battled an impression dating to the presidential campaign that (his) closest advisers form a boys' club" and that his "high-level" pickup basketball games exclude women players.

* * *

(The White House staff is meeting in the West Wing, in a room cluttered with empty Budweiser cans. The walls are covered with posters of FDR, John Kennedy and Marilyn Monroe. Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner enters the room.)

CHIEF OF STAFF RAHM EMANUEL: Holy (expletive), what happened to you?

GEITHNER: Oh, McCain, Ensign, Boehner and some of the boys on the Hill had a party on my face. You try to explain strategies to regulate credit default swaps and the derivative market, and they get all nuts. I'm not sure what their problem is. It's like trying to explain quantum physics to a group of lemurs.

ECONOMIC ADVISER LARRY SUMMERS: Those guys are animals. We should teach them a lesson.

(Press Secretary Robert Gibbs enters the room, looking glum.)

EMANUEL: Bob, what's wrong with you? It looks like someone killed and ate your (expletive) dog.

GIBBS: Bad news. I just saw Joe Lieberman on CNN saying that he would block health care reform all by himself if it contains a public option. And he can do it. He's that kind of creep.

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We're so screwed.

SENIOR ADVISER DAVID AXELROD: That weasel! I thought we had him on board.

EMANUEL: Does he have a horse? If he has a horse, I have some ideas.

SUMMERS: You know what this calls for?

GEITHNER: A reasonable response based on the fact that the majority of Americans favor a public option and that public health care already exists in this country for senior citizens and veterans. And perhaps we should point out that Lieberman, being from Connecticut, home of the insurance industry, is in the pocket of the big insurance companies, getting millions in campaign contributions from them.

SUMMERS: Those might seem like good ideas, but I have a different one. Toga party.

GIBBS: We can't have a toga party. We're under double-secret probation. What if Fox News gets wind of this? We'd be in huge trouble. Glenn Beck would cry on TV again.

SUMMERS: Gibbs, it's our only option.

VICE PRESIDENT JOE BIDEN: TO-GA! TO-GA! TO-GA!

(We cut to the toga party. The White House staff, dressed in togas, dances to the musical stylings of Otis Day and the Knights.)

AXELROD: Hey, who invited Olympia Snowe?

GIBBS: She's cool. Emanuel said it would be a good idea.

AXELROD: Oh, no! Emanuel is going over to her.

(They cringe as Emanuel throws his arms around Snowe and drags her onto the dance floor where he entices her with an arrhythmic version of The Frug, which causes irregular heartbeats in livestock within a 500-mile radius.)

GIBBS: Well, that was totally uncalled for.

AXELROD: This is trouble. Look. It's Lieberman.

GIBBS: What's be doing here?

AXELROD: Biden.

GIBBS: Yeah, gotta be Biden.

(Biden puts his arm around Lieberman and steers him toward the bar.)

BIDEN: Now, Joe, let's get you a drink.

LEIBERMAN: No thanks. What did President Obama want?

BIDEN: Did I say something about President Obama?

LEIBERMAN: You invited me here to talk about health care. I assumed we'd be meeting with the president.

BIDEN: Relax, Joe. Have a drink. Have a lot of drinks. That's a great tie. Is that a clip-on?

LEIBERMAN: Yes, it is.

(The party ends and the White House staff is sitting around the Oval Office.)

OBAMA: Now you guys went and did it. Did you have to do that thing with Lieberman and the horse?

GIBBS: Sorry boss. It was Rahm's idea.

EMANUEL: What? It wasn't my idea. It was Biden.

BIDEN: Huh?

OBAMA: Well, I hope you realize that we're sunk now when it comes to health care reform. He'll never come around now. Did you really have to put video of it up on YouTube?

AXELROD: Sorry, boss.

(The crew looks glum. Biden rises.)

BIDEN: It's not over until we say it's over. Was it over when the Germans bombed Pearl Harbor? Was it over when . . . I don't know, Napoleon did something or other at Waterloo?

GIBBS: Waterloo?

AXELROD: Forget it. He's on a roll.

BIDEN: When the going gets tough . . . The tough, um, something or other, I can't quite remember. But what happened to the White House I used to know? Where are your guts? Boehner, dead. McCain, dead. Lieberman . . .

EMANUEL: Dead. We have to go all out. We have to take these guys. We need to make a huge gesture.

BIDEN: We're just the guys to do it.

EMANUEL: Who's with us?

(Everybody runs from the room. Biden remains behind.)

BIDEN: Actually, I was going to say, "Let's have another toga party."


Mike Argento's column appears Mondays and Fridays in Living and Sundays in Viewpoints. Reach him at mike@ydr.com or 771-2046. Read more Argento columns at www.inyork.com/ydr -- click on the opinion section -- or visit his blog at www.mikeargento.com.