Opinion: Now guess who saw a UFO?

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UFOs are funny things. Not ha-ha funny, but funny weird.

If you think you’ve seen one and it had nothing to do with beer and a convertible, there’s no way to prove it and yet you can’t really doubt your very own eyes. If you haven’t seen a UFO, it’s hard to believe that anyone in their right mind would claim such a thing. And you feel the need to wink at a nearby friend.

So one would imagine that it took a tad bit of courage the other night for Rep. Dennis Kucinich to admit on national TV in front of the other Democrats debating for their party’s presidential nomination and more than two million curious Americans he was trying to convince to vote for him that yes, in fact, he had seen an unidentified flying object.

“It was an unidentified flying object, OK? It’s, like, it’s unidentified. I saw something,’ the frequent candidate said rather testily, as if he could feel his longshot chances lengthening.

Whether the flying saucer question had any place in what was supposed to be a serious discussion of policies and positions is one question. And so is whether anyone who offers themselves up to our brutally demanding and often humiliating presidential selection process can possibly be in their right mind anyway.

So why is it somehow not surprising now that Jimmy Carter, the former president, says that he too has seen a UFO? Yes, the former governor and peanut farmer told CNN this morning, he saw one many years ago. It was in southwest Georgia. ‘I and about 25 others saw something in the air,’ Carter said on ‘American Morning,’ ‘that changed colors and was round and came and left. We couldn’t figure out what it was.’

Carter did say he didn’t think the sighting involved space aliens. Which is comforting since the last thing we need right now is another emotional debate about illegal aliens.

--Andrew Malcolm