Meet Meez Inside.

The world doesn’t seem to take itself too seriously anymore. It used to be that the Olympics were a monumental competition to test the feats of man. Then someone in the great wide world of Marketing & PR had the idea that the Olympics needed mascots.

Atlanta brought us Izzy in ‘96:

Beijing is bringing us these five fuwa in ‘08:

And it has just been announced (merely hours ago!) that Canada will be bringing us Miga, Quatchi, and Sumi in 2010:

I’ll give you a minute to consider how we represent skiing really fast or flipping really high to the youth of tomorrow. If we use mystical puffy creatures to get people jazzed about people doing incredible things, then what does the Mascot Games used to get people jazzed about mystical puffy creatures doing incredible things?

I digress. Back to the topic of things not being taken seriously. I hope some Net-addicted friend has sent this video your way. It stars Chuck Norris and Mike Huckabee. Pause. CHUCK NORRIS, as in, “when Chuck Norris does push-ups, he doesn’t push himself up, he pushes the earth down.” MIKE HUCKABEE, as in “Hi, I want to be your next U.S. President. Please take me seriously. Please.”

Since when was the icon of a Internet joke meme the most credible talking head to star in a commercial for a Republican Presidential hopeful? I really don’t know what to say here, so I will resign myself to end with this: