Searching the hills and hollers for signs of the ridiculous.

An Alabama newspaper ran a front page teaser next to a picture of a new hybrid vehicle. It read: Not your father’s hybrid.

Really?

My father’s hybrid vehicle was a 1970-something yellow Chevy Nova with 200-pound doors and an engine the size of many of today’s whole cars. Gas mileage, what gas mileage? No one ever thought about such mundane things back then.

The Nova came especially equipped with a car seat for my then-infant brother, Dan. With myself and two siblings occupying the back seat, Dan sat in his car seat on the passenger-side floorboard.

Did I mention safety?

Our other family hybrids included a brown Pontiac as long as a football field and the suped-up racer my older brother, Brian, brought home when he turned 18. He needed $20 a day to keep gas in that one, even back then.

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A Jackson television station anchor, leading into the second story of the night, said: “A Ridgeland woman killed herself before shooting her husband to death.”

Nothing exemplifies the differences between TV and newspapers like this. As soon as those words left her mouth, they were done, out and over. Make a boo-boo like that in the newspaper and the community holds the paper up for ridicule and it may find itself on Jay Leno.

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Each trip down U.S. 49 to Hattiesburg and beyond takes travelers past a nice brown sign for the Dry Creek Water Park.

I wouldn’t be high-diving into that thing.

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The man who has been placed in charge of the Internal Revenue Service failed to pay as much as $34,000 in taxes. He paid up soon before being announced as the next Secretary of the Treasury and has, for the most part, received a pass through congressional hearings, chalking up his tax scofflaw to “mistakes.”

I once forgot to mail a state tax check of less than $100. They came after me like I robbed a bank.

Maybe having someone smart enough to go four years without paying that much in taxes, then claim it as innocent is just what we need to figure out our current economic mess.

Oh, how I love politicians.

Makes me think of a great movie line: “I’m a politician, which means I am a liar and a cheat, and when I’m not kissing babies, I’m stealing their lollipops.

Now that is change I can believe in.

Sean P. Murphy is Web editor of The Vicksburg Post. Write to him at Box 821668, Vicksburg, MS 39182, or e-mail smurphy@vicksburgpost.com..