As co-founder of The Capitol Steps, a troupe of Washington-based satirists who have been lampooning Washington politics since the early 1980s, Bill Strauss doesn't worry about his satire being trumped by reality.

He's far more of-the-moment, taking political shenanigans as they happen and skewering them so quickly that further events barely have time to unfold.

Here's his take on what happened yesterday, a song tentatively scheduled to open the troupe's New York performance tonight. Sung to the tune of "That's Entertainment," it's "That's an Impeachment":

A funk we are in

This whole week has been

A real slow news week

When a guy

In a Monica tie

Tells a lie

With a weak alibi

What's he try

When the lie doesn't fly?

Some entertainment

When the man

Tells the world he began

With a plan

Bombing Afghanistan

And Sudan

What's the word in Iran?

It's just "No comment"

Let's check out his war travelogue

He could be waggin' the dog

What's past is only prologue

What started as pure excitement

Is leading to an indictment

When a Starr

Takes the lid of the jar

And he shows

That it goes pretty far

In reports

To the court and the bar

We now comprehend

This whole thing could end

With an impeachment

Pub Date: 8/21/98