When you see Ken Starr getting up in front of the Senate and the American public, and lamenting that we’ve arrived at an “age of impeachment,” then you know that irony is dead.

Or at least on life support.

Ken Starr? Isn’t he the guy who prosecuted Bill Clinton relentlessly, starting with the “Whitewater scandal” and ending with Monica Lewinsky, the blue dress, and a President who was afraid to admit to his wife that he’d been getting blow jobs in the oval office?

You know how I can prove that the impeachment of Bill Clinton was an actual witch hunt? Without looking it up on Wikipedia, tell me what the Whitewater scandal was actually about.

That’s right, you have no idea.

And how did we get from there to the blue dress?

That’s right, you have no idea.

Ken Starr was such a political blowhard, such a Republican hack, that he dealt the death knell to the Independent Counsel statute, after which Congress let the authorizing statute expire because everyone believed that there was too much of a danger of the office going rogue, as it had under Ken Starr.

So here we have Ken Starr appearing before the Senate and intoning with a straight face that impeachment should be a “measure of last resort” and that it’s too divisive for America.¹

Irony is dead. Or at least on life support.

1. Starr actually appeared to be a bit nervous on stage, and maybe with a dim awareness that having him be the poster boy arguing against partisan impeachments really is the pot calling the kettle black.