Yes, it was strange, but Clint Eastwood’s skit with the Obama chair made me laugh. I know, it was disrespectful to the office of thepresidency. He was quite naughty to imply that Obama would use the f word (more than once, actually). And it made a clown out of a Hollywood icon. It’s going to be hard to watch a rerun of one of those spaghetti westerns now without snickering.

But it was the most authentic thing that happened at the Republican National Convention.

And Clint Eastwood’s complaints were a lot closer to my own than Mitt Romney’s are. Like Clint, I would also want the chair to tell me what we’re still doing in Afghanistan, for example. And I have also wondered why Guantanamo remains open despite Obama’s campaign pledge to close it.

So what if the Romney campaign didn’t get to show their sappy video in prime time? I saw that phony infomercial on MSNBC and it did not ring my bell. What I saw was a disjointed stream of home-movie clips, showing various Romney relatives and friends doing the kind of things people do in home movies. Yawn.

So Marco Rubio’s speech had to be cut. So who’s sorry now? Not me. I found Rubio a pretentious bore, with his Horatio Alger bio and his tunnel-vision view of America’s role in the world. With that kind of tedious self-praise and misinformed jingoism, I would say every minute the audience lost was a minute gained.

I can sympathize with Clint’s desire to be a comic. I, too, have tried to make people laugh, and have been chastened with the oft-repeated admonition, “You are not funny, George.”

If that was Bob Hope doing a skit with an empty chair, everyone would have praised it to the skies. It would have been hailed as creative and original, even “game changing” (whatever that is). But we won’t accept other people – especially entertainers – when they step out of the pigeon holes to which we assigned them. We labeled Clint Eastwood as a tough guy; he is not believable as a comic.

But I thought he was funny Thursday night. And I wondered whether he knew he was sticking it to the Republicans … messing up their odious propaganda show and robbing them of their “precious prime time minutes.”

I hope he was doing it on purpose.

They deserved it.

And about that f-word thing, I think the president should send Clint a note of thanks. I bet Obama’s been dying to tell Romney to do that for some time now.

I know I have.