There has been an ample number of amusing and absurd moments in world politics over the last 12 months (we'll leave the horrible ones for now).

• France's President Nicolas Sarkozy got his groove back
• Russia's Vladimir Putin sort-of moved off centre stage -- and made a video
• A plain-talkin', knowledge-lackin' Alaska moose hunter and U.S. vice-presidential candidate went on a US$150,000 shopping spree and burbled on TV, helping make one female comic very famous in the process
• U.S. satirists despaired at the thought of a president who doesn't have verbal dyslexia
• Dubya's reflexes got tested, and;
• One of the great political buffoons returned to the stage

Let us revisit a few of the key moments of 2008.

Sarko's midlife crisis is over!

You may remember France's President Nicolas Sarkozy's bout of middle-aged craziness following the breakup of his marriage in the fall of 2007.

Within a month, he had become engaged in a very public romance with Italian-born singer/supermodel Carla Bruni, spiriting her off to France's Disneyland and Egypt's pyramids of Giza for Christmas while France's economy crashed and burned. The Egypt trip was taken using a billionaire pal's private jet.

The lovebirds exchanged gifts worth about $137,000. Some wags, unable able to appreciate romance, started calling Sarkozy "President Bling-Bling."

Discount airline Ryanair used a photo of the couple on their trip in an ad without consent, which led to court action by Sarkozy.

However, the two married on Feb. 2 -- the union being Sarkozy's third -- and Sarkozy got back to work. A highlight for him was getting Ingrid Betancourt, a French citizen and a longtime hostage of Colombia's FARC guerrillas, released this summer.

Bruni has been a hit with the French public. Her visit to Britain with Sarkozy to meet Queen Elizabeth had some gushing about her being the new Jackie Onassis. Bruni even released a hit album and a 1993 nude photo of Bruni from her modeling days sold for US$91,000.

Sarkozy even patched up an old sore spot in Canada-France relations by saying: "You know we are very close to Quebec, but I will tell that we also love Canada very much."

So all would seem well at year's end. Except ...

Voodoo doll case needles Sarkozy

A publishing company in France produced a voodoo doll in October that came with pins and instructions on how to put the evil eye on Sarkozy.

He went to court and lost -- the only of six such court actions he lost this year.

Well, he sort of won too.

A French appeals court said the dolls must carry a label saying they are offensive to Sarkozy. In the judgment, the court said "spearing the doll ... constitutes an offence to the dignity of Mr. Sarkozy."

The company produced a similar doll of French Socialist Leader Segolene Royal, whom Sarkozy defeated in the 2007 presidential race. She didn't take legal action, saying, "I have a sense of humour."

In December, Carla Bruni would launch a legal action of her own. The famous nude picture of her that sold for US$91,000 in April showed up, unauthorized, on a bag sold on the French Indian Ocean island of Reunion. The speech bubble on the bag had her saying, "My boyfriend should have bought me Pardon!"  On Dec. 18, a court on Reunion fined Pardon US$58,500.

So long, Vlad?

Back in February, Russia's then-President Vladimir Putin held his final presidential news conference. In a scene that would seem surreal to Canadian journalists, reporters from Russia's many regions held colourful signs and waved them enthusiastically in the hopes their nation's leader would favour them with a question.

One young female reporter started off a question with the preface, "I would like to have a baby."

Putin, who likes to project a high-testosterone image, responded with, "Why are you asking me about it?"

Another female reporter gave him a heart-shaped pink valentine.

Of course, Putin didn't venture far off his nation's political stage. He became prime minister, with Dmitry Medvedev replacing him as president.

Many Russia-watchers predicted Putin wouldn't be long out of the president's chair, but as 2008 winds down, Medvedev remains president and the gossip continues.

Wanna learn judo?

In October, in time for his 56th birthday, Putin released a judo instructional video (he has a black belt in the sport).

This came as the world's stock markets were collapsing. Russia, with its economy heavily dependent on energy exports, has been hit harder than most. Oil's price has plunged since the summer.

"Does it strike anyone else as odd that while the national economy is melting down, the man who styles himself as co-leader (which may well underestimate his self-image) has time for such antics?" asked the Economist magazine.

A few weeks before the judo video, Putin had claimed to save a news crew from a stalking Siberian tiger during a trip with scientists to Russia's Far East. "Funny, no film footage was available on that one," the Economist grouchily noted.

Still here, Ehud?

Israel's Ehud Olmert is nothing if not tenacious, having had a hellacious 2007 that saw his popularity rating below 20 per cent at one point.

However, he hung on to the Israeli prime ministership -- although his time now seems to be drawing near.

Olmert is coming ever-closer to being indicted on corruption charges. He had said he will step down after elections in February.

But in a "don't let the door hit your butt on the way out" move, Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni -- elected as Olmert's successor as leader of the ruling Kadima Party -- called in late November for Olmert to quit immediately.

That would pave the way for her to become acting prime minister.

Blaming Israel will only get you so far

Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad loves to verbally attack Israel, having notoriously once said it should be wiped off the map.

But that and 4,000 Iranian Rials (about 50 cents) will get you a cup of coffee in Tehran when your country's economy is tanking. Iran is heavily dependent on oil revenues.

By late October, the famously workaholic Ahmadinejad was said to be suffering from exhaustion -- with his popularity level sagging along with his energy.

In early November, one of his cabinet ministers got in trouble for having falsely claimed to have a degree from Oxford. Iran's parliament ultimately voted to sack Interior Minister Ali Kordan over the affair.

Speaking of resume inflation

During the U.S. primaries, Hillary Clinton would claim she and daughter Chelsea came under sniper fire during a 1996 visit to Tuzla, Bosnia.

Video footage of the arrival showed quite a different scene. The civil war in Bosnia had ended in 1995 (Canadian troops were involved in peacekeeping operations there).

"So I made a mistake," she said. "That happens. It proves I'm human, which you know, for some people, is a revelation."

Clinton would go on to lose an epic contest with Barack Obama for the U.S. Democratic nomination, paving the way for him to triumph as the first black president of the United States.

In what some are calling a "team of frenemies," Obama named Clinton his secretary of state, making her the nation's top foreign policy official.

It isn't yet clear who will be taking the 3 a.m. phone calls on world crises.

Not ready for a 3 a.m. phone call

Had Clinton won the Democratic nomination, she could have become the first woman elected president of the United States.

The Republican Party made history of its own by finally nominating a woman vice-presidential candidate -- Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, whose previous political job had been as mayor of Wasilla, an Anchorage suburb.

The avid moose hunter went over with a bang amongst the GOP's conservative base, but as the campaign went on, even some staunch conservatives thought she wasn't qualified to be a heartbeat away from the presidency (Republican nominee Sen. John McCain, at 72, was the oldest person to ever seek the presidency).

A disastrous media interview harmed Palin's image and provided an opportunity for comic Tina Fey to return to her alma mater, NBC's Saturday Night Live, to do some devastating Palin impressions.

A portion of her impressions, however, weren't scripted. In a skit mocking Palin's interview with Katie Couric, Fey repeated parts of the Alaska governor's rambling answer about the economic crisis and the $700-billion bailout package. The performances revitalized SNL's ratings.

Palin herself made an appearance on the show, but although she walked by Fey on camera, the two women didn't exchange any words. Fey would go on to be named the Associated Press's entertainer of the year.

Wardrobe-gate, the mini-scandal about Palin's US$150,000 wardrobe bill, also harmed the ticket.

In a Canadian connection, Palin also got punked. Two radio comics from Montreal, the Masked Avengers, managed to convince both her and her staff that she was talking to France's President Nicolas Sarkozy -- whom they have also prank-called. The conversation went on for more than six minutes before they clued Palin in.

Marc-Antoine Audette and Sebastian Trudel would later say the only other person who never clued to their game was Britney Spears.

As an afterward, one U.S. Congresswoman hung up twice on Obama when he tried to call her after the election. She assumed it was a radio station's prank call.

Rueful humour in defeat

In a post-election appearance on the Tonight Show with Jay Leno, McCain said he had been "sleeping like a baby" after losing to Obama -- "I sleep two hours, get up -- cry."

Comics panic

In the wake of Barack Obama's ascendancy to the U.S. presidency, comics were worried that after eight years of the comic goldmine of U.S. President George Bush, the vein had been tapped out.

Obama projects a cool image and hardly ever misspeaks, which isn't good for satirists.

"New rule! Barack Obama has to give comedians something to work with," Bill Maher, host of the HBO show "Real Time," said in October.

"Seriously, here's a guy who's not fat, not cheating on his wife, not stupid, not angry and not a phony. Who needs an a--hole like that around for the next four years?"

Tabloids hope

Obama, captured shirtless by a paparazzo's telephoto lens as he walked on a Hawaii beach, sent the tabloids into a frenzy. "FIT FOR OFFICE: Buff Bam is Hawaii Hunk," gushed the New York Post, which endorsed him for president. The Drudge Report described him as "President Beefcake," while the showbusiness website TMZ.com said Obama "Is still humble enough to do laundry -- on his ABS!"

All this had the blog Mediabistro ask on Dec. 23, "Will Obama be our first tabloid president?" (Note: Mediabistro didn't exist during the Monica-Lewisky's-stained-blue-dress period of President Bill Clinton). Some media commentators noted that celebrity magazines had started training their guns on politicians in 2008 as people's interest in politics increased and the wave of celebrities-behaving-badly news started receding.

Republicans put foot in it

On Dec. 27, it became known that Chip Saltsman, a candidate for chair of the Republican National Committee, had sent a CD to his fellow GOPers that included the satirical song "Barack the Magic Negro."

"The 2008 election was a wake-up call for Republicans to reach out and bring more people into our party," current RNC Chairman Robert M. (Mike) Duncan said in a statement. "I am shocked and appalled that anyone would think this is appropriate as it clearly does not move us in the right direction."

'This is the farewell kiss, you dog!'

In his last trip to Iraq, Bush got greeted as an occupier and not a liberator.

At a Dec. 14 news conference, 28-year-old TV journalist Muntader al-Zaidi hurled both his shoes at Bush, who successfully ducked both times.

"This is a gift from the Iraqis; this is the farewell kiss, you dog!" al-Zaidi screamed as he tossed the first shoe. "This is from the widows, the orphans and those who were killed in Iraq!" he added while throwing the second one.

"All I can report is it is a size 10," Bush would say afterwards, trying to pass off the incident as a sign of democracy and blossoming freedom of expression.

Thousands of Iraqis demonstrated for al-Zaidi's release. Others in the Arab world proclaimed him a hero. Enterprising U.S. web geeks developed online games in which a person could throw virtual shoes at a whack-a-mole-like Bush. The Baydan Shoe Co. of Turkey claimed it made the tossed shoes and told the New York Times that sales of the model spiked after the incident.

Al-Zaidi is set to go on trial on Dec. 31 for "aggression against against a foreign head of state."

Some noted that had al-Zaidi tried the same stunt with Saddam Hussein, the deposed and executed one-time dictator of Iraq, he would have been shot on the spot.

Silvio's back!

While George Bush is leaving the world stage in January, Italy's Silvio Berlusconi has returned as his country's prime minister, having lost power in 2006.

The billionaire conservative media baron and human gaffe machine, who has derided leftist women as ugly, made a former TV showgirl a cabinet minister and his government's chief spokesperson. Mara Carfagna, who lists collecting pens as her main hobby, has said Sarah Palin is one of her role models. In fairness, Carfagna has a law degree.

Berlusconi would say during a conversation with Russia's President Dmitry Medvedev that Barack Obama was "young, handsome and tanned" (in fairness, remember that Joe Biden, who will be Obama's vice-president, once described his future boss as "really clean").

It's a well-documented fact that Obama is black. Carla Bruni said remarks like that from Berlusconi made her "happy to be no longer an Italian citizen."

After the ensuing uproar, Berlusconi would say his Obama remark was "a great compliment," adding, "God save us from imbeciles." A few weeks later, he would play hide-and-seek with German Chancellor Angela Merkel.

The comic gods taketh away, but they also giveth back.