Not Mr. Nice

Entertainment: Paul Shanklin takes the high art of high-level impersonation very seriously | Arsenio Orteza

Guy Lyons/Genesis Photos

LAFAYETTE, La.—The place: a banquet room in a private club in southwestern Louisiana. The time: an evening less than two weeks before Election Day 2008. Two hundred mostly middle-aged Republicans (the event is a fundraiser for the Acadiana Republican Women) sit six to a table before plates from which they've just consumed a decidedly rich fare in an attempt to appease their appetites and to suppress their growing anxiety about the upcoming election's results.

The richest fare of the evening, however, stands behind a lectern on the podium, holding a mic, balding but trim, singing Johnny Cash's "Ring of Fire" to pre-recorded accompaniment. Except that it's the voice of Al Gore. And the words have been changed to "Our whole world will be a burning ball of fire. / Polar bears drown, drown as the seas grow higher."