Save us from the piousness of politicians and their supporters.

They have no sense of humor.

Case in point: The television advertisement currently being run on Maine stations that features Sen. Susan Collins, Rep. Tom Allen and a Mob boss. The ad is paid for by the Coalition for a Democratic Workplace, whose members include the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the Retail Industry Leaders Association -- a group whose biggest member is Wal-Mart -- and the Associated Builders and Contractors. It's about the Employee Free Choice Act, legislation pending in Congress that would change the federal requirement that all votes to unionize must be done by secret ballot. Among a host of changes it proposes, the bill would give workers the option of taking their vote to unionize with a public ballot.

Allen, who's Collins' Democratic challenger for her Senate seat, is in favor of the bill, as is organized labor and most Democrats.

Collins is against the legislation as are most Republicans and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

And then we have the position of the Mafia: They like the bill, or so the ad would have you believe. Vince Curatola plays a Mob boss in the ad, reminiscent of his role as John "Johnny Sac" Sacramoni in "The Sopranos." He makes it clear that as a union guy/Mob hit man, Tom Allen is his guy, because Allen likes the bill.

Implication: Tom Allen's a thug. He's beholden to labor, which means he's a captive of organized crime. He'll put your feet in cement if you don't vote the way his buddies want you to vote.

It's all perfectly ludicrous and preposterous. And it's pretty funny, too.

Except to politicians and their supporters, who are apparently quite a literal bunch.

Last week, Allen's campaign director felt compelled to stress that Maine union workers "are not organized crime."

Well, duh.

Allen's campaign has asked Collins to publicly denounce the ad.

Which her campaign spokeswoman did, evidently feeling compelled to show that she has no sense of humor, either.

Rhonda Bentz said Friday that, "Sen. Collins has always denounced third-party ads like these and continues to believe that they should have no place in Maine politics."

But they have a place in New Jersey politics, maybe?

And oh, the comments from supporters of both sides -- such umbrage! Such sanctimoniousness! They range from those calling Tom Allen a union toady to those who see the ad as the death-knell for decency: "Politics in Maine have been dragged to a new low by a nasty set of fraudulent TV ads misrepresenting the Employee Free Choice Act and Tom Allen."

We're constantly amazed at how campaigns and candidates' supporters presume that there is an "Average American Voter" out there who is stupid, unsophisticated and unaware that the sun rises in the morning and sets in the evening. Those poor innocents can't tell hyperbole and satire from the truth, they are utterly gullible and believe everything they watch. Especially when it's a political advertisement.

And thus, the need for outrage. Without that outrage, without the denunciation of these third party ads, surely then we would have a nation of voters led like sheep to slaughter.

Politics, as we've said before, is a rough business. The lily-livered need not apply. And those who insist on pretending that niceness and etiquette are the norm are really the ones perpetrating a fraud.

They'd be doing us all a favor if they ignored, laughed at or simply corrected any false ads -- and then got on with the business of telling us what they really stand for.