Ripa-ing her a new one

Oh Rosie. Oh Kelly. If you can't get along, how will the Sunnis and the Shiites in Iraq ever learn?

When it was announced earlier in the year that the abrasive, obnoxious, full-of-herself Rosie O'Donnell would replace the slightly less abrasive but just as obnoxious and full-of-herself Star Jones, I had to wonder if Barbara Walters had finally o.d.'ed on the high level of carbon monoxide emissions given off by a fuming, unregulated John Stoessel. What, I screeched (in a moment of distraction from my own self-induced crises), was Babs crazy!?! Why replace one diva terrible with another, changing the diversity angle from African-American to Lesbian-American (not by way of Portugal, please), but otherwise adding nothing to this crazy souffle? Certainly not an unleavening agent.

Surely no one would want to tune in to see one more cranky cohost on this show, I thought. Surely they could write off most of the viewing audience in the South and the West with the choice of Rosie "A League of Her Own" O'Donnell (even if she was late in admitting she belonged in the bull [dyke] pen), pitching themselves to a decidedly Yankee audience, represented by the Northern, uh, charms of Babs, Joy Behar, and now Ms. Rosie. (I've yet to figure out which charms Elisabeth Hasselbeck represents. Aging New England coeds who made good through genetics and marriage? Republican working moms bent on world upper-tier cable channel domination? Smug D-list celebrities who persist in the belief that it is better to look good than actually to be good at anything?)

But this is a little show called The View after all. Its appeal somewhat escapes me--until I think about Blanche, Rose, Dorothy, and Sophia on The Golden Girls, and then all is somewhat revealed.

Plus, it's a TV chat show, not the freakin' Wannsee Conference or a Halliburton board meeting. It would be best to turn my attentions to other, more pressing issues and more deserving topics.

But, dang it all, like athlete's foot and Pat Robertson, The View just would not go away. Every week or so, some website--the start page for my internet service provider or CNN, ferchrissakes--or an Entertainment Tonight-styled TV show (like Hollywood Now! as skewered in the movie For Your Consideration) would feature a "news" item about something Rosie O'Donnell had said, done, speculated about, mud-wrestled Joy Behar over, what have you. It kept drawing me back in, and before I knew it, on the sly I was sneaking a peak at the headlines (goodness gracious, not the show) to see what America's preeminent lesbian entertainer, heavyweight division, had done or said this time.

Then, finally, it dawned on me why Rosie had been asked to join The View, post-Meredith Viera: to draw attention to the aging concept (not to mention the cast . . .), to make headlines, and/or, more simply put, to talk shit. And gosh knows a lesbian who can, with a, ahem, straight face, still gush about how cute android-creator Tom Cruise is, even after a much publicized coming out (hers, not his) can talk some major crap.

Some years ago, there was a sketch on Saturday Night Live with Horatio Sanz playing Rosie O'Donnell. In this sketch, "Rosie" was interviewed during the "Weekend Update" fake news segment by Tina Fey (if I recall correctly; maybe it was Jimmy Fallon; maybe it was both of 'em). Rosie appeared in profile; when she turned in one direction, her hair was long, and she was all sweetness and light; when she turned in the other direction, her hair was short, and she was a fire-breathing dragon. This short sketch perfectly mimicked Rosie's changing personality at that time, from her time as America's "Queen of Nice" on The Rosie O'Donnell Show to her transformation into a stereotypically rabid, frothing, more politically correct-than-thou lesbian. (Editor's note: Save your keystrokes of protest. No, I don't think all lesbians are like this. Really.) Not only that but even the haircut was a perfect parody of O'Donnell's then-asymmetrical and (it must be said) dyke-chic bob. It was two minutes of brilliance, which, sadly, SNL only achieves every so often.

So I think The View represents some sort of major breakthrough for Rosie. She has finally grown her hair out again, so she doesn't look like she's ready to play a supporting role in Boys Don't Cry: The Musical, and thus is attempting to integrate both parts of her public personality, the Good Twin and the Evil Twin. Which makes her as entertaining as an overly ponderous Ingmar Bergman study of a nurse and her patient psyching each other out in black-and-white, minus the Volvos.

A case in point: The latest poopschrift from La Rosie's lips to our ears is her alleged "feud" with fellow New Jerseyite Kelly Ripa from Rigormortis and Kelly, uh, correction, Regis and Kelly, not to mention that lame sit-com with that gal from Murphy Brown, and All My Children.

Recently, when Southern-fried, leprechaunish chanteuse Clay Aiken cohosted with Kelly on her show, he saw fit to put his hand over Kelly's mouth to stop her from saying something. (What, like the big non-reveal that he's a hideaway homo?) A simple gesture, but one to which La Ripa took offense, pushing his hand away and saying " . . . I don't know where that hand's been, honey."

All and all, this seems like a pretty unnoteworthy, if somewhat tacky, exchange of words. I dare say millions of people, including sensitive little moi, would make nothing out of it.

But perhaps a few us still manage to cling to the naïve notion that we live in a world in which what Rosie O'Donnell thinks, breathes, eats, sweats, dreams, etc., does not matter. Clearly, though, we are deluding ourselves into thinking such a place exists in this space-time continuum.

Because the one beard that Tom Cruise hasn't married yet did indeed take offense. "If that was a straight man, if that was a cute man, if that was a guy that she didn't question his sexuality, she would have said a different thing," O'Donnell commented on The View sometime after the non-event.

Hunh?

Ripa explained that what she meant was that Clay had been shaking hands with audience members, and it was cold and flu season, so she was concerned about, I dunno, picking up germs from the great unwashed or something, which apparently was a far more palatable statement to Rosie.

According to CNN, O'Donnell replied, "I understand cold and flu season. I'm just saying from where I sit as a gay person in the world, I have to tell you, that's how it came off to me."

Rosie, baby, from where I sit, you're blocking the View.

Who knows what Kelly Ripa meant? Maybe it was exactly as she explained it. More importantly, though, who cares? In a world, where lots of people, gay and non-gay alike, are routinely slammed (both verbally and sometimes physically), some germ-phobic throw-away line by Kelly Ripa, of all stellar lights, seems like a pretty minor issue to get in a snit over. I'm as sensitive to criticism and prejudice as anyone--sometimes more so, as friends and family could no doubt attest--but Rosie's reaction to the non-incident just seems over-the-top and calculating, carried out for no purpose other than to garner ratings and attention. It also has the additional downside of tarring my little group with the "thin-skinned minority" label, which we don't need because the next time we have a legitimate gripe there will be fewer people interested in hearing it, having dismissed us from the last, less significant, whinefest. You want to get upset over how gay people, hell, all people, are treated unfairly, Rosie? Call me--I'll give you a list. Just ask you internet service provider to increase your mailbox size first before I send you my response.

When the evidence is examined, however, the O'Donnell diatribe doesn't make a lot of sense. For one thing, Clay Aiken has never officially come out of the ol' closet. Oh, it's not like everyone hasn't figured it out already, if from no other evidence that his consistently inconsistent, alternating denials and unresponsiveness. But wouldn't it be funny if he really wasn't gay, was in fact, straight? Granted, so highly unlikely that I think I just made my brain short-circuit at the thought, but there is the cultural assumption that all gay men act a certain way (nelly) and all straight men act another (butch), when, in fact, I don't think it's as clear-cut as that. (Yeah, yeah, same for lesbians.) While I'm not going to claim that the nelly queen stereotype isn't based on some reality, there's evidence otherwise to suggest that you can in life encounter swishy straight guys and hirsute and hunky homosexuals. It's been known to happen, more than once even.

For another thing, who says Clay Aiken isn't cute? He's not my cuppa, mind you, but I know plenty of women and men who think he's adorable and would love to take him home to meet mother or, at the very least, envision other suitably salacious ways to pass the time with one of North Carolina's tow-headed, passion monkeys (the other being, I guess, John Edwards). I tend to view him like a recent episode of The Soup on the E! Channel did--host holds chihuahua wearing a wig and smirks toward the camera, while in the background a photo of Clay appears with him wearing the same hairstyle as the chihuahua.

Nevertheless, I have odd tastes in who is handsome and who is not. Currently, I think it's the very married Steve Carrell from The Office and Little Miss Sunshine, a man who has a nose that could ward off Barbra Streisand at thirty paces. All I can say, Steve, is if you're reading this, I'd never leave you for the #1 Proust Scholar in America.

So my point here is not to further embarrass myself in public with odd choices in unattainable men. It's actually to say that there's no accounting for personal taste. There's nothing wrong with Clay's looks, at least in the eyes of many. Now his self-satisfied, country-mouse-made-good attitude, well, that's a discussion best left for another post.

And, finally, Rosie, let's get real. As we say in the gay parlance, if Claypot is indeed gay, he strikes me more as a "catcher" than a "pitcher," if you glean my meaning. Thus, I don't know that Kelly Ripa needs to worry so much about where Clay's hand has been. Maybe other body parts, but his hand? Not so much.

Gin, Rummy!

"You don't sound very excited. *I* sound more excited than you do."

Out of the mouths of Libertarians, specifically one Libertarian, my friend, the Native (Upstate) New Yorker, yesterday evening in a follow-up discussion on the recent mid-term elections.

The Libertarian was commenting to me on the Democrats' ascendancy to power in both the U.S. House and Senate, as well as the Wisconsin legislature, his current state of residence. In Pennsylvania, the vote's not in--literally, as who controls the state House of Representatives, Democrat or Republican, hinges on absentee and provisional ballot counting in Chester County.

The state Senate remained with the Republicans. But to our credit, our certifiable, right-wing U.S. Senator, Rick Santorum, was sent packing from his McMansion in Northern Virginia back to his modest bungalow in Penn Hills, and we reelected our generally-seems-to-have-a-clue Democratic Governor, Ed Rendell, for a second term. So yay us.

(Editor's note: Senator "Sanctimonium" has been criticized by many for having his primary residence in Leesburg, Virginia, or some other taste-forsaken 'burb, a token home in Western PA, and costing Pennsylvania taxpayers beaucoup bucks for the unique internet charter school the Santorums use to educate their children in Virginia, not PA. As if they couldn't have solved everything by buying a McMansion in the suburban Baltimore-Washington metropolitan area that York and Adams counties, Southern PA, are rapidly becoming a part of. But then that would have made them too close for comfort to me, and the Senator really does seem more like the sort to live in Loudon County. And, no, that's not a compliment.)

The Libertarian, who has been known to favor conservative stances and policies on occasion, and I, the amateur Green, who has traditionally voted Democrat, was chastising me gently over the return of the Democrats, something an ol' liberal like me should be jumping for joy over.

You would think, wouldn't you?

"Well, I'm feeling cautious. Let's wait and see what happens next."

Cautiously optimistic?

No, just cautious.

After all, as I explained to the Libertarian, I've been half-expecting the recently let-go Donald Rumsfeld to lead a coup d'état. I imagine tuning in to Good Morning America and instead of updates on the TomKat nuptials (which would immediately make me gag and run for the bathroom) and Desperate Housewives' trivia, Diane Sawyer interrupts the morning's ka-ray-zee hijinx with a breaking bulletin out of Washington. Flash on the screen, an image of Donald Rumsfeld's head popping out of a Panzer tank, his thick skull adorned with an Muammar al-Gaddafi-of-yore military chapeau, leading troops across the Arlington Memorial Bridge and toward the National Mall, where he will announce the Glorious Revolution has begun, comrades. Please turn yourselves into the authorities and spare your loved ones the trouble of doing it for you.

Ah, I love the smell of Donald Rumsfeld's napalm and my own paranoia in the morning.

* * *

But despite the scent of a sticky incendiary gasoline gel I fear breathing in, the air does seem a little cleaner and fresher now that the odiferous elections are over with, at least for another two years--or, rather, at least for another month or so until the speculation over who will run in the next election begins in earnest. Oops, too late.

Maybe everything seems shiny and new because I'm not as much a Green as I would like to think myself, despite my voter registration card to the contrary. Perhaps it's that my secret, shameful Democratic Party fantasies have finally come true--they won an election! And, as the Daily Show's Jon Stewart put it to Democratic Party Chair Howard Dean in a post-election appearance, did so "without uttering one coherent strategy about anything." Or words to that effect.

Dean, to his credit, took it with very good humor. But the winner can afford a chuckle at his expense, I guess. Or he chuckled simply because he knew it was true. I hate to even hint at agreeing with Sugar Land's own, Tom DeLay, about anything, even a given like the fact that water is wet, but I can't help but wonder if he had a small point when he said on MSNBC that the midterm election results were indicative more of the Republicans' losing rather than the Democrats' winning.

But he told a lot of other whoppers in that interview, too, like one about his not being guilty of corruption because he was "being indicted based on laws that don't exist." Whatever, Mary. Go stand in line with the other perpetrators-as-victims, please, and say hello to O.J. for me.

Still, no matter how you spin it, Congressman Frito DeLay, the Republicans did lose. Maybe not by much, but in your black-and-white (but still mostly white, I suspect) worldview, hey, that's all it takes! No more lobbyist funding for your daughter's baby shower from now on, possum. Please do fade into obscurity promptly, you arrogant mo' fo'. And take your don't-know-the-meaning-of-the-word-"hubris" colleagues with you.

But for now I can't get too hopeful. More relaxed and less likely to bolt to Canada maybe, but not yet hopeful. There's still that little problem about the Democrats not having a clue what to do next (at least not one that they've clued me in on, and we used to be like *this,* I tell ya). Eventually they're going to have to propose something forward-thinking, positive, relevant, and effective, instead of their usual orchestra-without-a-conductor (or even musical instruments) approach to issues. I can't say that I feel real confident, especially when Dean says something like, "Well, we're not going to try to impeach the President."

Good, glad to hear it, but, dude, this was under serious consideration? Like don't go all Don Quijote on me, OK?

Granted, given the little that I understand about federal politics, there are probably any number of good reasons for impeachment--oh, say, like 150,000 of 'em, which is the approximate number of persons who have died in a certain Middle Eastern country as a result of an ill-conceived war on its soil. Call me crazy, but that seems like a slightly more compelling argument for impeachment rather than, I dunno, lying to Congress (a bit like coals to Newcastle, that is) about getting a hummer in the Oval Office from a too-eager-to-please-and-talk White House intern.

Nonetheless, however justified, the idea of screwing around two more years on a series of pointless, ineffective investigations, hearings, and votes would just be a colossal waste of time and money. True, you're Congress, that's your job, but still . . . .

What do I know? I'm just a voter. I'm sure you, oh Democratic politicos, are far wiser and can see how the nation's citizens would rejoice and praise you for such a strategy.

As just a voter, though, even one who has been allying his bad self with independents of late, a word of advice: Really, you might want to propose a plan or something here, more than one that clings to some long-lost Great Society dream that's never gonna get funded or one that's simply anti whatever the other side of the aisle is for. True, everything that the other side of the aisle represents does seem thoroughly horrendous and of no benefit except to their nearest and dearest (that is to say, their bank accounts and their bank accounts' best friends). But as boring and obvious as it may seem to you to talk to us hoi polloi types, there does seem to be a need to explain clearly and yet somehow pithily (I'm talking to you Al Gore and John Kerry) why this other crud is either bad for most of us (e.g., ending the estate tax, attacking "activist judges," selling out the nation to the highest bidder, et al.) or a ruse to distract us (same-sex marriage, Terry Schiavo, et al.) from the real issues of the day (Iraq, healthcare, the social safety net, the growing inequality among citizens of our no-fair land, et al.).

C'mon, it's not that hard. Driving around the country outside the Greater Washington area (or, heck, even within Washington--have you been to Southeast D.C. recently?); visiting a campus other than your alma mater, an Ivy League one no doubt; dining out in our Fast Food Nation near the end of a pay period every now and again; or trying to figure out your private insurance during open enrollment (assuming you have insurance, that is)--you might just pick up a few pointers about what's really going on out here in Podunk, the Flyover Zone, Great Unwashedboro, or whatever it is you marbled-hall, block-headed types like to call the rest of the nation west of I-95.

And a Dale Carnegie course or two wouldn't hurt either.

Chilly scenes of yinzers

Greetings from Pittsburgh, the Switzerland of Pennsylvania--who knew?

Somehow, despite the promise of pleasure in doing so, I'm nonetheless managing to avoid discussing the elections and the departure of dear ol' Donald Rumsfeld and instead focusing my neurons on my current travels to Pittsburgh, Steel City, the gateway to, um, Ohio, where I am currently visiting as part of my ongoing World Tour 2006, Gainfulemploymentpalooza. It's two, two, two conferences in one this go 'round, so I'm here for a solid week of business, followed by a couple of days of pleasure, visiting my good friend Fouchat, who relocated here from Texas two years ago.

I'm not quite sure why I ever fuss about my job (and, trust me, I do--early and often) because I feel like most times I'm rarely there, instead attending some conference or meeting in another farflung, exotic locale--New Orleans, San Antonio, Frankfurt, Germany, and, well, Grantville, Pennsylvania, apparently the center of the known universe for all meetings by Pennsylvania government and non-profit agencies. Those of you who form part of the Grantville-noscenti will independently verify this fact, I'm sure.

So far, I'm enjoying Pittsburgh, at least the little I've been able to see. In part, this "lack of vision" is due to the fact that I've been in meetings from morning until evening for the last three days, with two more days to go. In part, however, the abundance of clouds and fog in this very hilly city are generally blocking the view of all there is to see and do--not only physically (it's intensely foggy at 8:30 am, do you know where your Duquesne Incline is?), but also psychologically.

Oddly, for me, a man with a blog, I find myself feeling a little timid at this conference, hesitant to venture too far afield, as if I step toward the banks of the Monongahela, the Allegheny, or the Ohio rivers, I'll fall down a hole into a strange Wonderland--or an abandoned smelter. I'm neither feeling depressed nor too introspective (hasn't this blog proven that point by now?), just a little shy, a little quieter than usual. And I can't help but think the shyness and timidity are due in part to the Lost Horizons feeling I get by being high in the Alleghenies during a very chilly, misty, and did I mention? rather dreary week.

Back east toward Harrisburg, this week it is apparently warmer and rainier with heavy thunderstorms, more like early fall and the transition from a warm and moist clime to a dry and cold one. But sometime on Sunday, soon after I passed through the Kittatinny Tunnel on the Pennsylvania Turnpike, I crossed into a world where cold weather commands, an almost-winter replete with ghostly, naked trees on mountainsides, their dessicated skin cells--that is to say, their leaves--blowing across the roadway, and a disorienting, yet somehow protective, miasma of fog, clouds, mist, and drizzle enveloping my Subaru as it hurtles over the macadam toward Pittsburgh, like a teal-colored bullet against the backdrop of a sad, gray dueling ground. In other words, the full late November doldrums that we know and experience melancholia over in the Northeast has arrived, and at that moment, I found myself racing forward to greet it.

* * *

This Wizard of Oz in Reverse Effect (traveling from a world of color to one of black-and-white) continues upon arrival in Pittsburgh, as I travel up the Monongahela Incline one evening to Mount Washington, one of Pittsburgh's premier neighborhoods. In this era of gumstuck bus seats and graffitti-fitted subway cars, the Incline is quite a cool method of transportation. It consists of a three-compartment carriage, each compartment higher than the next, that through a system of cables, electricity, and gears travels at a 35-degree angle up Mount Washington. It sort of looks like a coal bin traveling in reverse, going up the face of a mountainside to its peak instead of down into the bowels of the earth. Which is somewhat telling as Mount Washington was once known as Coal Hill and served as a working-class neighborhood for German and other European immigrants who flocked to the city during its 19th-century industrial expansion.

But instead of thinking about smelting and schnitzel, I'm reminded more of something from a James Bond movie--On Her Majesty's Secret Service, if I recall correctly--where James (played by short-timer George Lazenby) travels to Blofeld's secret lair on the top of a jagged peak in the Swiss Alps in a funicular-styled railway car. (At least, that's how I recall it.)

The effect at the top of Mount Washington is similar, I would like to imagine. I gaze at a foggy, misty, even mystical Pittsburgh skyline from an observation deck that juts out over the cliff's edge. I even experience mild vertigo as I near the deck railing, the vantage point being so steep and severe.

As I walk around Mount W. in the growing dark and fog, I admire the architecture of the homes and apartment buildings, some of which remind me of Swiss chalets and European ski lodges, neither of which I've experienced firsthand, but which I've seen enough of on TV travelogs and, oh yeah, James Bond movies. Some of the apartment buildings and homes are perched cliffside, offering staggering, panoramic views of downtown. Other houses have steep rooflines and pale, cottagey facades with windowboxes underlining and overbrowing their eyes to the world. Wry looks, wrinkled faces. The buildings struggle to climb streets like paved over ski slopes, only at the peak to promptly descend with luge-like swiftness, rickety and out of control, to the bottom of the hill. When the roads are coated with snow, I can't imagine trying to stop quickly for a light or a car crossing the intersection, not at least without 4-wheel drive, snow tires, and (nevertheless) a bumper crunch somewhere along the way.

The whole "Gstaad in Pittsburgh" motif is overwrought perhaps, much like my writing in this post. To be honest, today I couldn't tell you whether those cottages with windowboxes actually exist on Mount Washington or if those are memories from my stay last October in Gelnhausen, Germany. Nevertheless, I ended the evening with some après-ski cheese fondue and a glass of Riesling at the Melting Pot at Station Square. All that was lacking from this cozy version of the Geneva Convention was a gentle snowfall, a toasty fire, and Tobias Grünenfelder by my side, feeding me s'mores.

* * *

And then the next night, TBS shows The Wizard of Oz on TV. Coinkydink? I think not. It just furthers my Swiss Miss(ter) Instant Cocoa fantasia on Pittsburgh, methinks.

* * *

Contributing to the stranger in a strange land experience, my friend Fouchat and I go for breakfast at a downhome diner in his neighborhood, an area that, despite the presence of Fouchat and his significant other, the Artist Formerly Known as, well, the Artist, and their lovely hand-crafted bungalow, remains decidedly, perhaps even defiantly, working class. This is factory worker country. If I were to send back my eggs to the kitchen, I'd half-expect a labor uprising and a few choruses of "The Internationale" sung by the wait staff. It's just that I can't figure out where these factories are anymore in the newly glassy and glam Pittsburgh.

The diner itself, though, is fine, not strange in the least; it's just the walk to the diner that is a little uncomfortable. On our way, we pass two people. The first, a woman, is bringing home groceries in a cart. Fouchat, being the friendliest New Yorker you could ever meet, greets her with a pleasant "good morning," a greeting that she ignores. I repeat the greeting, but still nothing, not a flinch, not a tick, not a glance in our direction or a clutching of the purse. Bupkus--I figure this lady is either Botoxed or flatlining. "Maybe she forgot to turn on her hearing aid?" Fouchat offers when she is out of earshot.

The second, a man seemingly without a purpose or any contemporary fashion sense, reacts similarly to Fouchat's friendliness. There's a brief flicker of eye movement, but his face remains passive, his lips as pursed as the clutch on the woman's handbag.

This is odd to me. Heretofore, I've found Pittsburgh fairly friendly. Fouchat and I were in the Strip District the other day (it's not what you think; it's full of food glorious food--delis, bakeries, coffee and tea traders, etc.--rather than that other delectable consumible, cheap sex) and were greeted warmly and chumily by biscotti sellers, espresso makers, fudge retailers, pasta providers, and more. Granted, we were buying, but the merchants obviously enjoyed their work and were happy to offer samples, answer questions, and joke around with us. Everyone had a good sense of play, which, to me, is practically all that separates us from the savages. That and San Pellegrino Chinotto sodas.

So what gives with the blue collar blues back in Fouchat's township? Are we invisible? Are we trees falling in the woods and not making a sound? It is another foggy and misty morning in the 'Burgh, so perhaps we've landed in Nicole Kidman country in The Others, i.e., we see dead people walking around, who are unable to tell us that perhaps . . . oh, go rent the movie.

Walking down the street, Fouchat and I are hard to miss, representing a veritable Queer Mod Squad--one black, one white, one bald, with me offering the twofer deal. How can they not see us?

And therein may lie the rub.

* * *

The Mysteries of Pittsburgh are enhanced by the "yinzer" dialect, practically a language (Romansh, anyone?) unto itself. I could elaborate but as you can see from various Wikipedia entries, others have done it before me and to a more exacting and informative degree.

For most of the week, though, I feel like I'm surrounded by a flock of rather loud, somewhat excited ducks quacking, such is the sound of the Pittsburgh accent to my ears. (Editor's note: Snappymack, you native of the 'Burgh 'burbs, for the record, you never sound like this to me.) But these are ducks that are anthropomorphic, taking on human form. They go to work, ride the "T," cheer on the "Stillers" (Ben and Jerry? No, the football team, silly!), and aim for a coronary with the delicious sausage, provolone, french fry, and coleslaw sandwiches offered up at Primanti Brothers, with three locations to serve you, hopefully all of them near hospitals. (Sorry for the weird pic; I did the best I could with what was offered copyright-free on the Wiki.)

Human, duck, whatever, all that quacking kind of blows the Swiss theme I've got going on in my head. Even the sound of cowbells, yodeling, and that horn from the Ricola commercials on the soundtrack to a scene of mountain lasses in dirndl skirts and lads in lederhosen couldn't rescue my delusions of Heidi from Revenge of the Duck People.

Still (and I mean "still," not "steel," which is how they pronounce "steel" in Pittsburghese), the fantasy of living under Swiss Confederation in Western PA may be gone, but the hope of a sassier, more satisfying life in Pittsburgh lives on.

Go Stillers! Go West! Go me . . . back to Pittsburgh, first chance I get!

Touch me in the morning

You gotta love journalists. Oh, I know the Right Wing and the President and His Cronies like to tar them with broad, hot streaks of the stuff, just for doing their jobs. (Much the way that they treat the judiciary, come to think of it.) And I could certainly do without most of the TV personalities who pass themselves off as journalists, even, it must be said, my semi-beloved Anderson Cooper, who is not above broadcasting his fair share of sensationalistic drivel, tears over Hurricane Katrina notwithstanding.

But every now and again, one stands out above all the others, not because of some late-breaking, hard news spectacular, but, rather, because of the simplest of pointed phrasings, the subtlest of arched angles, the most delicate of duly noted observations.

This week's award for Outstanding Snarkiness in a Wire Service Article goes to Associated Press writer Dan Elliott for his November 9, 2006, article (published in the Harrisburg, Pa., Patriot-News) on plans by the Reverend Ted Haggard to remedy his recent hooker-and-crystal meth conundrum. In an article entitled, "Haggard agrees to lengthy, grueling rehabilitation," Mr. Elliott writes

There will be prayer, and perhaps the laying on of hands. There will be counseling and a confession. And there will be advice, confrontation and rebuke from "godly men" appointed to oversee the spiritual "restoration" of the Rev. Ted Haggard.

Laying on of hands? Isn't this how this whole mess got started in the first place?

If at the end of this rehabilitation, there's any suggestion that the Reverend Haggard was cured by his team of amateur saviors through aversion therapy--consisting in this case of repeated "happy finishes" under the influence of crystal meth, accompanied by chants by fellow ministers of "Spare the rod, spoil the child! Hallelujah!" while doling out spankings--then we can safely assume we've all been had.

Putting the mental in fundamental

You know your public relations campaign for your own particular brand of sexual deviancy is in bad shape when a disgraced leader of a national evangelical religious organization would rather cop to buying an illegal drug rather than own up to some quite legal hide-the-sausage (et al.) antics with a hunky male prostitute.

If you haven't been following this little flurry of pre-election sordidness (probably because you knew I'd follow it for you), let me recap: The allegedly Reverend Ted Haggard (appropriately named because crystal meth'll do that to you, I hear), jefe of the National Association of Evangelicals, a 45,000-church and 30-million-member strong umbrella organ (if you'll pardon) for fundamentalist Christians, was accused late this week of having sex with and buying drugs from a male prostitute, the generically named but not unappealing Mike Jones. Read all about it here.

At first, the Rev Gauche denied the sex-and-drugs-but-no-rock-and-roll-we're-evangelicals-thank-you scenario, until the Rent Man provided more evidence of phone calls from one to the other. (Nonetheless, all the Rent Man's accusations have yet to be proven. Some credibility issues there. From a prostitute, imagine that . . . .) Then the Rev decided to fess up to buying crystal meth from the Prostitute, which he claims to have thrown away. (What? You just wanted to understand its chemical make-up for your kid's biology class report? Try Wikipedia next time). Oh, and he had requested a massage as well. No word yet on whether the Rev threw in (or away) the towel on that one. Again, just to better understand the biology of it all, I'm sure.

I can only hope that as the Rev made this confession, some of his teeth fell out, clattered across the pulpit, and clunked into the baptismal font (another side effect of meth use, apparently). Perhaps, too, the scent of massage oil began wafting through the church and a Yanni CD went into heavy rotation on the sound system. Relax. Take a deep breath. That'll be $100, bud.

But wow. The Far Right must be really, really, really, really, really uptight about sex--entirely legal sex, mind you--if ticking the box marked "own up to crystal meth use" seems like the better fall-from-grace-on-your-face, soul-saving option. I mean, in a perfect, gender-neutral world, a fundamentalist admitting to playing with his or someone else's dong would seem like the safer choice. After all, it's just sex--it's not illegal like acquiring and possessing a homemade recreational pharmaceutical with addictive qualities.

Granted, however, soliciting a prostitute (or "escort," if you prefer, as if you needed help finding your way to your genitalia) is illegal, but I would suspect that would be a misdemeanor in the eyes of the law, not a felony like possession of illicit chemicals made in some ol' hippy's dirty kitchen from two parts Red Bull and ten parts Sudafed.

But whose law is it, anyway? In the eyes of evangelicals, we're talking fundamentalist Christian law here, the Shariya of America as it were, or at least a pinched and persnickety interpretation of it. So the slap-and-tickle with another male member would be the felony, I would imagine. I'm surprised emergency rooms all over the country haven't reported a rise in finger blisters on the hands of fundamentalists as they speed-thumb through their Biblical concordances. "See, I told you! Not one mention in the New or Old Testament of crystal methamphetamine abuse! But, lordy, look at the listings condemning happy finishes with massage therapists!"

So why say yes to drugs and no to carnal pleasures? Well, I don't quite get it myself, except that with drugs, well, it's an addiction, isn't it? The countdown to the Reverend Haggard professing that he's an addict of some sort begins NOW. Not to make light of a serious issue, but it has been done to death of late. Fundamentalists would be more sympathetic to that, I would imagine. He could go away, get treatment, and be invited back into the fold in time for Easter service.

But sex with another man? Hmmm. Is that a choice? If it is, then I would guess fundamentalists would consider it a poor, unsavory one, generally removed from their experience, except while away at Christian summer camp or during that long weekend hunting trip in North Georgia that no one likes to talk about. And despite some hope-against-hope homosexual "cure" programs like Exodus, if you're an evangelical, there's not much you can do to remedy--or forgive--a lifestyle choice you abhor, especially one involving coconut oil rubdowns and the exchange of bodily fluids in a downtown hotel.

But what if it's not a choice? What if the Rev's having sex with another man is indicative of something innate, natural even, at least for some male members of the species? Wouldn't that just blow away any plans you had for, say, banning gay marriage in Colorado or elsewhere?

Thus, I suspect the Reverend Haggard's I'd-rather-snort-than-switch-hit approach to his predicament is in part political. It's hard to rally God's self-annointed army to fight against gay marriage when you've been known to enjoy the fruits of lust's labor's lost in the Adam and Steve honeymoon suite at the Denver Hilton with a guy who has a bigger chest than your wife's.

That sort of realization is bound to wreak some havoc on your political clout, not to mention dry up any invitations to the White House for hot dogs and sausages on the 4th of July. Too embarrassing to put that on the invitation now. Might be misunderstood.

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Back to that Gay Agenda public relations campaign for a moment. Note to Doogie Howser--it's nice of you to offer your support. Really. We're very proud of you for making the leap from perpetual blind item on Defamer and Gawker, to real, live, dancin', prancin' homosexual. And nary a public latrine, teen chatroom, or Congressional page was harmed in the making of this coming out story. Good show!

Still, it took you long enough, and no one's really surprised to see you at the planning meeting for the PR push (a penchant for starring in Sondheim musicals on Broadway? c'mon, way too easy). But . . .

Sorry, we had someone else in mind for the lead spokesmodel role. Say, for example, someone who doesn't come off like Felix Unger channeling a gay leprechaun and who has never worked as a male prostitute or recreational pharmaceutical supplier.

Nevertheless, you're well-groomed and personable and haven't brought down any evangelists lately through a heady mix of shiatsu and Oxycontin. (At least as far as we know.) I'm sure we can find a place on the dais for you, Lance Bass, and T. R. Knight.