Well, there’s no smelling salts like a Presidential election year, and they’re back up and in the ring again. Somewhere in Oklahoma today, in honor of Anita Bryant’s birthday, there’s a big glass of Florida orange juice being raised by her most apt pupil, Oklahoma State Representative Sally Kern.

Former school teacher and Republican representative of Oklahoma House District 84, Sally Kern is the latest to weigh in on the Gay Menace perverting the American breadbasket. During a recent speech to kindred frothing party souls, Ms. Kern put everyone straight (as it were) who thought there was anything positive about the explosion of gayness that is apparently tearing this country asunder. “The homosexual agenda is destroying this nation, okay. It’s just a fact.” Okay. Noted. “Not everybody’s lifestyle is equal. Just like not all religions are equal.” Especially not the Jew one—what’s it called? Oh wait, I think that was another Ms. Kern speech.

And never mind how your average tanned, trim, chiseled homosexual looks next to an obese Oklahoma born-again with bacon grease beading up on their temples and marshmallow cream billowing out of their sleeves and waistbands, lest anyone think the gay is good for you, Ms. Kern says, “It has deadly consequences for those people involved in it. It has more suicides. They’re more discouraged.” I can’t understand why, with enthusiastic boosters like Sally Kern there with a supportive thumbs-up and a hang-in-there pat on the back. “Their lifespans are shorter. You know, it’s not a lifestyle that’s good for this nation. It’s a matter of fact, studies show that no society that has totally embraced homosexuality has lasted more than, you know, a few decades.” And that’s a fact, because it came from the unimpeachable Family Research Council, who support intelligent design, believe that abstinence-only education prevents pregnancy and STDs, and assert that up to one-third of child molestations are committed by homosexuals. (They also cast their vote for more inclusion in the Republican Party, when FRC chief lobbyist Tom McClusky said after the Mark Foley scandal, “All a big-tent strategy seems to be doing is attracting a bunch of clowns.”)

“So it’s the death nail for this country.” I’m guessing she meant “knell”, but maybe it’s a Jesus thing. “I honestly think it’s the biggest threat, even in our nation. Even more so than terrorists, or Islam, okay.” Which is why hardware stores shouldn’t be selling boxcutters to homosexuals. Why isn’t anyone talking about that???

Even worse, they’re going after our children. She continues, “’Cause what’s happening now, they’re going after, err, in schools, two year olds! They want to get our young children into the government schools so they can indoctrinate them.” Isn’t this the same government that’s run by a Republican President for the last seven years and a Republican Congress for twelve of the last thirteen? You think they would have done something about that. “I taught school for close to twenty years…” Public school—one of the government ones. “…and we’re not teaching facts and knowledge anymore.” For example, the fact that the Earth is only 2,100 years old and gay sex causes hurricanes. “And they’re going after our young children, as young as two years of age, to try to teach them that the homosexual lifestyle is an acceptable lifestyle.” Have you ever tried to indoctrinate a two-year-old? They have no attention span. It’s unbelievably frustrating. They’re all drool, and poo, and me me me. Besides, I think by the age of two we have already long-since formed our positions about what constitutes a thriving, healthy, and acceptable lifestyle. I remember I was already into tennis, fondue, and the performing arts.

She may have a point, though. You can dismiss Ms. Kern as hysterical, but take a trip to the Aeropostale store at the local mall and one has to wonder at the surfeit of teen boys in thick mustaches, biker caps, and shirtless leather vests if the army of gay teachers that have overtaken our schools really are achieving their mission of inculcating our children into adopting their own homosexual agenda. Also, according to the most recent iTunes figures, Rufus Wainwright downloads are up 493% over February of last year.

“You know, gays are infiltrating city capitals. Did you know, Eureka Springs, anybody been there?” Arkansas, population 2,350, home of the Dairy Hollow B & B and four “Diversity Weekends”, with lots of the gays. “Have you heard that the city council of Eureka Springs is now controlled by gays?” And the first thing they did was get rid of those God-awful Venetian blinds in the Council chamber. “There are some others, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania; Kensington, Maryland; Vermont, Oregon…” I can attest to her last example. In Portland, we have an actual homosexual who could become the next Mayor, which means we’ll be able to take Pottery Barn purchases and Cirque De Soleil tickets off of our water bills, and a Sister City program with Fire Island.

“I tried to introduce a bill last year that would notify parents, err, schools had to let parents know what clubs their students were involved in and the reason I did that bill, primarily, was this: we had the gay-straight alliance coming into our schools. Kids are getting involved in these groups, their lives are being ruined, the parents don’t know it.” Yes, kids are getting involved in these groups because their lives are being ruined by the group with the potential for the most vicious of bigotry: the American Adolescent.

“So I introduced a bill that said you have to notify all the club’s participants’ parents. A colleague said, ‘We don’t have a gay problem in my community, that’s why I’m not going to release that bill.’ You know what, to me, that’s so dumb. If you’ve got cancer or something in your little toe, do you say I’m just going to forget about it because the rest of you is fine? It spreads, okay. And this stuff is deadly and it’s spreading and it will destroy our young people and it will destroy this nation.”

And a grateful nation salutes Mrs. Representative Kern’s vigilance for standing up against the gay menace.

I’m really tired of being afraid of homosexuals. I’ve been around them. I’ve gone to plays with them. I’ve shared meals with them. I think I even took a sip of one of their margaritas. They’ve never pinned me down and had me against my will, and if they’ve ever checked out my package, I’m flattered, though I doubt it, and I’d certainly question their judgment. I haven’t come away with my association with them with any desire to lie down in sin with a man, and my fashion and interior decorating sense certainly hasn’t gotten any better, though I wish it would have.

I know gays who have had committed relationships far longer than my marriage lasted, and I’m as straight as Ted Nugent, who is no paragon of marital stability.

It’s 2008. If you have to be afraid of someone, be afraid of terrorists, of identity thieves, of Star Jones going on national television naked. Be afraid of your Vice President, whose homophobia has dropped off the radar entirely since his daughter came out of the closet, but who continues to do things far scarier than gays could ever do. Everyone predicted civilization was going to end when Ellen DeGeneres kissed Laura Dern on prime time television, and eleven years later, by my count, a heterosexual President has done far more damage to our country.

I hate to paraphrase Rodney King, but can we all please just move along?

All of the support that John McCain engendered when the New York Times last week heard the cooks at work in The New Republic kitchen and got skittish and pulled a half-baked story out of their own oven and served it up despite their better instincts? Well, it was gone in one fell swoop when McCain threw Bill Cunningham to the media and let them have their way with him.

If Tuesday night in Cincy was a dress-rehearsal for the Republican campaign this fall, they need to recast in a hurry or their fall stage run is going to close faster than Seussical.

Somewhere on an arterial leading out of Ohio tonight, there’s a baffled young man driving a rented Hyundai Elantra back to his parents’ house in Virginia, wondering just what the hell happened that he went from working one moment for the presumed Republican nominee’s campaign to the unemployment rolls just because he suggested the campaign should bring in to introduce The Candidate a popular Ohio right-wing radio host his friend from Columbus told him about, a suggestion  his boss thought was “fuckin’ brilliant! The old man will love it!”

Not so much. At least when it was apparent what it could do to his poll numbers. I had never heard of Cunningham before Wednesday, but his reputation precedes him in Ohio, and it was surely very well known by the advance team that inviting Cunningham to introduce your candidate was like inviting Andrew Dice Clay to give a toast at your wedding reception. After the usual tired far-right schtick about the liberal media (“…the Clinton News Network, the Nothing But Clinton network, the All Bill Clinton network…”, etcetera), Cunningham continued his tirade against the Democratic front-runner, his voice dripping with contempt every one of the handful of times that he sneered “Barack Hussein Obama”, and promising, Lee Atwater-style, to “strip the bark” off of him.

McCain didn’t waste any time distancing himself from Cunningham, calling the performance “totally inappropriate…I absolutely repudiate such comments.” Poor Bill Cunningham was so incensed at being unceremoniously tossed “under the bus, under the Straight-Talk Express” by Senator McCain that he had to run to Sean Hannity and Rush Limbaugh for cover, who were only too happy to provide it. Cunningham would also tell CNN’s John Roberts that “I’ve had it up to here with John McCain. He’s off the list. I’m joining Ann Coulter in supporting Hillary Rodham Clinton.”

Oh, the Rage Against The McCain. It’s downright ugly. This is not how you rally the troops. Rush Limbaugh had a 4-OxyContin tirade he unloaded on McCain Wednesday, mocking his anger at the middle-name flap. “What if McCain’s middle name was Adolf instead of Sidney?”

McCain is back where he was two weeks ago when the right-wing radio jocks were vomiting into their waste baskets and donning their Mitt Romney black armbands. He had exactly eight minutes of goodwill from the Limbaughtomites last week following the aforementioned NYT outrage, and, right though he was in feeding Cunningham to the wolves, he squandered that support faster than Giuliani did his campaign war chest.

Rest assured Mitt Romney’s busy these days, assessing the chances of slapping a defibrillator on his suspended campaign and showing up in Minneapolis-St. Paul for an old-fashioned nomination fight.

Meanwhile, that seismic jolt you just felt was former Republican Congressman and Director of the Office of Management and Budget Director Rob Portman’s chances for the GOP Vice Presidential nomination cratering. Portman followed Cunningham to the microphone to introduce McCain. “Willie, you’re out of control again. So, what else is new? But we love him…Bill Cunningham lending his voice to this campaign is extremely important. It was crucial to victory (in 2000 and 2004) and it’s even more important this year with his bigger radio audience. So, Bill Cunningham, thank you for lending your voice.”

Portman later needed medical assistance after his furious backpedaling rocketed him into the wall behind, as he stood later with John McCain and offered, “I was backstage so I didn’t hear everything he said.”