A lot of Republicans’ problems, both personal and political, could be solved overnight if the poor things could only get laid, and America would be a better place for it, to boot. But as patriotic as I am, I’m not about to volunteer.

In Sunday’s Oregonian, right-wing affirmative action hire Elizabeth Hovde celebrated Labor Day a day early by calling for Oregon to become a “Right to Work” state. Seriously. Like other righty martinets polluting op/ed pages from coast to coast, her arguments weren’t just based on shaky facts, they were the exact

The increasingly surreal reality show that is the Republican Convention is rapidly shaping up to be one of the most offensive displays of mendacity, racism, and bloodlust the Republicans have yet performed, as evidenced in the “color” stories coming out of it. From a black CNN camera operator pelted with nuts by some slack-jawed cracker slurring, “this is how we feed animals,” and a Puerto Rican billionairess speaker shouted down by the mob chanting, “USA,” Ann Romney waxing lyrical about her “real” marriage, to a bloated and surly Chris Christie bragging about union-busting in his laughable fake Sopranos style, the whole undeniably engrossing spectacle, harried by a hurricane, is just a few midgets shy of a Fellini movie.

Poor Barry Goldwater; he was just born too early. Much has been written about Goldwater’s historic wipeout in 1964; the conventional wisdom, which held for many years, was that America could only go so wingnut. Once a guy started to be associated, fairly or not, with the John Birch Society and unrepentant neoconfederates from the deep south, he would not only lose, but lose spectacularly, in the general election no matter the opponent.

One of the few perks of being a liberal in a right-wing era is that bitter experience has made us veritable experts in handling rejection in a psychologically healthy (if politically disastrous) way. This is a highly adaptive trait on a personal level; when dumped, one doesn’t blame the dumper, and both inwardly and outwardly seeks the sort of self-improvement that might avert a recurrence. When the shoe is on the other foot, we don’t blame the scorned for their shortcomings, but resort to such charitable lies as the shopworn but still usually convincing, “It’s not you; it’s me.”

My 30-year high school reunion is this weekend, and the occasion has given me cause for reflection, in addition to the dieting. Although Reagan had been in office for two years, leading to a grinding recession that hit Oregon particularly hard, the horrors of our current political era had only barely manifested themselves at that moment of my misspent youth.

What the whole controversy seems to show is that in our depleted democracy wherein the only “vote” that matters (literally, if vote-suppressing Republicans have their way…), is measured in dollars, the right has taken caveat emptor into previously unattained heights: they no longer have to even call shit Shinola. It sells either way.

It’s fitting, really, that Mitt Romney’s first significant experience in the Old World involved riding a bicycle, since his latest seems to require a helmet, with or without the bike. One thing we do know is that a gangly, draft-dodging 20-year old yammering about Golden Tablets and whatnot is considerably less newsworthy (and funny) than a presidential candidate (!) making an even bigger ass of himself, once the charm of youthful earnestness has long since been so utterly trampled under the stomping hooves of arrogant, plutocratic cluelessness. If he had any sense, Romney would try one of two things: A) Get his act together, or B) Make the trip onto a comedy tour, before it’s too late.

When Ann Romney haughtily declared this morning that “You People” had better well quit nosing around in her family’s affairs already, I was reminded of my mother’s perennial and typically generous comment regarding couples who were either startlingly unattractive or otherwise even less appealing together than the sum of their parts: “Well, at least they found each other.”

Indeed.

As the still-unfolding recession leads to a disturbing preponderance of PhD’s working at Subway, there is one increasingly infuriating bright spot of iron-clad job security: the op/ed page of your local newspaper.  Once upon a time, the op/ed page became my favorite part of the newspaper; as the third kid