November 3, 2003 -

MEANDERING METROSEXUALS!

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How's about getting in touch with your "pit bull" side?

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Those stories, and more. Now, the details...

TOW, Texas -- I figure you've got to look a long time to find a metrosexual around here. Matter of fact, I didn't have a clue about metrosexuality until the word prissed in on the Internet a couple of weeks ago. If I've got metrosexuality right, a metrosexual is a guy who is "getting in touch with his feminine side." (I think we once called guys like that "sissies.") Anyway, metrosexuality got a big bunch of exposure when former Gov. Howard Dean declared he is a metrosexual. He said he qualifies as one because he pioneered legalizing gay marriage in Vermont. Speaking in Denver, Dean backed away a tad from an outright declaration of out-of-the-closet metrosexuality. He said he is more of a "square" than a metrosexual.

There's a possibility that Metrosexual Howard heard the story a University of Texas government professor liked to tell. About a Southern congressman who was active in a Washington-area Little Theater group. His opponent beat him by telling people in his district that the congressman was "widely known to be a thespian." And the word metrosexual might hit quite a few ears as a tad on the hinky side. I have a friend in Dallas who won't drive in the High Occupancy Vehicle lane because he's afraid he might test HOV positive.

If you're not certain whether your neighbor is a metrosexual, maybe some day we will be able to tell by the way he/she/it blinks. That's possible because a publication called Behavioral Neuroscience has a study about how people blink. The study opens with the observation that men and women blink differently when they hear a loud noise. With the exception that lesbians blink like men. So maybe metrosexuals blink like men with one eye and women with the other. Next time you run into Howard Dean, wink at him and see what happens.

SACRAMENTO -- California Gov. Gray Davis said the horrific wildfires that swept the southern part of the state last month were the greatest disaster ever to hit California. I challenged that at first, on the theory that Gov. Gray Davis probably was the greatest disaster ever recorded in the Golden State. I was pretty smug about that until my California friend Don Pieper of Pismo Beach set me straight. Don pointed out that the wildfires can't be recalled by the voters.

A friend's daughter is a stringer both for Associated Press and the National Enquirer. My friend remarked that there is one hell of a difference between AP and the Enquirer. I agreed. The Enquirer meticulously fact-checks its stories for accuracy, while AP appears to have deep-sixed fact-checking years ago.

DALLAS -- It seems the hoary, formerly all-American AP news service might have second thoughts about American security. An "investigation" spearheaded by an AP writer named Niko Price reports that "a crackdown along the U.S.-Mexico border designed to prevent terrorists from entering the United States hasn't stopped even one known militant from slipping into America since Sept. 11..." Huh? How does Niko Price, whatever he/she/it may be, know how many "militants" have been turned away? And Niko needs to read up on history since September 11, 2001. We aren't focused on "militants."

The concentration has been on "terrorists." "Terrorist" shouldn't be a tough word -- even for an AP writer (it's really daunting for the Europeans, we agree). Niko and his/her/its editors need to read their own copy of a few years ago. They'll find that the people they want to identify as "militants" killed almost 3,000 Americans. It's quite possible that the border and immigration measures now being employed would have kept these "militants" from flying airplanes into the World Trade Center buildings and the Pentagon. I suspect the fools now running the AP would say I'm being overly militant in my view.

Howard Dean wants me, kinda/sorta. Dean says he wants the votes of people who have Confederate flags on their pickup trucks. Now I don't have a Confederate flag on mine, but I do have an American flag decal. Dean's intra-party problem becomes clear when we look at the reaction his opponents had to his idea that Southerners might vote for him. Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry, better known as Mr. Patricia Heinz (of the catsup fortune) said he would prefer to be the candidate of the NAACP than the NRA. I take that to mean that Mr. Kerry believes all Southerners are gun-happy nutballs and all NAACP people are kinda/sorta godlike. Maybe he has never met Jesse Jackson.

There's bad news for Goldie Hawn. Paul Bremer, administrator of Iraq, has enacted a 15 percent flat tax. Hillary Clinton and Ms. Monica Lewinsky are very concerned.

NEW YORK -- CBS backed off from plans to release a hatchet job on President Reagan. CBS biggies said a proposed mini-series starring Mr. Barbra Streisand (sometimes known as James Brolin) was about as unbalanced as Barbra herself. The proposed CBS movie was almost laughable in its roots. The script depicted Ronald Reagan as an imbecile manipulated by an evil bitch of a wife and declined to mention that he won the cold war. The script portrays Reagan as a homophobe. Of course, the two executives responsible for it had been involved in movies centering on gay and lesbian themes. But we should all say, "good riddance" to a piece of network excrement.

QUESTION FOR THE DAY: Would Barbra Streisand get upset if somebody proposed a tax on huge noses?