Ann Coulter....Morganna "The Kissing Bandit" In Disguise?

Ms. Ann Coulter is back in the news for a recent spat over some more jabs she's taken at the Edwards campaign and Mrs. Edwards' counterattack.

(Yawn)

It occurred to me this morning that Ms. Coulter really is, in some ways, the political equivlalent of Morganna the Kissing Bandit.

For those who may have forgotten, Morganna is a very-blessed woman who use to run out onto the baseball field during MLB games in the 1970s and 80s to plant a kiss on various superstars of the time like George Brett (above.)

Morganna offered nothing real to the game, but she was a mildly sexy blonde who diverted our attention from what was really going on. People who liked to fancy themselves serious complained about how she ruined the integrity of what was going on....but they forgot that what was going on was still, in one way or another, just a bunch of chronological adults playing a kids' game.

Selah.

Prairie Homophobe Companion? No Way.

"The country has come to accept stereotypical gay men -- sardonic fellows with fussy hair who live in overdecorated apartments with a striped sofa and a small weird dog and who worship campy performers... If they want to be accepted as couples and daddies, however, the flamboyance may have to be brought under control."

Garrison Keillor in Salon

These words got the host of A Prairie Home Companion in trouble with some gay advocacy orgnizations and media outfits. While I don't blame folks like Dan Savage for offering a loud retort to this article (your average department store could surely afford the occasional shoplifter, but they have to make examples of the ones they catch to set an example for others thinking of pulling larger schemes against them), a few things are clear to me.

• This was a satirical observation and not intended to be taken literally.  Anyone with a modicum of cultural literacy is familiar with Keillor's schtick. And in the absence of that, the rest of the column should have tipped them off.
  
• On a moral level, I don't know how much different this was from Ann Coulter's recent jab at American society's need to rehabilitate/re-educate anyone who offends.  While homosexuality was the subject of their remarks, it was in neither case the object.
• The mainstream media is not interested in this story because it was started by a soft-spoken entertainer from the Land of 10,000 Lakes, rather than a leggy blonde bombshell who likes to speak in quippy soundbites.  If you don't believe me, try GoogleNewsing "Garrison Keillor."  The result set is almost exclusively gay-oriented blogs and news outlets.

I'm going fishing out at Lake Wobegon.