THE REAL REASON FAR RIGHT REPUBLICANS WANT TO REPLACE SCHWARZENEGGER WITH MEL GIBSON-- ARNOLD'S NOT BIGOTED ENOUGH FOR THEM

As Kyle or Stan will undoubtable say on the show tonight, "I learned something today." Well I learn something almost everyday, but today's something came from a really unusual source. Ole Charlie is someone I usually pay any attention to. He works in a hardware store near where I live and he never shuts up. It's just yap, yap, yap, yap non-stop. And he only has one tooth in his face. He's a grizzled old coot who was working there when I first moved to the neighborhood almost 20 years ago and for all I know he's never been quiet for 2 minutes before then or since then. And although there are no topics Ole Charlie doesn't have an opinion on that he is eager to share with anyone he can corner, he loves babbling about politics, particularly right-wing politics.

I had to go over there today and get some last minute stuff before I leave for Morocco. I carefully avoided him although I noticed he has buttonholed some poor elderly lady trying to buy some lightbulbs and he was ranting and raving about what a traitor Schwarzenegger is. (I wasn't really paying attention and, at the time, I figured he had worked himself up into a lather because Schwearzenegger has pardoned that gang founder, although I soon found out that the gang dude is gonna fry tonight (ala Schwarzenegger) and that had nothing to do with Ole Charlie's rage at the Republican Governor. I-- along with everyone else in the store-- soon heard the problem: "She's a gurd-durn homo."

And that's the genesis of what I learned today. Although the old lady with the lightbulbs fled, one of Ole Charlie's co-workers told me that he's all worked up because some Republican club he belongs to is getting to word out to all the haters and bigots that "God's people" and Republicans should support Mel Gibson instead of Schwarzenegger because Schwarzenegger's new Chief of Staff is a lesbian.

Who knew? The papers around here mention she's a Democrat, mention she worked for Gray Davis, mention she supports a woman's right to choice-- all enough to give the local Republicans fits. But they don't seem to mention-- at least not clearly enough for me to have seen it-- that she is openly gay and that she married her longtime partner in Hawaii in 1999. What would I do without Ole Charlie?

I got back from the hardware store and googled around a little and found out that even though normal people don't know, the professional haters on the radical right certainly do know-- and they ain't takin' it lying down! "By placing a leading homosexual, pro-abortion Democrat activist in charge of his entire administration, Arnold has taken a disastrous turn to the left," frothed Randy Thomasson, president of a local hate group called the Campaign for Children and Families. "Conservative voters who supported him are waking up from their dream and stepping into reality -- and the reality stinks." (Gee, I wonder if he knows that Susan used to work with Jane Fonda and Tom Hayden.)

Gray Davis was a lot happier about the appointment than either Ole Charlie or Thomasson. "Flattery," he pointed out in response to the announcement, "is the sincerest form of flattery." It must be awful being a right wing nutcase in California these days, between Cunningham going to prison and bribery cases against extremist Congressloons Doolittle, Pombo, Hunter, Lewis, Issa and possibly Van de Weghe pending and now Arnold and the first lady hiring openly gay Chiefs of Staff (Maria hired Daniel Zingale, political director of the Human Rights Campaign), they must be going... well, crazier.

(Even before I had finished writing this piece, I had picked up this week's L.A. WEEKLY and found a report by Bill Bradley called "The Inside Story of the Governor's Anointing of a Lesbian Democrat".