Fab actress Holland Taylor folos my tweets; will you?

Actress Holland Taylor’s Twitter account indicates she doesn’t follow Nelson Mandela, Bill Gates or Pope Benedict.

She doesn’t follow Tim Tebow, Maya Angelou, Angela Merkel or the Rev. Harold Camping, the whack job pastor who said God told him he was going to end the world last May (favorite headline from that non-event: “Apocalypse Not Now!”).

Taylor, the ever-sexy and sassy co-star of hit shows from “Bosum Buddies” to “Two and a Half Men,” follows just 190 Earthlings including Stephen Colbert, Tom Hanks, Michele Obama, Frank Rich ...

And me.

Where this places me on the spectrum of cool is difficult for me to calculate.

But it will give me momentary bragging rights at The Pond, the friendly tavern beneath my Latrobe, Pa., office, after I explain what Twitter is, why any of them should care, and that Holland Taylor’s chummy with Tom Hanks and Charlie Sheen.

Last week I was surprised to find I was the recipient of a conspiracy of people who are trying to do what I’ve been unable for two years to do on my own: raise my Twitter profile. The ball, I guess got rolling, by @EditorialHell, a publisher who’s described himself as my biggest fan. Thank you, my friend!

He’s been advising friends to read my stories and achieved success with someone I’d never met who tweets as @TheDowagerSays. She wrote:

“Very few undiscovered gems left, but the writer Mr. Rodell (@8Days2Amish) is one of them. He’s odd, but he’s hilarious. And he can write.”

Sometimes -- and I’m not proud of this -- I will alter quotes about me to make them sound even more smashing. Or at least palatable.

They do this for all the Adam Sandler movies. For instance, a review that reads: “Adam Sandler is a perfect example of why so many lousy movies earn just one star,” will be transformed for promotional purposes to read: “Adam Sandler is a perfect movie star!”

But that lovely quote about me is genuine.

This enigmatic Dowager’s profile says she resides in North Yorkshire, England, and is dedicated to preserving “the moral and social structure of civilization.”

If you added “ . . . and being done doing so in time for my first beer by 4:30 p.m.” then that goal could be mine, too!

What caught my attention after a rush of new followers is that The One True Dowager is enjoyed by 7,469 followers, yet follows just eight herself. That’s uncommonly picky.

And I’m one of the eight.

Those numbers are stacked enough to penetrate even my dense understanding of basic mathematics: This Dowager is culturally influential.

So it was a fun evening watching a rush of new followers take the Dowager’s advice and follow me. It was a great surprise to see Holland, an actress I’ve always admired, do so, too. She’s just perfectly cool and so I was thrilled when the day after she began following me, she retweeted to her 14,278 followers the following tweet of mine:

“I understand if I pray for riches I’ll get nothing and if I pray for wisdom I’ll need nothing, but I can’t help it. I still pray for riches.”

I remain unsure of what twitter success will mean to my career, but if someone from a company that hires writers to compose fortune cookie notes says they want me after reading my tweets then that’ll be a significant boost.

So I’d like to extend this invitation to Holland Taylor, The One True Dowager and @Editorial Hell to come and enjoy dinner at our house on Saturday. The Westmoreland County Airshow is this weekend and you can enjoy the Blue Angels performing from the splendor of our back porch.

And to prove I remain egalitarian in my gratitude I’m extending the same offer to each and everyone who’s taken the time to follow @8days2amish.

All 172 of you!

I’d advise some of you to car pool. Parking promises to be a bit tight.

If you’re unfamiliar with twitter, here is my monthly @8days2amish round-up of what I think were some of my dozen best tweets:

• Devoted stationary salesmen are always pushing the envelope.

• It's indicative of innate verbosity attorneys feel obliged to include "at law" in titles. Nothing about them suggests "attorneys at play."

• I believe another consequence of global warming is that soon delightful little lightning bugs will begin to shoot actual lightning.

• Jim Crow racists used to call minorities who acted confident, "uppity." Did they call the ones who bent to their oppressions, "downity?"

• Has anyone ever researched if the CAPS key on e.e. cummings's typewriter was busted? That might explain a lot.

• So Trayvon Martin had pot in his system when gunned down. Maybe if George Zimmerman had some in his we never would have heard of either of them

• Forecasters predict warmest Mem Day Wknd ever. Don't believe 'em. Don't believe scientists, stats or your drippin' sweat. Believe Sean Hannity.

• His sense of irony intact, Donald Rumsfeld tells CBS he was "uncomfortable" with how Obama dealt with Khadafi and Libya.

• Told 5-year-old if you squeeze a piece of coal hard enough she’ll make a diamond. She squeezed so hard she almost made a turd.

• The very best bald-faced liars lack eyebrows.

• Honesty without tact is like brain surgery without anesthesia. The operation could cure, but the complications can kill.

• Redundant headlines say "Wildfires out of control." Of course they are. There's a reason they not called "tamefires."

• I'm such a reflexive pacifist the only thing I instinctively kill is time.

• Someday when I see a big "Welcome!" sign on someone's door I'm going to test owner truthfulness by marching in & making myself right at home

• Parenting advice from Elton John I consider sound enough to practice: Mars ain't the kind of place to raise your kids.

Papa was a rolling stone

This should be one of the happiest days of the year for me because it’s maybe the one day where the girls don’t instinctively treat me the way Moe treats Curly.

But Father’s Day, for me, has become more complicated over the past two years. It’s a day where I’m supposed to revel in being a dad, but I’m often melancholy because I’m no longer a son.

My father died in 2004. You can read about him here in a story Pittsburgh Magazine headlined, “The Life and Death of Joe Pittsburgh.”

He was so fun, so joyful and warm.

Then I belatedly learned he was so much more than that.

I learned he was a liar, a deadbeat dad and for a few months back about 60 years ago a bit of a bigamist.

Now, I hold none of that against him. To me, Pops was tops.

It all started with the above-mentioned story and a grainy e-mailed picture of my Dad, at the time a skinny young man, looking dashing and handsome in swim trunks standing out in the middle of some unnamed stream. It’s one of the few pictures of him I’ve ever spied where he wasn’t holding either a golf club or a beer. 

A friendly woman from Florida e-mailed the picture and said she was doing some ancestry research about a Paul Rodell.

You don’t have to be expert in detective procedures to see where this was headed. Dad had fathered a love child years before he met Mom.

The woman -- my new half-sister -- said my father had gotten her mother pregnant when he was about 19 and she was about 17. These dates and ages are all ballpark, too.

They split up shortly after a shotgun wedding and the mother gave the baby to her parents to raise. At some point the mother returned home to raise the baby herself. And she married a wonderful man that my half-sister came to know as Dad.

“Whenever I asked her about my real father, she’d point to the man who raised me and say, ‘That’s your real father. You don’t need to know anything about anyone else.’”

But, of course, she had an innate curiosity and thanks to the wonders of the internet soon read about a man named Paul Rodell from East Liverpool, Ohio, who raised a son who believed the father’s only sin was he couldn’t help himself from routinely cheating at golf.

So I called my brother to share the news.

He already knew. After my father’s death, my brother had to fill out the death certificates that record for posterity the actuarial details of my father’s life. He was shocked to learn he was not Paul Rodell’s first born child.

There was more. He’d married another woman shortly after the birth of his daughter. If the records are correct he was for a while married to two different women at the same time.

“I never told you because I didn’t think you could handle the shock so soon after the funeral,” he said.

I always thought it was odd that Dad hadn’t married my Mom until he was 32. That was a long time to be a bachelor back in the 1950s. 

My half-sister and I are friendly and communicate via e-mail on occasion and through Facebook. I’d write about Dad more and in often glowing ways, but I know she sometimes reads my blog and I wouldn’t want to risk upsetting her by saying nice things about the man who abandoned her.

In fact, I’m in touch more with her than I am with my brother, with whom I haven’t spoken in a year since we had a bitter fight over the way I was caring for Mom when she was deeply distressed. He stopped returning my calls. He’s been up to visit once in four years.

Maybe he got tired of having a brother. Fifty years is a long time to be as close as we were.

The previous year he went through his second divorce in two years and remains under emotional strain so I forgive him in absentia for behaving like a huge ass.

It would kill Dad to know his sons aren’t speaking.

That’s why it nags at me that it didn’t kill him that he walked away from a precious little girl.

I do forgive him and wish for the love of God he hadn’t lugged that secret around with him all his life. 

Of course, it may very well have eating him up from inside. He was a very loving man who understood the difference between right and wrong.

A few years before he died he hounded me about getting him an internet list of all the people named Rodell in America. He was desperate to learn more about the family tree, or so he said.

Maybe he thought he could find this girl and apologize. But maybe he thought the second family, the one he nurtured, wouldn’t forgive him for the lie he lived.

That was only his second biggest mistake.

So there you go. I hope you have a happy Father’s Day and cling to the ones you love. 

And thank you for taking part of the day to read about some of the people I love and how they fit into what seems to me a fairly typical American family tree.

All forked up.

To bee or not to bee

I’m such a reflexive pacifist the only thing I instinctively kill is time.

Proof of this is it took me nearly two weeks to wipe out the play set wasps that stung me and a little neighborhood innocent, part of which is recounted here.

And I must now reveal another heaping portion of my ignorance. I’d previously written I was stung by a bee.

I was wrong. I now realize it was a wasp.

I’m a nearly 50 year old man who until last week was unable to differentiate between bees, wasps, yellow jackets, hornets and many other insects sports teams use for mascots they think will intimidate opponents.

In fact, the only hostile insect I can readily identify are carpenter bees, which distinguish themselves by wearing tiny little tool belts.

Speed is partly to blame for my confusion. I run like hell whenever I hear the telltale buzz they all emit. I don’t stick around getting all what I guess is fair to call “bug-eyed” over insects.

In fact, the only insects for which I feel any cheer are butterflies and the insects with the most fearsome of names: the lightning bug.

Who doesn’t love lightning bugs? Who doesn’t have fond memories of chasing them around as or with delighted children?

I love them so much I feel sad just thinking another odd consequence of global warming could be that lightning bugs will begin to shoot actual lightning out of their buggy little butts.

As for the rest of them, the only good Bugs is Bunny.

I have trouble understanding why most of these insects are even part of God’s plan.  

Sure, we need bees to pollinate the flowers and without the flowers we’re doomed. But isn’t there an app for that?

And why do the bees seem so intent on stinging us? I’ve even seen them go after Winnie the Pooh.

You don’t sting Winnie the Pooh. You cuddle him. 

Did they ever stop to think they might be getting killed by karma?

If I could speak bee I’d tell we’d all leave them alone to do their work because we understand we need them. 

That understanding is partly why I dithered over killing what I thought were bees under the sliding board.

I thought, “The bees are dying off. What if I kill off the very last ones on earth and hence become responsible for mankind’s demise? And here I always thought it was always gonna be Doomsday Dick Cheney’s fault!”

It’s to my fiscal detriment, but I spend more time thinking about these sorts of hypotheticals than how I could earn even a couple dollars.

But then I realized these weren’t bees at all. They were wasps. Or hornets. This breakthrough came to me in front of a massive eight-shelf wall of pesticidal death in Aisle 2 at the local Lowe’s.

The realization hit me when I saw that wasps and hornets -- and I still don’t know the difference between them -- both live in tiny dwellings with thin paper walls, kind of like the places where I lived from 1986-92.

I swear, I spent 30 minutes in front of the wall reading all the directions, the side effects and trying to discern which would be the most humane way to kill something that would kill me in the blink of one of its hundred-panel compound eyes. 

Here’s something you may not know: insect killer is likely our least regulated lethal over-the-counter product -- besides handguns, of course.

Check out the actual entirety of the listed active ingredients right from the label:

Prallethrin . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  0.025%

Lambda Cyhalothrin . . . . . . . . . .  0.010%

Other Ingredients  . . . . . . . . . .   99.965%

Other ingredients, 99.965 percent? How do they get away with that?

That’s more vague than answering the first date standby question, “So tell me a little about yourself?” with, “I’m right handed.”

What else is in there? Scope? Peach Schnapps? Napalm? 

I don’t know, but whatever it is, it kills wasps dead.

I went out the other night and tried once more to reason with them into leaving on their own and warned that if they weren’t gone by morning I was bound to blast them with a wee bit of Prallethrin, a fraction of Lambda Cyhalothrin and a whole bunch of other stuff.

And that’s just what I did.

Too bad, too, that the enigmatic can of Kills-on-Contact Ultra-Kill wasp/hornet killer enlightened me as to the true identity of my stingy nemesis.

Despite my pacifist inclinations, I was really looking forward to seeing what it felt like to be a guy who nailed a bunch of bees.

I don’t think I’ve ever got a bee.

As you’ve probably already surmised, I was always more of a C student.

"Dallas" returns: A same-sex love story

By chance, I had the family in Pittsburgh this weekend to enjoy the Three Rivers Arts Festival when we happened upon the city’s Gay Pride Parade.

Of the two, the gay pride gang displayed far more vivid colors than anything we later found in a frame.

It was a truly eye-popping event for our daughters, ages 11 and 6, and I’m certain the GLBTs have forever ruined for them Latrobe’s annual Fourth of July parade, renown as it is for featuring roughly 25,000 firetrucks poking along at 2 mph for what seems like 18 hours.

I found the joyful expressions of once-forbidden love inspiring, so much so that I think today’s the perfect day to declare to the world the secret, profound love I feel for another man.

I haven’t seen him for about 10 years and during that time I dreamed of a day when I could declare aloud my feelings for him and we could once again spend so many soulful hours together.

Today’s the day.

His name?

J.R. Ewing.

As you may have heard, he’s back on TNT tonight, a station whose name recollects explosive situations, and that’s just what I’m hoping to see on the new “Dallas.”

You could say I was sort of in the closet over this personal turmoil for about the last 10 years.

Before that only one friend, my good buddy Paul, knew of my love for the Satan from Southfork. Although he shared my feelings, we never fought over J.R. Our love for him transcends possessive tiffs.

On the contrary, we’d spend hours regaling one another over his latest escapades from the re-runs we never missed on the Soap Opera Channel.

We’d roar over the episode where he and his daddy Jock Ewing decided to make up for lost time by having an all-out afternoon drinking contest at a local dive.

“Loser drives home!” Jock declared.

We howled when J.R. justified a rigged deal by saying, “Once you get past ethics, the rest is easy.”

I’ve since used that line in my role as a professor during the four minutes it takes me to lecture future journalists on the importance of ethics in storytelling.

Understand, I was only dimly aware of “Dallas” during its original run from 1978-1991.

I spent most of the Friday nights the show was on -- hell, most of the entire 1980s -- out drinking, chasing women and placing ridiculous wagers. It wasn’t until later that I learned the only difference between my hero and me was only one of us enjoyed access to a vast fortune in ill-gotten oil loot.

In two weeks it’ll be 20 years since I last had a steady job (paycheck, either). Working from home meant I’d often have the TV on in the background for things like the O.J. Simpson trial, classic SNL reruns and M*A*S*H episodes I’d through viewing repetition already committed to memory.

Then one day I happened to tune into “Dallas.”

I remember that day with the same clarity you hear religious devotees express about the day their souls were saved.

Sex, betrayal, lust, booze, revenge, greed -- the show had it all.

I was hooked. So was Paul, my newspaper buddy who often switched shifts with co-workers so he could work nights and not miss the 11 a.m. episodes.

Sure, my wife knew. She’s a woman whose tolerance for same-sex couples is only exceeded by that for malingering husbands who watch things like “Dallas” re-runs while other husbands are out earning a living.

But it was something men were reluctant to share with other men. I’ve never seen “Brokeback Mountain,” but I sense the plot lines are similar.

That’s why it was so liberating when I was visiting another buddy of mine in New York back around 1997. I’ve written about him before. He’s my evil friend John.

We were roommates at Ohio University. During the entirety of our friendship, I’d never known him to rise before noon for anything that didn’t involve a court order. So I was shocked when he strolled into the living room at precisely 10:59 a.m.

I’d, of course, been watching SportsCenter. I was at the time still concealing my TV viewing orientation. I figured he’d ridicule me if he knew of my hidden love.

His look was grave. “I have something to say that may surprise you. This isn’t easy for me because I’m not sure how you’ll react. So I’m just going to come out and say it: I watch ‘Dallas’ every day at 11 a.m. I never miss it.”

Well, I’ll never forget what happened next. I jumped off that couch and shouted, “Me, too!” We met in the center of his tiny apartment and kissed each other on the cheeks. I can’t say if his did, but I know my leg did that little bend back at the knee   thing you used to see happen when couples kissed in the old Cary Grant movies.

In an instant I was on the phone with Paul. “Guess what? John’s just like me and you! He loves ‘Dallas!’’

From then on, our giddy little trio was on the phone conference calling in between each and every commercial.

Care to take a wild guess what we’ll be doing at 9 p.m. tonight?

I’ve already declined invitations to come out and watch baseball, play golf and engage in other stereotypical “manly” activities.

We’re all three staying in to revel in the return of J.R. Ewing and “Dallas.”

It may be the first time in history that three men are coming out simply by staying in.

How am I doing? Honestly?

If I can muster the nerve, the next time anyone asks me, “How ya doin’?” I’ll respond, “I’m horny! How are you?”

Chances are it’ll be true. I remain one of those average guys the studies say think about sex something like a gazillion times a day. Now that our kids are out of school for another 81 3/4days, the odds of me actually having any sex are greatly diminished.

The kids are always in the house, are light sleepers, and are so clingy to Mommy that me taking any kind of run at her would immediately bump me from 2012 “Father of the Year” consideration.

So responding “I’m horny!” to our most mundane conversational inquiry will be factual.

Even better, it will be interesting.

You rarely hear anyone announce their horniness aloud.

Instead, we all lie and say, “I’m fine. You?”

Bullcrap.

No one’s ever fine.

We’re bewildered, angry, frustrated, unfulfilled, underpaid, overweight, sleepy, grumpy, sneezy and maybe two of the other Seven Dwarfs.

Fine?

Never.

My inspiration for this, as it often is, is Dave. He’s my friend, my office landlord and the man who spends his waking hours conspiring to inebriate me and our buddies in the tavern he and his family have owned since 1954.

He’s spent the last couple of weeks responding to mundane conversation with brutal honesty.

If someone asks, “How ya doing?” Dave will scream at them, “Mind your own damn business!”

When a cheerful customer gets up to leave and invariably departs by saying something like, “Take it easy, man,” Dave’s face will darken and he’ll growl with menace, “By god, don’t you ever tell me what to do!”

It’s the same reaction the hapless bastards in “Goodfellas” get when they good-naturedly inform “Tommy” (Joe Pesci) he’s a funny guy.

It’s made me alert to all our little lies.

I guess that makes me spiritual sort of soul mates with Brad Blanton. He’s the tactless genius behind a movement he calls “Radical Honesty.”

He maintains we’re all playacting in our relationships and the only way for us to prosper personally is to be brutally honest with ourselves and each other. He believes our little lies corrode our souls and erect impenetrable obstacles to our ever being happy.

If he’s horny, he expresses it to whomever is within earshot. He told me in graphic terms, which I’ll paraphrase even as I’m certain the sanitizing would infuriate him.

He said if sees a girl he’d really like to “hug” he’d tell her, man, I’d really like to get a bottle of wine and spend the afternoon (hugging) the (stuffing) out of you. 

Such demolition of traditional courtship rituals would doubtless reduce poets and florists to tears, but I remember admiring his directness.

He assured me the tactic was very successful. I may be mistaken, but I think I recall him saying it was helpful in him meeting two of his ex-wives, a statement that reveals radical honesty might have trouble gaining traction in matrimonial arenas.

I interviewed him for Playboy about 10 years ago and remember thinking, gee, what a really swell guy.

That’s a lie. To be radically honest, he’s what someone radically honest would call a real dick.

It’s my contention that honesty without tact is like brain surgery without anesthesia. The operation could cure but the complications can kill.

But it would indeed spice up our lives if we could make one another more alert to our true feelings and we answered honestly next time someone asks us, “How you doing?”

If we could incorporate that little bit of one-word honesty into our daily conversations, I believe it would help spread empathy and erase some of the stealth difficulties we all face in our daily lives. 

It could lead to a happier society, to better personal well-being and, for a lucky few, to romance.

Honest.

Re-run Sunday: Mine, all mine

This is from nearly four years ago, the time past a suitable gauge to judge my failures. My daughters are both still materialistic little monsters.

Just like their father.

My efforts to raise a child free of selfishness are being met with catastrophic failure.

Although I’ve always doubted the authenticity of the anthropology, I remain charmed by the legends of Native American tribes that have something like 30 words for snow and none for words like mine.

I have about 15 distinct words for snow and after December 25 they all involve profanity.

Once Christmas has passed every snowman becomes abominable.

But it’s the lack of the word “mine,” legend or not, that appeals to me. I believe the more people use the word mine and its possessive derivatives, the greater their tendency to start troubles that lead to shooting wars.

“This oil is mine!”

“This water source is mine!”

“This gold mine is mine!”

So I’m trying to steer our 2 year old away from the world of greed and grab and into a world where sharing is instinctual and the use of the word “mine” only leads to confusion. I want her to be like those proud Native American tribesmen and women who shared their harvest, their talents and all the rich glories of Mother Earth, at least until my Caucasian ancestors stormed here from Europe and declared, “America is mine!”

I knew going in that this would be difficult for reasons that have nothing to do with our materialistic society.

It’s because of the contentious makeup of Lucinda. Not only is she a classic example of a child who does the exact opposite of everything you tell her to do, she’s already mastered the good cop/bad cop routine for even the most innocuous conversation.

I’ve looked lovingly into her capuchino-colored eyes and gushed, “You are so beautiful!” She instantly turned python and hissed, “No, YOU’RE beautiful!” Clearly, to her it was the most stinging insult she could conjure.

I was playfully singing the great Pete Townshend/Who rock anthem, “Won’t Get Fooled Again,” and the sober little contrarian deflated all the assertive vigor from the lyric by replying, “We WILL get fooled again.”

So my efforts to impart any residual wisdom are already facing an uphill battle. I try to tell her about sharing and she just looks at me the way cows look at passing trains. The concept doesn’t take.

It doesn’t help that her older sister’s room is a virtual fortress defended by armies of Barbies and war-worthy Webkinz. Josie’s gone as far as putting up signs on her door with instructions about who and under what circumstances anyone is allowed to enter her room. It’s a document precisely designed to restrict her sibling from entering.

It’s court-worthy writ and, I’m sure, will be held up as legally binding the instant Lucinda learns to read.

Worse, all my instructions about sharing crumble whenever the poor kid reaches for any of her sister’s toys and is invariably met with, “No! That’s mine!”

The Barbies? “Mine!”

The Webkinz? “Mine!”

The crayons? “Mine!”

So it’s no surprise that Lucinda’s starting to ape her sister whenever I reach for things like an apple, my car keys or domestic beer from the family frig.

“Mine! Mine! Mine!”

And, honestly, I’m not one to talk. Try as I might, I’m still a possessive failure who frets when one of the girls starts monkeying around with my computer, my iPod, any of snazzy shirts, my watch, my golf clubs, my DVDs, my HDTV or any of the other shiny things no self-respecting Indian brave would have had inside his humble prairie teepee.

They’re just learning by the sad example set by their father.

The girls are mine.

All mine.

Is Uncle Sam gay?

The iconic American symbol turns 200 this year. In all that time, there’s zero evidence he’s ever had a romantic relationship with a single woman. For the healing benefit of our national character, I think it’s time to ask the question:

Is Uncle Sam gay?

There is stereotypical evidence this could be the case.

He’s never been married or fathered a child, and he’s spent the last 100 years actively soliciting the company of strong young men.

He’s often appeared in orchestrated photo ops with Miss America, but that could be a ruse, a rare example of a man with a goatee needing a beard.

With behavior like that, I’m surprised the snoops at National Enquirer haven’t included him in the bi-annual gay/not gay round up that features questionable profiles of actors like John Travolta and Tom Cruise.

Uncle Sam was born during the the War of 1812. The nature/nurture circumstances of his upbringing have no bearing on this topic, but if you want to read about it you’re welcome to scan this Wikipedia entry here on the character’s inspiration, Mr. Samuel Wilson of Troy, N.Y.

Wilson was a meat inspector.

Will those of you with the senses of humor that never escaped junior high please stop snickering?

If he is gay, he would be the most enduring example of what I call a “slomosexual,” which I define as any person who devotes his or her life to the self-proclaimed virtues of public heterosexuality before finally coming to grips with their true sexual identity.

I wonder if he thinks we’d not forgive him the hypocrisy of all those decades of recruiting mostly young men to serve with the prejudicial stipulation that none of them be anything but lady-loving heterosexuals.

He was adamant that each of his recruits be eager to kill fighting men, not love them.

The question of Uncle Sam’s sexuality may be a sensitive one for many. Patriots may believe it should go unexamined.

Don’t ask, don’t tell, you might say.

Nonsense.

The U.S. Supreme Court is bound to soon consider the question of same sex marriage. His sexual orientation will help clarify the arguments.

But it’s more important on an individual level for this great man. If Uncle Sam’s gay, hiding it may be a source of pain that should concern every American.

It’s not too late for him to find happiness with a soul mate. The restless matchmaker in me says we should fix him up with another eccentric uncle who always seemed to prefer the company of men over women, that being Uncle Charlie from “My Three Sons.”

Of course, it’s impossible to calculate the the consequences this will have on some Americans who are sure to react as if they learned John Wayne enjoyed breeding poodles.

They will be hurt. They will be mystified. Their core values will be shaken.

They will feel, Uncle Sam, as if you’ve betrayed them.

They will be wrong.

They will have betrayed you.