The Columnist Manifesto

The photos of Bush with his sheepish grin on this morning's NYT cover say an awful lot.

"Aw, shucks, I made a few mistakes. Everyone does!"

More confirmation (as if any were needed) that the man does not live in the same country (or the same time-space continuum) as the rest of us. He shouldn't bother to show his face in public without an expression of grave and humble contrition. It's a sad testament to what happens when you install a silly little man in a position of power.

I just attended the memorial service of a close relative in a town with a population of 1,500. A large number of neighbors and townsfolk attended, in addition to family members. After the service, we all moved to the nearby town hall, for a meal of homemade lasagna, salad and brownies.

Although the families were Christian, they weren't "Christian." There was a brief prayer and a mention or two of God, but no officiating religious figure, no religious doctrine, and no murmuring about the lack of any of that.

No one advocated censoring books in the local library, or breaking down the constitutional separation of church and state.

The man whose life we were celebrating was a WWII vet; there were American flags, including a veteran's flag folded into a triangle, but there was not a buzz about "my country right or wrong," or supporting the Iraq war. There was talk of peace.

There were deer-hunters in the assembly, but also vegans.

My sense is that there was a diversity of opinion on such matters as choice and shotgun weddings for teenage children. There were even Obama supporters among the attendees.

My impression of small town American values was of a place where people could vote their conscience, agree to disagree, and come together at a memorial service without shoving their beliefs in your face.

To the GOP handlers of Sarah Palin who wish to portray small town America as a monolith of intolerant, super-religious, right-wing, wildlife-killing, book-burning opinion -- you can kiss my a**.

Driving into the gym parking lot yesterday, I came within 3 feet of having a fender-bender with a big Cadillac, which was backing out. It's slightly shocked-looking driver was none other than Gerry Torres, our university Athletic Director and former bowl-winning head football coach.

How cool is that?

Dear Dan Savage,

When I'm in My Home Town, I probably spend 75-80% of my cafe time at Grandma Moses. I'm such a regular, that they just recently used my name and testimonial quotation in a handbill ad about their iced coffee:

Grandma Moses makes the best iced coffee in the continental United States... and perhaps the world. I drink it year round!
---Oscar Madison

So I feel like I'm having an illicit affair -- with The Water Nymph! It has a warm and cozy space, really good iced coffee (regular only, however), yummy non-Vegan baked goods --- and real breakfast and lunch food. And it's equidistant from my house (fortunately, in the other direction) from Grandma M.

I really don't want to leave Grandma Moses for this new fling... but can a man be in love with two coffee shops at the same time?

Please help me,

SOOGM

This week, I'm on "jersey duty" for my hockey scrimmage group.

When you do the NYT Crossword on line, the web page clocks you and then shows your rank among all the online solvers so far that day.

It's kind of fun to check the fastest times -- always around 2 minutes for M-W -- and see "tylerhinman," the young puzzle phenom featured in the movie "Wordplay."

I thought I was moving pretty fast through today's crossword, because I caught on to the theme pretty quickly and had good guesses to fill in the four 15-letter theme clues. But I got bogged down and ended up at 11 min., 30 sec., good enough to place me at #350 out of about #450 online solvers.

I notice that #453 was "kranepool3." Could it be Ed Kranepool? It would be cool to be able to say that I beat Ed Kranepool in solving the crossword puzzle. Poor Ed, the "Original Met," who spent so much of his long career as a bench player. It would be just like him to be the

Olympic rowing duo Zac Purchase and Mark Hunter of Great Britain won gold in the men's lightweight double scull today.

That's all well and good, but couldn't they have worked harder to come up with a more memorable name pairing -- like the U.S. rowing team of [Calvin] Coffey and [Michael] Staines, who took the silver in the 1976 Olympics in Montreal?

If only Purchase could have ditched Hunter for a guy named "Sayle."

I suppose Purchase could have stepped aside in favor of a rower named "Bargain." Or even "Gatherer," if he'd have been willing to sit in the back of the boat.