GIVE 'EM A LITTLE CREDIT. Some people have asked me why I insist on characterizing my opponents as either duplicitious or insane. The answer is that I was well-brought-up. My friends will tell you that, when I have not had too much whiskey, I am a highly social creature who seeks to promote harmony and fellow-feeling in all encounters. To that end, when forced to discuss something, or someone, unpleasant, I put forth the most charitable interpretation possible. I will call a fat person "big-boned," for example, or a moron "refreshingly free of academic pretentions," etc. Call me polite to a fault, or politically correct, but there it is.

Consequently, when confronted with plain inanity from a person whose career depends upon an illusion of sagacity, I do my best to avoid questioning his intelligence, knowing such a charge would be a painful blow to his self-esteem. So I suggest that the person is deranged, which implies a medical condition over which he has no control, or a prevaricator, which is more than halfway a compliment in a culture such as ours that prizes success over honesty.

I must say, though, that Andrew Sullivan challenges my good manners. In his latest hand-wringing over gay marriage, he contemplates and even partially excerpts the late Sonny Bono's semi-coherent statement on the subject. Sample Bono quote:

So I think we go beyond the Constitution here. I think we go beyond these brilliant interpretations here, and I think we have hit feelings, and we've hit what people can handle and what they can't handle, and it's that simple...

It would be easy to dismiss the guy as an idiot, but Bono had achieved both pop celebrity and a House seat; he probably wasn't as dumb as her made himself out to be, and may have been a genius of sorts.

Bono's daughter, you see, was a lesbian, and this fact was known; but as a Republican Congressman Bono had to give props to the bigot wing of his party. So he did what any canny politican would do: he fudged, he personalized, he endeavored to turn attention toward the difficulty his choice forced upon himself -- and away from the difficulty his choice would cause millions of his fellow citizens. Sonny Bono was a clown, but he was no fool.

Sullivan, however, reads the situation differently: "I loved Bono's sentiments not because they were particularly coherent, but because they were so honest." Honest? Now look at what Sullivan says about other anti-gay-marriage Republicans with gay progeny:

I'm not privy to the strain the Cheney family must be under, nor would I want to be, but this is an issue that is hard to seal off from one's heart, because it is about the heart. And it's certainly sad that figures like Phyllis Shlafly should also have gay offspring…

Sad?Oh, let’s give these rich and powerful people more credit than that!

Sullivan seems to have missed that these people's prestige allows them to assume, quite reasonably, that they and their loved ones will be sealed from the consequences of their own political actions -- that no one will challenge Mary Cheney's money on the grounds that a lesbian handled it. Of course, they may be even more deep-thinking than that, and consider their kids a worthy sacrifice to the cause of their own power.

Is their case tragic? Potentially. But Cheney is no Creon -- he hasn't the moral stature of Creon. Actually, he hasn't the moral stature of a starving jackal. But he sure is smart.

As for Sullivan -- well, if one can't say anything nice…