Like whores and ugly buildings...

Like whores and ugly buildings, far-right kooks gain respectability as they age. Today's cases in point: G. Gordon Liddy and Phyllis Schlafly.

Liddy recently denounced Cindy Sheehan -- and the left in general -- as anti-Semitic. This ploy, of course, followed the disinformational words Rovian forces tried to place into Sheehan's mouth. The apparent tactic is to transform widespread disillusion over the war into a discussion of Israel. (When all else fails, change the subject.)

Younger folk may not understand why politically savvy oldsters laugh at the idea of G. Gordon Liddy as the Good Friend to Jews Everywhere. Liddy (who once declared his willingness to die for Richard Nixon, even though Nixon considered Liddy a crank) has long had an unwholesome obsession with all things Hitleresque. If Liddy ran a Burger King, the sign over the kitchen would read "Arbeit macht FRIES."

That obsession explains why he once tried to name the Plumber's unit ODESSA. I forget what Liddy's ODESSA stood for, but he meant the gesture as a fond homage to an earlier group called ODESSA -- Organization der ehemaligen SS-Angehoerigen or "Organization of Former SS Members." Liddy claimed to be in friendly contact with members of this group of Nazi funsters, whose leader was the notorious killer Otto Skorzeny.

Yep, that G. Gordon Liddy sure is a good friend to the Jewish people. Just don't ask where his lampshades came from.

As for Schlafly:

I was sickened -- so sickened I soon had to turn off the sound -- when Bill Maher invited this antique John Birch loon onto his show. I'm told she spent her minutes bleating about the Boy Scouts and the Pledge of Allegiance and apple pie and so forth.

If Maher -- or panelist Chris Rock -- had been a little hipper, they would have asked about her mid-60s opus The Gravediggers, which screamed that commies had infiltrated Washington. What set her off on that rampage? Oh, a good many things -- not least among them the "controversial legislation" that LBJ had backed in 1964.

Gee. Just what sort of "controversial legislation" d'ya think she was referring to?

And has she, in the years since, denounced her 60s-era opposition to equal rights? Not to my knowledge. That means she must still consider Johnson's "controversial leglislation" a mistake. Or a commie plot.

It's worth noting that Schlafly's husband Fred served on the board of the World Anti-Communist League, a group headed by Roger Pearson, a noted "scientific" racist who authored such works as Eugenics and Race and Race and Civilization. Pearson later joined forces with the neo-Nazi Willis Carto, while WACL remained largely under the influence of the Reverend Moon, notorious for his own links to Japanese fascists.

As previously noted, Schlafly had a long association with the John Birch Society, an ultra-right group co-founded by one Revilo P. Oliver. You might want to take a gander at Oliver's opinions on Jews and black people. Here's a hint: Oliver was the kind of guy who felt perfectly comfortable using the word "nigger."

(The right's been trying to play guilt-by-association games with Cindy Sheehan. Why not use similar tactics in the case of a Schlafly? In her case, the links are much stronger -- and far, far, far more ominous.)

The Gravediggers argued that American military policy was secretly designed to promote communism. That's right -- the commies are going to come streaming over our borders any day now...!

She also wrote A Choice, Not an Echo, which "revealed" that the 1964-era GOP was controlled by an eeeee-vil Bilderberger conspiracy to foster Marxism. This theory is succinctly described by the little bird who pops out of certain clocks once an hour.

Incidentally, the fact that her son is openly gay does not stop her from denouncing homosexuality as an abomination.

Just why would Bill Maher give airtime to aged wackos of this sort? And if the political dialogue must be expanded to include dingbats, why are only right-wing dingbats invited to Maher's belfry?

I'd like to hear from a wider array of oddballs. For example, whatever happened to dear old Bob Avakian, the guy who tried to start a Mao-style cult of personality within the Revolutionary Communist Party? Sure, he was silly. But Schlafly has always been sillier. And yet, she has always been genuinely dangerous, which guys like Avakian never were. Her associates have had access to money, which no-one on the far left ever had.