You, Too, Can Write a Frank Rich Column!

Did you ever wish you were one of those big-time journalists in Manhattan, sitting in a nice office, opining on the state of the world each week and getting well paid for it? Would you like to say the same thing over and over again at tiresome length, in prose that reads like it was translated from the original Hungarian? Would you like to occupy and depreciate some of the most valuable journalistic real estate in the country?

Well, you can. All you have to do is follow a few simple rules.

Like most of his fellow, very bad, Op-Ed writers on the New York Times, Frank Rich — non-bestselling author and showbiz wannabee — has a few little bugbears and bogeymen he likes to write about each week in the course of wasting oceans of ink and newsprint in his mind-numbing essays about… well, pretty much nothing, except the usual suspects: show tunes, gay rights, and Those Darned Republicans.

So why don’t you try it? Just follow the erstwhile Butcher of Broadway’s lead. First, start with some cheap pop-cultural reference:

Of all wars, only culture wars offer the hope of sheer, unadulterated hilarity. Sex and hypocrisy were staples of farce long before America became a nation, and they never go out of style. Just listen to the roaring audience at the new hit Broadway revival of the perennial “La Cage aux Folles,” where a family-values politician gets his comeuppance in drag. Or check out the real-life closet case of George Rekers, who has been fodder for late-night television comics all month.

La Cage aux Folles is great because it’s also a two-fer: not only a show whose praises Rich has been singing for decades, but also one that introduces his other favorite theme: homosexuality and gay rights.

Rekers is in a class by himself even in the era of Larry Craig and Ted Haggard. A Baptist minister and clinical psychologist with a bent for “curing” homosexuality, the married, 61-year-old Rekers was caught by Miami New Times last month in the company of a 20-year-old male escort at Miami International Airport. The couple was returning from a 10-day trip to London and Madrid. New Times, which published its exposé in early May, got an explanation from Rekers: “I had surgery, and I can’t lift luggage. That’s why I hired him.”

Alas, a photo showed Rekers, rather than his companion, handling the baggage cart. The paper also reported that Rekers had recruited the young man from Rentboy.com, a Web site whose graphic sexual content requires visitors to vouch for their age. Rentboy.com — really, who could make this stuff up?

Never heard of George Rekers? Who cares! He’s a Christian and a cultural conservative, and that’s all that matters when Inspector Rich of the Hypocrisy Police comes a callin’.

Though he’s not a household name, he should be. He’s the Zelig of homophobia, having played a significant role in many of the ugliest assaults on gay people and their civil rights over the last three decades. His public career dates back to his authorship of a theoretically scholarly 1982 tome titled “Growing Up Straight: What Families Should Know About Homosexuality.” (I say theoretically because many of the footnotes cite his own previous writings.) And what did Rekers think that families should know? By Chapter 2, he is citing the cautionary tale of how one teacher’s “secret homosexual lifestyle most likely led to his murder.”

Next, it’s obligatory to drag in one of your stock villains. If Sarah Palin’s not available, there’s always —

Rekers soon went on to become a co-founder with James Dobson of the Family Research Council, a major, if not the major, activist organization of the religious right as well as a power broker in the Republican Party.

Getting the hang of it? Great! Now, go on to —

• cite Rachel Maddow as a source.
• hammer Anita Bryant, even though her heyday came in the seventies.
• try to relate the whole mess to Elena Kagan, thus giving your column a patina of topicality.

It never hurts to resort to a little historical revisionism:

Despite her critics’ cries, Kagan never banned military recruitment of law students and never denigrated the military in word or deed. She followed Harvard’s existing (and unexceptional) antidiscrimination policy while a court battle played out over a Congressional act denying federal funds to universities barring military recruiters. She was so cautious — too cautious, I’d argue — that she did not join the majority of her own faculty in urging Harvard to sue the government over the funding law, limiting her action instead to the signing of an amicus brief.

Kagan’s side lost, 8-0 in the Supreme Court.

Finally, wrap things up with a stirring finale, appealing to the better angels of our nature — but be sure to bash Bush as your readers stream for the exits!

The real game became clear when that same week a former Bush aide and Republican Senate staffer published unsubstantiated rumors about Kagan’s private life in a blog at CBSNews.com. (It was taken down after White House denials.) Those rumors have chased all unmarried Supreme Court justices or would-be justices loathed by the right, whether Republicans like David Souter and Harriet Miers or the previous Obama choice, Sonia Sotomayor.

By late last week, double-entendre wisecracks about Kagan’s softball prowess were all the rage on Fox News and MSNBC. These dying gasps of our culture wars, like Rekers’s farcical pratfall, might be funnier if millions of gay Americans and their families were not still denied their full civil rights.

Think you’ve got what it takes? Go ahead, give it a try.