Like many others in the blogosphere, I am utterly smitten by Margaret and Helen, the elderly ladies from Texas whose blog was created as a way for them to keep in touch when one of them moved far away. Largely due to the outrageously funny and flamboyantly liberal posts from Margaret during the presidential campaign, the old gals have become something of a cyber-phenomenon. I gotta tell you Margaret is about to bump the cartoon character, Maxine, from her place as the embodiment of "who I wanna be when I get old."

Margaret is not exactly Sarah Palin's biggest fan [cough, cough]. Margaret actually loathes and despises Sarah Palin. She seems to have the same general level of disdain for Governor Palin that I always reserved for Phyllis Schafly, and for almost all the same reasons. Granted, Margaret gets carried away with her prose from time to time, but to be honest I could come uncorked thinking too much about Schafly or Gov. Palin, too.

The calculated use of hyperbole and satire are almost sacred obligations for any writer who wants to lampoon politicians. What Margaret may lack in the area of satire she more than makes up for in the area of hyperbole. She does get nasty sometimes, but her writing is so crisp and funny, I forgive her when she gets carried away. That's a large part of her charm.

The other day she wrote a post about Gov. Palin's trip to Georgia to campaign for Senator Chambliss. To summarize: Margaret was not pleased with Gov. Palin for making the trip and she is not a fan of Senator Chambliss. Margaret's post generally seemed to be along the lines that the Guv needs to go back to Alaska where she can screw up the lives of only a few people, and the people of the state of Georgia need to get real ... and get rid of Chambliss. Both of those things seemed like perfectly reasonable suggestions to me, although even I will acknowledge that Margaret was in something of a fine fettle when she wrote the post.

I usually don't read the comments on that blog, mainly because there are too damned many of them. For some reason, I scanned the comments to that post and came across some horrible evangelical screed. I haven't seen anything that nasty since I quit reading Episcopal Church-related blogs.

It would appear that, even though the election is over, the crazies are still lathered up. I would love to think that the Obama Administration will have support from a wide spectrum of America. I would like to see us join together to make the changes that are necessary in order to restore America's soul, repair our damaged relations with the rest of the world, and move toward a new future together. My fear is that the far right wing racists and Christianists will not let that happen.

I appreciate Margaret's humor, just as I appreciate the humor of Al Franken, and other liberal humorists. I see it as HUMOR. It makes me sad (and frightened) to think that so many people in our country are so narrow-minded, short-sighted and bigoted that they (a) cannot acknowledge that someone might have another point of view and (b) they get pissed off when somebody pulls their leg.

Come on, people: LIGHTEN UP!