Hypocrites and sepulchers.

• Author: Clinton, Kate
• Position: Republicans

The almost-three-year-old of a friend of mine is just learning to talk and is fascinated with long, multisyllabic words. The family was in church, up in the front, listening to the Sunday sermon, when the pastor cranked into a froth about, and I'm paraphrasing here, hypocrites and whited sepulchers.

That's all the three-year-old needed to hear. Her ears pricked up faster than Joe Orton's, she stood up on the pew, turned to her fellow parishioners, and began to pipe louder and louder, "Hypocrites! Hypocrites! Hypocrites!" Her mother confessed to me that, before hauling her down off her perch, she did let her go on a bit.

Do let me go on a bit about the Republican Presidential hypocrites. More about the whited sepulchers later. Does it seem to you that before announcing their candidacies at the special prayer breakfast at Nashua, New Hampshire's, quaint Ruddy Old Guys in Mesh Caps Family Diner, the Republican ever-hopefuls took a Hypocritic Oath in the private, pine-paneled banquet room? Or do I have a microchip embedded in my right buttock?

The New Republic, that intrepid muckraking magazine (who can forget the special Black History Month feature, "Cornel West Is Not Really Black"?), broke the hard-hitting story that Phil Gramm had invested in a porno movie. Gasp. Unanswered questions: Was the screenplay based on the soft-core novel of Newt Gingrich? Was Sophia Loren involved? Did it show up in Clarence Thomas's Blockbuster file? How many times?

I don't know who broke the Pete Wilson story - disgruntled Kathleen Brown operatives? Rosa Lopez? Jose Canseco? - but it's a twofer. First, not only did Proposition Pete Wilson have in his underemploy for a number of years an undocumented worker and neglect to pay her social-security taxes. There goes that Supreme Court seat. But second, he also tried to tag the blame on his ex-wife. Whoops, there goes the gals' vote.

A late entry into the Republican run for the Rose Garden, who spoiled the Seven Dwarf analogy, is another Californian, Bob Dornan. He never appears without cardboard flats of the whole Dornan brood set up behind him. Fine-looking Farkels you've got there, Bob.

Dornan got his start on C-Span, which prompted the Up With People for the American Way people to call for a scrambler on C-Span. Not that old Bob needs a scrambler. A loving Christian man spewing hate, his late-night longer-than-Castro-on-a-good-day speeches are wild rambles from family to fisting to his Catholic faith to veterans...