The Misanthrope's Corner.(cleaning files: items on People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, lesbianism, etc.)(Column)

'Killing two birds with one stone" has been the guiding principle of the well-organized person from time immemorial, but, as with so much else dating from time immemorial, it is now more or less unconstitutional.

Merely using the expression can get you in big trouble with People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, but I'll have to take the chance. I'm pruning my Idea Files, but meanwhile I have a column due, so I decided to kill two birds with one stone and write about what I find so I can throw it out.

When ordinary people make notes on ragged scraps of paper or clip newspaper articles and decorate them with necklaces of frantically scrawled marginalia, it's called "paranoia." When writers do it, it's called "research" and it's tax-deductible. These advantages lend an air of sanity but it's bogus. Idea Files are crazymaking by definition because a writer must constantly ask himself where something "goes." Paranoid amateurs don't have to make bricks out of their straw collection, but we do, so we keep re-filing some tattered clip in the hope that it will "go" with other tattered clips and be enough for a column.

Take, for example, the Dec. 26, 1997, clip from the Washington Times headlined "Geneticist Says Lesbianism is Cultural, 'Not Inherited,'" about the further findings of geneticist Dean Hamer, proponent of the theory that male homosexuality is inborn. Reluctant to get tangled up in a column that would expose my scientific ignorance, I moved this one from Gay to Women to Feminists to Men and back to Gay again without ever figuring out a way to write about it, adding new marginalia each time I re-filed it. The resulting necklace of notes reads:

"Flash from NR: Men are cradle gays, lesbians are converts. Scientific chivalry lets lesbians off the homophobic hook. At last the Breeding-Heart Right will have to blame something on the environment. Why there is no lesbian equivalent of the female impersonator: Because there's nothing to do. If you want to impersonate a man, all you have to do is sit still, stick to the subject, and say things once instead of three times. This lacks entertainment value."

Sometimes a new clip will segue flawlessly with a quotation from a book that I copied out years earlier. It's still not enough for a column, but the satisfaction is so great that I can almost hear a click as the two snap together in my mind.

This happened with a colloquy by Bonnie Erbe and Josette Shiner in the Oct. 31, 1999, Washington Times. Erbe, the liberal half of the team, deplored the behavior of Bob Dole during his wife's campaign for the GOP presidential nomination, claiming it was "purposefully designed" to sink her. Erbe cites his Viagra pitches on national TV while Liddy was trying to be sweet 'n' nice on the hustings, his public statement that Bush's lead was "insurmountable," and, most damaging of all, his announcement that he was thinking of contributing to one of her rivals (John McCain).