* If you grow up in Hawaii , raised by your grandparents, you're 'exotic, different.'

* Grow up in Alaska eating mooseburgers, a quintessential American story.

* If your name is Barack you're a radical, unpatriotic Muslim.

* Name your kids Willow , Trig, and Track, you're a maverick.

* Graduate from Harvard Law School and you are unstable.

* Attend 5 different small colleges before graduating and you're well grounded.

* If you spend 3 years as a brilliant community organizer, become the first black President of the Harvard Law Review, create a voter registration drive that registers 150,000 new voters, spend 12 years as a Constitutional Law professor, spend 8 years as a State Senator representing a district with over 750,000 people, become chairman of the state Senate's Health and Human Services committee, spend 4 years in the United States Senate representing a state of 13 million people while sponsoring 131 bills and serving on the Foreign Affairs, Environment and Public Works and Veteran's Affairs committees, you don't have any real leadership experience.

* If your total resume is: local weather girl, 4 years on the city council and 6 years as the mayor of a town with less than 7,000 people, 20 months as the governor of a state with only 650,000 people, then you're qualified to become the country's second highest ranking executive.

* If you have been married to the same woman for 19 years while raising 2 beautiful daughters, all within Protestant churches, you're not a real Christian.

* If you cheated on your first wife with a rich heiress, and left your disfigured wife and married the heiress the next month, you're a Christian.

* If you teach responsible, age-appropriate sex education, including the proper use of birth control, you are eroding the fiber of society.

* If, while governor, you staunchly advocate abstinence only, with no other option in sex education in your state's school system while your unwed teen daughter ends up pregnant, you're very responsible.

* If your wife is a Harvard graduate laywer who gave up a position in a prestigious law firm to work for the betterment of her inner city community, then gave that up to raise a family, your family's values don't represent America 's.

* If your husband is nicknamed "First Dude," with at least one DWI conviction and no college education, didn't register to vote until age 25 and has been a member of a group that advocated the secession of Alaska from the USA , your family is extremely "patriotic."

OK, much clearer now.

I think we're in great shape as a nation.

Support a woman's choice in reproduction issues, while at the same time striving to reduce the (perceived) need for anyone to seek an abortion and you are a "baby killer"; seek to deny the option to terminate any pregnancy, even in cases of rape or incest of a minor, and you are "family oriented." (Note: Alaska ranks among the top 5 states for rape, incest, and domestic violence.)

I'd go on, but it's too early to have to feel nauseated all evening.

-Thanks Aunt Marge.

Be good to everyone.