First, Denis Leary. Now, Rachel Maddow

I might as well lay all of my cards on the table.  These next few factoids will, undoubtedly shatter a few stereotypes about gay men and shed all kinds of light on what kind of man I really am.

I watch "Rescue Me" -- have done so every summer since Season 2.  While the notion of a drama centering around a firehouse should easily every gay man's delight, every character on the show is extraordinarily dysfunctional.  Every. Last. One.  It makes this show all the easier for anyone to relate to -- who didn't enjoy some level of dysfunction in their own family as they were growing up?

I was more of a casual (read: I'd be in the room glancing up now and then as the show played) watcher before the next to last episode of Season 2.  (yeah, I know I'm sourcing Hulu. Sign up is free.  No captions on this episode - oi!).  I do not remember laughing so hard and crying so hard within the space of an hour.

Anyone that can illicit laughter and tears in the space of an hour is someone of which I'll be a fan for life.

Oh, yeah, and I listen every now and then to Playboy Radio and enjoy a good long belch every now and then.  Really.

And, if there was any doubt before, I'm now a fan for life of Rachel Maddow.  She got me to mine new depths of outrage, then had me howling with laughter . . in the space of 30 minutes!

So, there, multi Emmy-nominated actor on a basic cable show!

First, the "cover sheets" of the Worldwide Intelligence Updates presented to our previous President.  Full color photos.  Bible verses. BIG FONT.  I can't help but imagine that there had to have been, at least once, a finger puppet performance of one of these Updates in lieu of having to *ugh* read one of these things.

Not even me trying to reenact the possible puppet show relaxed my jaw and unclenched my fist.  The color photos I could let slide. But slapping Bible verses under the report titles . . that set me off!  OK, so as a rational grown up there are plenty of incidences of the Bible being used as justification for all sorts of atrocities (here is one directly from someone far more familiar with the Bible than I).

Then, the litany of voices from the right wing over Speaker Pelosi's alleged involvement with torture (I can't call it anything else) of prisoners years ago (and maybe even now? anyone's guess) just so some kind of frail link between the attack in NYC in '01 and Sadaam Hussein.  Newt Gingrich slathered the icing on this bizarre cake.  The outrage I can, again, let slide.  But Gingrich spouting off at someone for lying?  Check this out: