For some reason the local Albuquerque Journal has decided to run Cal Thomas' syndicated column three to four times a week. Readers of my column (there are three of you, I think) know that the columnist I love to hate is Suzanne Fields. But I hate Thomas even more. His columns are full of name-calling hatred and idiotic whimsy. Let's dissect and mock Cal Thomas, showing him the same respect he offers those who don't meet his standards of morality.

Let's start with his picture. He looks like he's wearing mask. Take Pee Wee Herman, make him older, slap a Hitler-style mustache on his face and you've got Cal Thomas. He looks like the MC of an early century German cabaret. But, it's not mask. His face is contorted by moral outrage.

Yes, he's one of those. He's a religious conservative. That means he wants to tell you and I how to live our lives. That means that he's appalled when Monica Lewinsky says that phone sex is "fun." It is fun. But Thomas wouldn't know that because it's only fun when you don't have to pay for it. Sorry, ad hominem, I know. Actually, I'm not sorry. He's a jerk.

In a more recent column, after the University of Massachusetts at Amherst released a study saying that kids were not badly affected by having working mothers, Thomas wrote a silly rant. First he accused the University of being a "hotbed of liberalism" (his ad hominem, I guess) and then he compared the study to tobacco company claims that nicotine is non-addictive and non-threatening. "I'm not buying it," he wrote "no matter how 'scholarly' the study appears." Because he's a jerk.

In his fourth graph he cites economist Robert Rector, who works at the Heritage foundation. Now, U-Mass Amherst is a "hotbed of liberalism" but the Heritage Foundation is... Well, most people call it a "conservative think-tank" which means its not a hot bed of anything, since conservatives have cold beds. I mean, I guess that's Thomas' logic. "You're a bunch of liberals, the Heritage Foundation says so!" Of course, the Heritage Foundation might say that to the Michigan Militia. You don't get more conservative than those stuffed shirts.

Rector tells him that forty percent of a woman' income go to pay taxes. That's why women work, because the tax burden is crushing the American family. And here I thought that low wages and weak labor unions were making life tough on people... How come conservatives can't write four paragraphs without complaining about taxes?

Thomas argues that "increasing numbers of women are tiring of the work grind and returning home." Well, gee, those girls can't stick with anything, can they? It's because their second chromosome is bigger it weighs them down and makes them slow. Then, there are the math requirements and all of that analytical thought...

So Thomas has built a great straw-man. In his view, lowering taxes means women don't have to work. Also, women don't like working. They want to go home and raise the children. It never crosses Thomas' mind that some women want to say... make a difference in the world. They might want to raise children and publish their thoughts in a newspaper, or raise children and a corporation. Or raise children and run for congress. No, they're tired and want to go home and the foamless don't need the income anyway.

By the end of his column, Thomas argues that we don't need more federal money for day care. He wants a tax cut so the women can stay home (if they choose, he writes, if they choose)ä But maybe we do need more federal money for day care. So that women can go to work. If they choose, if they choose.

That Cal Thomas is such a jerk.

Michael Maiello has a whole list of jerks he'd like to excoriate. Interested publishers may contact the LCN syndicate.