PUBLIC MARKS with tags young & back

I'm starting to think that if Jesus Himself came back to earth, there'd be no shortage of people around who would criticize his every move. I guess that's just the way we've become. When I managed to convince the hateful, horrible members of the Westboro Baptist Church to call off their planned "protests" outside the funerals of the little Amish girls in Pennsylvania, I didn't expect to get a ticker tape parade or anything. In fact, I wasn't looking to do anything at all except figure out how to use my radio show to thwart these people from hurting the Amish mourners any further.

The cringe factor is back in American politics. It suddenly doesn't seem all that long ago we were wincing over the significance of a stained blue dress; now, one finds oneself looking back on Mr. Clinton's proclivity for porcine young women with a certain nostalgia. Hummers, interns, cigars and ''I did not have sex with that woman'' suddenly seem almost respectable, even statesmanlike, compared with underage pages, Internet chats and ''do I make you a little horny?''