Jonny Rice For NAE el Presidente!

I'm officially throwing my hat into the ring, ladies and gentlemen. Congratulations, Evangelical America, you're having the Best Week Ever!

In top secret phone conversations with J.S., I mentioned how I really didn't care that much if Ted Haggard was gay, or even just bi-curious. It was as much a blip on my "holy crap radar!" as last week's outing when that one guy who plays George an Grey's Anatomy (who I get confused with that other one guy who played Jonathan on Buffy the Vampire Slayer) came out of the closet. As for my official position, I'm inclined to believe that this was Ted's first and only sexual encounter(s) with another man, and that he's probably been a very confused individual since it happened. I guess I'm so used to hypocrisy from famous leaders that I expect it as the norm (rather than the exception). I'm rooting for him to pull through, and if not write an awesome fall-from-grace bestseller, at the very least see him sign up for a Myspace and record his journey back from the dead. In other words, Ted Haggard, you've got a friend in me.

That being said, NAE board chair Roy Taylor told Christianity Today, "We hope to have an announcement next week as to who would be an interim president. And then the executive committee will consider a recommendation to the entire board for the future as to whether we continue with our more recent arrangement with a president who's primarily a spokesman or if we will go back to having a full-time president." Which brings yours truly into the picture.

I will be your next president, NAE. I am still mostly an evangelical. My church attendance has been spotty since college, but I bet D.L. Moody's was too! I'm down with divine inspiration, I think God has knowledge of future events, I don't speak in tongues, and I can quote Psalm chapter 1 by heart thanks to my many years at Freedom Farm Christian School (where Christianity Today was thought to be a "liberal" publication). So you see, I can bridge the divide between the fundamentalists and the evangelical left! There's reconciliation flowing through these veins! And no drugs! Plus, I've never had sex! With a chick or a dude!

In other words, I am something like 67% holy. Which, in today's world, is pretty freaking amazing. I will clean up the corruption in Colorado Springs. I will cut taxes for working class Americans. I will bring our troops home. I will balance the budget, halt reckless government spending, provide universal health coverage, rebuild our schools, hire more teachers/police officers, find and kill the terrorists, rescind the Patriot Act, drive out the foreigners, build huge fucking fences, restore integrity back to Congress, make our teenagers virgins again, wipe away every tear, and forecast infinite consecutive quarters of hot economic growth. A vote for Rice is a vote for dreams come true!

Vote Jonny Rice this November. Together, we can build a brighter tomorrow so that the sun can provide us with energy dependence from foreign oil and our cars can run on banana peels and the fevered dreams of Sudanese orphans. Thank you.

(No one paid for this ad because it's on teh internets and you are powerless to stop me foolish, boot-licking FCC dog-soldiers who kowtow to Stephen Spielberg's R-rated movies even though there are much better filmmakers producing much better films which more richly deserve to be aired unedited on network TV but won't because they didn't start out making freaking ET or whatever the hell it was that made you love him so much in the first place.)

posted by jonny @ 12:28 PM