As usual, Dick Cheney is right and Barack Obama is wrong.

It’s time to wave the pink flag and drop opposition to gay marriage.

I’ve changed my thinking on this one. Personally, I admit my opposition to gay marriage has always been on the same level as my opposition to the death penalty: I understand and appreciate the arguments against both intellectually – but in actual practice, I simply don’t lose any sleep over either. With the death penalty, I sympathize with moral opposition – but when a Ted Bundy takes that final ride on “Old Sparky” (or that final big sleep on “Old Lethal Injectiony”), my only real objection is that it isn’t televised.

Similarly, with gay marriage, I understand those who have a religious objection to the concept (unlike, say, every single liberal true-believer I’ve ever met in my life, I tend to err on the side of respecting other people’s religious beliefs…that’s how my mother raised me), but in actual practice, my reaction is, well, kind of Zen. It’s like the old philosophy question: if two gay men get married in Vermont, and I’m not invited to the ceremony, are they really making any noise that affects my life one way or the other?

Like most of my deeply held convictions, this one grew out of developments in my show business career (like, say, every single other actor I’ve ever met in my life, I am a remarkably shallow, self-centered individual). Recently, the NY Friars Club had a roasting competition – a series of celebrity roasts held at the club with a bunch of us comics competing for valuable cash and prizes (or a free chicken dinner with Mickey Freeman). The comics’ names were all thrown into a hat and matched up with various celebrity roastees. I got lucky. I could have been roasting Vincent Pastore (Big Pussy – how many more Lisa Lampanelli jokes does the world really need?), Gary Dell’abate from the Howard Stern show (since my own show on Sirius ended I don’t have my free subscription, so I’m not up on the latest Ba Ba Booey in-jokes), or Omarosa (apparently Puck from the 2003 season of MTV’s Real World wasn’t available). I got paired up with George Takei.

Are you kidding? Jackpot! Everybody loves George Takei! And talk about some easy targets for comedy: Japanese, gay, “Star Trek”… If you can’t write a few roast jokes for a gay Japanese Star Fleet navigator, you’re in the wrong business.

The show went great. Very funny stuff from Tom Cotter, Jim David, Cory Kahaney, and Gilbert Gottfried. My contribution to the festivities went well, and all had a good time.

George Takei was funny, charming, and gracious. His longtime companion, (now his, well, husband? Married partner? Mr. Takei?) Brad Altman, was equally charming and gracious.

Watching George and Brad together that night, it was hard to see how they were a threat to the institution of marriage. Oh, the institution is in trouble alright. Welfare policies that give young, poor women a financial incentive not to marry the father of their children (and, in turn, give the fathers an excuse to not take responsibility for their children) have destroyed marriage in the inner cities. The societal acceptance of middle-aged upper-middle class women adopting (or having, or surrogating, or whatevering) babies without bothering to include a father/husband in the picture has been a fiasco for marriage.

The glorification of knucklehead celebrities who use marriage as just another publicity stunt for their new movie/CD/reality show (host “Saturday Night Live,” get married, drop by “The View,” get divorced…) hasn’t helped. Neither has no-fault divorce, the all-purpose ripcord for the terminally lazy (because it’s easier to get divorced than to apologize for being such a shmuck).

Our mainstream pop culture doesn’t help. Like reruns of “Friends.” I loved the show, but I’d never let my teenage daughter watch it. Not primarily because of the sex jokes – but because of the way marriage is thrown away as a punch line (everybody on that show was either getting married by mistake, or getting pregnant without getting married, or getting divorced so they could get pregnant with somebody else’s babies, or marrying a baby, or…).

I think a large part of opposition to gay marriage is rooted in a mathematical fallacy: the “fact” that ten percent of the population is gay. There are 300 million Americans. So the concern is that you might be looking at thirty million gays getting married. That’s a lot of gay marriage! The ten percent figure comes from the Kinsey report. But Kinsey was a nut who based a lot of his data on studies of prison populations. The hoosegow in Kinsey’s time, an era of criminalizing homosexuality, by its very nature had a higher percentage of homosexuals than the rest of the world. I’ve lived in New York City my whole life. Even here I’ve always thought that the ten percent number was way high (except when I played Vince Fontaine in the 90’s revival of “Grease” on Broadway – percentage of homosexuals in your average Broadway musical? Ninety two percent. Rama lama lama!).

So let’s say the more accurate figure is five percent. That’s 15 million, as Jim McGreevy would call them, gay Americans. Subtract the very young and the very old. Narrow it down to the gays in their 30s and early 40s – your big marrying years. That’s probably one quarter of our 15, so three or four million. Now, subtract one quarter that isn’t even dating, another quarter that are dating but not seriously involved. Now we’re down to two million. Okay, we’ve got two million gays in committed relationships. How many of them want to actually get married? Maybe half. Now we’re down to one million gays who want to get married. George and Brad are already married, so you can subtract them. That’s just fewer than one million gays who might want to actually get married.

Out of those one million gays, 25 percent will break up over arguments about the wedding plans (The band! The centerpieces!). So it’s really only 750,000 gays. That’s 375,000 gay couples. Mostly in LA and NY. And Provincetown. In a nation of 300 million.

What will happen to those gay married couples? Let’s face it, half of them will get divorced just like everybody else. After the initial novelty wears off, the numbers of new gay marriages will probably drop. The whole thing will eventually (you’ll pardon the expression) blow over.

Conservatives: go libertarian on this one! Let the states decide, call it something else: union, partnership, really really going steady. And to George and Brad, much happiness and a belated “mazel tov” from Dick Cheney and me.

Neither is mine.

Fortunately Joel McHale & Co. monitor all of these fine programs-and countless others-on my behalf, identify their most absurd moments, then mock them mercilessly in an easy-to-swallow half hour of weekly television fun.  Welcome to The Soup, which airs Friday nights at 10pm ET on E! 

The show, which has existed in various iterations for years, has reached new comedic heights on McHale’s watch.  In a nutshell, it features 22 minutes of distilled television trash; the very worst of what American culture has to offer.  Degenerate attention-seekers looking for “true love?”  Check.  Startlingly self-absorbed celebrities padding their inflated egos?  Indeed.  Washed-up/cashed-strapped stars demeaning themselves for a paycheck?  Oh yes.  The Soup peddles in the lowest- common-denominator programming that’s beamed to cable boxes and satellite dishes from coast to coast every day. 

So why bother to watch? 

First of all, the show is hysterical.  It’s impressive to see what a group of good writers, a charismatic host, a green screen, and a few outrageous video clips can accomplish.  While the humor sometimes falls short (the brief on-camera skits are generally pretty lame), McHale’s sarcastic evisceration of what passes for entertainment these days reliably includes a handful of laugh-out-loud one liners.  Often the clips themselves are so preposterous that they don’t even require an additional punch line, but McHale delivers anyway.

Second, The Soup serves up a convenient Cliff Notes guide to popular culture on a weekly basis.  The fact that it’s so entertaining is gravy.  Like many people with jobs, I have neither the time nor the stomach to watch even a small fraction of the rubbish McHale skewers, but I still value having a basic awareness of the shows that millions of Americans-many of whom are my peers-regularly consume.   Do I care if Spencer (and his creepy flesh-colored beard) and Heidi are still “married” on The Hills?  Of course not.  But approximately 90 percent of high school girls (who will soon be eligible to cancel out my vote) know all about the picayune details of this soulless, made-for-tv couple’s pseudo-relationship.  If conservatives, already panicky about “young people” and how they’ll vote, have no clue what’s relevant to the very group they’re wringing their hands about, it may prove rather difficult to relate to them, no?  Perhaps this is a juicy rationalization I employ to justify watching the show, although point #1 is the only reason I really need.

Finally, the show generally reinforces traditionalist values.  Bear with me here.  Admittedly, when partisan snipes sneak into the script, they’re usually aimed at Republicans.  And yes, I’m aware that Keith Olbermann is a huge Soup fan, which does give me pause.  Nevertheless, the vast majority of The Soup’s content features McHale flogging the entertainment industry for its gutter values.  He repeatedly rips celebrities over their insufferable self-importance-a theme that conservatives can appreciate.  (That McHale reserves a special brand of antipathy for Tyra Banks wins him extra points).  He also blasts the depraved, over-sexed “stars” of reality shows who seem willing to jump into bed with whomever it takes just to extend their 15 minutes of fame by a few seconds.  His frequent references to sexually transmitted diseases are always good for a chuckle, but they also subtly remind the audience of how disgusting promiscuity and its consequences can be.  While many of these dreadful shows actually celebrate the ignorance of those who appear on them, McHale will have none of it; slapping down this type of foolishness with added gusto. 

The implicit message behind the derision is that it really isn’t cool to be myopic, rude, slutty, or ignorant.  The unseemly behavior glorified on these shows may buy someone a few weeks in the limelight, but will serve that person very poorly in the long term.

The Soup is certainly not for everyone.  Its content and humor is often crass and may offend some people.  It also may take a bit of time to grow on certain viewers.  Not everyone will be instantly enamored with recurring segments such as “Chat Stew,” “Let’s Take Some E,” or “Scenes from Home Shopping.”  Still, if your gut impulse is to ridicule, rather than to accept or even applaud, popular culture, you may find an unlikely ally in Joel McHale.  There will be an extensive menu of television options this Friday night.  May I recommend The Soup?