I was reading the letters to the editor in last week's Globe and came upon this one from a professed "liberal" chastising his "fellow" "liberals" for making light of Jerry Falwell's demise.

As I noted, the letter-writer, a certain Richard Smith of Acton, starts off by claiming to be a liberal, possibly in the hopes of getting into The Globe's good graces so that he could see his letter in print.

But Richard Smith of Acton might just as well be claiming to be Anne of Green Gables or The Second Coming. I am a Tibetan Mastiff myself, and the reincarnation of Tinker Bell.

If only saying it made it so I would wave my little wand and be back in the Himalayas before you could say "you silly ass."

But you see, saying it doesn't make it so.

Call yourself what you will. The proof is in the pudding.

Not that I care either way where Richard Smith of Acton is concerned. He may be liberal, or he may not be but thinks he is. Or he may know he's not and has set out to deceive us all, crafty devil.

And anyway "liberal" is a stereotype. Stereotypes can, of course, be useful for talking about others, but clever people never use them when referring to themselves. So strike two against Richard Smith of Acton.

Once people start spouting off "I'm a liberal!" "I'm a Christian!" "I'm an artist!" "I'm a Philatelist!" "I'm old school!"* "I'm a Male-to-Female Lesbian Protopunk Vegan Bicycle Courier!" (we have several in our neighborhood)—or whatever, you know it's going to be a long night. You're dealing with someone so substanceless to themselves that they need to keep looking at their own label to remember what product they're supposed to be advertising. And no one's buying anyway.

And it's redundant besides. Other people are more than happy to label you for you, free of charge, sometimes from passing cars, and you can bet they'll be a fair bit more accurate about it, too.

Most people understand that labels have limited usefulness. "Motorist," "Voter," "Homosexual" (as opposed to "Queer") are examples of labels used in certain settings, but utterly irrelevant in others. While "Taxpayer," "Schlub," and "Disgruntled Postal Worker" are examples of labels that tend to work 24-7.

The tendency to self-label can range from the benignly amusing (mostly in children—"I'm The Decider!") to the irritating (no one wants to discover that there's Miracle Whip in the mayonnaise jar, kidneys in the favabean can, or superglue in the KY tube) to the downright embarrassing ("I am the Messiah and the world will end any minute now"). In most cases it's not harmful: you merely drop twelve to twenty-seven IQ points (depending on what you label yourself, if you have to ask).

As for Richard Smith of Acton: objectively speaking, I see no evidence that he is much of a liberal, however defined, however much he may profess to be. His letter seems like a stealth attack on gay marriage, in fact. Big yawn, Richard Smith of Acton. Get a life. I mean, there's an issue that's given busybodies everywhere something to natter on about endlessly, hasn't it?

I certainly would not put it above the enemies of liberalism (however they define it) to pose as liberals for the nefarious purpose of insinuating themselves into the pages of wicked liberal papers like The Globe and The Times, although it seems The Times is better at weeding them out.

The Globe might have known Smith was an imposter. It's very typical, after all, for righties to accuse lefties of being hypocritical, as Mr. Smith does in his letter. And "liberal tolerance" is their common taunt: if you liberals are so tolerant, how come you can't tolerate bigots, homophobes, misogynists, and hate-mongers? What are you, a bunch of hypocrites?

Mr. Smith, still pretending, unconvincingly to my mind, to be a liberal, argues this case very ably: "As liberals, we like to say that we respect all points of view, but there always seems to be a lot of name calling and insults directed at those with whom we disagree." This from a man who just called us all a bunch of hypocrites.

But more to the point, I don't know even any self-professed liberals who say that they respect all points of view. At least not when they are amongst other liberals in our secret cabals. Oops! Did I just say that? Looks like the cat's out of the bag!

I have a confession to make: I looked Richard Smith of Acton up on the liberal database, and am chagrined to report that he does not have the Mark of the Beast, which means, sadly, he cannot be one of us.

But seriously. Is there anything immoral, as Mr. Smith insists, in a joke or two at the expense of an old jokester like Falwell? And you don't have to be a self-professed liberal or a hypocrite to see a charlatan for what he is. In fact the less you rely on those labels, the more of that sort of thing you see.

Because labeling yourself and others is not just an expedient, it's a worldview.

Frankly, there are a lot of people out there who've been having Miracle Whip out of the mayonnaise jar for so long they don't know and don't care that it's not mayonnaise anymore. Richard Smith of Acton may be one of them.

Note: Thank you to all those who voted for the inclusion of my abs...


... in "The New Seven Wonders of the World" list. I am very flattered. We thought we definitely should have edged out The Eiffel Tower, but unfortunately, we were just twelve votes—TWELVE VOTES!—shy. A LOT of politics going on behind the scenes is all I can say. But never mind. Being the eighth wonder is OK by me.
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*And I was old school when old school was new school, which is to say, I was old school when old school wasn't cool, bitches, so don't even.