Just as those of us here in the Heartland are getting over the incredulity of seeing a Former Olympic Decathlon Winner shave his legs, augment his topside, put on a dress, pose for Vogue magazine, and declare that you CAN call him Shirley…or Caitlin…or whatever…comes a story that’s even weirder.

The Washington Post reported yesterday that

A controversy is raging over whether a prominent Washington state civil rights activist and Howard University graduate who claimed she was African American is actually white.

Rachel Dolezal, 37, is the president of the Spokane NAACP and has claimed to be the victim of a number of hate crimes. As questions were raised about the veracity of some of her reports this week, a white couple from Montana came forward to claim that Dolezal is their daughter.

Earlier this week, KXLY4 asked Dolezal about a photo posted to the NAACP chapter’s Facebook page of a black man identified as Dolezal’s father.

“I was wondering if your dad really is an African American man,” Jeff Humphrey of KXLY4 asked Dolezal.

“That’s a very … I mean, I don’t know what you’re implying,” Dolezal said.

“Are you African American?” Humphrey said.

“I don’t understand the question,” Dolezal said. She walked off-camera as Humphrey asked: “Are your parents, are they white?”

Dolezal did not return requests for comment.

In a telephone interview with The Washington Post and others, Lawrence and Ruthanne Dolezal of Troy, Mont., said Rachel Dolezal is their daughter, and that they are Caucasian.

“There seems to be some question of how Rachel is representing her identity and ethnicity,” Lawrence Dolezal said. “We are definitely her birth parents. We are both of Caucasian and European descent — Czech, German and a few other things.”

The Dolezals provided The Post with family photos of Rachel as well as what they said was her birth certificate.

Lawrence and Ruthanne Dolezal, a Christian couple who adopted four young children — two of whom are black — while Rachel was a teenager, said her decision to misrepresent her racial background, if that’s what she’s doing, may be related to her family and social justice work.

“The adoption of the children definitely fueled her interest as a teenager in being involved with people of color,” Ruthanne Dolezal said. “We’ve always had friends of different ethnicities. It was a natural thing for her.”

Lawrence Dolezal said his daughter was involved in Voice of Calvary, a “racial reconciliation community development project where blacks and whites lived together,” while at Belhaven University in Jackson, Miss.

“You speak and sound and act and take on the mannerisms of the culture you live in,” he said. When Rachel applied to Howard University to study art with a portfolio of “exclusively African American portraiture,” the university “took her for a black woman” and gave her a full scholarship.

“You’ve got a white woman coming in that got a full-ride scholarship to the black Harvard,” Lawrence Dolezal said. “And ever since then she’s been involved in social justice advocacy for African Americans. She assimilated into that culture so strongly that that’s where she transferred her identity.”

He added: “But unfortunately, she is not ethnically by birth African American. She is our daughter by birth. And that’s the way it is.”

For the past five years of writing this blog, I have been pointing out how our nation has been traveling sown the Slippery Slope of Relative Morality and Situational Ethics. And, how this country seems to have resigned itself to the notion that “whatever gets you through the night…it’s alright…it’s alright”, as the late John Lennon sang.

However, where does “self-realization” end and honesty and simply being a good person begin?

Are Bruce…Caitlin…Whatever…Jenner and this “Homegirl” wannabe being true to “themselves” or to their pocketbooks?

Or, are they both just “Mentally Irregular”?

With those questions in mind, sitting here on a hot Saturday Morning in Dixie, I put fingers to keyboard, and came up with this little ditty.

Everybody sing…

WEIRDO (Sung to the tune of “Lola” by the Kinks)

I saw her in the paper just the other day
She was on the front cover and certainly did look weirdo…
W-e-i-r-d-o
Her picture looked so familiar to me
Didn’t I see her on a box of Wheaties?
Wheaties W-h-e-a-t-i-e Wheaties…

Now, that threw me and I wasn’t sure
But, wasn’t she a guy and now she’s a girl?
Oh how weirdo wa-wa-wa-wa weirdo
Well I’m not dumb but I can’t understand
Why she looks like a woman, but lusts like a man
Ol’ Bruce Jenner…J-e-n-n-e-r…Jenner…

Here in the Home of the Brave and the Land of the Free,We can be anything that we want to be,
For wealth or fame or pride or money
We can even change from a dude to a honey

 Now, I’ve a big heart and am a compassionate guy
But, I think ol’ Caitlin’s pullin’ a con. She’s still Bruce Jenner.
Ja-ja-ja-ja Jenner Ja-ja-ja-ja Jenner
Jenner Ja-ja-ja-ja Jenner

Is it identity or fame?
Either way, it’s so lame
His inner “woman” came out
Please put “her” back in
I can’t look anymore…I may throw up

Well that’s the way that this story goes
I still think that “her” story blows. Ol’ Bruce Jenner
Ja-ja-ja-ja Jenner
Bruce was a boy and now he’s a girl
Was it for contentment or his pocketbook?
Ja-ja-ja-ja Jenner

And, now we have another weirdo hack
Her folks say she’s white, but she says she’s black
I guess this weirdness goes all the way to Spokane
Now, the N-double A-C-P will never be the same again

Well I sure do miss the Good Ol’ Days
When the Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave
Was not so weirdo
Wa-wa-wa-wa weirdo Wa-wa-wa-wa weirdo
Wa-wa-wa-wa weirdo Weirdo Wa-wa-wa-wa weirdo…

Until He Comes,

KJ