Not that this is a question, which should consume any of you, but on the odd chance you might wonder why I drink, here’s a perfectly good reason.

Since December, 2000, I have hosted a weekly talk show Saturday mornings over WFLA 970-AM, which comes out to about 400 shows give or take. That’s a lot of Dewar’s. It would be even more if I could drink on the air.

At any rate, over the course of all those programs I have had to contend with all manner of fruits and nuts, conspiracy theorists, right-wing huffers and puffers and left wing harrumphers.

Sometimes though, the reasoning of some callers completely baffles me. Even scarier, I suspect it baffles them too.

Last Saturday was one of those moments.

A angry caller weighed in, noting how he absolutely could not stand presumptive Republican presidential nominee, Arizona Sen. John McCain. Too liberal, too bi-partisan, too yada yada yada.

HOWEVER, in light of The New York Times recent story about McCain’s relationship with a Washington lobbyist, the caller had decided to happily throw his support to the senator.

I found this curious. I find many of my listeners curious. I am curious to know if some of them are even aware they are alive.

Explain something to me, I asked the caller. First of all, I inquired if the caller had ever even read a copy of The New York Times. He admitted he never had picked up and read the Old Gray Lady.

Now we were getting somewhere!

Explain something to me, I said to the caller. As of a few days earlier, the listener had had no use for that lousy, stinking, liberal John McCain.

But now a newspaper the caller had never read had published a story about a presidential candidate he couldn’t stand and on that basis the listener was now going to support someone they don’t like simply to make a gesture toward an entity they’ve never examined.

Uh, could the caller please explain that reasoning, to me? Things went downhill from here.

The caller repeatedly tried to attack The New York Times, which is very nice, but I had to ask how did he know the paper was the tool of Satan since he had never read it?

And I had to ask, alas often, what possible difference would it make to now support a political candidate he disliked, simply because a newspaper he never had picked up had reported something about the pol he wouldn’t bother to ever read?

Silence.

In the interests of fairness and admittedly I am a sucker for the surreal, I even put the caller on hold while I went to a commercial break to give the chap time to think his argument through a bit more.

It didn’t help. Once back on the air, the caller still couldn’t explain his thinking and by the point I was getting bored, so I let him slip back into the ether from whence he had come.

By the way, this sort of thing goes on for three hours, every Saturday.

And that is why, yes bartender I’ll have another. And make it a double.