Still, a man sees only what he wants to see...

and disregards the rest...

Frank Bruni, of the NYTimes, is in Plover, Wisconsin, analyzing the natives.  Something tells me, Frank never heard about the Wisconsin version of ... Minnesota nice. 

(Hint:  it's about being tight-lipped, not sharing everything you're thinking, and putting on a very nice front.  Still, when you dig a bit deeper, you might not like what you traditionally find.)

Tammy Baldwin, who has a very real chance of becoming the first openly gay or lesbian person elected to the United States Senate, stood with a 73-year-old potato farmer in his fields here the other day and asked him: “How hot am I?”

For the previous half-hour, the farmer had been boastfully showing Baldwin, 50, his equipment: the sorting machine, the stacking machine. And now, in response to her question, he nudged his thermometer close to her. I do mean thermometer, an infrared one, with which he’d just determined that the temperature of the dirt on this scorching July afternoon was 136 degrees.

He took a reading of Baldwin’s skin, which was a crackling 101.

“Wow,” she said, repeating a syllable that was getting a thorough workout as she deftly played a social role as traditional as any: the attractive younger woman stroking the older man’s pride. Her sexual orientation was irrelevant.

Because he didn’t care about it? Or didn’t even know? I had just a few minutes to chat with him before she and a few aides, doing a campaign swing through rural Wisconsin, arrived, and I got the sense that he was familiar only with her politics, the populist tone of which he said he liked.

“And the lesbian part?” wasn’t a phrase I instantly blurted out. The lesbian part shouldn’t be the deciding factor. And to judge from what I observed while shadowing her one day last week, it won’t be.

Baldwin, a Democrat currently serving her seventh term in the House, won’t know until mid-August which of four Republican aspirants she’ll face and precisely what kind of fight she’s in for.

But I don’t think its outcome will be governed by whom and how she loves. Not in 2012.

Not with all the change afoot.

Uh oh, here comes the confusing of celebrity culture with  ... actual impact on the ground.

I keep telling these fellas:  imagine you didn't see it on tv.  Do you see it on the streets or schoolyards of your community?  Trust me Frank (I've spent more than... one day in Wisconsin, observing how people act and think), superficialities matter little.

Look at the last few weeks, even the last few days. The high-profile wedding in the news over the weekend was of the retiring Congressman Barney Frank and his male partner.

The high-profile wedding the weekend before that was of the Facebook co-founder Chris Hughes and his male partner.

A male hip-hop star just came out; a prominent pray-away-the-gay advocate just conceded that sexual orientation is Psalms-resistant; Google just announced that it would promote gay rights worldwide, even in countries where homosexual acts are now criminal.

That’s not to mention Anderson Cooper’s recent acknowledgment that he’s gay, which elicited more yawns than gasps. The reaction befit a world in which Ellen DeGeneres is a pitchwoman not only for CoverGirl but also for J.C. Penney, whose catalogs this year included same-sex couples.

The specific issue of same-sex marriage still provokes fierce disagreement. But even factoring that in, the gay rights movement inexorably closes in on its real goal, which is not — as some opponents believe — for everyone to be talking incessantly about homosexuality. Among ourselves we don’t talk incessantly about it, trust me. We talk about dinner, diets and, during a summer like this, air-conditioning. We’re hot all right, but in the same weary, sweaty sense as everyone else.

Let's be real for a minute?

Mr. Bruni didn't spend one minute telling us why Rep. Baldwin would be the best person to serve Wisconsin in the Senate.  Didn't talk about what she's done -- very little -- in her 7-term Congressional job performance.  Instead ... he told us, once again, that yep, she's gay.

That plays well in the Madison area. 

Lots of  ... "rebelling" in the college youth, and in the aging who still seem to want to give the finger to the man.  If electing a lesbian --  because she's a lesbian -- is radical, we're on board.

But... eventually ... it comes down to getting the job done.  Who's got the most experience, the most drive, the most skills to best represent the people throughout the state?  (not just in Madison and surrounding environs.)

Tommy Thompson isn't gay, hence no mention of him in Bruni's piece today.  Still, although aging, he's got an impressive resume.  He might not be up to sweet-talking the elderly voters (Bruni's description of an eye-batting little lady, stroking her ways to the vote, saddened me.  It really doesn't have to be like that, Frank:  substance matters, even if you're stuck on the style stage...)

In short,

that's the stumbling block that gay writers, gay politicians and gay actors still have to struggle to overcome.  Honesty matters.

I'm not trying to be rude, but... does anyone honestly think Mr. Bruni would have been plucked from the food pages -- even with a working-man's journalism career -- not hopping to the top of the heap, but working his way up surely -- had he not been openly gay?

Bruni surely believes that. 

He has to.  He doesn't want to be the "gay columnist" character stock, so he tries to expand his repertoire, and spend a day here or there in the field, covering other beats.  Still, he brings himself, what he wants to see and believe, to his work...

He advocates rather than reports -- in this column, writing about Baldwin's sexuality in order presumably to downplay how much of this political rise really is about her primary personal characteristic -- what he wishes the world to be, rather than simply covering the way things are.

Too bad he couldn't or didn't spend any time talking with and listening to gay people in rural Wisconsin -- rather than folksy potato farmers performing regional schtick with politicians -- on their opinions of Tammy Baldwin's shot at being a Senator.  He might have been surprised, or learned a thing or two about being gay in this area, himself.

So Barney Frank got married this weekend?

Trust me, it wasn't in the Top 10 news in northern Wisconsin. 

And Ellen DeGeneres is capturing the stay-at-home-with-the-tv-on daytime mom crowd left behind when Oprah prematurely retired after her big political plug the last election go-around? 

That doesn't surprise me either, anymore than JC Penney's ad people saw fit to broaden their demographic appeal by including models of color.  I mean ... gay people. 

Really, is anyone surprised these days that middle Americans aren't fuming and boycotting a commercial department store, all because the consumer pitches aren't tailored to a lily-white straight crowd, but are deliberately inclusive in the hopes of attracting more consumers? 

No, that doesn't surprise me much either....

What would be very, very surprising to me -- and I'll wait to analyze it when it happens -- is if the Wisconsin electorate overlooks job performance, job experience, job platform and personal political promise all in the name of making history by electing a young (enough), attractive (enough), woman because she's got some immutable personal characteristic not common in the majority of the population that still makes her something of ... a thing of interest, based solely on that personal quirk.

No, I just don't see that happening.  Thankfully.

Better still -- for gay rights and individuals who happen to be gay, in general -- if that issue is truly off the table, and not being played as something ... special, to garner the media spotlight of the day, even if it's shadily done in the name of the personal characteristic not mattering a whit, beyond the consuming mention* that is.

We've still got a way to go, baby, out here in the real world, compared to how they play things on t.v.

But it might take more than a few days observation, a bit more dedication to the truth of the work, to pick up on that...  Not surprising.

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*I'm going to predict here:  if you asked the average Wisconsinite to mention the first thing that comes to mind in describing Baldwin -- those who are familar with her name -- it's the gay thing. 

Every campaign, it comes up. 

The feature stories ... all feature it.

Every campaign, every election...

The details of her work?  Her "signature" issues?  How she's defined her political career, and what types of legislation she's specialized in?

It all comes in a distant second to campaign press reports, like Bruni's today, of her sexuality.  

I think in an economy like this, in a split Senate where every vote counts, Wisconsinites want more than an asterisk noting that we "made history" and helped advance the career of one gay person, at least.  In the long run, that fact alone is pretty meaningless to the group as a whole...

Best to stay focused on the work.  Even someone not inclined to vote for a minority isn't going to cut off their nose to spite their face if that person proves, over time, to be the best person for the job.

Wisconsin gets that.

I suspect, America as a whole, does too.