Each morning that I bound out of bed to discover that the mercury in my outmoded thermometer has dipped about three clapboards below zero overnight and the winds are blowing the newest layer of snow to hell and back with such gusto I can’t see my neighbor’s place across the way, it occurs to me that this global-warming stuff is likely going to be the death of me yet, just as the professional doom-and-gloomers of the world have predicted.

Over the past month, each time sadistic Highway Snowplow Guy has pushed back into my driveway all of the globally warmed snow that I have taken such great pains to remove, I have reminded myself that it’s not even winter yet. If global warming continues apace through the three months of actual winter beginning next weekend, the joys of Mud Season won’t be upon us until next August.

It apparently has already driven us a little squirrelly up here in the crown of Maine, to say nothing of wrecking home heating budgets. Watching television one recent evening, I heard a reporter speak of how a downstate snowstorm had been especially hard on the natives, since “It’s still autumn down there.” Fancy that – the tony Portland crowd in The Other Maine condescending to be governed by the same calendar as the good burghers here in The Real Maine. Who could have suspected?

It is possible, I suppose, that the alleged global warming catastrophe-in-waiting – which appears to have replaced the once-favored nuclear winter catastrophe-in-waiting – may be producing sunspots and related phenomena responsible for a lot of strange events beyond weird weather patterns these days.

For openers, you’ve got Major League Baseball superstars cited as common cheaters by our own senator-turned-gumshoe, George Mitchell, for juicing themselves up on banned performance-enhancing substances, despite years of denying the rumors. So far, no overpampered jock has blamed global warming for this sorry state of affairs, but it’s probably only a matter of time until some enterprising defense lawyer employs the formidable greenhouse-gas defense for his baseball clients. Meanwhile, ballplayers’ salaries approach the $30 million per year mark, and choice tickets to the old ballgame cost more than the down payment on my first house.

Elsewhere, you’ve got your shooting rampage du jour, assorted charitable scams, fraudulent Internet practices and the like, each more unfathomable than the previous one. And you’ve got Oprah Winfrey’s gushy endorsement of Democratic presidential wannabe Barack Obama.

Only in America could a touchy-feely glitz-and-glamour television talk show host have the pull to lure up to 30,000 people to a South Carolina football stadium – not to watch a major college football game, mind you, but to make them a captive audience to an ambitious politician spouting pious platitudes on behalf of his desire to become president. If that is not the accepted definition of cruel and unusual punishment, it has to come pretty close.

Only in America might the politicians presume the natives to be so uninformed they will vote for president on the basis of some show biz personality’s say-so, rather than by way of reasoned assessment of the candidate’s ability.

“I’m sick of politics as usual,” Winfrey told the star-struck southern crowd as she warmed them up for the main event. “We need Barack Obama. There are those who say it’s not his time, that he should wait his turn. Think about where you’d be in your life if you’d waited when people told you to,” she said, in full talk show advice mode.

A recent poll shows Hillary Clinton leading Obama in South Carolina’s Jan. 26 Democratic primary race. The two candidates break even on the black vote there, and that’s where Obama is said to be hoping that Winfrey’s appeal will become a factor – along with her pull among women in general.

Oprah’s pull among women is a certifiable fact, all right. It used to beat me as to why, until I came to realize that the lady is an attractive and spectacularly successful promoter of weepy causes, a sort of female Phil Donahue, although not nearly as excitable. Show me the woman who doesn’t love a weepy cause and I’ll show you the rare one who doesn’t get the Oprah thing.

Whenever I float my theory amongst a gaggle of women I get my head handed to me, and I don’t suppose things are going to change much this time. To steal a line from Al Diamon, my old newspaper columnist friend from The Other Maine, “Oh, look. There comes a crowd of angry villagers now, bearing torches and pitchforks. I wonder what that’s all about.”

BDN columnist Kent Ward lives in Limestone Readers may contact him via e-mail at olddawg@bangordailynews.net.