Google has regularly been receiving heavy criticism around the blogosphere -- mostly quite deserved, and some of it coming from this blog. This time, I want to thank Google.

(More properly, maybe it's Google Values I should thank.)

I get a fair amount of Google traffic, which is usually said to be bad, because it's not considered as "clean" as traffic coming from other blogs. Obviously, I'd prefer "clean" readers from blogs to "dirty" readers from Google, but I don't have much choice in the matter. Which is why I haven't been as interested as I perhaps should in the type of reader sent here by Google, and I've only given the Google hits an occasional glance.

But even my cursory glances began to reveal a pattern. Many readers directed here by Google had used the word "Values" in their Google searches.

Values? What kind of values? I wondered. So I googled the word "Values" and I was blown away to see that Classical Values came up first.

That's Number One out of 129,000,000 hits.

(A hell of a thing for someone who's never googled his values before to see, I assure you.)

This gave me a start, and the more I thought about it, the more humbled I felt. After all, this web site engages in satire, and satire means making fun of stuff. Especially the stodgier, more intrusive type of "Values" so often hurled in our face by people who feel that they alone possess the moral high ground to use that horribly overwrought word. I meant to poke gentle fun at them when I started this blog, and now I'm taken aback to see this funny little blog ranked higher than the Goliaths it makes fun of.

It's almost not funny, and I doubt it would be funny at all to some of the Goliaths of "Values."

The ultimate irony is that my own values are actually pretty conservative, as I hope most regular readers would acknowledge. Yet my conservative values mean nothing to the people who love to scream about values, for the simple reason that I don't agree with their way of looking at things. I think too many of the people who scream about values view the world through a sort of penis prism. (May Steven Malcolm Anderson forgive me for that bit of spectrumology!)

But seriously, they're more inclined to judge people by the content of their orgasms than by the content of their character. To the other "Values" people, homosexuality (and other sexually oriented things) is what it's all about. Christianity, morality, culture -- for them it all comes down to where a man sticks his penis.

And it's not so much actual homosexuals or even the practice of homosexuality that bothers them. As I remarked to a friend in an email the other day, the people I complain about have always struck me as more rattled by opinions than by conduct. It isn't physical homosexuality that bugs them the most; it's ideas. And despite the current media hoopla, it's about a lot more than the relatively recent idea of gay marriage. To the people I'm complaining about, mere tolerance of homosexuality means the breakdown and ultimate destruction of Western Civilization. That's too much. That deserves satire and ridicule. I grew so sick to death of this homos-destroy-Western-Civilization meme that it was a major reason I selected the name "Classical Values" for this blog.

And that's why I thought I should take a moment to thank my Google readers.

While I'm at it, let me reassure everyone that just as "the homosexuals" are not out to destroy Western Civilization, neither is Classical Values!

No quarrel here with tradition, either.

MORE: John Beck's comment below ("Kofi Annan rapes dead horses") coupled with Glenn Reynolds' "Michelle Malkin + Kinky" plot, makes me yearn for greater culture Googlification.

So why didn't I get any hits when I Googled "Kofi Annan rapes Michelle Malkin's Kinky dead horses"?

Can't we get along?

MORE: In the interest of full disclosure, I ought to note that a few holes are beginning to appear in my values. Commenter Urthshu thinks I should "start talking about dholes" (a new playpal for pits) so I can corner the word, but after researching and giving the matter considerable thought, I have concluded that the dholes may be suffering from a phthalate imbalance.

One breeding female for ten or more males?

Has anyone checked the dholes' phthalate values?