If, at around 10:25 p.m. last night, you heard something that sounded like 10,000 monkeys shitting themselves, it wasn't your imagination. That was the sound of irony dying. It happened just seconds after Rick "Man on Dog" Santorum professed to be concerned with the fate of gays. As long as they live in Iran.

Santorum declared his allegience with Iran's LGBT community during a Republican presidential debate in Iowa, which aired on FOX News. Santorum, our former Senator (R-Frothy Mix) was attacking libertarian candidate Ron Paul, who'd been espousing a live-and-let-live approach to Iran. Santorum leapt to the attack, asserting that Paul, like Obama, believed in a foreign policy in which "[w]e have to go around and apologize" to other countries. Santorum denounced the human-rights record of the Iranian regime, which he said "tramples the rights of women, tramples the rights of gays." (See it for yourself here, at the 45-second mark.)

I mean, what's up, Iran? If anybody's gonna trample the rights of women and gays, it's going to be the GOP. (Indeed, Santorum also said he opposed abortion even in cases of rape, since letting a woman choose to terminate the pregnancy would just traumatize her all over again.)

But I kid Rick. He was actually one of the more mature candidates on the stage last night -- which tells you just how completely off the spectrum the Republican Party has gotten. At another point last night,  Santorum took issue with current Republican It Girl Michelle Bachman, who refused to support a debt-ceiling hike, and has staked out a radical Tea Party agenda. "You can't stand and say, 'You give me everything I want or I'll vote no,'" Santorum said. "You need leaders, you need people who are good at leadership, not showmanship."

He even cited his own ... bipartisanship. I mean, there was Rick Santorum, one of the ideological warhorses of the far right, portraying himself as a paragon of compromise and bipartisanship. Of course, the kinder-gentler routine only gets you so far: Santorum immediately asserted he wouldn't compromise one iota on a tax increase.

FOX's online broadcast included a handful of homunculi discussing the merits of the candidates, and the general consensus of the panel was that Santorum acquitted himself well. But he was clearly frustrated with how little airtime he was getting: During closing remarks, Santorum said, "As you've seen here tonight, national media may not pay a lot of attention to us, but we pay a lot of attention to the people of Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina."

Oddly, he pronounced "South Carolina" with an odd southern twang. (I'm not the only one who heard it.) So apparently, he's not just become a bipartisan friend to the LGBT community ... now he's a southerner to boot. 

But Rick? The "national media" carrying this debate and allegedly ignoring you? It's your former employer, FOX News. Seems a little odd to be bitching about a lack of national media  exposure when up until a few months ago, you were been suckling from the wrinkled dugs of Rupert Murdoch.