Is the American Nazi Party the only organization with any integrity anymore?

Don't get me wrong, I find the Nazis' political views as repulsive as unrefrigerated sauerkraut. But I do respect the group for limiting membership to white supremacists only.

After all, most groups will let in anyone with a checkbook and a pen.

That became clear two weeks ago, when my colleague Robert Hardt Jr. reported that more than 20 staffers in Public Advocate Mark Green's office had joined a political club called the Gay and Lesbian Independent Democrats in hopes of locking up the group's mayoral endorsement for their boss.

Few of the staffers were "gay" or "lesbian" (at least one joined WITH HIS WIFE -- and she was female, even!) and none was "independent" (after all, they were already pledged to support Green). Were they even Democrats? No one knew or cared as long as they paid the membership fee.

Inspired by Hardt's story, I set out to join groups of all kinds -- Conservative groups, vegetarian groups, gun groups, anti-gun groups -- and discovered that the only thing that matters is money. Groucho Marx's old joke about not wanting to belong to any group that would have someone like him as a member has been perverted by the need for cash.

Although I am neither gay nor lesbian, I signed up with GLID, where the only membership requirement was deciding how much money I wanted to give ($15 gets you a "basic membership," while $60 makes you a "patron").

Fifteen dollars later, I was in. For all they knew, I was a member of the National Rifle Association.

In fact, I am! The NRA didn't mind that I object to guns and their proliferation. All it wanted was my $35 and my choice of which NRA magazine I want to receive free: American Rifleman, American Hunter or First Freedom (I chose "First Freedom"; who wants to look at dead deer all day long?).

Now I can go to cocktail parties and say "I'm the NRA and I vote!" -- even though I never vote NRA.

Next, I decided to see if the NRA's bitterest opponent would accept a card-carrying member of the gun lobby. Handgun Control was only too happy to have me.

In fact, for $10, the group even let me make my donation "in honor, in celebration or in memory" of anyone I wanted. I chose "in celebration of Charlton Heston" -- and still received an email thanking me for my "generous contribution."

Later, I signed up with the Log Cabin Republicans -- even though I'm not gay, not a Republican and, frankly, think log cabins are just so precious -- and joined The Catholic League -- despite one obvious pre-existing condition that should have invalidated me: I happen to like that painting of the Madonna with the elephant dung.

Even the VivaVegie society -- New York's "premier vegetarian-outreach organization" -- accepted me, a man who proudly consumes more beef, chicken and other animals that many countries. All it took was a $15 check.

The membership form DID ask whether I consider myself a "vegetarian advocate" or a "veg-evangelist," but I was told I didn't need to be either (thank God -- who wants to be sent, missionary style, to proselytise in Africa?).

VivaVegie leader Pamela Rice explained that the group is happy to enroll anyone -- even a meat-eater -- as long as he coughs up the $15 fee.

"How else can we teach them about the advantages of the vegetarian diet?" she asked. (Well, there's always dressing up as a peapod outside meat-industry events.)

And then I came to the sign-up form for the American Nazi Party, which requires you to swear to being "a white-Aryan man or woman of non-Jewish descent or ideals and in basic agreement with the aims of the American Nazi Party" and that you will "live up to the high standard [of] Adolf Hitler."

I couldn't sign (damn my "Jewish" ideals!). But at least Marx (Groucho, not Karl) had been turned on his head: I wouldn't want to belong to a group that WOULDN'T have me as a member.

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