Ted.

History has blessed us with but a few notable Men Called Haggard.

The first, British novelist Henry Rider Haggard, wrote sprawling colonialist adventures beginning in the late 19th Century. King Solomon’s Mines charts a quest to uncover the spectacular riches of the titular Biblical King of Israel. Allan Quatermain features a lost white civilization brimming with internal intrigue and power-mongering. In the bombastic She, the indomitable goddess-empress Ayesha is obliterated by her own boundless ambition on the fiery dais of her sacred flame.

Cut to the 21st Century and detect a thematic foreshadowing in Ted Haggard and his New Life megachurch, the mere nomenclature of which on the scale of shameless American vulgarity tops even the Monster Truck Rally, the Multiplex and the Megamall.

Slick, camera-happy Ted succeeded in raking in untold riches for his congregation as the Biblical King of the Evangelicals. He headed his own snowy white Christian society rife with behind-the-scenes scandal and power-jockeying. Thanks to his epic fall from grace in 2006, this flaming queen was self-slain by his own sanctimony on the phony altar of virtue.

Maybe it’s just the meth talking, but of all the outed Arch Conservatives we’ve come to know and love, Ted will always be our favorite. If there was a Tiger Beat for disgraced Right Wing closet cases, Ted would have a fold out poster you could pin up on your wall during those dreamy lock-down days at Gender Reorientation Summer Camp.

All of his attributes are perfectly-tailored for maximized gaydar-triggering. He rocked that dopey Mayberry haircut that’s apparently mandatory for membership into the Republican upper echelons. He had the Xanax-controlled stand-by-your-man wife garbed in Laura Ashley and a fog of denial. His rictus grin was like a wall of giant Pepsodent-scrubbed teeth. There was even that doughy, austere cast to his face that every Family Values-fixated demagogue, Ex-Gay poster child and Fox News anchorman has, the kind that makes them look like villains in disguise from a 60s Italian spy caper.

Ted played his part almost too well.

How can we ever hope to choose his best gaffe? Was it his Cat That Ate The Canary cameo in the wince-inducing Jesus Camp wherein he all but dared the AllMighty to strike him down with a holy thunderbolt on camera? His being kicked to the curb by his beloved crush George Bush and his own credibility-challenged administration like a cheerleader shunned by her squad after getting double-teamed under the bleachers at Homecoming? Maybe his side-splitting, red-handed post-outing assertion that he paid a hustler and bought drugs, only to abstain from nailing the former and opting to just toss away the latter?

Now comes news courtesy of truthwinsout.org that Ted — after being declared “completely heterosexual” by his spin doctors — has washed-out of his ex-gay rehabilitation program. The Tedster completed only one year of his surefire five-year program (if it sounds like a prison sentence, consider that it’s exactly the median term served by the majority of inmates) before hitting the skids.

If there wasn’t already cynicism regarding the success rates of these Pray-The-Gay-Away programs, the fact that the New Life Church couldn’t even manage to cure its own Wonder Boy hardly makes for a ringing endorsement.

At this rate, probably every high-ranking Republican has a son or daughter secreted away at these concentration camps for the duration of the next year in the hopes that they won’t derail the next Presidential Election and/or damage the party’s queerly-tinged rep even more. Maybe Ted couldn’t stomach his own former line of bullshit, much less the constant reruns of The Passion of The Christ and 7th Heaven.

Or was it his cruising for monetary donations while in “restoration” that finally caused his handlers to finally throw in the towel and proscribe his ass out the door, advising him to seek out (No! Don’t say it! Anything but that! Do not utter those words in the name of God! Mine ears will bleed!) … secular employment?

Anything’s possible with Ted.

Whether he’s reformed, flat-busted or just a con man between scams, neither side wants to claim this train wreck. Picture him scaling a chain-link fence under cover of night with Mike Huckabee’s vegan/ animal rights activist son Job in tow, the pair bound for a flight to Ibiza or a mad dash to downtown Phoenix to flag down Ted’s former score JujyFruit.

Their prison break love theme: Survivor’s The Search Is Over.

Goodnight and good luck wherever you are, Ted. You were with us all the while … dickhead.