THE BELL CURVE:

As I write this, my dog, Gia, is barking up a storm. She is doing this because my next-door neighbor, Bill, is outside our common fence rolling his trash cans and mine to the street for collection tomorrow. He takes them out, I bring them in. We have been doing this for many years, even though we belong to different political parties.

Gia observes this model example of neighborliness with stern suspicion. As a result, she has raised hell on every trash day since she joined my family almost three years ago.

And if I am sure of anything — that the Angels will lose in the playoffs if they draw Tampa Bay, for example, or that John McCain will face down evil wherever and whenever he encounters it — it would be that Gia will bark next Tuesday night when Bill takes out the trash again.

She will not bark very long, only long enough to establish her ownership of the ground he is violating. Then she will quit, pleased at her performance.

The barking may last only two or three minutes, but it will assuredly be “audible beyond the boundaries” of my property. And under the ordinance the Costa Mesa City Council just passed, that could cost me a bundle every week that some non-dog owner reported it.

No, I don’t have to be reminded that I don’t live in Costa Mesa. I’m writing this because I want to take a stand with dog owners who find the terms of this ordinance excessive. And also as a preemptive strike in case Newport Beach is considering similar action.

What this kind of draconian approach does is to turn what could and should be a compromise over a sticky issue into a totally divisive one that separates the community into two camps: dog owners and the rest of the world.

I’m fortunate enough to be surrounded by dog owners, and we tolerate one another’s fractious pets as we do visiting hyper-active children who need a little tough love to become civilized. Dog owners don’t look kindly on excessive barking. But we don’t — or at least this one doesn’t — look kindly on excessive punishment, either.

There is no distinction made in this ordinance between the infrequent offender and the callous one, between the dog who barks all night and the one who is just protecting his property, the complainer with a legitimate beef and the one who just hates dogs. I guess the saddest part of this to me is the admission by passing such an ordinance that neighbors can’t solve such problems face-to-face. Or at least attempt to before calling in authorities.

Under the new ordinance, single complaints bring out an animal control officer who gives the offending dog owner 10 days to “fix the problem” before the fines kick in.

No matter how determined the owner is to accomplish the fix, a little patience added to the mix might save a lot of hard feelings.

But that has to come from both parties, and we seem more and more to be a society of factions. And that’s where the hard-liners come in. And the heavy fines. And, apparently, where we are now.

I watched Larry King’s several-hour schmooze session on CNN with pastor Rick Warren for reactions to his interviews with the two presidential candidates and didn’t learn very much. Mostly what I remember is that McCain was not in a secure room, as Warren said, while Barack Obama was being interviewed but was in a car where the security people with him could have had the radio on. And that Warren would never under any circumstances support an atheist for public office.

Nothing I heard or saw since Saturday dealt with my two concerns — that the buddy relationship between Warren and the candidates would color the intensity of the questioning and that an opportunity for follow-up questions would be overlooked. Well, both of them came about. There was obvious warmth in the exchanges, and there were no follow-up questions asked. The warmth didn’t prevent but may have reduced the acerbity of the questioning, and Warren obviously felt that the breadth of questions was better than the depth the follow-up questions would allow.

The other issue I tried to track down proved to be a non-issue in the aftermath of the event. Clearly some high-priced tickets changed hands. How many and for how much was never explained, only that the ticket money was used to defray expenses of the event and what was left over went into a fund dedicated to nonprofit church activities. We can only wonder if this needs to be checked into by the tax people.

I am also left wondering if the edge generally given to McCain after this event will be seen by the Obama people as a call to toughen his campaign. John Kerry was caught in this same place four years ago and chose to stay on the relative high road despite the acrimonious personal bile directed at him. Obama would appear to be addressing the same situation.

Perhaps the enduring result will be the crossroads to which it may have taken the Obama campaign. Or a softening of the determination of our nation’s founders to keep church and state strictly separate.

On the serious side, if the guy who has been phoning me for a couple of years about a gathering of local graduates of South Side High School of Fort Wayne, Ind., would just leave his name and phone number, I’d be happy to get in touch with him.

JOSEPH N. BELL lives in Newport Beach. His column runs Thursdays.