September 19, 2003 by s.z.

Head for the Bunkers -- We're Under Secular Attack! In today's Talking Points Memo, (Judicial Coup d'Etat) Bill O'Reilly alerts us to "the most important story the U.S. has seen in decades," right behind "the War on Terror."  And what is this really, really important story?  Rogue atheistic judges.  Bill says: There is a move in the United States to change the country. The ACLU is hooking up with a number of liberal judges to declare things that they don't like as unconstitutional. Now, a judge can declare anything unconstitutional -- you can interpret the words of the founders in many different ways -- but the will of the people has always been the driving force behind policy in America. This is changing and here's the best example I can give you. According to a Gallup Poll, 77 percent of Americans do not object to displaying the Ten Commandments in a courtroom. However, as we know, a federal court has ruled the display unconstitutional.  So it is not the will of the people that the judges are concerned about. Ah, but Bill, a survey of Alabamians (remember, this is a State building we're talking about, and so States Rights trump national Gallup Polls, right?) found that the majority of those polled did not approve of Roy Moore sneakily installing his own personal monument in the judicial building one night.  So, maybe the will of the people WAS done.  And I'm not sure really I understand Bill's point -- it seems to be that secular judges who hook up with the ACLU to stomp on the will of the people are bad, but that Christian judges who use grandstanding stunts to stomp on the will of the people are good.  Or am I reading him wrong? Oh, and speaking of using religion for self-serving ends, back to Bill: In my upcoming book, Who's Looking Out for You, I provide rock-solid proof that the Founding Fathers wanted spirituality incorporated into public policy -- that is, they wanted a definite morality right and wrong to be considered in policy matters. Oh, right, Bill's has a book coming out!  Since nobody has sued him about it, it clean slipped my mind and I bought Al Franken's instead.  Anyway, in MY book (which will be forthcoming as soon as Bill sues me), I will present rock-solid proof that the Founding Fathers, while firmly holding that there was a God which created us with certain "unalienable rights," didn't ever say that this was the God of Moses, Jacob, and Isaac, or the God of Roy Moore.  Also, they didn't want any particular religion incorporated into policy matters, and they believed strongly that "The civil rights of none shall be abridged on account of religious belief or worship, nor shall any national religion be established, nor shall the full and equal rights of conscience be in any manner, or on any pretence, infringed.'' Bill continues: Now the ACLU and some judges are hell bent -- pardon the pun -- on changing that and circumventing the will of the people. Yeah, those federal judges are going to hell, all because they didn't heed a Gallop poll.  We can only pray for their souls. Bill also provides a few other instances of high-handed judges, and they are, strangely enough, "liberal" judges.  No examples of imperious, know-it-alls who thumb their noses at the will of the people by, say, writing in state supreme court legal documents that homosexuality alone "is sufficient justification for denying that parent custody of his or her own children."  Now for the attack alert: It is obvious, ladies and gentlemen, that we the people are being directly attacked by secularists who want to change this country. They know they can't do it in the voting booth, so they are going to do it using the courts. Last time, I thought they were doing it through the vast NY Times organization, with its secular, liberal agenda dedicated to changing the country by writing unkind things about Bill O'Reilly in their book reviews.  This is no less than a potential coup d'etat and you should know about it. You know, what with all these potential coup d'etats, traitorous publishers always bringing up the date that the President declared an end to hostilities in Iraq, and liberal comic books, I just don't have time to worry about the economy and the loss of jobs and things like that anymore.  So, I must thank Bill (and Ann and their cohorts) for looking out for me.  Say, that would be a good book title -- I think I'll copyright it! 6:56:37 PM

J'Accuse Ann Coulter of Low SAT Scores & TREASON!        Okay, one last Ann Coulter item before I turn in.  In this week's column (if you want to visit Ann's universe for yourself, click the navigator link on the left of your screen), Ann responds to "the persistent, illiterate request" that she name a traitor, and names "Pinch Sulzberger, publisher of the New York Times." And why is Mr. Sulzberger a traitor? Um, apparently for publishing bad news about Iraq.  But Ann does give him an out: To be sure, if any liberal could legitimately use the stupid defense, it is the one Sulzberger who couldn't get in to Columbia University.  At a minimum, Columbia has 400 faculty members who start each day by thinking about how to get their kooky ideas onto the Times' op-ed page.  For an heir to the Times not to attend Columbia, those must have been some low SAT scores. Anyway, you might be wondering, "How does Ann know about Sulzberger being denied admission to Columbia?  Did they used to date back in high school. and she was there when he got the rejection envelope in the mail?  And so he confided in her that he had to settle for his second-choice, Tufts, which is also a fine school -- but while there, he met a nice liberal girl and dumped Ann, and she has never gotten over it, which is why she hates the NYT and liberals so much?"  Well, we wondered that too.  And as far as we can tell, Ann has no personal knowledge of Sulzberger's hopes and dreams of attending Columbia being crushed by his low SAT scores.  And news of his Columbia rejection is not available in any public source that we could find; however, we did find a reference to his father, Arthur Sulzberger, Sr., being denied admission to a fraternity at Columbia because he was Jewish.  Maybe Ann just got the names, details, and facts mixed up, and made up the rest, and that's what led her to accuse Sulzberger of treason.  Hey, it worked for her dream man, Joe McCarthy! We also found that back in May, Ann stated that Sulzberger was turned down by Harvard.  She apparently deduced this by putting together the fact that Sulzberger didn't attend Harvard with the fact that George W. Bush did.  And QED: "Those must have been some low SAT scores." Along these same lines, we note for the record that Ann's role model, Phyllis Schlafley, attended Harvard.  George attended Harvard.  But Ann attended Cornell and then Michigan State.  I rest my case. Oh, her column also has some blather about how the NYT won't stop mentioning the date of when Bush declared an end to hostilities in Iraq (which is pretty treasonous, all right), and that "Interestingly, we started to lose this war only after the embedded reporters pulled out," which seems to be implying that it was the "embedded reporters" who were doing the real fighting, and so it was treason to take them out of the war.  But the real raison d'etre of her piece seems to be that accusation re Sulzberger having low SAT scores.  No wonder Ann has been named one of our "top 100 Public Intellectuals."  But I accuse of her treason, because I don't like what she says, which is apparently the standard these days.  I hope she and Sulzberger get to share a cell and renew their high school romance. 3:57:07 AM

Search no more! We've got your nude Ann Coulter photo right here! 1:14:04 AM

Conservatives Call On Incredible Hulk to Cure Economy   In today column (Superheroes for saving Saddam?) by Brent Bozell, President of "Media Research Center, a Townhall.com group" (an organization apparently dedicated to searching web message boards for signs of liberal insurrection), Brent laments that: It was only a matter of time, I suppose. Comic-book superheroes have gone into the liberal political indoctrination business. Well, I have a 1978 comic book entitled "Mickey Mouse and Goofy Explore Energy Conservation," which proves that comic books have been doing liberal political indoctrination for quite some time, but let's hear Brent's specific gripes: The September issue of the DC Comics book "Justice League of America," or "JLA," presents Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman as U.N.-promoting paper dolls for a thinly disguised propaganda play against President Bush's war on Saddam Hussein. The story begins with a "napalmetto" attack on home soil. President Lex Luthor -- how nice, a supervillain standing in for President Bush -- [Note: that WAS nice, since nobody I know would describe George as "super"-- I bet even his Mom has to admit that he's pretty average] connects the terror attack to "Qurac" and says the "Joint Chiefs are recommending military pressure." Wonder Woman protests: "International law and the U.N. Charter forbid unprovoked action against a sovereign nation." She then lectures, "We cannot simply disregard international ethics to depose him ... what message does that send to the world?" (Ten-year-old Johnny must be on the edge of his seat reading this, don't you think?) Brent goes on to explain the parallels between the comic book and the Iraq invasion ("Where do you get off questioning me? ... It's unbecoming to question your president during times of international unrest"), and how Superman can't decide what he should do, until finally he vows, "I will know the truth, and I will not feel ashamed or be called un-American for demanding it." But the comic ends happily, when Superman wakes up and it was all a bad dream. Anyway, Brent did extensive research by reading a comic book geek message board, and reports: Mostly, comic-book fans prefer traditional fantasy situations, not the action-free, didactic lectures offered by JLA writer Joe Kelly.  "Someone needs to remind him that these are superheroes with outrageous powers and shouldn't be bogged down in political situations all the time," said one."  And if ten-year old Johnny is complaining about didacticism in his comic books, then the conservative establishment should take action, because this is serious stuff, dammit! Brent then clarifies what Johnny and the other ten-year-old online comicbook fans don't want in their reading material: In other words, can we do without Superman as Cyrus Vance and Wonder Woman as Madeleine Albright? Can they kick butt instead of lecturing on international law? Do they get to engage evil, or do they have to wait for a subpoena from The Hague? I agree that "The Adventures of Super Cyrus Vance and Ultra-Madeleine Albright" would probably not make a great comic book.  I recommend that Marvel discontinue this title from futher consideration.  And that's the bottom line we can take from Brent's piece of media research: that liberals should keep their politics out of comic books, because people turn to the comics for escapist fun, not for reminders of how, in real life, things are often complicated and nuanced, and require grown-up skills such as diplomacy, patience, tact, restraint, and "playing well with others" in order to achieve lasting results.  Just give us more outrageous super powers! Okay, message taken, Brent.  Even though comic book writers, even liberal ones, are free to put whatever they want in their stories (what with that First Amendment and all), I'm sure comic book publishers will appreciate your extensive message board research into what comic readers want. But then Brent concludes his column by informing us that: But in the "real world, it's not all an apocalyptic vision of rogue presidents and policemen bashing peaceniks who alone hunger for the truth.  It's not a grim vision of media outlets and citizens reacting like sheep to Pentagon directives . . .In the real world, people want a strong defense by action heroes, not just guilt-ridden lecturers waiting for universal agreement with their pacifist dreams." And somehow, we're not in the real world anymore, Toto.  Wow, "real world people want a strong defense by action heroes"!  I'd point out just how silly, misguided, and just plain scary this last paragraph is, but I think Super President's lawsuit against George Bush for infringing on his whole "Super Hero/U.S. President" trademark says it much better than I can, so I'm going to bed. But be sure to stay tuned for tomorrow's exciting superhero chapter, in which we reveal the secret identity of Bruce Wayne-ish reclusive billionaire, Richard Mellon Scaife.  Same Bat Time, Same Bat Channel! 12:28:36 AM