March 17, 2005 by s.z.

Who Said It?   St. Patricks Day Edition First, we will reveal our Mystery Guests from last time:  1.  Ari Fleischer.   (Roger Ailes brings us the news about how President Bush has called on Hezbollah to disarm Ari, who has apparently gone nuts and became one of those dangerous, gun-wielding loners since leaving the White House. 2.  Karen Hughes  3.  Bill O'Reilly 4.  Condi Rice 5.  Mel Gibson While Dave named them all, we think that steroids were involved.  Therefore, while we hold Congressional hearings on the matter, we will give a point to everybody. So, a point to Dave, Clif, teh l4m3, Singularity, Ted,  Annti, john b, Goseph Gerbils, and Sandals.  Oh, and a kidney to Thomas Sowell.  Our winners can save up their points and use them for such fun prizes as "Punchy O' Reilly" pens, available from Dollar Days: Punchy O' Reilly pen lights up when you write. Buttons on back to control boxing arms. Black ink. May the luck of the Irish be yours today.       Now, name the pundits of Irish ancestry who said the following:     1.  After devoting most of her column space to a transcript of Ashley Smith's testimony, who wrote thIs? It is an idiot's errand to follow such testimony with commentary. It's too big. There is nothing newspaper-eloquent to say. We have entered Flannery O'Connor country, and only geniuses need apply. Oh, and then she followed such testimony with non-genius commentary, to include this: Is it a matter of happenstance, is it without meaning, that America was taken by this drama at Eastertide, in the days before Palm Sunday, when a wanted man rode by donkey to an appointment at Golgotha? Is it an accident that a great but troubled country that yearns so to be good is given such instruction at this time?   2.  Which Irish-American pundit wrote this in his most recent book: Evil exists. It is real, and it means to harm us. I believe this strongly, and not just because of my Catholic faith, although that's the root of it. When you work in the news business, you deal with the ugly side of life. Of course, you should keep in mind that he helps to make the news business a lot more ugly, so his experiences might not hold true for everyone.     3.  The following passage comes from the book of which commentator (a guy who makes much of his working class background, apparently believing that because he didn't summer in the Hamptons, he must have come from a working class background, even though his parents were college educated, his father was an accountant, and he grew up in the suburbs)? Without us, say good-bye to country music and rap, slasher flicks and Home Shopping Network, the Gap and SUVs, Jerry Springer and Oprah, malls and malt liquor, tattoo parlors and trailer parks, Myrtle Beach and Branson, Missouri, professional wrestling and the National Enquirer. This country hums along economically because of the toil and the tastes of the working class . . . and the big-profit boys will do almost anything to keep it that way. Factor that into the price of your next Happy Meal. Yeah, it's Jerry Springer, Oprah, malt liquor, and McDonald's who are keeping you down, man!  They WANT to keep you poor, stupid, watching Fox News, and buying the products it advertises!   Fight the power! 4.  The following comes from the transcript of which Irish-American journalist's interview yesterday of Douglas Wead (the guy who secretly taped George Bush as he considered running for President?:  [Mystery Guest]:  When your story came out, when you gave this to "The Times" or however you got it to "The Times," all the Arab countries and the Arab people in the world, the street that doesn't like us, think we're heathens and we're whatever you call, the infidels, the president of the United States used drugs?  He's one of the evil ones.  You gave them ammo, the other side, didn't you? WEAD:  No. MG:  What do you mean you didn't? WEAD:  Look, I was wrong.  [...]  MG: But the Arabs out there, the people that don't like us, the terrorist crowd, the anti-American crowd, they're reading your tapes.  You don't think that hurts us?  Yeah, the Arabs now hate Bush, and by extention the United States, because of tapes that indicate that Bush used marijuana.  THAT'S our problem.  So, clearly Wead is a traitor who helped terrorists and worked against our country. Later, our MG asks Dana Milbank if his pants make him look fat. MG: Let me ask you, I was pushing him hard, as you saw, on the international implications of this, to have the president of the United States basically admitting using illegal drugs, for the world to know and be sure of.  Do you think I pushed it too hard?  Isn't it kind of pathethic when news program hosts ask stupid questions, and then turn to reporters for reassurance?     5.  From which journalist's best-selling non-fiction book book (which, it's been reported, will soon have a sequel): As the years went on, especially on Memorial Day, when we went to the local cemetery to plant little American flags on the graves of war veterans, I sometimes asked him about the war. Although I desperately wanted to know what had happened, I was careful not to push too hard. It was clear that he didn’t want to talk about it, and I imagined that I might feel the same way if something that terrible had happened to me. And because his father, a private man, didn't want to talk about his war experiences, our Mystery Guest wrote a book about him.    6.  From a guy who may or may not be Irish, but whose next book I look forward to a lot more than Mystery Guest #5's: Uncle Todd never wanted to talk about the war. I'd ask him all the time to tell me about it, but he wouldn't ever talk about it. So I started leaving little notes all over his house saying, "Talk about the war". Also, I'd call him up late at night and just say, "the war", and hang up. I think he cracked up and had to go away someplace. He should have talked about the war. 7:36:01 PM

'Why Is the Easter Bunny Under Attack?' That was one of the topics on today's "Hannity and Lame Replacement for That Other Guy" show. Here's the promo from the Fox News site: Why is the "Easter bunny" under attack? You won't believe what some malls in Florida have planned less than two weeks before one of biggest day's on the Christian calendar.  But actually, we would believe it because we already discussed it last Saturday.  (To recap the story: three malls in the Palm Beach area are calling their seasonal varmints by names other than the Easter Bunny, so as to get all parents, not just the Christian ones, to bring the tikes to the mall to get some chocolate eggs and then buy a bunch of stuff from Toys 'R Us).  However, we predicted that it would be Bill O'Reilly who would spearhead the "Easter is under attack" call to arms, not Sean Hannity.  So, I guess we aren't as prescient as we thought. We happened to catch most of this segment while channel surfing -- it featured David Silverman of "American Atheists" repeatedly trying to explain that his group really doesn't care all that much about the Easter Bunny appearing in malls, and that they had nothing to do with the fact that the Gardens Mall is calling its rabbit "The Garden Bunny," since it's all about captiolism and free enterprise and stuff.  But Sean would have none of that, and was was frothing at the mouth at the notion that the liberals, the atheists, and the ACLU are depriving innocent Christian children of their sacred Easter Bunnies.  The dopey co-host's contribution was that he "doesn't have enough faith to be an atheist."  I guess that's what happens when your topic is so slight that it can't sustain even 30 seconds worth of discussion.  So, to help Sean (and Bill, if he decides to jump on the bandwagon), here are more instances of attacks on the Easter Bunny. As some of you mentioned, there is the story from last year: Actors Whip Easter Bunny at Church Show.  First, the Passion of the Christ. Now, the torment of the Easter Bunny? It may not have been as gruesome as Mel Gibson's movie, but many parents and children got upset when a church trying to teach about Jesus' crucifixion performed an Easter show with actors whipping the Easter bunny and breaking eggs. Melissa Salzmann, who brought her 4-year-old son J.T., said the program was inappropriate for young children. "He was crying and asking me why the bunny was being whipped," Salzmann said. [...] Performers broke eggs meant for an Easter egg hunt and also portrayed a drunken man and a self-mutilating woman, said Jennifer Norelli-Burke, another parent who saw the show in Glassport, a community about 10 miles southeast of Pittsburgh. "It was very disturbing," Norelli-Burke said. "I could not believe what I saw. It wasn't anything I was expecting." I think this story shows just how far the the secular atheistic libreals will go to persecute that symbol of Christianity, the Easter Bunny.   (Just ignore the fact that the group doing the beating was "The Glassport Assembly of God," because it kind of takes us away from the "Faith Under Fire" motif that WorldNetDaily started when they brought the Palm Beach Post story to the attention of people like Michelle Malkin and Hannity. ) And then there's this Fox News report from last year: "Man Assaults Easter Bunny At Mall."  (Why are the malls so anti-bunny?) Travis Peterson, 29, dressed as the Easter Bunny at the Wausau Center Mall, said he was greeting kids Saturday when an apparently drunk man hopped into his lap, wrapped his arm around his neck in a headlock and punched him three times in the mouth. "I was just sitting there in my chair, waving to the kids, and he came up and jumped in my lap and just started hitting my head," the Bunny told the local Wausau Daily Herald. The assailant was apparently drunk and showing off for friends -- or at least, that's what the liberal Fox News would have you believe.  In retrospect, it's obvious that this was part of the liberal/secular Attack on Easter Bunnies, and that the perp was paid by George Soros Or maybe it's wasn't Soros . . .Consider if you will this this 2001 WorldNetDaily story by Jane Chastain entitled "The Easter Bunny Won." Here's part: While China was holding the crew of our crippled EP-3E surveillance plane hostage, the good citizens of this country expressed their outrage. There was widespread talk of a long overdue boycott against Chinese products. As it turns out, it was just talk. Over Easter weekend, I took the time to call the managers of some of this nation's largest toy stores and super markets in strategic areas of the country, and, without exception, they all told me that holiday-week sales of Easter Bunnies were brisk. There was no slow down. In fact, some stores set records on their plush toy sales during this holiday. And many of those plush toys were made in the PRC!!! So, while the Easter Bunny won that round, so too did the ChiComs.  So, maybe the vendetta against the hare is actually being carried out by the John Birch society and other patriotic Americans who want to teach Mr. Leporidae a thing or two about supporting communism. Or maybe the attack on the Easter Bunny is about getting revenge for this: In any case, with more than a week remaining before Easter, don't expect to have heard the last about the War on the Easter Bunny. But to end on a more positive note, we offer you this cheery song from the 1940s (back when the Easter Bunny was a holy icon that all that's good and holy about our nation, and when he was attacked, he attacked back -- with a GUN!):  "Here's the Easter Rabbit (Hooray)" P.S.  I just noticed that Rush Limbaugh also got into the act -- his site features this link to Rush reading and talking about the Palm Beach Post story: Easter Bunny Replaced with PC Bunnies...story |  Rush concludes by saying, "But I bet this is happening all over the country: the banning of the Easter bunny and Easter eggs and this sort of thing."  And if it is, it's undoubtedly the fault of the ACLU, Ward Churchill, and Hillary Clinton. 12:43:39 AM