November 26, 2004 by s.z.

Who Said It? As Sadly, Seb! said, our last Mystery Guest was Canada's pride, David Frum.  (Seb, your prize is in the mail to the address you provided).  You can find the Frum pieces we excerpted from here, here, and here.  (But only if you really, really want to.) Now, who said this in their most recent column, "Library Confidential: The Shocking Tale of How the Story Lady is Brainwashing Your Kids"? "Now let's sing it all together." The librarian rewinds the tape and plays it as the children chant, "Five fat turkeys are we — " At this point I am goggling at the brazenness of her reeducation program, and look wildly around at the other adults. Their faces are tranquil. The children, meanwhile, are mostly damp-browed and slumped in the fantastic heat. Counterrevolution starts at home, so when the song is over I whisper into [Gladiola's] ear, "I think turkeys are delicious. I am glad we have one to roast for our Thanksgiving dinner." She nods, thumb firmly in place. "Like the pilgrims had for theirs," I can't help adding, running-doggishly. And of course, children, pilgrims are delicious, and I am glad that we had one to roast for our Thanksgiving dinner. 2:49:22 AM

The Most Picked On Person in America That would be Mary Katharine Ham, a 24-year-old Heritage Foundation employee who is always being martyred for her conservative beliefs. For instance, there's the story in her guest column for today's Townhall: Once, about four years ago, I found myself being tailed late at night by a car I didn’t recognize. I was by myself, it was around 11 p.m. in my hometown, a city with enough violent crime to make a person more than a bit wary. I saw the guy’s headlights in my rearview mirror, noticed he was fairly close to me and had been for a few miles. I was on my way to shoot some pool with friends, and decided to turn off the main road, mostly to convince myself he wasn’t really following me. He followed.   He follows her through several turns.  She keeps driving to her destination, the poolhall.  She "contemplates" going home "to avoid attack," but then his lights are gone, so she goes into the pool hall, although "still shaky." A couple acquaintances came up to my table, started telling a story that had them both in stitches. “Did you guys hear?” one of them laughed. “John tailed some idiot with a Bush-Cheney sticker on his car all the way here.” The story got a hearty laugh from my whole group of acquaintances, all liberal. It was a good joke, played on some abstract conservative, retold in the utter certainty that there were no such abstract creatures in the room. I glared straight at John and said something along the lines of “Yeah, that was me, and that was real liberal and accepting of you,” adding a few sailor-approved flourishes worthy of a man who would threaten a young woman with physical harm because of her political beliefs. At first there was more laughter, then nervous smiles, then looks and comments of utter bewilderment—not at the fact that someone they knew had just been physically threatened for her political beliefs, but at the fact that she held those particular beliefs. There were apologies from John, but all with a smile on his face. The whole incident was quickly excused. While tailing somebody all the way to the poolhall is immature, stupid, and perhaps even mean (if meant to harass somebody, although it's not clear that this was even the objective in this case).  However, it is hardly "threatening a young woman with physical harm."  Just because you were scared, doesn't meant that anybody threatened you.  And in the future, Mary Katharine, if you really do feel threatened, drive to the police station, not the pool hall, okay?  And MK, while I can understand you venting like this at the time, (a) that was four years ago, and you should have got some perspective by now; (b) nothing actually happened to you except that somebody who was also going to the poolhall drove his car behind yours; and (c), John and your college acquaintances are hardly representative of all liberals.  So, so your effort to make this story be the keystone piece of evidence in a column entitled "Liberals Have a Distorted View of Tolerance," is, well, lame. Four years later, these are the same people to whom eye-rolling warrants a lawsuit and distributing insensitive Band-Aids is beyond the pale. They belong to a party that prides itself on fighting against political intimidation and laments the sharp political division in this country—both commendable positions. But they didn’t fight against intimidation that night and they didn’t lament the division it might cause between themselves and the only conservative in the room. Why not? I’m pretty sure it’s because they think I deserved it. It wasn’t the first time I got that feeling from liberal acquaintances. Mary Katharine, maybe you DO deserve it.  Not because you're a conservative, of course, but maybe because of something you may be doing.  I'm only saying this because you ALWAYS seems to be getting picked on by liberals.  To illustrate my theory, lets recap your first Townhall column, which tells about that time you were insulted in a bar.  In my 24 years, I had never met a man who told me to my face I was inferior to him because I was a woman—until last weekend.     It happened in a Capitol Hill bar on Friday night. I was introduced to a friend of a friend. He asked where I worked, and his eyebrows flew up at the mere mention of  The Heritage Foundation. As we said before: The nerve of his eyebrows, reacting to Mary Katherine's employment that way!  To explain his eyebrow, the guy, whom MK calls "Brad," says that he used to work for the DNC. Well, there you have it. Eyebrows were raised, acronyms used, ideological lines drawn. There was no hope for enjoying my Miller Lite. Already MK has been victimized (prevented from enjoying her Miller Lite) by horrible liberals who assaulted MK by not having the same opinions as she did. Anyway, she and Brad debate politics for a while, and then MK poses the question that leads to her being grossly insulted. “All right,” I said, “as a young person working on Capitol Hill, making a modest sum of money, what do you and the Democratic Party have to offer me? What are you gonna do to help me move from one class to another?” Brad looked at me as if the answer were self-evident. I raised my eyebrows and waited for his answer. “Well, you know, as a female…” “As a female… what?” He replied, "As a female dog," which is why MK was so insulted. Okay, not really -- instead he insulted her by mentioning women's rights. He mumbled something about women’s and minorities’ rights and “leveling the playing field.” [...] DNC Brad had a slightly sheepish look on his face. He had just let slip one of the most blatantly sexist things I’d ever heard in person, and before I repeated it, had apparently been secure in the fact that he occupied the moral high ground. Okay, maybe MK should stop going to bars, and stop hanging out with those liberals who belong to her crowd, because it always seems to end badly.  It seems that every liberal she associates with does something hurtful to her. Case in point: this post by MK at Townhall's blog (called Clog, I believe) which describes liberal villainy close to home. Breaking the Code Frank J. at IMAO translates for the Left. Some of my favorites: the rich, the wealthy = you e.g. "We’ll fund things by taxing the rich." fair = huge, enormous e.g. "Everyone needs to pay their fair share." progressive (adj.) = appallingly moronic e.g. "We hope to get into law more progressive policies." After living with a liberal roomie, I am familiar with these code words. In fact, this weekend my roomate implemented a "progressive" policy in which she ate a "fair" portion (ALL) of my Kabob Palace leftovers when she got home from partying Friday night. Good thing I'm so "rich," so I can continue to contribute to the "greater good" (her appetite).  [01:52 PM 19-Oct-04 || Mary Katharine Ham] Not only do the liberals physically threaten MK by driving on the same roads she does, and insult her by talking about the DNC's platform for wage parity and reproductive rights, but they even eat her leftovers -- no doubt, just because she's conservative.  And they call themselves the tolerant ones! You know, when I was 24, I was pretty conservative, and I had lots of liberal friends -- and they never were jerks like MK's seem to be.  So, I have to wonder if the problem is (a) Mary Katharine; (b) the people she chooses to associate with; or (c) all liberals, everywhere, as she claims.  (I am inclined to believe it's mostly "a.") But the discrimination against Mary Katharine doesn't stop at her friends -- now the liberals are kicking her out of cabs just for being conservative and supporting the troops. Conservative Cabbies Censored NY cabbies who support Bush are being fined for voicing that particular opinion. Cab driver Mira Chaikin claims the incident for which she was fined $150 went a little something like this: "I said, 'The troops are doing a good job.' And she [the passenger] went off on it." Wow, that's a lot nicer than the two (count 'em, two) cab drivers who have shouted me out of their cabs in the last six months after finding out I was conservative and supported the war effort. On both occasions, the kicking out of the cab happened after said cab drivers started a political conversation with me and were displeased with my politely-stated positions. I never cease to be amazed by the capacity of liberals to shout me down/kick me out of cabs/call me brainwashed, all the time so sure that I'm the intolerant one. Yeah, I'm the close-minded one... and you may want to wipe the foam from your mouth. I'm sure there's a fine for that. [01:31 PM 26-Oct-04 | Mary Katharine Ham] To get personal again, I know that I have taken a lot of cab rides in a lot of cities, and yet never have I been shouted at or thrown out.  Odd that it would happen to MK twice in six months.  I can only assume that this is part of the Vast Left-Wing Conspiracy Against Mary Katharine Ham that you are probably all part of. But anyway, back to "Liberals Have a Distorted View of Tolerance." This same rationale allowed liberal acquaintances to giggle when Ann Coulter was attacked by two young men with pies and shrug as former Florida Secretary of State Katherine Harris was almost run over. NOBODY should giggle when people are attacked by pies, because ... oh, come on, it's FUNNY, MK.  If we learned only one thing from the Three Stooges (and we did), it was that throwing pies is comical.  Even your CLog colleagues think so: Two arrested for hurling pies at Ann CoulterAP:  "Two men ran onstage and threw custard pies at conservative columnist Ann Coulter as she was giving a speech at the University of Arizona, hitting her in the shoulder, police said." As much as I love Ann Coulter, this is kind of funny. [02:16 PM 22-Oct-04 | Ryan B. Zempel] And now, the stirring conclusion to MK's story of persecution by liberal meanies: This week, I’m going home for Thanksgiving to a blue city.  [...] I will undoubtedly have to convince the young man who once tailed me on a dark night because he didn’t like my political bumper sticker that mine are not the politics of fear and intimidation. Why, oh why, will you undoubtedly have to do that, MK?  You know, the Bill or Rights, which gives us freedom of association, also gives us the freedom not to hang out over Thanksgiving with people who have threatened us with physical harm.  Geez, woman, it's like you are Annie Jacobsen, and you keep looking for flights with Middle Eastern musicians so you can be continually be terrorized by them.  You may be young, but you're old enough to stop being such a drama queen.  And Townhall is old enough to stop enabling you.  All this silliness is enough to make liberals want to bitch slap their computer monitors in annoyance (which really isn't a threat of physical harm, MK, just as being intolerant of stupidity isn't the same thing as being intolerant of conservatives).  P.S.  If YOU are part of the Vast Liberal Conspiracy Against Mary Katharine Ham, here's her cLog bio, to help you to persecute her for her beliefs:   Mary Katharine Ham Mary Katharine is a North Carolina native who attended The University of Georgia to watch football, er... get her bachelor's degree in Newspaper Journalism (Class of 2002). She worked as a sports and features reporter at a small newspaper in North Carolina for two years before tiring of the mainstream press and coming to The Heritage Foundation, where she met more conservatives than she ever knew existed, all in one place. She now edits InsiderOnline.org and the Insider magazine for The Heritage Foundation, where she demonstrates her bizarre ability to actually make public policy research fun and interesting. InsiderOnline.org collects studies from think tanks all over the conservative movement. Get great stats to use in arguments with liberals and more blogging from Mary Katharine at InsiderOnline.org. 2:00:59 AM