January 29, 2006 by s.z.

Odd Sense of Humor Those Folks Have

Justice Ought to Be Poisoned, Coulter Jokes

"We need somebody to put rat poisoning in Justice Stevens' creme brulee," she said. "That's just a joke, for you in the media."

Funny stuff, Ann!  It kind of reminds me of a joke that Carl Edward Johnson told a few years back.  His went something like this:

Leading eCash candidates for dying at an opportune time to make some perennial loser 'Dead Lucky' are:

e$ 2,610.02
J. Kelley Arnold, United States Magistrate Judge,
Union Station Courthouse, 1717 Pacific Avenue, Tacoma, Washington 

 [...]

If you can correctly predict the date and time of death of others then you can win large prizes payable in untaxable, untraceable ecash. ... Contest will officially begin after Posting of Rules and Announcement of Official Starting Date (Until then it is for Entertainment Purposes Only).

Carl got 37 months in prison for his jokes, but he probably doesn't look as good in his black vinyl mini-dress as Ann does.

And then there was Bill O'Reilly -- when he talked about blowing up a major American city, he was just doing a "satirical" riff, as he explained in the Factor segment he called "Hurt Feelings in San Francisco":

And then I went on to do a satirical riff with a serious point.

Here's that riff, in case you've forgotten:

If Al Qaeda comes in here and blows you up, we're not going to do anything about it. We're not going to do anything about it. We're going to say, Look, every other place in America is off limits to you, except San Francisco. You want to blow up the Coit Tower? Go ahead.

Yes, clearly Bill was just making the serious satirical point that if San Francisco doesn't support military recruiters in schools, then it would serve them right if its men, women, and children were all killed by terrorists.  (It's funny because it's true! )

Of course, Ann doesn't have to explain her "jokes" to some in the media -- here's what TIME magazine's John Cloud said to Editor & Publisher after some nasty folks claimed that it might not have been appropriate of the magazine to do a cover feature on a woman who had expressed regret that hundreds of journalists hadn't died in a bombing. 

The New York Times quote she said to another reporter, George Gurley. She said at the time that it was a joke. ...if she's kidding around with another reporter, and says something to him that he puts at the end of his article, am I then obligated to print that in my article?

Well, this is what she actually said at the time: 

We headed down Fifth Avenue and talked about The New York Times.[...]

"They ran not one but two photos of George Herbert Walker Bush throwing up in Japan. Not one, one was not enough! Two photos of that. Is your tape recorder running? Turn it on! I got something to say."

Then she said: "My only regret with Timothy McVeigh is he did not go to the New York Times Building."

I told her to be careful.

"You're right, after 9/11 I shouldn't say that," she said, spotting a cab and grabbing it.

So, actually Ann was just saying that after 9/11 expressing sympathy for terrorist attacks was no longer considered politically correct.  But yeah, her comment was so hilarious that it must have been a joke.

Ah, conservatives -- what don't they find funny? 

Well, this:

This is what happens when you send a yellow woman to do a white man's job.

That comment was considered so vile that Michelle Malkin included it on the back cover of her book Unhinged: Exposing Liberals Gone Wild as an example of the how liberals are out-of-control mean, to quote the very civil (and funny) Bill O'Reilly.

Of course, she doesn't explain the context or the background of the remark. so we'll let David Neiwert do it for her:

As Thersites has pointed out, the entire post was actually a clearly satirical one:

Why can't we find competent race-traitors anymore? Issuing a retraction based on legal threats? Disgusting. This was her moment to shine - a real public forum to level a set of smears against Japanese-"Americans" that would have assured they NEVER tried to drive across the heartland of America again. Instead she knuckles under like Tojo in Tokyo Bay. This is what happens when you send a yellow woman to do a white man's job. Posted by: Tommy Pain at May 18, 2005 11:45 AM

That is, the poster was writing in the voice of an actual racist to make a satirical point about Malkin's argument. This, of course, seems to have either been missed or glossed over by Malkin. Her use of it as an example of ugliness is either a dense misreading of the original post or just dishonest. Or, rather, "unhonest."

So, poisoning judges and terrorist attacks = funny.

Satire about Michelle's retraction of an erroneous claim = proof that liberals are "over the top mean and nasty," to quote her most recent Amazon customer reviewer.

Keep that in mind if you want a job writing jokes for the 2008 GOP convention.

11:04:38 PM