May 15, 2004 by s.z.

If You Don't Answer the Question, How Can You Answer Wrong? It was Ann Coulter Vs. Al Franken at Connecticut's Bushnell Center for the Performing Arts on Friday.   Steve Roberts, husband of Cokie, was the moderator.  The evening's tone was set early when Roberts asked which political figure each would most like to be. Coulter said she would answer with who she believed had the most fun. Her response: Sen. Joseph McCarthy, because he got to remove "communist spies from the government." Yes, he personally removed hundreds of communist spies -- invisible ones, from OUTER SPACE!  But of course, Ann really wants to be him because he had a lot of fun drinking himself to death, which has always been her goal. Roberts: Do you think the Bush administration did anything wrong in regard to the war in Iraq? Coulter: "When we won the war in a few weeks with amazingly few casualties, all the liberals had to complain about was some broken pottery. Any college student who was ever forced to gaze at Mesopotamian pottery was relieved." Roberts: The Massachusetts Supreme Court voted to allow gays to marry there. How do you feel about gay marriage? Coulter: "Have they read the Constitution? It's a short document. It doesn't say anything in there about gay marriage. We need to get them looking for Osama Bin Laden, because if they can find gay marriage in that document, maybe they can find him." Translation: No, the Bush Administration has done nothing wrong, ever, and all that Abu Ghraib stuff is just you liberals whining about some broken pots.  Oh, and if gay marriage isn't specifically mentioned in the Constitution, then it's probably a terrorist plot. After Coulter made a comment about liberals being liars, Franken brought up her age, something that's been written about often in the press. There are conflicting reports. "I've written books about Joseph McCarthy, Bill Clinton getting impeached, but all Al can argue about with me is that I lie about my age," Coulter said. "I don't lie about my age. I'm 23." Franken shot back: "I think you should be in Guantanamo where under John Ashcroft the rules of the Geneva Convention wouldn't apply." Roberts, trying to intercede, called for an intermission, but Franken refused to break until Coulter disclosed her age. "That's not the important question," Coulter said. "The important question is how tall are you?" Franken: "Five foot eight." Coulter: "No you're not." Franken: "Yes, I am. It's on my driver's license." Translation: Ann: You guys are liars! Al: Well, you lie about your age. Ann:  Nuh uh!  Nuh uh to infinity!  I know you are, but what am I?  You're rubber, I'm glue!  It takes one to know one.  So's your old man! Ann is just the kind of apologist the Bush Administration deserves, and I hope they give her Colin Powell's job if he resigns before January. 7:04:29 AM

The Hell? Here's part of a Cox News Service story about the announcement of the "National Criminal Intelligence Sharing Plan to Help Local Cops Combat Terrorism By Letting the FBI Have Acccess to All Their Informaton": "Government erected a wall that segregated criminal investigators from intelligence agents, government buttressed that wall, and before Sept. 11, 2001, government was blinded by that wall," said Ashcroft, speaking at a news conference with FBI Director Robert Mueller and other federal, state and local law enforcement officials. Under the National Criminal Intelligence Sharing Plan, a council of local, state and federal law enforcement officials will find ways to improve communication among the nation's 18,000 police agencies. The council will develop and implement intelligence sharing policies.  [...] "Law enforcement has done a great job at collecting info, but a terrible job sharing it," said Gene Voegtlin, legislative counsel for the International Association of Chiefs of Police. The reasons for the lack of sharing are threefold: rules that kept criminal investigators apart from intelligence agents; officers feared sabotaging their cases by sharing; and no system to share information Okay, maybe it's just that the reporter did a crummy job of reporting, but it sounds like Ashcroft is blaming "Jamie Gorelik's wall" for keeping local and state law enforcement agencies from sharing info with the FBI (and vice versa).  Of course, "the wall" only actually constrained the passing of information gathered in foreign intelligence investigations to those doing criminal investigations --  because, due to the looser restrictions permitted for gathering information of a foreign intelligence nature, if might have not have been allowed in court.  These foreign intelligence investigations would only have been conducted by members of the INTELLIGENCE COMMUNITY (chiefly the CIA, NSA, and the FBI's Counterintelligence Division).   So, how come Ashcroft (and this Voegtlin guy) are bragging about bringing down some pre-9/11 wall (erected by Clinton, of course) while announcing a plan that involves greater info sharing among the "nation's 18,000 police agencies"?  Politicking, or just plan lying: you make the call. P.S.  It would seem that this new plan only addresses one of Voegtlin's three reasons for the "lack of sharing: the "lack of a system one.  Of course, the first one never applied to group that will be covered by the plan, and it does nothing about reason two.   However another common reason for the "lack of sharing" that Voegtlin doesn't address is "If you share info with the feds, they will boss you around and then, at the end, take credit for everything."  But hey, that was probably 'the wall's" fault too.  6:16:44 AM

Braindead: How Conservative Foundations Co-Opt America's Youth Ben Shapiro's Book misconstrues facts?  Say it isn't so! But Ben had a really good explanation to offer the Daily Bruin, right? Shapiro rescheduled Monday an in-person meeting that was supposed to take place that morning and asked to be interviewed by phone instead. Shapiro canceled the phone interview after being presented with the errors through e-mail and would only comment in a statement by e-mail.   "I stand behind the facts in my book, and behind the major point of my book: The overwhelming majority of professors are leftists, and their leftism enters the classroom," he wrote. After canceling his interview, he did not return calls and messages left to his home and cell phone but responded in a later e-mail that he would not be able to talk for "the next several weeks." He wrote that he is busy with the publicity campaign for his book, which in an interview last week he said would launch today. When asked about factual errors, a spokeswoman familiar with Shapiro's book declined to comment before speaking with a legal team.  Needing a lawyer will be good practice for young Ben, who is starting Harvard Law School this fall (and not joining the Army, as you might have assumed). But oddly enough, while Ben didn't have time for even a phone interview with the Bruin to discuss the errors in his book, he did make himself available to FrontPage Mag. Here are a few interesting bits of what Ben had to say: Practically speaking, it’s much more fun to have a beer with the liberal guys and girls in your class than to argue with them and spend the evening in your dorm room browsing the Bush/Cheney 2004 website. Yes it is, but Ben gave up fun (and girls and beer) in pursuit of a higher calling: being the rightwing poster child for abstinence. At the same time, many professors don’t tolerate dissent, so conservative students have to use their heads.  If you’re afraid the professor will grade you down, keep quiet.  It isn’t worth sabotaging your grade.  Speak to other students outside of class.  It’s a terrible solution to a real problem, but that’s about all many conservative students can do.    Yes, Ben bravely speaks out in his columns for the Heritage Foundation-funded Townhall, his WorldNetDaily published book, and on his somebody-sponsored campus book tour, but if speaking out in class might jeopardize his grade, then he shuts the hell up, 'cause he has his future to think of.  When I attempted to expose the fact that the Muslim Student Association at UCLA is treasonous, I was fired from the Bruin.  Well, this is what the Bruin said about Ben's termination: Shapiro, a Viewpoint columnist for nearly two years, was dismissed in 2002 for appearing on a radio show without first telling his editors, said Cuauhtemoc Ortega, the Viewpoint editor at the time. In the book's introduction, Shapiro writes that he was fired from The Bruin "for revealing the newspaper's systematic bias in favor of the Islamic community." The book's jacket says Shapiro was fired for his conservative views. He said The Bruin refused to publish two of his stories about Muslims and spoke about the issue on Larry Elder's radio show shortly before being dismissed. Ortega said Shapiro was let go not for speaking on the Larry Elder program, but for going on the program without telling an editor first. So, the paper says one thing, and Ben says another.  Well, three others.  I think it's strange that the story about Ben being fired for exposing treason at UCLA only came out when he was talking to the conspiracy nuts at FrontPage Mag, but it's probably just a coincidence. Anyway, you can tell a lot about a book by the people who are enlisted to write its blurbs: Brainwashed has them from such folks as Michelle Malkin, David Horowitz, Marvin Olasky, Michael Medved, Hugh Hewitt, Daniel Pipes, and Ann Coulter.  But actually Ann's blurb is the same old one Ben has kept next to his heart for last couple of years -- they just changed "Ben Shapiro's columns" to "Ben Shapiro's writing," to make it seem like Ann had written something for the book's jacket when in reality she couldn't be bothered with Ben now that he's out of puberty.  Poor Ben -- he must be so disappointed that his dream girl couldn't be bothered to even read the book he wrote to impress her.  Now he'll have to shoot George Bush. Anyway, the blurbs reveal that Ben is officially one of "them" now, and will never be able to escape his fate.  I'd pity him, if he wasn't such an annoying young twerp. 5:54:11 AM

"In the manner of Sisyphus" Time for another peek at America's Worst Mother™ and her four graces: Hecate, Medusa, Scylla, and Paris.  This week Meghan confirms that they really did name their kid Paris.  I had assumed, like the posters in this FreeRepublic thread (it seems that most of them detest her columns too, proof that some things really can bring us together) that nobody would be such a twit as use their kids' real names when writing about them for a national (theoretically) audience.  But I was wrong.  Somebody really is such a twit.  (And there's apparently more than one of them, because reliable sources say that Natalie Lileks is her real name, and it's the one she'll being using on her future bestseller, Daddy Drearest.) Anyway, TBOGG has done a stellar job with Meghan's column in a little piece called "Where once we biffed, now we just footle."   It will undoubtedly be remembered at Academy Award time -- which is more than can be said for the Brad Pitt movie that inspired Meghan's ramblings.  My favorite part comes in response to Meghan's description of the "crude division between people that allows our family to draw some small, smirking conclusions."  See, some folks ask if the Gurdons named their son Paris because he was conceived there, like Paris Hilton.  Meghan and her family then know that these people are cultural illiterates who were raised in trailer parks, and Meghan longs to kill them.  The other group realizes that the kid was named after the famous Greek gigolo, and asks if Meghan's next son will be named Achilles or Hecuba.  Meghan also hates these people for posing an inappropriate question (one that implicitly asks if she and the husband are going to have sex again), but she doesn't plan to kill them, because at least they know that Paris isn't a girl's name.  So, in response to Meghan's outrage over those first people who ask "intimate questions" about her son's name, Tbogg has the perfect comment:  Of course the more intimate question would have been: "Is he called Paris because he's the result of a broken Trojan®?", but that would have just given Meghan the vapors and she would have scarcely recalled it.  So, read the whole thing.  Great stuff. However, there were a couple of minor points in Meghan's oeuvre (titled "Our Prince of Ilium" -- I will pause while you barf) that Tbogg left unaddressed.  Like this one On NPR the other day I heard a piece about how Hollywood pulls out togas and sandals at crucial points in American civic life; crucial for left-wingers, anyway — which I suppose is the same thing as saying "Hollywood" — but still bears mentioning. Okay, first of all, I was amazed that Meghan still listens to NPR.  Remember that time the Gurdonettes heard Ned Beatty take the Lord's name in vain in a clip from a Tennessee Williams play, and Meghan immediately wrote to the NPR ombudsman to chide him for forgetting that "your listeners are not always hard-bitten, cynical, worldly types"?  Of course you do -- I just referenced it yesterday.  So I would have thought that Meghan would have forsworn NPR after the ombudsman replied that  yes, their listeners ARE always rough, crude, oil-riggers, sailors, and longshoremen, and if Meghan didn't like the language used on "All Things Considered," she could shove it in her %&@*! And secondly, just why do "left-wingers" (AKA "Hollywood") make sword and sandal flicks at "crucial points in American civic life," and what crucial point are we at now which caused a German director to make a film about Helen of Troy?   Meghan never says -- she apparently just brought it up to let the world know that (a) she listens to social commentary on NPR; and (b) she's read a book by Waugh (and plans on naming that second boy "Evelyn"). And then Meghan uses Edith Hamilton's Mythology (thank the gods that Scylla didn't give it the Proust treatment!) to say catty but classical things about the Capable Mothers: Harpies are not just shrieking, clawing creatures from ancient myths; you can find them in every carpool line. Bacchantes roam the decks and back lawns of a million suburban houses, shooing their children away with one hand while knocking back gins-and-tonic with the other. Don't ask how Meghan knows what the Bachantes drink. And then it's back to the 17-year locusts, which is the most exciting thing the Gurdons have ever experienced. Now it happens that tree nymphs are literally crawling out of the ground around us. It is hot as Hades, and as alert Swamp readers know, Washingtonians are bracing for a plague of — "Cicadas! I found my first cicada!" Yes, only alert Swamp readers know about the locusts -- they found out by using their secret decoder rings to analyze the cypher contained in last week's column.  So, the wimmin go hunting locust skeletons while the manly Paris takes a tennis lesson.  They return to the tennis court to admire as Paris keeps hitting the balls over the fence and through the windows of near-by houses. "That boy is like Hercules," I hear a father remark approvingly to the people standing with him. "Actually," I call, casting the die, "His name is Paris." "Was he conceived on Parris Island?" asks the man.  "I've heard about women who go there looking for all-night action with squads of hard-bodied young marines." And then Meghan kills that man.  Okay, Meghan says the rest of conversation really went like this: "Oh, after the hero," he says, nodding. "Well, yes," I reply, "And thank you." I call no way! I can accept that Meghan might publicly bitch about the other mothers in the PTA, despite the fact that these women know Meghan's name and can presumably read.  While I doubt that her children say adorably whimsical things week after week (usually while making conservative points), I can't prove that they don't, so am willing to sorta suspend my disbelief while I read Meghan's columns.  But I refuse to even TRY to conceive of a situation where a suburban father sees somebody else's kid hitting tennis balls over the fence and says admiringly,"That boy is like Hercules."  I submit that what he actually said is, "That boy is, like, a jerk.  His parents are paying for those balls." 2:49:24 AM