How Low Can She Go?

You know, every so often I tell myself that I should really stop posting about Ann Coulter. I tell myself, enough is enough. Write about something more important -- or at least more interesting. Write about David Irving's imprisonment and the issues that entails, or write about how the British are quietly bugging out of Iraq, or something with some real gravitas. Not some middle-aged spinster who clearly didn't get enough attention as a child.

And then the bitch says something so reprehensible, so completely despicable that it's impossible to let it go. You just have to call her on it and expose her for the loathsome piece of filth that she is.

The following comment was made by Miss Coulter on the campus of Indiana University, where she was giving what was euphemistically referred to as a "lecture." One of the student reporters took notes on her off-the-cuff comments, and printed them on this website:

http://www.idsnews.com/news/story.php?id=34254

During the question and answer period (in which she referred to one student as a "gay boy"), she was asked by another student, "Who would Jesus bomb?"

Now, keep in mind a few things. Keep in mind that Ann Coulter is, or at least claims to be, a Christian. Keep in mind that Pope John Paul II condemned the invasion of Iraq in no uncertain terms. Keep in mind all the stuff in the Bible about turning the other cheek and loving your enemies and how only those without sin should cast the first stone -- you know, the stuff that Jesus is supposed to have actually said.

What was Coulter's response to the question "What would Jesus bomb?"

"Probably abortion clinics," she replied.

This is the most disgusting excuse for a human being in America -- with the possible exception of the disgusting excuse for a human being currently occupying the White House. If you consider yourself any kind of a Christian, you should be ashamed of both of them.

And that's the last time I comment on Ann Coulter on this blog.

Tom Moran

Name Ann Coulter's New Book!

Ann Coulter has a new book coming out in June. I just know you can't wait to read it.

The funny thing is that the book's publisher (Crown Forum, which specializes in books with a conservative slant) has not yet announced the book’s title. It's possible that they have yet to decide on one.

Well I think we should help the little girl out, don't you? She's obviously run out of ideas, and I think all right-thinking Americans should pitch in to help give this book its name.

Help choose among the following:

a) “All Liberals Should Be Hung on Meat Hooks With Piano Wire”
b) “How to Dress Like a Teenaged Slut”
c) “Confessions of a Horse-Faced Right-Wing Fembot”
d) “I’m Too Much of a Coward to Live in New York City”

Make your choice, or make up one of your own, and e-mail it to:

nameanncoultersnewbook@yahoo.com

Tom Moran

Cheney on Trial?

Alec Baldwin has an interesting take on Dick Cheney on Huffington Post today:

"Cheney is a terrorist. He terrorizes our enemies abroad and innocent citizens here at home indiscriminately. Who ever thought Harry Whittington would be the answer to America's prayers. Finally, someone who might get that lying, thieving Cheney into a courtroom to answer some direct questions."

Baldwin evidently thinks that Whittington will take Cheney to court in a civil suit. No such luck, Alec. Whittington is a good, loyal Republican. If he's called upon to take one (in the face and chest) for the team, he will gladly do so.

So I sincerely doubt that we'll see Cheney on the stand in a civil trial involving this incident.

That doesn't mean he's not a terrorist, however. Or a war criminal, which is probably a more accurate way of putting it. After all, since this administration did to Iraq what the Germans did to Poland, I don't see why they shouldn't be held responsible, sooner or later, for their actions.

Tom Moran

It Was Only Birdshot, You Big Pussy!

Dick Cheney decided to take the coward's way out. Big surprise that is.

Instead of facing the press (or what right-wing nutjobs like him like to call the "mainstream media"), he opted instead of go before the cameras of Fox News and the softball questions of Brit Hume, a man who used to be considered a journalist.

How softball were the questions? Why don't we try quoting a few:

Question: Mr. Vice President, how is Mr. Whittington?

Question: How did you feel when you heard about that?

Question: And you -- and I take it, you missed the bird.

(Okay, I have to admit, that one is my personal favorite.)

But besides the generalities and the bullshit, there was one jaw-dropping statement made by Cheney in the interview. He said it at the very end, so you may have missed it.

This is what he said (and with a straight face!):

"One of the problems we have as a government is our inability to keep secrets."

Do you believe that? And the really pathetic thing is that he means it.

This has been the most secretive administration in American history. They have withheld from the press and the public information about almost everything they've done -- and have only given out any information at all when they've been forced to. And this idiot thinks that it's their inability to keep secrets that's a problem?

Gore Vidal once wrote (about Teddy Roosevelt or Hemingway, I'm not sure which), that if you give a sissy a gun he'll shoot everything in sight. Only it's not just one 78-year-old Texas attorney who's been peppered by this chickenhawk administration's birdshot. It's also the United States Congress, the Constitution of the United States and the American people.

One of these days, they're all going to start firing back.

Tom Moran

Welcome to Chappaquiddick, Mr. Cheney

The Deadeye Dick story is proceeding apace.

We now know that President Bush knew about the shooting of Harry Whittington within an hour of the event -- and yet the incident was not reported for another 15 hours after that.

And once again Scott McClennan is being used as a piñata by the press (and by David Gregory of NBC in particular) because of this administration's stonewalling on the incident -- and, by extension, their contempt for the press in general.

And while I'm sure each of us wishes Mr. Whittington the best and hopes just as hard as Vice President Cheney does for a full and speedy recovery, things could get interesting if he doesn't make it.

Imagine how ironic it would be if Cheney had to accept legal responsibility for one person's death, while at the same time avoiding legal responsibility for the other 2,000-plus deaths he's responsible for?

Welcome to Chappaquiddick, Mr. Cheney.

Tom Moran

Next Time, Bring Bush

The Vice President of the United States shot someone yesterday.

And we didn't find out about it until today.

These are the facts:

Vice President Cheney was on a hunting trip down in Texas with some friends. Somehow at some point on this trip a 78-year-old gentleman named Harry Whittington got in between a Republican and a gun -- which is never a bright idea. The net result of this incident is that Cheney shot Whittington in the face and neck, putting him in the hospital.

Now you would think that the vice president shooting someone -- albeit accidentally -- would be something that should be filed under the heading "news." Yet somehow the Vice President's office saw fit not to release this information for 24 hours, only after it was made public by the local media.

Doesn't this make you wonder what else they're choosing not to tell us?

Tom Moran

Dumbing Down the Met

The New York Times has a piece today on the upcoming "Gelb era" at the Metropolitan Opera.

At the end of this season Joseph Volpe, who has run the venerable opera house for the past 16 years, will step aside in favor of Peter Gelb, a former record company executive who is the son of Arthur Gelb, a former managing editor of The New York Times and biographer (with his wife Barbara) of Eugene O'Neill.

Gelb fils is nothing if not ambitious. In an interview for the Times article, Gelb states that "My work at the Met is going to involve everything, even subtitles." This in an opera house that already has "Met Titles," which are on the back of each seat.

"Mr. Gelb's program," the Times continues, "calls for a collaboration with Lincoln Center Theater that will engage Hollywood directors like Anthony Minghella and Broadway directors like George C. Wolfe, as well as musical figures like the theater composers Michael John LaChiusa and Adam Guettel and the jazz musician Wynton Marsalis. Major conductors who have never appeared at the Met will make debuts, including Riccardo Muti, Daniel Barenboim and Esa-Pekka Salonen. The Met will install a gallery for works by contemporary painters, extending its reach into the visual arts. The artists include John Currin, Richard Prince and Sophie von Hellerman."

You can just tell what's going to happen, can't you?

I wrote an article for the now-defunct Opera Monthly about 15 years ago called "How to Behave at the Opera," in which I pointed out, somewhat presciently, that the operagoing experience was in the process of being ruined by a bunch of rubes who wants to have the cultural prestige of attending the opera but have no idea what they're listening to or have a clue as to how to respond to it. They're akin to the idiots in the outer boroughs building "McMansions" on plots of land not big enough for a moderately sized house: lots of money, and no taste. That's the audience that the Met is shooting for with these changes to a 123-year-old institution.

At least you can forestall the incursion of obnoxious "McMansions" by altering the zoning laws, as has been done in some neighborhoods in Queens; but what can be done to prevent the dumbing down of the Met that's going to take place once the next three seasons (which have already been scheduled by the Volpe regime) are over?

Do we really want to see productions of classic operas by George C. Wolfe, who almost single-handedly ran the Public Theater into the ground with his self-indulgent revivals, almost every one of which bombed? Or hear new works by musical mediocrities like Michael John LaChiusa? Or see productions of "Parsifal" where all the Flower Maidens perform in the nude? At least that last idea has some historical precedent -- it was suggested to the powers that be at Bayreuth in the 1930s by a fervent Wagner fan with some clout: his name was Adolph Hitler.

If Gelb thinks that by bringing in so-called names from the outside and embracing new technologies he can somehow make the Met "relevant" (i.e. profitable) then he's delusional. Opera podcasts are not going to cut it, especially when the Met is still refusing to release the bulk of its classic opera broadcasts from the 30s and 40s on compact disc (while legally harassing those who do). People who coo orgasmically while listening to Fergie opining about her "lady lumps" are not likely to download a Ring cycle -- even one with Flagstad and Melchior. And the people whose ticket sales and donations already keep the Met going (described in the article on average as "a 62-year-old college graduate earning about $120,000") are hardly going to appreciate the kind of dumbing-down of the house that the Gelb regime has in mind.

Hmmmm... alienate the old subscribers who have kept the place going for decades in the hopes of attracting a musically illiterate audience that doesn't give a shit about opera and who won't show up anyway. Now that's a way to run an opera house!

Tom Moran

What Are They Rioting About, Exactly?

The American media can't seem to get enough of the Danish cartoon story.

We've seen story after story about the rioting caused by the satiric cartoons depicting the prophet Muhammad that appeared first in a Danish newspaper and were later reprinted across Europe.

We've seen men firing automatic weapons in the air. We've seen crowds jumping up and down threatening death to anyone who insults their prophet. We've seen the Danish flag in flames. We've seen all of this day after day, ad infinitum.

But there's one thing we haven't seen -- have you noticed that?

What we haven't seen are the actual cartoons the caused all the commotion in the first place. As far as I know, not one American news outlet has reprinted them.

And we know why that is, of course.

Tom Moran

Thought of the Day

This was written by Edward Gibbon, the author of The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. He was at the time a Member of Parliament, and he wrote it about the insurgency across the pond -- what we have come to call the American Revolution.

"I shall scarcely give my consent to exhaust still further the finest country in the world in the prosecution of a war from whence no reasonable man entertains any hope of success. It is better to be humbled than ruined."

-- Edward Gibbon

The quote can be found in D.M. Low's biography. Page 274 of the 1937 Random House edition.

Tom Moran

AP Quote of the Day

This is from an AP story on Jacob D. Robida, the young man who went into a gay bar in Massachusetts with a hatchet and gun and injured three people as well as killing two people in Arkansas, one of them a police officer, in his attempt to escape:

"Robida's friends said he had, at times, glorified Nazism and bore a swastika tattoo, but had not previously expressed prejudice toward homosexuals."

Gee, if he'd only said something...

Tom Moran

The McCain Conundrum

Deborah Orin at the New York Post has an interesting article about the idea of John McCain running for president in 2008.

Now the idea of McCain running for president is an interesting proposition -- for Democrats and Republicans.

It boils down to three questions:

1) Does he want to run?

2) Can he get the Republican nomination?

3) Can he win a general election?

The answer to the first and third questions is an obvious "yes." Of course McCain wants to run -- would he have spent most of 2004 sucking up to George W. Bush (a man he has every reason to despise for the way he slimed him during the primaries in 2000) if he didn't want to run for president? And I don't think there's any doubt that McCain could most likely beat whomever the Democrats put up against him -- including Hillary Clinton.

But can he get the Republican nomination? That's the interesting question.

You're going to have people like Bill Frist, Rick Santorum and Sam Brownback running against him -- all far to the right of McCain. Now while Frist has made such a hash of his job as Majority Leader that he's pretty much discredited himself, Santorum and Brownback are the kind of True Believers that GOP primary voters love.

Are Republican primary voters willing to put their so-called "principles" to one side and vote for someone because they think he's their best chance of staying in power? Because if they vote on their core beliefs, there's no way McCain wins. He is to the GOP what Kerry was to the Democrats in 2004 -- the best chance at winning the election. Otherwise the Democrats would have gone with Dean last time.

As for my personal sentiments, I think the Democrats can beat anyone except McCain -- which is why I'm hoping that Republicans don't warm up to McCain and decide to vote on their principles in 2008.

Because if they vote on their principles in the primaries, then we win in the general election -- with or without Hillary on the ticket.

Tom Moran

Happy Birthday, Jim!

Today is the 124th birthday of the great Irish writer James Joyce.

So I wanted to take the opportunity to wish him a happy birthday.

Happy birthday, Germ's Choice!

And, come on -- don't you think it's time you took another crack at Ulysses? And finished it this time? Or even (gasp!) tried reading Finnegans Wake?

I know he's no J.K. Rowling, but you might like him.

Tom Moran