"Ann Overboard!"

As a "conservative", for lack at the moment for a more appropriate word, I have to make the admission that we often crawl all over ourselves to prove to our "liberal" friends that we're nice people, who care for animals, plant trees, love our gay cousin Fred, drive a hybrid etc. Crap! I've even worn through a pair of Birkenstocks! Oh, the shame! (I won't get into the fact right now that I do not believe there are very many dyed in the wool liberals or conservatives out there. Most of us are individuals, and if we sit down long enough find that we agree on most fundamental things and just go about getting those things in a different way).

Anyway, sometime in the past 20 years or so the party of Abolition, Suffrage, and Civil Rights got tired of apologizing for itself and letting the other side define us, and started slinging the mud in the opposite direction. I don't know if this is a wise way to fight this war of ideologies, but some of that mudslinging is funny. Unless someone who speaks for me, starts slinging the really dirty kind of mud, and it gets on me, and I try to wash it off, and it leaves a stain, and I think people see it, you get what I mean.

Most humor comes from pointing out everyday people's little hypocrisies. Like the fact that the same people who are always demanding tolerance for other religious beliefs love to drive around with little fish with legs on their bumper. I think it's cute in a way, but it is hypocritical, why not wrap a pork rind around the star of David while you're at it? Oh, wait, that would be anti-semitic, and not really very funny. Sorry.

This is where Ann Coulter comes in. I guess she decided somewhere along the way to expose the hypocrisy of those who decry "First Amendment, First Amendment!" every time someone wants to do something rude and offensive to traditional folks, and then turn around and demand you go to rehab whe you say something that offends them. So she said something really rude. And not funny. So Ann yelled "Faggot" in a crowded theater, and some people got really bruised up trying to be the first one to the exit door. I'm sure it was entertaining to her. She loves this kind of controversy. Watching someone have a cardiac infarction over a the utterance of a word is usually high-comedy.

She's been making it her business for a while to throw verbal pies at her opponents. And for a while it was hi-larious. In the meantime she made some excellent points too. And her sharp wit is matched by no one. But this week she threw a real shit-pie and she knew what it was when she baked it up, this wasn't a gaffe, botched joke, or faux pas, she intentionally tossed that pie out there, and it got on everybody. I don't want that stuff on me.

She also gave the opposition ammunition for about 2800 news cycles, and I'm going to have to listen to that too.

One thing that's nice about the Republican Party (and at the moment there aren't very many nice things I can say), is that when somebody in the party says something "not funny", we generally condemn it. See Trent Lott, who was just confused IMHO. We don't have republicans in the Senate that were Klan wizards (Byrd), or folks who let their girlfriend drown in four feet of water because they were worried about their political future, and then have the nerve to buy a Portuguese water rescue dog and name him "Splash" (Kennedy). We have a few buffoons on our side, but you generally find that they are widely scolded for their buffoonery, and the media reports it, and they get on TV and apologize for it etc.

See the nice thing about the First Amendment, is that although it gives you the right to say any damn thing you want, it doesn't give you freedom from censure.

I don't think she should apologize to me. But I certainly won't defend her for what she said. She has the right to think it and say it. But she's not speaking for me anymore. I have the right to walk away any time I please, and as soon as my fellow denouncers manage to cram their way through the exit doors and come out like ground beef on the other end, I will be right behind.