[CLICK]
"Hail, Azatoth! Hail, Cthulu! Hail, Hades! Hail, Azazael! Hail, Beelzebub, most high father of lies and bringer of pestilence, avarice, war, degradation and evil, the hulking, scaly beast who slouches in the night! Oh, master of the underworld and the fiery pits of doom, hear this plea from your humble servant --"
"Hey, Dick, lunch is ready!"
"Okay, be right there. I was just praying."
"We're having your favorite -- barbequed goat's head and Devil's Grip beer."
"Did you leave the eyes in?"
"You bet!"
"Um, ummmm, that's good eatin'!"
"Here, Dick, why don't you start off with this quart of beer while I set the table."
"I believe I will, Jean. Ummmm, beer."
"My, Dick, that blaze orange vest certainly sets off your cold blue eyes."
"You bet, Jean. Yes, I've always thought I cut quite the dashing figure in my hunting togs."
"Dick, you've finished that quart already!"
"And I'll be damned if I'm not ready for another one! (belch)"
"You'd better pace yourself or you're gonna be stewed by the time we go out hunting."
"Less talk, woman, more beer."
"Ha, ha, Dick'll be all right once he gets a couple of goat eyeballs in him -- right, Dick?"
"You got it, Harry. Where is that grub anyway?"
"Here's your beer. It'll be ready in a minute, Sugarpants."
"Say, Dick, you plannin' on baggin' a few fat quail out there today?"
"Actually, Harry, I was thinking of a different kind of game."
"'A different kind of game'? What would that be? Dick, why are you looking at me like that..."
[CLICK]
"Welcome back to Meet the Press, let me introduce our panel: Over here is John Fund of the Wall Street Journal; syndicated columnist Roger Simon; William Safire of the New York Times, and Byron York of the National Review. Presenting the Bush Administration's side of the news is Mary Matalin, formerly an advisor to Vice President Dick Cheney."
[CLICK]
"Harry, we need more insurance."
"Don't worry, I just signed up for a new policy from the AARP."
"You mean the same AARP that shafted us royal by supporting Bush's Medicare plan?"
[CLICK]
"Ask your doctor if Defenestrol is right for you."
"Yeah, so we seniors can manage the seasonal depression of 'winter blahs'."
"If you don't mind anal leakage."
"That could be depressing."
"Don't worry -- GlacksoMurkFizer has a pill for that, too!"
"You wouldn't be talking about new Assitol, would you?"
"I would. Ask your doctor if Assitol..."
[CLICK]
"Be all that you can be in the United States Army, where we do more before breakfast than most people do all day! And then you keel over at 45 from cirrhosis of the liver and a stress-induced heart attack. But, hey, we'll give you money for college, as soon as the War on Terror is over!"
[CLICK]
"What kind of shoes are those?"
"Avanti."
"Say, excuse me, those running shoes you're wearing -- what brand are they?"
"They're Avanti's."
"Hey, it looks like you're wearing Avanti's, too!"
"Everybody's wearing them."
"Listen, I know I'm a complete stranger just running by in this marathon, but can I use your laptop for a minute?"
"What? What's wrong with you? No you can't use my laptop! Leave me alone before I call a cop!"
[CLICK]
"Dad, can I have $85.00 to buy some new jeans?"
"Are you on drugs? Eighty-five bucks for a pair of pants? You think I'm made of money? Ever since I invested in that Avanti shoe stock we've been wiped out. Thanks, Ameritraitor! Here's twenty, go find something at Target."
[CLICK OFF]
-------------------------
Courting Ann Slanders
Not referring to the nickname of the late advice columnist, but the current reigning blonde harpy of the beyond-the-fringe neocons, Ann Coulter.
Personally, I think that the various media flotsam and jetsam on the hard right -- whether it be James Dobson, Pat Robertson, Michael Savage, or the subject of this piece -- should be given all the airtime they need to hang themselves. It's inevitable that, at some point, if they go on babbling long enough, they will chew on their own shoes with sane people looking on aghast, flinching in disgust -- "What an idiot," is the common reaction.
Whether it's Dobson rallying the faithful by stating that a TV cartoon character in the shape of a sponge is gay; or Robertson assuring the public that God's judgment was at work on sinful liberal New Orleans by way of Hurricane Katrina (neatly ignoring the Almighty's bad aim, since surrounding conservative Republican areas were also severely damaged), or Savage compassionately advising gays to get AIDS and die; or Coulter wishing Timothy McVeigh had blown up the New York Times instead of the Murrah Building in Oklahoma City, they can't help themselves; their vile, intolerant, hate-filled neocon philosophy only gains traction if one is ignorant of the full breadth of what they believe.
Of course, some think that, like Rush Limbaugh, Coulter's nothing more than a political performance artist willing to spew any outrage to get attention, who gravitated to the extreme right because that's both where the money and an uncritical audience lies. It's worth remembering that college friends of Limbaugh say he wasn't particularly conservative then, but, in plotting his broadcasting career, formulated the insight that it would be easier for him to gain an audience for his political form of 'shock jockery' with gullible right-wingers than with the better-educated and more well-informed listeners in the center and on the left. Similarly, Coulter apparently chose such a cynical career path, and even self-described friend Bill Maher, who often ridiculed Coulter to her face on his various TV shows in the past, has alluded to her Dragon Lady public persona as simply 'shtick,' to be taken as seriously as Andy Kaufman's Las Vegas lounge lizard alter-ego Tony Clifton.
But there are boundaries which Coulter should not be permitted to breach; when, for example, Ted Rall gets death threats because she blatantly lies to connect him with those who deny or belittle the Holocaust, a position diametrically opposed to Rall's thinking. Whenever Coulter is caught making one of these treacherous statements, she dismisses it as 'kidding' and accuses liberals of having no sense of humor. She forgets that, as her favorite president has said, '9/11 changed everything.' If a liberal writer issued some of the deadly exhortations to violence and racist epithets that the sneering Coulter has peddled in the name of 'humor' they would be quickly interrogated by the FBI, if not interred in jail.
So maybe it's time, in the spirit of Republican responsibility for your words, that Ann was held accountable in a court of law for her potentially lethal humbuggery.
After that's done, perhaps we should also bring Rush to judgment, so to speak.
'Slander? She wrote the book: How Ann Coulter gets away with defaming liberals'
Posted on Friday, February 24 @ 10:28:02 EST
at The Smirking Chimp
by Ted Rall
Originally appeared at Yahoo.com
NEW YORK--My utterances occasionally spark controversy but I've got nothing on Ann Coulter. The star Republican pundit, who has spewed more racist, offensive and defamatory slurs in a week than Louis Farrakhan and Pat Robertson have in their whole lives combined, has turned slander and threats of violence into a cottage industry.
Coulter thinks the nation's top journalists deserve to die. "My only regret with Timothy McVeigh," Coulter sneered in reference to the Oklahoma City bomber, "is he did not go to the New York Times building." After 9/11, she validated radical Islamists' fear and hatred: "We should invade their countries, kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity."
After he called for the assassination of the president of Venezuela, conservatives pressured Rev. Robertson to apologize. But when Coulter dropped the following three racist slurs and a fatwa on the Iranian president in a single paragraph of her syndicated column last week, no one blinked: "If you don't want to get shot by the police, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, then don't point a toy gun at them. Or, as I believe our motto should be after 9/11: Jihad monkey talks tough; jihad monkey takes the consequences. Sorry, I realize that's offensive. How about 'camel jockey'? What? Now what'd I say? Boy, you tent merchants sure are touchy. Grow up, would you?"
Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist was asked about Coulter's use of the r-word--"ragheads"--to refer to Muslims. "I better not comment," he said.
Threatening the life of a top government official violates federal law but it's just another throwaway line for Coulter. "We need somebody to put rat poison in Justice [John Paul] Stevens' crème brulée," she said earlier this month. Imagine the outrage if a Democrat said the same thing about Antonin Scalia.
Read the rest here.
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