Hate Speech: The Beat Goes On (with update).

CC has a number of good points in his post The unbearable vacuity of Ann Coulter.

As for the cancellation of Coulter's lecture at the U of O, I call bullshit. There was actually no physical threat, only heated, emotional outbursts from a crowd that had been whipped up to a frenzy by the inflamed publicity her entourage had stoked.

Coulter should have thanked the students protesting outside Marion Hall. Their performance has raised Coulter's profile in the US. Media networks that had stopped inviting her to their talk shows are likely swamping her agent with booking requests.

Yesterday I mentioned that Coulter's popularity at rightwing events had been eclipsed by Palin and Bachman.

Le Cirque de Coulter has left the city and its main event, a skankily-dressed, scrawny faux-blonde is laughing all the way to the bank.

Check out balbulican's blogpost. It has the money shot.

More here, including a choice quote from Coulter: "I think I’ll give my speech tomorrow night in a burka. That will protect me." Sorry, Ann. A popular stand-up comic who performs at Juste pour rire - Lise Dion - already works that corner.

Shrieeekkk!?!?!?!?

Warning: Many rightwing fundamentalist religious zealots of all stripes are likely to be offended by this post.

This week I attended an evening of Xmas and secular holiday music held in a local church. The choir gave the money raised from ticket sales to local charities: a food bank and a shelter for homeless men.

One of the carols they sang was The First Noel; the lyrics repeat several times, and end with this statement:

"... Born is the King of Israel."

So I wondered: Would the CPCCA - the Canadian Parliamentary Coalition to Combat Anti-Semitism which claims to the arbiter of everything anti-semitic find these words objectionable?

And if that carol were banned from public performance, would the fundamentalist christian zealots and/or rancid haters who screech there's a War On Christmas accuse Jews of persecuting them? Just asking.

It's all so confusing. Won't someone remember the true meaning of Xmas?

Shriek! My parents turned me into a rightwing zombie!

That seems to be the core message of Raphael Alexander's, oops, Adrian MacNair's blogpost about global warming. Notice how the title parrots Christopher Monkton's verbal defamation of the young climate change activists who challenged him in Copenhagen?

MacNair also blames his parents for forcing him to attend anti-nuclear weapons demos and consequently turning him into an individual repelled by progressive values.

During the fifties, on television and in schools across the country, Diefenbaker's government used graphic visuals - mushroom clouds, skin and flesh melting to reveal the skullbones beneath - to impress the public with the urgency of war preparedness. It instilled in my parents a life-long need to keep an overstocked pantry but I can't say it traumatized me to the point I now run screaming from the supermarket whenever I see shelves crammed full of canned goods.

MacNair singles out the evulness of this particular video. He appears absolutely enraged - ENRAGED! - that innocent children could be exploited thus and on their behalf, mothers are challenging the premise of an economy based on the complete depletion of our planet's resources.

I know how he feels. It turns my stomach whenever I see MacNair's hero, Stevie Spiteful using babies in his election photos and video propaganda opportunities.



With any luck, MacNair's children will likely reject their father's rank and rabid, passive-agressive, rightwing socon politics as he rejected his parents political activism.

Dueling commodifications.

DJ! has blogged before about Levi Johnston - most recently here. And. Also here. But this interview with The Guardian's Ed Pilkingston, writing from Anchorage, offers a weight of credibility that surpasses most of the puff pieces, including the titillating gossip Vanity Fair published. This is Johnston's version of how things unfolded:

In Johnston's account of what happened in the run-up to the presidential election, Palin treated him like modelling clay – taking this rugged teenager and smoothing him out to fit the image of the perfect, loyal family man that she wanted presented to the news channels. Even before she was chosen as McCain's running mate, she was pressuring him and Bristol to marry, he says. "Oh yeah, that's what Sarah and Todd [her husband] wanted. She just kept mentioning that we should, she was all in a hurry, so I was 'Alright, I'll do it!'"

Johnston claims she even offered to adopt Tripp. He says he and Bristol were appalled by the suggestion, which Palin made over the phone while he was at a tattoo parlour, though Palin has strongly denied this.

After the election any positive feelings between Johnston and the Palin family vanished, though he still wears Bristol's name in a floral tattoo on his ring finger, having not got round to having it removed. Sarah Palin's attitude, he says, changed overnight after she lost the race. "Suddenly it was 'Maybe you ought to think again about marriage, wait, maybe do it next year.' So at that point I had to think that she had just wanted us to marry to make herself look better in the campaign, to
boost things up."

Here's the difference between Johnston and Palin. Levi's not running for public office, power-hungry nor pretending to be something he's not. What you see (or will see, in a future Playgirl issue) seems closer to what he is, than the "Sarah Palin" fabrication that his son's grandmother and her handlers have concocted.

Boo-hoo-hoo!

In all the batshit craziness steaming out of the Excited States, a bit of good news.

Focus on the Family announced Wednesday it is laying off 8 percent of its work force, casualties of the latest budget shortfall at the influential conservative Christian group.

Seventy-five employees will lose their jobs and an additional 57 vacant positions will remain unfilled, said Gary Schneeberger, spokesman for the evangelical ministry founded by child psychologist James Dobson.

The cutbacks are necessary because projections show the group will fall 5 percent short of a $138 million budget for the fiscal year ending this month, Schneeberger said.

Last fall FOF reduced staff by 200.

Maybe the loonitude is turning off the less loony. We can only hope. . .