Flush!

Ann Coulter as Pied Piper

(c) Bryan Zepp Jamieson
http://www.mytown.ca/zepp
4/19/08

Ann Coulter did a speech and book signing at Furman University in South Carolina this past week, and the first I heard about it was a few days later when a liberal poster gleefully reported that they made her do the book signing in a public toilet.

I was a little skeptical. I don’t mean to upset anyone, but there is a possibility that not everything you read on the Internet is true. Normally a university wouldn’t do such a thing to an author, but this is Ann Coulter. When it comes to being well-liked, she falls about half way between Reverend Phelps and Charlie Manson. So I went to see if the story had any truth in it.

Yes, she did give a talk at Furman University on the 16th. And I found a right wing blog that dutifully reported that there was an overflow crowd of 1,800, and that members of the audience proposed marriage to her and wanted to be like her and felt she was the only honest voice in America.

Well, ok. Things get pretty strange at the bottom lip of the bell-shaped curve. Even Ann Coulter has fans. No mention of toilets, though.

I finally did find such a report, at the Wonkette. The Wonkette isn’t a website that goes out of its way to make friends in right wing circles. In fact, she likes to gleefully toss bombs at them whenever she gets the chance, which these days occurs on an hourly basis.

Wonkette not only reported the story, but provided a photograph. The link to it speaks for itself. No, there aren’t any images of women defecating. However, the photograph didn’t appear to be photoshopped.

The Wonkette posters were beside themselves with glee. One, “MikeL” remarked, “Very considerate. Consumers could buy the book and flush it immediately. They didn't have to carry it home and smell up the car.” One, responding to a comment about Ann’s freakish hands (which are about 14" long) wrote, “Every time she tells a lie, her hands get longer.” And there were the inevitable remarks about the androgynous Coulter’s “mangina.”

Aside from the opportunity for scatalogical humor, which nine out of ten Cardinals will agree is the height of human wit, I thought the incident said something about the role of the far right in American affairs these days.

Not only are they consigned to public toilets, but they act like that’s really where they belong. Be it “political commentator” or senior US Senator, they recognize that their place really is among the stained porcelain and condom or kotex dispensers. The GOP gives a meaning to “scat” that Ella Fitzgerald wouldn’t recognize, whether it’s Bob Allen soliciting in a public restroom in Florida, or Senator David Vitter hurrying to a whorehouse with a pack of Depends diapers under his arm. Certainly, Coulter looked right at home perched in front of the sinks signing books for her admirers. It spoke volumes.

The right wing is really in the toilet. Of course, there are those who would argue that they have always been in the toilet, never left the toilet, but simply got enough money and a megaphone so they could annoy passers-by from the toilet with their propaganda. Given the nature of some of the people in that movement, there’s something to be said for that.

Take, for example, the occupation. They still refuse to admit it is an occupation, and still try to dress it up as a war. They still pretend that Iraq was a threat to the US, and that the resistance is a threat to the US beyond the one they pose to the poor bastards Putsch has placed in harms’ way over there. The Pentagon, in a report yesterday, called it a “debacle.” For some odd reason, “debacle” isn’t a French term that means “in the toilet,” but it should be. The former head of the Pentagon, probably trying to cover his ass, avowed that the Administration lied to him when he was chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff about the use of torture. Flush.

There was bad news in the economy, with more banks announcing huge losses and more huge government bailouts (the latest is a $100 billion bailout by the Bank of England to try to save the Royal Bank of Scotland and others. At least the American taxpayer won’t be shelling out for THAT one!). Unemployment took a sharp jump (.5% in California) while producer prices jumped 1.1%, suggesting a fresh round of stagflation. And a report showed that under-employment was having an even more crippling effect on people than unemployment, as wages and hours get cut. Despite all this, the markets were buoyant, with the Dow soaring about 700 points last week. When the markets develop a hysterical disregard for gravity like that, it usually means a major crash is imminent. Flush.

The right wing is going nuts trying to smear Obama with everything they have. The Reverend Wright gets mentioned a lot, even though hardly anyone cares what some nitwit preacher said. The fact that one of Obama’s more well-heeled supporters is on trial, and there is endless feverish speculation that Obama will go to jail any minute, despite the fact that there isn’t evidence of even peripheral involvement in that. And Obama knew someone who many years earlier was a member of a radical group. Ooooooh! Flush.

Last but least, they get openly racist, demanding to know if a nigger can run America. It might be easy to dismiss such filth, but it’s not so easy to dismiss the fact that few people among the Republicans are willing to speak out against it. Of course, some of what they say about Hillary is as bad, but right now they are going easy on Hillary because they are clinging to the notion that the longer the primary race goes on, the better their chances in November. So they let the vilest and lowest scum of America, the white power types, run the debate for them, and remain silent. Flush.

Which brings us to John McCain. McCain seems old and weak before the campaign even begins in earnest. He can’t tell Sunni from Shiite, with the result that he doesn’t know who America’s friends or foes are in the middle east. He thought Al Qaeda was Shiite. He thought they were allies of Iraq, and then of Iran. At a time of a gathering economic storm, he admits he doesn’t know much about the economy, and while such honesty is commendable, it’s not very reassuring in the face of a big crisis. Flush.

The really sad thing, as the right wing fades back into obscurity, is that the mainstream media, once a sign of pride in American freedom, is going with them. In the latest episode, Charles Gibson and George Stephanopoulos utterly disgraced themselves in the debate before the Pennsylvania primary, asking questions that came straight out of the GOP talking points playbook, really stupid stuff about why Obama doesn’t wear a flag lapel pin, or which of the two “loves America more.” Flush.

Eighteen percent of people think America is on the right track. Only thirty-three percent think the rest of the GOP can help America recover from the Putsch era. And the worst is yet to come.

Flush.