Heaneyland!

The dog ate my server. Now if I could only get him to eat Ann Coulter as well.

Let's just imagine we had one of those "Experiencing Technical Difficulties" signs up yesterday afternoon, shall we? Now let's see if I can remember the things I wanted to blog about.

Oh, well, there was that whole Ann Coulter thing. She was supposed to be writing a series of columns for USA Today, covering the Democratic National Convention. After she turned in her first column, they cut her loose.

"It was just differences over editing of a fairly ordinary kind," USA Today Editorial Page Editor Brian Gallagher told Editor & Publisher. "We had some different conceptions of what the column should be, we tried to work them out and when we couldn't, we decided the best course of action was for us to go our own ways."

Whereas I imagine that, in fact, they simply weren't expecting the level of crazy ranting that Coulter was about to dump in their laps. Here's an excerpt from her column:

My pretty-girl allies stick out like a sore thumb amongst the corn-fed, no make-up, natural fiber, no-bra needing, sandal-wearing, hirsute, somewhat fragrant hippie-chick pie wagons they call 'women' at the Democratic National Convention.

Christ. Talk about your trenchant political commentary. You can read the rest of that column at Coulter's website. Here's another quote that really defines the rabid conservative rhetorical style for me:

Looking at the line-up of speakers at the Convention, I have developed the 7-11 challenge: I will quit making fun of, for example, Dennis Kucinich, if he can prove he can run a 7-11 properly for 8 hours. We'll even let him have an hour or so of preparation before we open up. Within 8 hours, the money will be gone, the store will be empty, and he'll be explaining how three 11-year olds came in and asked for the money and he gave it to them.

Let me see if I've got this. Dennis Kucinich is risible to Ann Coulter because, in her mind, he would do a poor job working retail. And this proves what, exactly? That has nothing to do with facts and everything to do with Ann Coulter's biases. I can point to lots of things George W. Bush has done since he's been in office that I believe make him a piss-poor president, and perhaps you will disagree with me if you are not fond of your personal freedoms, but at least I am basing my opinions on fact. To say I feel George W. Bush wouldn't make a good president because, say, I don't think he could figure out how to do a hanging indent in Microsoft Word -- that's meaningless.

Anyway, we all know that if Bush ran that 7-11, it would also be empty, because he would have given away all the merchandise to rich people in order to stimulate the economy.

UPDATE: Tahnan thoroughly deconstructs the crazy Coulter essay (which I fantasized about doing, but was too lazy to follow through on). Rebuttals abound.

Posted by Francis at 01:11 AM