Purchase of the day.

From the February 22, 2013 Amazon Associates Earnings Report:

"If Democrats Had Any Brains, They'd Be Republicans" [Hardcover] Ann Coulter (Author) (Earnings to the Althouse blog = $0.00)

Honorable mention:

Educational Products - SET Zimbabawe 10, 50, 100 Trillions Collection / Hyperinflation Money - (Earnings to the Althouse blog = $0.96)

... and 52 other items purchased — at no additional cost to the buyers — through the Althouse Amazon portal.

Althouse portal users: brainy, frugal, value-smart.

Thank you all who support this blog.

"Americans who remember the student protests of the 1960s tend to assume that U.S. colleges are still some of the freest places on earth."

Says Greg Lukianoff:

But that idealized university no longer exists. It was wiped out in the 1990s by administrators, diversity hustlers and liability-management professionals, who were often abetted by professors committed to political agendas.

"What's disappointing and rightfully scorned," Mr. Lukianoff says, "is that in some cases the very professors who were benefiting from the free-speech movement turned around to advocate speech codes and speech zones in the 1980s and '90s."

Today, university bureaucrats suppress debate with anti-harassment policies that function as de facto speech codes....

At Western Michigan University, it is considered harassment to hold a "condescending sex-based attitude." That just about sums up the line "I think of all Harvard men as sissies" (from F. Scott Fitzgerald's 1920 novel "This Side of Paradise"), a quote that was banned at Yale when students put it on a T-shirt. 

More examples like that at the link — which goes to the Wall Street Journal — and in Lukianoff's book "Unlearning Liberty." There's video too at the link, displayed with this unintended freeze-frame humor:

“Why does Ann Coulter call Todd Akin ‘a selfish swine?’”

Asked Lawrence O’Donnell (who, strangely, looks almost exactly like Todd Akin).

“Because Todd Akin’s bat-crap crazy ideas on rape are going to make it so much harder for [R]epublicans to win control of the Senate. Right now, Democrats hold 51 Senate seats, Republicans 47, independents 2. Republicans would need to pick up four seats to gain control of the Senate. They would need only three seats if Mitt Romney actually won the election, because then the vice president, Paul Ryan, would be able to cast a tie-breaking votes.”

But according to Coulter, O’Donnell['s] failure to invite her to appear on his show makes him “a complete pussy”....

The link goes to The Daily Caller (which badly needs proofreading — I had to fix 2 things in this short cut-and-paste). The main reason I'm linking to this item is that the picture of O'Donnell looks so much like Akin.

I looked for a picture of Akin to make my point and got distracted by — speaking of "a complete pussy" — this.

ADDED: Selfish swine or kind toad?

Rich Lowry is keeping it short.

"Needless to say, no one at National Review shares Derb’s appalling view of what parents supposedly should tell their kids about blacks in this instantly notorious piece here."

That's the whole item. Should he have said more?

For links to more commentary on the abysmally bad John Derbyshire piece, go here.

IN THE COMMENTS: Patrick said:

He should have added another line, informing NRO readers that Derbyshire is no longer an NR contributor.

Remember when National Review fired Ann Coulter?

UPDATE: Rich Lowry announces that NR has fired Derbyshire. After some nice compliments — "he’s a deeply literate, funny, and incisive writer" — and some half-compliments — he's "maddening, outrageous, cranky, and provocative" — Lowry calls the new piece "nasty and indefensible." NR would never have published it, yet the name, National Review, is getting used to inflate its prominence. "Derb is effectively using our name to get more oxygen for views with which we’d never associate ourselves otherwise." Lowry calls the article "so outlandish it constitutes a kind of letter of resignation." Perhaps it is what Derbyshire wanted, and now he's got a powerful send-off.

"Santorum... is more of a Catholic than a conservative..."

"... which means he's good on 60 percent of the issues, but bad on others, such as big government social programs. He'd be Ted Kennedy if he didn't believe in God."

Quips Ann Coulter, via  WaPo's "On Faith... Conversation about Religion and Politics."

"Woo Hoo! Feingold at Walkerville tonight, maybe my other honey Jon Erpenbach will be there too!"

"I do love rubbing up against those two!"

In light of Weiner's Twitter troubles, it's fascinating to read a tweet like that.

ADDED: "A 5pm visit by former WI Sen/rockstar Russ Feingold will result in streets overflowing w/adulation."

So it's at 5. I'll try to get some pics of the idolators... and the rubbers-up-against.

IN THE COMMENTS: Shouting Thomas said:

Haven't read it, but this brings to mind the theme of Ann Coulter's new book, Demonic.

Having heard Coulter discuss this book on the radio the other day, I'd had the same thought as I was writing this post. So I bought the book — you can buy it here — to extract some relevant material.

Manifestly, liberals fanatically worship their leaders. FDR, JFK, Clinton, Obama, even Hillary, Liz Holtzman, and John Lindsay—they’re all “rock stars” to Democrats. They’re the Beatles, Elvis, or Jesus, depending on which cliché liberals are searching for. As Le Bon says, the “primitive” black-and-white emotions of a crowd slip easily into “infatuation for an individual.”

Le Bon is Gustave Le Bon, who wrote a book "The Crowd: A Study of the Popular Mind" (1895), which Coulter relies on heavily. Back to Coulter:

The most Reagan-besotted conservative would never seriously refer to his presidency with something as hokey as “Camelot.” But in the bizarro-world of the Democrats’ Camelot cult, all we ever hear about is the youth, the vigor, the glamour, the “Kennedy mystique,” and the rest of the cant.... Bill Clinton was called a rock star often, the expression “rock star” [is] the most irritating cliché of the century....

Eleanor Clift described the doughy Clinton-Gore team as “the all-beefcake ticket,” gasping that she was “struck by the expanse of their chests”... The Washington Post’s Sally Quinn said women identified with Clinton because of “the softness, the sensitivity, the vulnerability, that kind of thing.”... An infatuated Jonathan Alter babbled in Newsweek about the Clinton hug: “Bill Clinton hugs other men. It’s not a bear hug, usually—more like a Full Shoulder Squeeze. Women get it, too, but the gesture is more striking in its generational freshness when applied to the same sex....”

When Obama came along, guess who liberals started having sex dreams about?... The New York Times’s Judith Warner reported, “Many women—not too surprisingly—were dreaming about sex with the president.”... The Obamas, Warner wrote, were “a beacon of hope, inspiration and ‘demigodlikeness.’ ”...

NBC’s Matt Lauer noted that “people” have called Obama “ ‘The Savior,’ ‘The Messiah,’ ‘The Messenger of Change.’ ” Try to imagine conservatives coming up with such honorifics for Dwight Eisenhower. Being rational individuals, conservatives don’t turn their political leaders into religious icons. Liberals, by contrast, having all the primitive behaviors of a mob, idolize politicians. 

"To know what Ann Coulter writes in her books, they’d have to know what’s in her books."

"That would require reading Ann Coulter’s books — and worse yet, admitting it in print, which no self-respecting Timesian would do. Far better to make a major embarrassing error... and thus actually score points when busted by Mickey, since this makes it clear to the NYT crowd that your mind is unpolluted by contact with Coulter’s writing."

"I like gays. I like all gays. And not just the ones who are Ann Coulter drag queens."

Said Ann Coulter in 2006, quoted today, by Mickey Kaus, who's defending her against the NYT, which has a big article on her saying she's "taking some surprising new positions" now that "the Tea Party movement have stolen much of her thunder." One of the supposedly "surprising new positions" she's taken is pro-gay. Mickey says:

Coulter has a whole chapter in her [2007] book If Democrats Had Any Brains They'd Be Republicans on why gays should join the GOP. The chapter is called "No Gays Left Behind!"... Pretty shrewd of her to realize in 2007 that in two years the Tea Parties would rise up and steal her "thunder"—so she'd better start going for the gays!

Ha ha.

Was it "racially insensitive" to say to gay people — as Ann Coulter did — "Marriage is not a civil right. You're not black"?

That's what Talking Points Memo says. I'm trying to understand the theory by which it's racially insensitive. The only thing close, in my view, and I know it's not TPM's, is that the remark contains the unwitting assumption that gay people are white. TMP notes Coulter's explanation:

It was part of a larger argument on which she later elaborated, telling the crowd that the 14th Amendment only applies to African-Americans and that it does not, in fact, apply to women, LGBT people or other minorities.

Can I get a quote? I don't trust this paraphrasing. She said the 14th Amendment only applies to black people? Or did she say that the 14th Amendment should be understood with some reference to its historical context of insuring rights for the freed slaves? It's not the same thing, TPM.

Wow, the Canadians are really helping Ann Coulter with her PR!

"This has never, ever, ever happened before — even at the stupidest American university. . . . Since I’ve arrived in Canada, I’ve been denounced on the floor of Parliament — which, by the way, is on my bucket list — my posters have been banned, I’ve been accused of committing a crime in a speech that I have not yet given, I was banned by the student council. So welcome to Canada!"

Ann Coulter has her mouth wired shut.

After breaking her jaw.

I hope no one breaks any bones in the rush to crack jokes about it.

"Okay, I'm putting my Nicorette back in."

You know, I like all of these individuals better in their off-camera stuff than what they do when they think a million people are looking.

What did Ann and Rush and Jimmie talk about?

As long as we're reading the gossip column this morning, let's keep going:

Talk about random: Jimmie (J.J.) Walker of "Good Times" fame dined at Elaine's with Ann Coulter and Rush Limbaugh.

So... what did they talk about? Ann's latest publicity baiting? Rush's eBay auction? (He's got one of the great documents in American history for sale over there with the bid up over $2 million now.) But what about Jimmie? Will Ann and Rush help him dream up a scheme to rake in millions?

Is Jimmie a right winger? Let's see. He's got a website with a tab for "Jimmie's Views." Here he is on Barack Obama:

" Nothing from nothing leaves nothing"... That sums up the " Golden Boy" of the Democratic Party... Barack Obama... Obama has been annointed the Savior of the Democratic Party... But what has he done or said?... NOTHING... Until the Democratic Convention of 2004 when you mentioned the name Barack Obama... people thought you talking about Osama Bin Laden... Obama doesn't seem to be a bad guy...but there's nothing of substance in anything he's said or done ... maybe that's what so appealing about him to so many people ... he's managed to say a lot of nothing... His best selling book doesn't have any policies or new ideas... it's more like a Tony Robbins feel good book...Barack is Tony Robbins on speed...There are tough decisons to be made as president of the United States... and not everyone is going to like you... Unlike Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton, Mr. Obama is a candidate white America can live with, like Colin Powell... But unlike Colin Powell, Barack Obama is more than willing to accept whatever the party will give him... with the Black critics using the " He's not Black Enough" card ...He is the Johnny Mathis of candidates to Black voters...... But that's more than enough to get the white liberal establishment behind him... Ivy league educated and the first Black editor of the Harvard Review...Obama hasn't used the Black card... but he's let others around him play it ... to the point of " All In "... Every Democrative operative From Hillary Clinton to John Kerry to James Carville has mentioned it ... Every news organization has run with the Black card... But never Barack Obama...He has learned his lessons well ... never speaking about policy... but instead giving feel good Tony Robbins speeches...getting into the Senate was a lucky break for Obama... he was elected on a pass... late in the race, his opponent was caught up in sex scandal with a vengeful ex-wife, and dropped out ... Ultra conservative Alan Keys was brought in to as a carpet bagger to run against Obama on short notice... and was soundly defeated... Two schools of thought come in... With Hillary Clinton being the clear front runner... what is her real chance of being elected... why not have the " Star" of the 2002 Democratic Convention make a run.. Or with Hillary Clinton it would be great to have the fair haired boy run with Hillary... to have a woman and a Black running together... Barack Obama hasn't been in the " cess pool of American Politics"...He hasn't had to defend his record or policies... 'cause he doesn't have any...the American Public hasn't seen nor heard a negative word or political ad from Obama and the American people have no Idea what he stands for ... Maybe that's good... but is it good enough to be President...

So what's the scheme here? Is someone writing for Jimmie (and taking the trouble to misspell Keyes and insert typos to throw us off the track)? Did Rush/Ann spot this writing — which I note is dated "11-21-07" — and pounce on an opportunity? Or are we to think this dinner at Elaine's was just a wacky, "random" meetup that belongs in the gossip column?

"Elizabeth Edwards didn't call Hillary Clinton a man."

Noted.

ADDED: Salon's Joan Walsh wrote:

I knew Edwards was making news when she criticized Clinton, but she was definitely not calling her a man, which is one of the GOP's favorite slurs against Hillary Clinton. This is the last, best hope of the Republicans to hold onto the White House: to brand the leading candidate, who happens to be female, as too mannish, while slurring the leading men -- John Edwards and Barack Obama -- as girly. Meanwhile, President Bush is the swaggering moron who won't ask for directions even though he's 100 miles off course, and the 2008 GOP lineup is a parody of masculinity -- not to mention a Mount Rushmore of infidelity. According to an Associated Press poll released today, GOP primary voters are still longing for someone different to throw his or her hat into the race. Elizabeth Edwards' point was to question Democrats who are making a straight gender pitch for women to support Clinton -- or for African-Americans to support Obama -- which is absolutely fair game.

Walsh is complaining about one of Drudge's headlines. But when does the GOP use the word "man" against Hillary? I mean, there may be insinuations that she's insufficiently feminine, but I'm not seeing anyone actually calling her a man. So why is Walsh bitching about Drudge idiocy and then committing the same offense?

Anyway, there is an elaborate gender subtext in the 2008 campaign, and Elizabeth Edwards is playing her part in it. She's pretty subtle about it, but she is using gender to score points. So what Drudge did worked as hyperbole. I could see blogging that interview and making a wisecrack to the effect that Elizabeth Edwards is saying Hillary's a man. Drudge sets his own standards for what his page is supposed to be. It's not quite normal headlines. Sometimes he twists things around for comical effect.

The main problem, I think -- and I've blogged about this before -- is when he puts something in quotes that doesn't appear in text at the link. Today, he had: "Gender Bender: Wife Edwards Says Hillary 'Behaving Like a Man.'" And "behaving like a man" did not appear at the link. You could do fake quotes. The Onion does. But I don't think that's Drudge's standard approach. That's what makes it seem wrong.

MORE: Katharine Q. Seelye writes in TimesSelect:

[I]t seems that there’s something about Mrs. Clinton that is clearly frustrating to Mrs. Edwards....

Yeah, she's beating the hell out of her husband.

The Edwards campaign may find that such pointed remarks help Mr. Edwards raise money, as Mrs. Edwards’s confrontation with Ann Coulter did a few weeks ago. But it may also find that they overshadow her husband and his message.

I'm thinking it's actually pretty smart of EE to strike out like this. There's something a little annoying about sending the woman (who's a wife) out to attack the woman (who's a candidate), but EE is very appealing, and the Edwards marriage is quite a bit more appealing than the Clinton marriage. And Hillary has been using Bill.

Am I supposed to comment on the sick symbiotic relationship between...

... John Edwards (desperately needs a new way to drum up cash) and Ann Coulter (has a book coming out just now in paperback)?

Here's what I'm not talking about.

MORE: TRex -- who mocks Coulter for incoherent raving by incoherently raving about drug use -- seems delirious with glee that to announce that Coulter's book ("Godless") declined #85 to #98 on Amazon’s Top 100 Non-fiction Politics top sellers list at one point yesterday. But today, it's #25. Unfortunately, kicking up a storm on TV actually does sell books.

YET MORE: "Coulter's Words Help Edwards Raise Cash."

Poor Mickey... but he kind of deserves it.

I finally got around to watching the new episode of "South Park," which helped me understand why Andrew Sullivan is needling Mickey Kaus like that. I laughed a lot, especially in the first few minutes, which you can see in the clip that's currently on the front page here. (And help me figure out how to make this a permanent link to that clip.)

If you'd rather see Mickey Kaus just yelled at outright, rather than taunted with references to cartoons he doesn't watch, go here and watch Bob Wright get incredibly -- and uncharacteristically -- steamed about Mickey's failure to condemn Ann Coulter for using the f-word... the other f-word.

The trick of "insulting upward."

Ann Coulter uses it, and so does that lawprof columnist Paul Campos -- who went to University of Michigan Law School with her -- Dave Kopel observes.

[P]ick somebody more famous than you. Vilify the person in some outrageous way. Ideally, the target gets upset and responds, and the press covers your public argument. By engaging in a public fight with you, the target has implicitly raised you to his own level of importance....

His column ... insulted upward at University of Wisconsin law professor Ann Althouse (bizarrely claiming that she is part of a conspiracy to protect Coulter). Althouse is far more famous than Campos on the Web and in academia; her record of scholarly publications in law journals is significantly larger than his. She responded to Campos on her blog, thus giving him more publicity.

A couple of weeks ago, Campos also successfully insulted upward when he accused University of Tennessee law professor Glenn Reynolds of advocating murder, and urged that the school censor Reynolds. Reynolds too has a vastly larger record of scholarly publication than Campos, and Reynolds' Web log, InstaPundit, is the most influential in the world (based on incoming links statistics at truthlaidbear.com).

Kopel notes that Campos also tried the insulting upward trick on Coulter but she used the correct response of ignoring it, while Glenn and I fell into the trap by responding. Well, it's not as if I don't know not to ignore an insulter who stands to gain from the attention. I do ignore insults every day. Some days, like yesterday, I ignore a whole slew of insults. But I choose some to respond to for various reasons. One reason I responded to Campos is that he's a fellow law professor. Another is, I actually know him. Also, he's got a column in a major newspaper.

Hey, I guess I should perceive Kopel as using the trick of defending upward! He got me to write about his damn Rocky Mountain News column.... at 3 a.m....

(Can you trust your own judgment, blogging at 3 a.m.?)

"Ann Althouse would probably write a column in The New York Times about how, if Pelosi were really a feminist..."

Why is lawprof Paul Campos invoking my name in his Rocky Mountain News column?

Now suppose I were to stand up here and call Coulter a \[expletive]. (Interestingly, unlike "faggot," American newspapers won't print this word, although it's no more offensive). That would, I believe, be a highly inappropriate thing to do. Even though it's my personal opinion that, if anyone deserves to be called a \[expletive], Coulter does, it's still the sort of thing any decent person will avoid doing.

Yet if I were to point out that Coulter is, by any reasonable standard of evaluation, a \[expletive], I suspect much outrage would ensue. After all, Nancy Pelosi is giving a speech later tonight inside this same hotel, in which - in this hypothetical scenario - someone Pelosi doesn't know (i.e., me) would have called Coulter a \[expletive].

If such a thing were to happen, the entire right-wing noise machine would leap into action. Ann Althouse would probably write a column in The New York Times about how, if Pelosi were really a feminist, she would unequivocally condemn some guy Pelosi has never heard of, who called Coulter a \[expletive] in front of 75 people in a hotel room in Denver.

What the hell is he talking about?

For reference, here's my post about the Coulter/"faggot" thing. My point was that I'm under no obligation to disassociate myself from someone I've never allied with. So this hypothetical column writing he's imagining... it doesn't fit me at all.

Thanks for keeping my name in the press, Paul. But that was just weird.

IN THE COMMENTS: Go in there and read Daryl Herbert's 11:08 comment. I'd reprint it on the front page here -- it's one of the best comments ever -- but it's kind of long, and it's got that word. You know, the word.

I hate to do this. But I'm going to write a post defending myself against the idiotic charge...

... that I'm failing to denounce Ann Coulter for using the word "faggot" with reference to John Edwards. I have never promoted Ann Coulter on this blog. I just checked all the old references to her. In over 8,000 posts in 3 years, I see her name in only 10 posts, and half of these just have her name in some block quote from someone else. I've never approved of the kind of shots she takes, though I have said I think she imagines herself to be some sort of comedian:

You know, when we first noticed Coulter doing various political shows -- I think it was back in the mid-90s -- we were always saying "Why is that woman laughing?," "She's always laughing," "There's that woman again who's always laughing," etc. No matter what she said, she'd be laughing, as though every damned thing that happened in politics was hilarious to her and everything comment she made completely cracked her up. You might not think what she is saying is funny, but I think she's motivated by comic energy, and the people who like her are picking up on the fun.

And I've responded to a comparison of me to her:

One of the things that I observe, by the way, is how this attitude I take -- whatever it is -- drives the left blogosphere up the wall. I wonder why it takes so little? And why this special obsession with me? Some blogger wrote about me -- I linked to him yesterday... he's not getting another -- "She makes Ann Coulter look like Cicero." Ann Coulter makes outrageous statements intended to taunt people into attacking her. That's her game. I make some throwaway, half-humorous remark in the middle of a comments thread and touch off multi-blog fireworks that go on for days. What's that all about?

I briefly note an instance where she was prevented from speaking -- which reflects my longstanding interest in free speech. And I quote her joke about the nomination of Harriet Miers: "I eagerly await the announcement of President Bush's real nominee to the Supreme Court." Which is a good joke that expressed how I felt about the nomination. And here, also a propos of Miers, I mention that she laughed at a joke on "Real Time With Bill Maher."

So if you think I have some obligation to disassociate myself from her, you are just damned wrong on the facts. And if you think I have ever supported homophobia on this blog, I challenge you to prove it. You can't. And if you think I hate John Edwards, why don't you see if you can figure out who I voted for in the 2004 primary?

Meanwhile, what chumps you people are to take the bait and promote her again! Or is there some other story that would be big today if this nonsense weren't eclipsing it?

ADDED: There's the eclipse.

Oppressed by the label "Republican"?

Dr. Helen is showing solidarity.

How many times do you hear someone apologizing for having right leaning views -- "Oh, no, I am not really a Republican, I have other views etc." My question is, what if one is a Republican or right leaning. So what? Is that a crime?

She's also disagreeing with me disagreeing with Tom DeLay who said that the blogosphere needs more right-wing attack dogs. (I'm paraphrasing!)

Sadly, I used to agree with views like Althouse's but I am beginning to see that while it is admirable to hold facts and substance above attacking one's opponents views, it doesn't work.

My view, you remember from yesterday, is that vicious and nasty lefty bloggers should be bested with better substance and smarter rhetoric. But Dr. Helen has a point. For example, I've noticed that arch ambiguities, terse sarcasm, and mischievous fun-poking confuses a lot of people. But I'm not going to change. I'm not in this to persuade people to agree with me. I write for the sake of writing and observe because I am alive... up here in my lonely outpost in Madison, Wisconsin.

One of the things that I observe, by the way, is how this attitude I take -- whatever it is -- drives the left blogosphere up the wall. I wonder why it takes so little? And why this special obsession with me? Some blogger wrote about me -- I linked to him yesterday... he's not getting another -- "She makes Ann Coulter look like Cicero." Ann Coulter makes outrageous statements intended to taunt people into attacking her. That's her game. I make some throwaway, half-humorous remark in the middle of a comments thread and touch off multi-blog fireworks that go on for days. What's that all about?