I've put off updating on this because frankly I think the discussion has run its course, and I'm tired of giving her attention. But there's enough new stuff to justify some quick links.

Robert Stacy McCain's precis of the controversy at the Washington Times.

Last night, however, Miss Coulter said that she did not use the word to demean homosexuals, nor to suggest that Mr. Edwards -- a 53-year-old married father of four -- is homosexual.

Describing her remark as "a schoolyard taunt," she said on Fox News Channel's "Hannity & Colmes" program that she meant to describe Mr. Edwards as "lame" and a "sissy."

"In that way, it is a sophomoric word, not a bad word," said Miss Coulter, longtime legal-affairs correspondent for the conservative weekly Human Events.

Criticism of Miss Coulter was most fierce from Internet activists, including a group of conservative bloggers who attended the conference. In an open letter posted on their sites, they urged CPAC's sponsors to stop inviting Miss Coulter to the event and declared that "the Age of Ann has passed." The signatories included Ed Morrissey of Captain's Quarters, Ace of Spades, and Glenn Reynolds of Instapundit.

CPAC organizers responded yesterday by saying they "do not condone or endorse every speaker or their comments," but "leave it to our audience to determine whether comments are appropriate or not."

...

On the Fox News Channel yesterday, National Review Editor Rich Lowry accused Miss Coulter of employing "a schoolyard slur that you don't expect from anyone over the age of 12."

Good video clips from Hot Air: O'Reilly's criticism of Coulter's comments (while also mentioning Bill Maher's death-wishes for Cheney), and featuring Michelle Malkin taking Ann to the woodshed. Plus, Ann's defense (where she says she just meant it as a "schoolyard taunt," as mentioned in the article above.

Here's that open letter to CPAC, which I signed. I didn't really want to sign it, not liking the whole Important Action Alert Joiny McJoinerton nature of these things, but I agreed with it, so I did sign it.

A lot of people offer the "They Do It Too" defense. Well, of course they do. Which is the whole point of taking Coulter to task -- how can anyone criticize speech like this from the left if we don't also criticize it on the right?

The left claims that no such speech occurs on the left, eveh, and Patterico easily disproves that with a series of hateful remarks from, as radio-station ads say, the eighties, the nineties, and today.

So, a lot of prominent right-leaning bloggers have signed a letter denouncing Coulter; can we expect Glenn Greenwald and Daily "Screw them" Kos to organize a similar effort against Maher?

Of course not. Because, well, we're better than they are. And frankly that's the whole point of integrity -- being better.

I'm really not trying to start any of this up again, just posting new stuff.

Extra Links: Coulter's entire speech can be viewed, in two parts, over at Ms Underestimated. She calls it brilliant. I'm going to watch it myself and see if it was decent, apart from you-know-what.

And this shit right here is just funny no matter who you are.

Allah, in his post linking the videos of Coulter, says he doesn't think Coulter is anti-gay. I'll one-up him: I think she's pretty pro-gay, the sort of blue-state single woman with lots of gay friends.

So what's the problem? Well, any joke along these lines can fall into three categories:

1. Intentionally demeaning to a group you hate.

2. Negligently, willfully, or carelessly demeaning to a group you don't hate, but don't particularly care if you offend them or not.

3. Arguably demeaning to a group you hate, but chiefly only "offensive" to those who are deliberately looking to be offended.

Obviously, this self-serving scheme has the not-entirely-fortuitous benefit of differentiating myself from Coulter's remark.

But I think it's more or less right; the question is, where does Coulter's comment fall? She says category three; I, and an awful lot of other conservatives, say category two. Some argue for category one, but I really doubt that. It's just that she gets it in her head that saying this or that will "really piss off the liberals," and never pauses to consider Gee, maybe this will piss off conservatives, or anyone else with a sense of decency or decorum, as well. Like her wouldn't-it-be-great-if-the-terrorists-had-hit-the-NYT-building joke.

Yes, pissed of liberals. Also angered anyone who doesn't think 9/11, or wishing death on one's fellow countrymen, is a joking matter. But hey-- pissed off the liberals. All that matters, really.

The problem with her "joke" is that the target of it isn't clear at all. It's not set up like the Onion piece -- superficially much more "anti-gay" than Coulter's brief reference -- so that the actual target is clearly not the forbidden target (i.e., "faggots" themselves). Even those who say "it's just a joke" are kind of vague about what the hell the joke is supposed to be. Apparently it's about Edwards being a girly man (but not an actual "faggot," definitely), and also a joke about Isiah Washington's entry into Stalinist mindcontrol rehab after using the word "faggot" to refer to an actual, well, faggot. So it seems pretty muddled to me -- Ann is saying she isn't using the word "faggot" in its literal sense in joke referencing an incident in which it definitely was used in its literal sense?

I don't know. "Nothing's funny if you analyze it to death" and all that, but the joke in the Onion bit is pretty clear, and I really don't get Ann's at all. I could think of a dozen ways to make either of her two points funnier and less likely to provoke outrage and hurt feelings, and I'm just a moron.

Was it a "joke"? Well, yes, of course it was a joke. But then, all of Marcotte's slurs were "jokes" too. The joke defense isn't absolute, i.e., just because it's a joke doesn't mean it's not over the line. I could rattle off a dozen racial jokes that I heard as a kid, but telling them at CPAC as "jokes" wouldn't make them inoffensive.

For a joke to be inoffensive, it has to also have a clear target about which joking isn't considered offensive. Ann's joke was indeed a joke, but it fails to have that saving grace. It just seems, basically, to be calling John Edwards a faggot, and I really don't see the rich, layered, nuanced social satire about Isiah Washington as changing that.

Posted by: Ace at 06:27 AM | Comments (465)
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He was off-duty, flying free, I guess. Apparently he'd already seen the movie so he was forced to find his entertainement elsewhere:

An off-duty Northwest Airlines employee was arrested after a woman on a flight from Seattle complained that the man had ejaculated on her.

The FBI identified the man as Samuel Oscar Gonzalez, 20, of Lakewood, Wash. He was charged in federal court with simple assault, a misdemeanor.

It happened on the redeye Monday morning from Seattle to Minneapolis. The woman was headed back to college.

Near the end of the flight, the FBI said Gonzalez sat next to the woman as she was trying to sleep. He touched her, which she described as spooning, lifted her shirt and then got up and left. Court documents said she felt a warm fluid on her back, clothes and seat after he walked away.

It's almost the perfect crime... except for the part where he leaves his DNA all over the victim.

Posted by: Ace at 07:55 PM | Comments (77)
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Sweet:

The mysterious disappearance of an Iranian general in Turkey in early February has led to speculation he either was kidnapped or defected.

Iran has reportedly asked Interpol to investigate the general's disappearance.

I hope they get right on that. I hope we echo the National Security Advisor in Hunt for Red October and offer Iran all possible technical assistance in finding its missing general.

One respected analyst with sources in the Iranian Revolutionary Guard says Gen. Ali Reza Asgari has defected and is now in a European country with his entire family, where he is cooperating with the U.S.

Other reports have suggested that the general may have been kidnapped by the Israeli secret service, the Mossad. A spokesperson at the CIA declined to comment on the reported defection.

It's all good, yo.

"This is a fatal blow to Iranian intelligence," said the source, explaining that Asgari knows sensitive information about Iran's nuclear and military projects.

I'm not sure how this part works -- but it's interesting if true.

...

The source... believes Asgari's disappearance was prompted by the detention of five Iranians after the raid on their government's liaison office in Irbil, Iraq in January. Asgari, 63, knew and may have worked with some of the detained men, said the analyst.

Is the suggestion Asgari provided the US information about the Iranian agents, then figured he'd better defect because suspicions would fall on him?

Great stuff.

Thanks to JackStraw.

Posted by: Ace at 04:37 PM | Comments (21)
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After the capture of the Taiban's number 3 man (apparently a big yapper), the CIA is rushing resources to Pakistan:

“Reports that the trail has gone stone cold are not correct,” said one U.S. official. “We are very much increasing our efforts there,” the official said.

I kinda hate posting these stories, since they only create disappointment. The same heart-ache the left experiences when they, for example, learn that an elected official of the US government has survived an assassination attempt by Al Qaeda or Taliban terrorists.

But I guess there's always a chance.

We Didn't Get The Top Thug In the Islamic State of Iraq Organization: Again, Expectations Fatigue kept me from being enthusiastic about this report, or even posting it. But maybe we got the second in command, which would still be pretty damn good.

I Kinda Think He's Dead... Or else he'd put out videos of himself at some point, wouldn't he?

Then again, I thought the same thing when he went video-silent from 2002 until 2004... just in time to, erm, encourage the American people to vote Democratic.

Posted by: Ace at 04:28 PM | Comments (15)
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By the white beard of Zeus! And I thought we were just talking about a movie here! I thought artists had be permitted the freedom to explore controversial ideas!

Well, not so much. Ideas which are controversial among Those Who Need The Elites' Moral Instruction are to be incessantly explored, whereas anything that discomfits the Teachable Moment Left is to be branded as vile.

LOS ANGELES, March 4 — Three weeks ago a handful of reporters at an international press junket here for the Warner Brothers movie “300,” about the battle of Thermopylae some 2,500 years ago, cornered the director Zack Snyder with an unanticipated question.

“Is George Bush Leonidas or Xerxes?” one of them asked.

The questioner, by Mr. SnyderÂ’s recollection, insisted that Mr. Bush was Xerxes, the Persian emperor who led his force against GreekÂ’s city states in 480 B.C., unleashing an army on a small country guarded by fanatical guerilla fighters so he could finish a job his father had left undone. More likely, another reporter chimed in, Mr. Bush was Leonidas, the Spartan king who would defend freedom at any cost.

...

Walt Disney largely sidestepped arguments about whether its Pixar-created animated film “The Incredibles” was quietly channeling Ayn Rand. “We feel that the longer we either refute or debate a subject like that, the more the story will live,” said Dennis Rice, senior vice president of marketing for Disney’s Buena Vista Pictures unit. “So we chose to do nothing.”

Executives at Warner, which is releasing “300” in the United States on Friday declined to discuss the studio’s approach in marketing the film. Billboards and trailers, seeming to mirror Disney’s tack with “The Incredibles,” have focused heavily on the picture’s battle action and visual flamboyance — “Prepare for Glory!” runs the most oft-repeated advertising line — while avoiding some deeper story elements that are stirring unexpectedly heated reactions, especially abroad.

Shortly after his press-junket grilling Mr. Snyder — an established commercials director, whose best-known previous credit was a remake of George Romero’s “Dawn of the Dead” — ran into some surprising reactions at the Berlinale film festival in Germany. Some attendees walked out of a screening there, while others insisted on seeing its presentation of the Spartans’ defense of Western civilization in the face of a Persian horde as propaganda for America’s position vis-à-vis Iraq and Iran. (By contrast it drew applause at a Los Angeles screening last month.)

“Don’t you think it’s interesting that your movie was funded at this point?” Mr. Snyder recalled being asked in Berlin. “The implication was that funding came from the U.S. government.”

Not so. Funding may have come from media-controlling, warmongering Jews as well.

...

According to Deborah Snyder, Mr. Snyder’s wife and an executive producer of “300” (which has more than a dozen credited producers of various levels, including Mark Canton and Gianni Nunnari), some changes to Mr. Miller’s original story may have inadvertently amplified its political resonance.

In a key twist Mr. Snyder and his collaborators expanded the presence of Gorgo, the Spartan queen and Leonidas’s wife, including, among other things, a sequence in which she inspires a wavering populace and weak-willed council to resist the Eastern armies even at the cost of battle deaths. “Her story is that she is trying to rally the troops,” said Ms. Snyder, who dismissed as irrelevant a question about her and her husband’s personal political philosophies.

Mr. Snyder acknowledged that Mr. Miller — who declined to be interviewed for this article — had opened the door for contemporary comparisons with his passionate, if not entirely accurate, portrayal of the ancient Spartans as saviors of Western civilization. “He’d be on their side regardless of who they were fighting, because he just loves them,” Mr. Snyder said.

The director was responsible for the nearly-perfect Dawn of the Dead remake? And refuses to answer questions about his politics?

Well! Refusing to talk about one's politics in Hollywood is like refusing to talk about one's sexuality -- the very fact you won't simply acknowledge the default, prevalent choice speaks volumes.

This brings to mind what I think was one of the most controversial one-second images in recent movie fare -- something so hiddeously offensive and outrageous that not a damn person except me seems to have noticed it.

In the first few post-teaser shots in Dawn of the Dead -- a movie, of course, about a civilization destroyed by mindless, psychopathic hyperviolence -- a shot of Muslims bowing in unison in a mosque is shown.

That can play two different ways, of course. It can just be seen as suggestive of the apocalypic end-time scenarios described in many religions. A suggestion made famously by the original Dawn of the Dead's promotional tag-line: When there's no more room in hell, the dead will walk the earth..

On the other hand, it can be seen as suggesting a metaphor between the mindless death and destruction wrought by the film's anti-civilization, anti-human, primitive zombies and the mindless death and destruction wrought by the real world's anti-civilization, anti-human primitive Islamicists.

I don't know which message Snyder intended. I do know for a fact -- based on skills -- that he's smart enough to know the shot could be taken either way, and didn't seem particularly bothered by that.

So Zack Snyder finds himself directing another movie about the defense of Western civilization against viral insanity?

Hmm. Good to know.

We pretty much know where Frank Miller -- who declined to be interviewed for this article ("My sexuality is none of your business") -- stands on similar issues:

After never fully believing in patriotism and the U.S. flag, Miller discusses how the events of 9/11 shaped his newfound belief in patriotism and the flag. In discussing 9/11, Miller says, “I draw and write comic books. One thing my job involves is making up bad guys. Imagining human villainy in all its forms. Now the real thing had showed up. The real thing murdered my neighbors. In my city. In my country.” Miller adds, “Patriotism, I now believe, isn’t some sentimental, old, conceit. It’s self-preservation. I believe patriotism is central to a nation’s survival.”

The Shot: Seen here, followed of course by Johnny Cash's When The Man Comes Around over the credits:

Sorry for the poor quality of that clip. There are several versions of that intro up on YouTube, but one cleaner version is useless for my purposes, as the poster was sensitive enough to cut that opening shot out.
Correction: Moviegique corrects my quote of the tag-line, and notes it was actually the tag-line for the original Dawn of the Dead, and not Night of the Living Dead as I'd thought.

Ohhh... In the end credits, again showing the end of the world, the director slips in a clip from Paris Hilton's sex tapes (or a clip staged to look like her sex tapes), suggesting, humorously, that Paris Hilton caused the Apocalypse.

A humorous little Easter Egg, but once again, one that seems to spring from a conservatively-oriented mind.

Second Video Deleted... As it seems to be a Truther video. Though I think they just took a 9/11 video popular a few years ago and added a few of their own images.

Thanks to Midaz and NiceDeb for alerting me to that. Apologies.

Let's Keep This Quiet, Okay? Moonbat_One ID's Zack Snyder's t-shirt here as being a parody of the Major League Baseball logo, with a guy shooting an assault rife instead of a holding a bat. The slogan underneath (unseen) he says is "Major League Infidel." Seen here.

Could just be a funny t-shirt, I guess. In any event, keep it on the Q.T. so that "those people" don't find out.

Posted by: Ace at 03:35 PM | Comments (108)
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At 420 pounds, I'm not sure she'd've even noticed the sex:

pril Branum went to her local emergency room Monday night complaining of stomach pain and emerged with the biggest shock of her life. She was pregnant with a full-term fetus.

Doctors, who discovered the baby when they took X-rays of her abdominal area, immediately sent Branum to UCI Medical Center in Orange for prenatal testing.

The fetus's lungs were fully developed, the heartbeat was strong, and no defects were detected. The baby was ready to be delivered.

Two days later, the first-time mother gave birth by C-section to a healthy, 7-pound, 7-ounce boy named Walter Scott Edwards III.

"Usually you can tell if you're pregnant, but with me, I couldn't tell," the 39-year-old Garden Grove resident said Thursday, pointing to her belly and explaining that, at about 420 pounds, she was so large that no one – including herself – could tell she had carried a baby to term.

Branum says she never had morning sickness and did not feel the baby kick, at least not until after doctors told her what was inside her womb. "If he kicked, I didn't feel him kicking," she said.

The layers of fat padding her belly likely insulated the baby's movements, said her physician, Dr. Afshan Hameed.

"When she moved or laid down, she had so much weight of her own that the tiny movements of the baby didn't register as well," said Hameed, a UCI obstetrician-gynecologist and cardiologist.

Branum, who lives with her fiancé Walter Edwards II in the Garden Grove house where she grew up, gave up hope years ago of having any children with him. She stopped having a menstrual cycle about two years ago – likely a complication of her obesity – and had grown accustomed to her lifestyle working as a baby sitter of six children.

Meanwhile, she was struggling with an unsuccessful gastric bypass surgery she had about seven years ago. The surgery did not help her lose as much weight as hoped, her doctor said.

Branum and Edwards, who plan to marry by the year's end, met in a Costa Mesa karaoke bar about four years ago and have been engaged for 2 1/2 years. They have adopted four dogs together, including their puppy Junior, which they added to the family in September."

Thanks to Nice Deb.

Posted by: Ace at 02:15 PM | Comments (56)
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Oh really?

Just a bunch of off-the-top of my head hard rock and pop rock songs from that period. more...

Posted by: Ace at 01:47 PM | Comments (125)
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It's long been a slogan that if guns are banned, criminals will simply resort to using... well, guns, because criminals don't care if they're illegal or not, but if they can't get guns, they'll just move on to the next most lethal weapon.

Like cheap imitation "Samurai swords." England:

The sale of imitation samurai swords could be banned by the end of the year, the Home Office announced today.

Importing or hiring the weapons could also be made illegal following a string of samurai sword attacks in recent years.

...

Collectors and martial arts enthusiasts owning or using genuine [and very expensive] samurai swords would be exepmt from the ban

According to Home Office estimates, there have been at least 80 serious crimes involving the swords in England and Wales over the last four years.

One MP recently warned that they were being used by criminal gangs as the preferred weapon of choice after guns.

Last month, amphetamine addict Hugh Penrose was jailed for at least 19 years for hacking a 21-year-old woman with a samurai sword and then deliberately running her over.

In October, Bradley Moran was jailed for 17 years for murdering another man with a samurai sword following an argument in a nightclub.

...

The Home Office now wants to ban their sale as part of a wider crackdown on knives and bladed weapons.

Carrying a samurai sword in a public place already attracts a maximum jail sentence of four years.

Vernon Coaker, the Home Office minister, said today: "Samurai sword crime is low in volume but high in profile and I recognise it can have a devastating impact."

Fine, ban them. Criminals will just go to the next-best weapon on the D&D weapons list. Let's see... hmmm, appears to be a bastard sword doing 1d10 damage when wielded with two hands.

Maybe -- just maybe -- it might be better to disarm outlaws than to outlaw arms.

Posted by: Ace at 01:16 PM | Comments (68)
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Tony Hedra's right now busily cranking out a post entitled "The Little Clot That Could."

Posted by: Ace at 12:52 PM | Comments (72)
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Not so much funny as true.

The Guardians said recent developments in the music world, such as the unaccountable popularity of the Dixie Chicks and Sufjan Stevens, have created a "perfect storm of lameness" from which rock might never recover. While Iommi refused to say when the vault would be opened, hard rock sources believe it will take place just prior to next month's Fall Out Boy–Honda Civic tour, which many fear will suck the remaining lifeblood from all that still rocks.
Unlocking The Code

"Citizens of Rock, we refuse to stand idly by any longer," ZZ Top founder and Protectorate High Elder Billy Gibbons said. "When a puss like James Blunt is allowed to rule the airwaves, we must respond by exposing this monster riff, and blowing minds into the stratosphere."

Seriously, what the hell happened? The early to mid nineties were an amazing Renaissance of rock and then... the boy bands came, and the puss folkies, and etc. What I wouldn't give to hear on the radio again even bands that were kinda lame -- like, I don't know, Live and Pearl Jam.

Thanks to HotAir.

Posted by: Ace at 12:42 PM | Comments (65)
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