Here are the reasons (besides the obvious ones) that we think it was a good idea for Jeremy Paul Olson to throw food at Sarah Palin today during her Minnesota reading, for which he is currently incarcerated:

Throwing food at people has a long, messy history

The first recorded incident of throwing food at a public figure in history, according to our ten minutes of Googling, was in 60-something AD when Roman emperor Vespasianus Ceaser Augustus was "pelted with turnips" at a riot, most likely by people sick of having nothing to eat but turnips. In the 1770s, preacher John Crook was similarly assaulted when he tried to convert the heathens of the Isle of Man to Methodism.

Later, an 1883 Times article titled "AN ACTOR DEMORALIZED BY TOMATOES" recounts the fierce pillorying of the actor John Ritchie

He had a crowded house, and was warmly received, in fact, it was altogether hot for him, there being distributed among the audience a bushel or two of rotten tomatoes. The first act opened with Mr. Ritchie trying to turn a somersault. He probably would have succeeded had not a great many tomatoes struck him, throwing him off his balance and demoralizing him... a large tomato thrown from the gallery struck him square between the eyes, and he fell to the stage floor just as several bad eggs dropped upon his head. Then the tomatoes flew thick and fast, and Ritchie fled for the stage door.

Come on, haters: That is awesome!

More recently, Nixon was pelted with eggs and tomatoes during a 1958 trip to South America, but cleverly blamed it on the fact he was riding in one of the notoriously shitty Edsel convertibles. You guys just got a face-full of history there, which proves that throwing food is basically the "Mad Men" of political protest.

A violent action without all that violence

Violence is wrong. But sometimes you just want to fuck shit up. Throwing food is a good compromise, with much of the spectacle and newsworthiness of violence but none of the stupid "hurting people" part. (Incidentally, we should mention that we endorse that tomato-throwing guy if and only if he was chucking very soft, overripe tomatoes which would splatter readily and harmlessly all over Ms. Palin and drip down into her clothes while she was trying to sign books. Also, the tomatoes should have been organic and fair trade!)

It's democratic

Did we mention that, after signing her books today at the Mall of America, Palin headed off to a $5000 per head fundraiser for The Freedom Club PAC? The people who can pay $5000 for this kind of thing are the people who run our country. It's only fair that we allow Joe the disenfranchised Plumber the right to hurl at members of the power-elite the tomatoes which their own unfair trade policies have made so affordable and delicious.

Usually, the victim deserves it

Consider this partial list of people who have had food thrown at them, according to Google:

• Roman Emperor Vespasianus Caesar Augustus
• Shitty 19th century actor John Ritchie
• Nixon
• Nick Griffin (British right-wing politician and notorious Holocaust denier)
• Thomas Friedman
• Bill Gates
• Ann Coulter
• David Horowitz
• William F. Buckley
• Phyllis Schlafly
• Sarah Palin

If a group of people who more needed a pie in the face exists, then someone should pie those people, too. Chances are, if people are angry enough to risk incarceration simply to throw food at you, you have done something to deserve it—and then some.

It's hilarious

Politics is so boring. Those people who complain about how childish or unproductive throwing food at politicians is forget that the political process is by nature childish and unproductive. At least throwing food lends some real and hilarious slapstick to a system which too often resembles Wile E. Coyote trying to blow up Road Runner with a stick of dynamite made out of stupid, boring legislation.

"The tree of liberty is watered by the pies of patriots."
-Thomas Jefferson (American revolutionary and inventor of the pie)

Contestant #1: Hero lady Ann Coulter, a non-racist who said that Maxine Waters "couldn't get a job that didn't involve wearing a paper hat without affirmative action." But Ann has a non-racist explanation!

Contestant #2: Former Bush flack Dana Perino. Who says, "We did not have a terrorist attack on our country during President Bush's term." Yep.

Vote for the Queen of Thanksgiving now!

Coulter, a guest on Behar's new Headline News show, insists that Palin's a powerful woman because "one little twitter" about some mythical "death panels" sparked a huge debate on health care. Behar agrees that Palin's powerful, but points out that she's a bumbling fool: "That woman cannot construct a sentence." Coulter disagreed and would have incinerated Behar with her eyeball laser beams, but then the ladies made up by agreeing the UN causes too much traffic.

Friends forever!

To be fair, Clinton didn't have much of a choice, because Meet the Press host David Gregory asked the former President whether the so-called conspiracy, first assessed by Hillary Clinton, still exists, to which Clinton replied in the affirmative.

Sure it is. It's not as strong as it was, because America has changed demographically. But it's as virulent as it was. I mean, they're saying things about him. You know, it's like when they accused me of murder, and all that stuff they did. ... But ... it's not really good for the Republicans and the country, what's going on now. I mean, they may be hurting President Obama. They can take his numbers down. They can run his opposition up. But, fundamentally, he and his team have a positive agenda for America. Their agenda seems to be wanting him to fail.

Well duh they want him to fail. But, that's beside the point, because the "conspiracy," if it should even be called that, may actually be more powerful than the one that worked against Clinton. With all the new media outlets, not to mention Fox News, it's easier to mobilize the masses and work them into a fury. No, there's no impeachment planned, but there are even more complicated and insidious roadblocks at the right's disposal.

And, sadly for the big O, Clinton's comments are only going to fan the flames. If there's one man the ultra-right hate more than Obama, it's Bubba, and having him jump in the fray will simply embolden and further ostracize the President's critics. Plus, a sizable amount of Clinton's drama came from his, shall we say, encounters with Monica Lewinsky. Injecting that particular memory into the right's already petulant collective consciousness could create a sticky, stinky brew of fresh Obama hate.

Oh, look: Ann Coulter's already ranting about "semen stained Kleenex." Great.

Yes, Dobbs is back to pandering to the lowest common denominator of American cable subscribers, this time crowing about his defenders in the media like Ann Coulter and Bill O'Reilly, even though their defense of Dobbs is based more in the right of free speech than it is in support for Birthers. Whatever, Lou Dobbs doesn't care because he's so damn gangsta! Now here's more of Dobbs' crazy old guy braying. Oh, and thanks CNN—nice cave job on this one.

Via Media Matters

These days, everyone in Hollywood and politics is on message all the time and media trained within an inch of their lives. Thank God there are a few people who are too washed up, too stupid, or too crazy not to give a rat's ass what they're told to say. Isn't that what makes life interesting?

The Jackson flap wasn't Rupert's first time at the rodeo. He recently got attention for discussing Graydon Carter's sexual proclivities as well as saying that gays shouldn't have children. Oh, and his book calls Julia Roberts "tinged with madness" and Sharon Stone "utterly unhinged."
Bill Maher was infamously fired from his talk show "Politically Incorrect" for saying that the 9/11 terrorists were "brave." Thankfully HBO is crazy enough to give the man his own show where he is one of President Obama's first liberal critics, even saying he wishes Barack were more like George W. Bush. "If Bush could go to war in Iraq when nobody was thinking about it, how come this president can't get through something like health care reform in a way that the people really want when people are actually for it," he spouted off recently.
For a skinny blond lady, Ann Coulter sure talkes a lot about death and violence, usually wishing both on the "liberals" she's made a career of threatening. Her nadir came during the campaign when she called John Edwards a "faggot." We may think she's a loon, but at least she speaks her mind.
Kathy Griffin said "dick" during a live broadcast on CNN. Yes, absolutely no restraint.
The latest addition to the "say anything" club, Megan Fox, while already the sexiest, is also our new favorite. When she's not saying she's a tranny or dissing on Scarlett Johansson for being affected, she's talking about how women in Hollywood are objects. Our fingers are crossed that her career lasts long enough for her to have more unfiltered comments to share.

Yes, Bill was all hot under the collar on his show last night because Newsweek allowed Rick Perlstein to say mean things in a "vicious piece" about Sarah Palin and, of course, Fox News, without clearly identifying him as a "far-left zealot" rather than merely an "author." Never mind the fact that O'Reilly regularly invites mouth-breathers like John Zeigler and Ann Coulter to be guests on his show regularly on the "fair and balanced" network without ever identifying them as "far-right zealots." Of course not, because to O'Reilly, these people are normal.

Now excuse me while I go stick my head out the window for an hour or so.

First off, Beck went on his show tonight and performed perhaps the most stunning feat of pulling one out of the old anus in the history of stunning pulling one out of the ole anus feats. Beck, with a straight face mind you, looked into the camera and said that America as it stands today is a "boiling pot" fueled by extremists groups like Al Qaeda and 9/11 truthers who are sowing the seeds of extremism and hatred in this country. Then, still with a straight face, Beck also warned his viewers that more violence is likely to come in the future, that "more nutjobs are going to coming out of the woodwork now," that all of this is part of the "perfect storm" he's been trying to warn everyone about, a "perfect storm" which will result in a "witchhunt" that will focus on two groups of people. Can you guess who they might be?

Jews and—Conservatives!

Beck, like the true reptilian coward he is, doesn't make mention, much less offer an apology for, the lunacy he's been promoting over the radio and television airwaves over the years, lunacy that directly feeds the derangement of people like James von Brunn, inflammatory rhetoric he's been spewing about America turning into a totalitarian communist regime under Obama, the New World Order, Mexicans pouring over our borders to take our jobs and rape our children, FEMA concentration camps, ACORN rigging an American Presidential election for Obama, that dark, powerful, unseen forces are controlling the American economy, how liberals might to assassinate him—We could go on and on and on. There's truly no end with this clown.

We wonder how the executives at Fox are sleeping tonight in the aftermath of the Holocaust Museum shooting. Certainly there's got to be at least one person in power working there in possession of a active conscience and a brain with enough of a capacity for abstract thought as to be able to connect the dots between the types of things Glenn Beck says on the air and the violent domestic extremism we've seen on the rise lately. There just has to be. And we would hope that such a person would have the intestinal fortitude to stand up and say that this sort of madness needs to stop, that it destroys what little credibility the Fox News brand holds as a news organization to have this sort of maniacal charlatan identified as one of the network's stars. Then again, maybe we're a bit too hopelessly idealistic to believe such a person exists over there.

Anyway, here's Beck's utterly nauseating act from today. It opens with part of his "The One Thing" address about the Holocaust Museum shooting and ends with his asking a former CIA agent to confirm that the 9/11 truthers are the ones who inspired James von Brunn.


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Finally, there's Ann Coulter wannabe Debbie Schlussel, last heard from making Sonia Sotomayor/JLo jokes. Here's what she said about what happened at the Holocaust Museum:

It is because of Muslims—who are the biggest contributor to the worldwide rise in anti-Semitism to Holocaust-eve levels—that neo-Nazis feel comfortable—far more comfortable!—manifesting their views about Jews. Until 9/11 and our resulting new tolerance for Islam, the neo-Nazi types were marginalized and howling at the wind. We know who has been targeting Jewish museums and centers affiliated with Jews in recent years. And it hasn't been, in general, 89-year-old White guys.

Mr. Von Brunn has been on this planet for 89 years, and he didn't feel comfortable shooting up a Holocaust museum until now—this new era of "tolerance," in which we must tolerate the most extremist Muslim behaviors and sentiments. It's, in general, not 89-year-old White guys telling people at churches worldwide and in religious schools that the Jews are the devil incarnate, a filthy tribe, the sons of pigs and monkeys, subhuman, etc.

No, it's guys with names like Mohammed and Ahmed on our own American streets who make Mr. Von Brunn far more at ease in 2009 than he was even in 1999 to attack places associated with the Jews. They created the comfort zone for James W. Brunn to engage in today's shooting.

Moreover, not only do White supremacists and neo-Nazis work with Muslims in many, many documented cases and investigations. But they are basically one and the same. The only difference is that one guy is named James and the other guy is named Ahmed. And the former only has a few thousand discredited, marginalized compatriots.

Whereas the latter has over a billion followers and a U.S. President kissing their collective ass.

So there you go. It's the new era of tolerance that inspired a neo-nazi to murder a black guy in the course of trying to shoot up a Jewish museum. You try to figure this one out, because we sure as hell can't.

For a while now we've been mildly fascinated by Meghan McCain. When she first popped up in the public consciousness through her "work" on her father's failed presidential campaign, there was something sort of endearing about her. We wanted to like her. But as we've become more and more exposed to her with the passage of time we've come to find her, well, pretty fucking grating, intolerably insufferable, the complete and total embodiment of everything wrong with a whiny-ass generation of privilege that wants, no expects, everything to just fall right into their precious little laps without having to do shit to earn whatever it is they desire.

So Meghan's out there calling bitches out in her Daily Beast column, painfully attempting to enter into the punditry, signing "high six figure" book deals, dropping F-bombs on Twitter, and acting like a cunt-y diva at gala events, all on the back of her father's name. So what's the deal with Meghan McCain? What is it that she's angling for here. Does she truly hope to become a "voice" for a new generation of progressive Republicans, a genuine agent of change, or is she just another fame-whore high on life in the public eye.

Tonight she was on the Colbert Report droning on and on and on about how much the Republican party needs to change its stance on just about everything, from gay marriage to sex education (Meghan is very, VERY "pro-sex") to how it markets itself to younger voters, but then she turned around and talked about how totally AWESOME the Republican party is, except for, you know, all of the batshit crazy wingnuts who're provided political shelter within it (Speaking of batshit crazy wingnuts, McCain declined to offer any comments on Sarah Palin). All in all McCain was, well, sort of likeable in that "oh you poor, confused little girl" sort of way, definitely stricken by a deeply-rooted identity crisis, and, oh yeah, did we mention that she loves to fuck?! And that's pretty much it.

The interview closed with Colbert landing the line of night, delivered just after McCain had launched into another one of her many "pro-sex" diatribes: "When you say 'pro-sex woman' I think the Republican's numbers go north."

Zing.





Meghan McCain on The Colbert Report [Colbert Nation]

McCain, who is attempting to position herself as fresh young voice in the Republican Party, was discussing her most recent Daily Beast column, wherein she clinically demolished Coulter's cult of personality: "I straight up don't understand this woman or her popularity." Take that, David Brooks, David Frum, Ross Douthat, and Andrew Sullivan. There is literally nobody else in America with the fortitude and vision to publicly declare that there is anything wrong with Ann Coulter, a fact that McCain will gladly repeat over and over again for emphasis.

Also, she gets tons of hits, people everywhere read her column, she has done a lot of stuff and experienced a lot, and leave her alone because she didn't take Econ 101 and therefore doesn't understand the financial meltdown.

Maddow expertly gave McCain all the rope she needed to make a complete ass of herself, but sadly one gets the sense that it was because the hostess was enchanted by the idea of the daughter of a Republican presidential candidate saying bad things about other Republicans, rather than the idea of the daughter of a Republican presidential candidate being irretrievably stupid.

My question: Why does Meghan get all the attention? When will the Daily Beast give a column to Bridget?

Meghan is 24 and so she knows what the kids are into these days. The kids these days are not into her dad, John, or his party, the GOP. Meghan thinks the problem might be that young people hear a lot of bad stereotypes about Republicans, and all of those stereotypes are embodied by this woman named Ann Coulter, a scary, mean woman who no one likes.

Coulter could be the poster woman for the most extreme side of the Republican Party. And in some ways I could be the poster woman for the opposite.

Yes, Meghan, sure. You are definitely known as the poster child for whatever the opposite of Ann Coulter is, and not simply as "the blonde daughter of John McCain who posted quite a lot of photos of herself on a blog while he was running for president."

Meghan she goes on:

I consider myself a progressive Republican, but here is what I don't get about Coulter: Is she for real or not? Are some of her statements just gimmicks to gain publicity for her books or does she actually believe the things she says?

Yes, well, everyone who thought about it for ten minutes figured this out 7 years ago, but for those who haven't, Ann actually answered some questions from the evil New York Times! In ALL CAPS, because that's how she rolls:

I DON'T SAY THINGS JUST TO "GET A REACTION" OR "PROVOKE MY AUDIENCE" ANY MORE THAN ANYONE WHO TALKS ABOUT IDEAS DOES. I IMAGINE CHURCHILL HOPED TO "PROVOKE HIS AUDIENCE" WITH HIS "WE SHALL FIGHT ON THE BEACHES" SPEECH. I'M TRYING TO EXPRESS IDEAS, USUALLY ABOUT IMPORTANT ISSUES, AND IF A POINT IS MADE WELL THAT WILL TEND TO ELICIT A REACTION.

So there you have it!

Next week Meghan will write a column called "who is this Rush Limbaugh guy, you ever heard of him?"

Records dug up by private investigator Joseph Culligan and posted on Webofdeception.com showed Coulter entangled in a lawsuit over rent in 2003 while she was supposedly living with her parents in New Canaan, Conn. Property records also showed her owning an apartment in Manhattan while voting in the neighboring state.

Last month, officials said such behavior would be wrong, but they couldn't do anything unless someone filed a complaint. They only had to ask. Longtime Coulter obsessive Daniel Borchers promptly filed one.

There are only two possible conclusions here.

Either Coulter is innocently pathetic, a fortysomething woman living with her parents. Or she is a liberal — you know, the people who she claimed share "the absolute conviction that there is one set of rules for you, and another, completely different set of rules for everyone else."

We're shocked. America elected Barack Obama for one reason and one reason only: it was impossible to place his name in a list of names of disreputable people, without context, and get away with it. It turns out, though, that is is very possible to just rattle off a list of scary and bad names of people and pretend they all have relevant connections to our president-elect that we should be concerned about! That's not change you can believe in! That's change you can make insinuations about without having to provide any evidence of wrongdoing! So please enjoy this video of Chris Matthews, Ann Coulter, what's-her-head from The View, Rudy Giuliani, Hannity's neck, and others.

Now you try: Obama, Khalidi, Richardson, Burris, Wright, Ayers, Blagojevich, Kraven the Hunter, Hussein, Malia, Pelosi, Bush, Mxyzptlk, Shmoo Snook.

(Video: Brian Colgan)

You can see her wearing out the ear of the sympathetic crew on Fox & Friends, who were forced to listen to her even without being outwardly drunk. You can also watch her talking to Harry Smith at CBS below, her key quote being:

"(The book is) basically about how victimhood is rewarded and everyone wants to be a victim," Coulter told CBS News. "It's about the rewards and praise you get for being a victim and the way liberals use victimhood and they oppress others."

All this whining, Ann; you sound like a fucking liberal. Shut the fuck up and go kill something.

Watch CBS Videos Online

No actually Coulter went on Fox's Hannity & Colmes tonight and, reports TVNewser, said the following:

I think I'll accept and then cancel at the last minute... I know the whole thing was a set up to block me from other TV shows.

Right, except Coulter is already booked on CBS' The Early Show.

We think she'll accept, and at the last minute go on the show. It's a much better deal this time around: The appearance has been hyped by Coulter's leaks to Drudge et. al. and, crucially, Coulter won't have to share the green room with Perez Hilton. (Even more crucially, no one will have to share it with the both of them.)

This whole stupid booking foofaraw serves everyone, really: Coulter moves a few extra copies of her dumb book; Today snags a few extra viewers; and the Barack Obama voter gets to shout down the conservative straw-man (err, woman?) on the TV, trying to interrupt America's honeymoon with the pesident-elect.

(Oh, and everyone else gets something to write about during the holiday no-real-news hangover.)

(Fox News Channel image via TVNewser)

These terrible people like Ann became scary powerful slander-dragons back in the 1990s, because of the end of the fairness doctrine, and then Bill Clinton only won a plurality of the vote and there was a large segment of the population willing to believe he was a slimy corrupt Arkansas horndog pretty much from day one. But Barack Obama? He won an actual majority of the popular vote and, most importantly, his pre-inaugural approval ratings are historically high. People want him to succeed. People are exhausted with Bush and Republicans and the entire last 20 years.

Rush and Ann still have lots of listeners and sell lots of books, but they're not driving any sort of national conversation anymore, just throwing meat to increasingly marginalized anger-junkies. The Obama smears didn't catch on last year, and they won't get much traction until he starts fucking up. So it was absurd for NBC to annoy viewers by giving this outdated comedienne a microphone during the already hallucinogenic fourth hour of Today.

Ann's statement involves the words "liberal media bias" but still doesn't even make sense within her own little mythology of persecution, so whatever. Let's let her go away in peace.

(Ha ha wait she's BANNED FOR LIFE and also it was apparently the 7 a.m. hour! And they replaced her with Perez Hilton Jesus Christ you just can't win. But yes the question remains: why would a privately-owned television network wish to promote, for free, the work of someone who virulently criticizes them, all the time? What is Ann complaining about, does she want the government to hand out spots on morning tv? Does she want affirmative action for conservative pundits? Sheesh.)