Oct. 29, 2007 – Geneva (apj.us) – Ann Coulter recently claimed that someone named Nonie Darwish, “whose father founded the Fedayeen,” along with Cyrus Nowratseh, the producer behind ABC television’s factually-challenged and debunked docudrama “The Path to 9/11,” visit college campuses to condemn Islamic terrorism.
In fact, the Fedayeen were most active between the 8th and 14th centuries – which means Mr. Darwish’s dad must be very old.
Let me be more honest than is Ms. Coulter. In 1948, the Fedayeen in Palestine was established, then in Iran a Marxist "fedayeen" was organized. An Armenian Fedayeen was started in 1990, although it is interesting that Armenia is firmly a Christian nation; and then in Iraq in 1995, the military established a "fedayeen" loyal to Saddam Hussein. Several Fedayeen generals and other members of this Iraqi group were arrested after the US invasion of Iraq in 2003.
Of which one was Mr. Darwish’s father a member? Maybe Coulter can clarify. Or not.
Ms. Coulter is using this factoid to prop up falsehoods relating this anecdote. She tells us that that Democrats on these campuses threaten to riot over Darwish and Nowratseh’s appearances.
In fact, students were protesting the well-known neo-Fascist David Horowitz, who has been touring campuses to preach against Islamics much as Hitler preached against Jews in 1938. Horowitz, trying to gain riches through selling his trash books – and believe me, I read them, and they are the worst class of rubbish – was on tour to flog his Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week!
Horowitz now travels with “protection” to supposedly preserve his miserable life – or does he do so to underscore his self-importance? He is, to my mind, truly pitiful. The fact is that few know who he is and, what’s more, do not care. They should. Mr. Horowitz is a menace as malignant as any to what America stands for. The only thing noteworthy about him, in my opinion, is that he was actually born from human parents.
Here is a little something the much-loathed Horowitz made during a recent campus visit:
“If I were a raving, American-hating traitor, I could come to this campus without any protection. [sycophantic applause]. If I were Cindy Sheehan or Michael Moore.”
So it is neither Mr. Nowratseh nor Mr. Darwish who angered students – it was Horowitz, and Horowitz purposely (as is usual) went to schools perceived as the most liberal in order to make headlines, to insult people, and to hope with all his heart that someone would punch him out.
Coulter, for her part, makes certain to underline this garbage about Neocons supposedly needing security. She writes:
“Consequently, the speakers for Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week require the sort of security phalanx one would expect for someone more like Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.”
Talk about lies: Horowitz’s security is about the same as a hamster’s, and his “phalanx” is the size of a Cub Scout den.
She goes on to lie that college students cheered Iran’s Mahmoud Ahmadinejad when he appeared at Columbia.
What they cheered was his constitutionally preserved right to speak – and his host, Columbia University President Lee Bollinger, loquaciously and eloquently humiliating and chastising the vicious little weasel-president of Iran in a manner of which Bush is simply incapable. They cheered and laughed in the face if this "esteemed leader" as Ahmadinejad made an ass of himself with the assertion that there are no gays in Iran.
As for Coulter, the funniest remarks come toward the end of her rant. She actually stated that Dennis Prager and Michael Medved are American intellectuals!
Now that's funny!
Prager, an ultra-right-wing radio entertainer and Medved, an ultra-right-wing Roger Ebert wanna-and-never-will-be, are in about the same intellectual sub-phylum as Ren and Stimpy. Their target audience is the uneducated and under-educated American racist, and self-aggrandizing , angry minority. Check their F-scores and see who really listens to their pap.
Ms. Coulter whines that liberals denounce these geniuses. Well, of course we do, in the tradition of denouncing Father Charles Coughlan, David Duke, and Coulter's hero Joe McCarthy.
Here’s a genuine joke: Ms. Coulter claims that “conservative speakers are constantly being physically attacked on college campuses – including Bill Kristol, Pat Buchanan, David Horowitz and [herself], among others.”
This is a fabrication of enormous importance.
Coulter herself has been “attacked” by custard cream pies thrown at her when she came to Arizona State Univeristy – a bastion of Neocon non-intellectualism, drunkenness and rampant drug use. Just ask Barry Goldwater Junior, an alumnus.
The two students who threw the pies – complete with likenesses of Coulter on them – were arrested and charged with felonies because the black muslin (which the police wrote was a “muslim”) scrim on the stage was supposedly “ruined” and was worth $3,000.00. A scrim is a sheer curtain drop made of fabric that seems almost opaque (muslin) when lit from the front but semitransparent when lit from behind.
The idea that the scrim was totally destroyed by some cream pies is tough to accept. Could it not be cleaned? Perhaps we should follow the trial of the two culprits to see?
The same goes for Bill "The Bloody" Kristol, Pat "Pitchfork" Buchanan, and Horowitz: they were also hit with ice cream pies!
Ms. Coulter weeps that ”[e]ven Democratic candidates for president and their wives are getting in on the act.”
That’s just too pitiful to respond to – even after the laughter subsides.
Do Coulter, Horowitz, and their propagandizing minions ever wonder why they attract such righteous anger – which they reflexively and dishonestly label "hatred" time and time again – by the majority of people to whom they choose to speak? Don’t they lay awake at night and wonder if it’s worth it?
To tell you the truth, I think it is wrong to throw pies or anything else at someone speaking publicly – no matter what they say – unless they are urging violence.
Yet I must add that to some people the ideas that Coulter, Kristol, Buchanan, Prager and Horowitz promote can be interpreted as urging violence.
Those people who do believe this may be right – but could also be wrong. Throwing things at people is simply not acceptable in almost any society. In fact today this is a far worse harassment tactic – because today a victim of such an attack could fear the thing flying toward them is a grenade or worse.
But poor Ms. Coulter blows it yet again – because she forgets to tell you that many many liberals and Democrats have also suffered such attacks – and worse.
Shall we begin with Martin Luther King?
Remember Bobby Kennedy?
Does anyone recall the Neofascist rioters at polling stations in Florida – drawn from the ranks of Washington's Republican cadre of congressional aides and sent their by the Republican National Committee to stop ballot counting in order to cement Mr. Bush’s putative presidency in 2000?
One could characterize them as a gang of Naziesque thugs – no mistake about it.
I for one do not wish Ms. Coulter or any of the others mentioned here to be silenced or harmed even with water pistols – not ever.
America's most precious values include the right to speak and listen to anyone talk about anything unless is can cause harm to others. Therefore, the more that Neofascists, Neocons and just plain American Nazis talk publicly, the more the public loathes them. The more they write and publish, the more the voters turn against them.
The proofs of this are the latest rounds national and state elections.
Ms. Coulter ends her diatribe with this statement:
“If liberals want to face real fascism, try showing up on a college campus and denouncing fascism.”
Earth to Coulter: this is what liberals are doing.
Finally, here is Webster’s Dictionary definition of fascism:
– a political philosophy [Neo-conservatism], movement, or regime [Bush-Cheney] (as that of the Fascisti) that exalts nation (ism) [Neocons and Bush] and often race [Coulter, Ward Connerly, et al] above the individual and that stands for a centralized autocratic government headed by a dictatorial leader [Bush-Cheney], severe economic and social regimentation [Wolfowitz and the Federal Reserve], and forcible suppression of opposition a political philosophy [2000 presidential elections].
Grasp that, Ann?
JEFF KOOPERSMITH is a political consultant, opinion research authority, policy analyst, and self-described "renegade lobbyist.".