From Spiegel Online:

Rushdie, Hirsi Ali, the Pope -- Who's Next?
By Claus Christian Malzahn in Berlin

The pope has apologized for the outrage amongst Muslims sparked by his recent comments. But the episode proves once again that criticizing Islam is dangerous.

Twenty years ago in the German city of Bremen, Dutch comedian Rudi Carrell's life depended on police protection. His offense? In a satirical program on German television, he let fly with a lewd joke about the then leader of the Iranian revolution Ayatollah Khomeini. Mass demonstrations in Iran -- orchestrated, no doubt, by the government -- were the result. The threats of violence led to an apology by Carrell, and he never again made a joke about any Muslim -- at least not on television.

In February 1989, the Ayatollah then released a fatwa calling for the murder of Salman Rushdie for his novel "The Satanic Verses." The book, he and other Muslim leaders claimed, was a grave misrepresentation of Islam. Rushdie's Japanese translator lost his life as a result of the fatwa and Rushdie himself went into hiding, though the Iranian leadership distanced itself from the fatwa in 1998. There remain, however, a number of fanatical Muslims who yearn to see Rushdie dead.

Feminist and Islam critic Ayaan Hirsi Ali, the former Dutch parliamentarian who recently left Holland, also lives under threat of murder. In addition to a number of interesting books about the oppression faced by women in the Muslim world, she also wrote the screenplay for the short film "Submission." In one scene, a verse from the Koran -- demanding that women bend to the will of their husbands -- is projected onto a woman's naked body. The film was provocative, and the filmmaker Theo van Gogh paid for it with his life. He was killed on the streets of Amsterdam by a Muslim fanatic.

And then there's Flemming Rose, the Danish editor who a year ago published a series of Muhammad caricatures in his newspaper. Months after they originally appeared, the Muslim world erupted in protest against the drawings. He too must fear for his life.

One thing should be kept in mind, however: The often violent protests that erupted in the Muslim world in the wake of the cartoon controversy have often been manipulated and fuelled by Islamists. The bile currently being flung at the pope is no different.

But the attacks against the pope are especially grotesque. The severe criticism -- often coupled with threats of violence -- directed at the speech held last Tuesday by Benedict XVI is not just an attack on the head of the Catholic Church. The malicious twisting of the pope's words and the absurd allegations made by representatives of Islam represent a frontal attack on open religious and philosophical dialogue.

That so many in the Muslim world joined the protests against the pope merely show just how influential Islamist extremist groups have become. The political goal of the Islamists is clear: any dispute between Christianity and Islam must obey the rules handed down by political Islamism.

Bending to this demand would be a mistake -- indeed it would be tantamount to turning one's back on freedom of expression and opinion. What will come next? Perhaps a complaint that Allah feels insulted by the numerous European women who don bikinis during a summer trip to the beach. It could be anything really -- militant Islamists will always find something. But the response needs to be firm. Freedom of speech, after all, is a vital value and needs to be defended. Any attempt to make political speech hostage to some imagined will of God must be resisted.

There are -- few -- critical voices that should be taken seriously when it comes to the pope's comments. Shouldn't Benedict XVI have known that the quote he included in his speech -- a passage he himself described as "brusque" -- might be misunderstood? Couldn't he have made his meaning a bit clearer? Even if he had, it should be welcomed by all, including leftist atheists and agnostics, that we now have a pope who can pose challenging academic questions. In any case, a close reading of his speech reveals not a single insult directed at a single Muslim.

And there's no reason to respond to every presumed insult. Consider an example from Denmark. Recently, a paper there published a number of rather tasteless Holocaust cartoons which had been shown in Tehran. The reaction of Copenhagen's rabbi was instructive when considered against the bloody response to the Muhammad cartoons -- outrage which ended up costing lives. When asked if he would call for protests, the rabbi merely said: "You know, I've seen worse."

From New Musical Express:
The Killers - Sam's Town
NME Rating: 8 of 10

Eyeliner and Dior make way for leather and facial hair as Brandon and his gang prepare to take over the world

Before we go any further we need to set the record straight. Three and a bit years ago, at the very start of The Killers' UK assault, this writer reviewed one of their live shows and suggested that, bar the odd freak storm of melodic synth genius, they were essentially a retro, electro-pop pastiche writing po-faced tunes called things like 'Glamorous Indie Rock & Roll' without anything like enough knowingness. We remember this mainly because, for at least the next 12 months, Brandon Flowers would bring it up at every available opportunity - as though 200 words on page 53 of his favourite music magazine somehow kept him awake at night more than his 4million debut album sales, three Top 10 tunes, one festival anthem and the 1,500 crappy soundalike clones he and his band spawned the day they discovered the '80s. What we rather cruelly neglected to tell him though (until now) was that, a week later, we'd given 'Hot Fuss' another spin and, along with the rest of the world, realised that it was actually amazing. Still prancing, pompous and so shamelessly studied in places - but magnificently, ridiculously so. And this is why all that talk earlier this summer of The Killers having razed their electro-fey history for a more macho, Americana-steeped second album came as such dismal news.

So, while we're here, we might as well set another record straight. Much has been made of Bruce Springsteen's omnipotent presence on The Killers' new sound. Unsurprisingly (did you hear the first album?), it's not strictly true. OK, the pink blazers may have been ritualistically burnt in favour of five o'clock shadows and oil-stained denim, but The Boss' influences are - save a couple of piano-belted rock'n'roll numbers near the end - fairly cosmetic. Get past the cover image of a depressingly budget beauty pageant scene (a parody of the American Dream learnt straight from the school of Springsteen's 'Born In The USA') and the only other place you're going to get grizzly man-rock is in Brandon's lyrics. Because 'Sam's Town' (named after a casino in their seedy home city of Las Vegas) is clearly the same band of Anglo-maniacs who brought metrosexuality mainstream with 'Hot Fuss'. They've just scrubbed off their make-up, beefed up the vocals and found the turbo-charge button on their tune-making machine. If there's one obvious new noise on this record, it's actually that of U2's ramped-up, stadium synth-rock. Listen to immense lead-off single 'When You Were Young' or righteous and anthemic album highlight 'Read My Mind', and it's little surprise to learn that Alan Moulder and Flood (two of U2's regular make-it-go-massive production team) are behind the spaceship controls again here. And when Brandon's not imbibing Bono's spirit, it's Bowie, Queen and even Muse being soundchecked: 'Why Do I Keep Counting' is an 'All These Things That I've Done'-style epic that starts all kaleidoscopic and 'Space Oddity', before building into this album's 'Heroes'; saucy mini-opera 'Bones' ("don't you want to come with me?/Don't you want to feel my bones on your bones?/It's only natural") borrows its histrionic four-part harmony breakdown straight from 'Bohemian Rhapsody'; and with galloping drums and crazy prog build-ups, 'Bling (Confession Of A King)' is basically 'Knights Of Cydonia' minus Matt Bellamy's squawking. Elsewhere 'For Reasons Unknown' and 'Uncle Jonny' are the classic 'Mr Brightside' and 'Smile Like You Mean It' disco-noir sound, with Brandon as a newly tutored vocal virtuoso up front.

Even the words are worth checking out this time round. Gone are the gender-bending boyfriends, fashionista warblings and ill-considered tributes to murdered teenagers. Now Brandon's hanging out in dead-end streets, heading for wild desert landscapes and (here's where the Springsteen fixation finally becomes apparent) "burning down the highway skyline". Think that sounds heavy? It's also an album preoccupied with judgement - both from the back-sniping Las Vegas peers The Killers left spluttering in the Nevada dust on their fast-track to fame and free designer trainers (see opener 'Sam's Town'), and The Big Man himself. Jesus, the Devil and a host of angels all pop up along the 12-track ride to wrestle with Brandon's married, morally upstanding Mormon soul ("It's hard trying to keep on the right side in this land of free rides" - 'Bling...'). Meanwhile, 'Why Do I Keep Counting?' uses the singer's fear of flying as a smokescreen for a much deeper musing on mortality.

All this, however, isn't to say that The Killers have gone all (God forbid) serious on us. The tunes may be huger, the influences cleverer, the lyrics more adventurous and the band more self-assured, but their primary concern is still being the biggest indie-pop stars on the planet. For all their smart new ways, The Killers are still as flashy, unintentionally funny, and flagrantly affected as ever - and this time we wouldn't even pretend to have it any other way.

Krissi Murison

The Hold Steady
Boys and Girls in America
(Vagrant/Universal)

Boys and Girls a gem

By DARRYL STERDAN -- Winnipeg Sun

Following up a critically acclaimed, career-defining concept album is easier said than done. Unless you happen to be Craig Finn, that is.

Barely 18 months after the Minneapolis-born singer-guitarist and his Brooklyn bar band The Hold Steady released their staggering sophomore disc Separation Sunday -- our favourite CD of 2005 by a mile -- Finn and co. are back with another stunner. And if it doesn't quite reach the same lofty heights as its predecessor, that's only because it doesn't really try.

For Boys and Girls in America (in stores Tuesday), Finn discards the full-length narrative approach of Separation Sunday in favour of a looser theme based on a line from Kerouac's On the Road: "Boys and girls in America have such a sad time together." But never mind that. It's really just a bunch of songs about Finn's usual topics: Suburban kids, shady lowlifes, drugs and booze, young lust and hanging out on the banks of the Mississippi River.

But what a set of songs: Chips Ahoy! is a love story starring a druggie girl with a winning touch at the horse track; the theatrical duet Chillout Tent recreates a romantic interlude between two overdosed teens at a rock fest (the boy is voiced by Soul Asylum's Dave Pirner); You Can Make Him Like You offers cynical relationship tips for shallow girls; Citrus is a bare-bones acoustic ballad. First Night reunites us with Separation Sunday's Holly and Charlemagne.

Finn hasn't tempered his musical ambitions, either. His '70s guitar-rock epics still channel Springsteen's Jungleland grandeur, Thin Lizzy's harmonized boogie-rock and Jim Steinman's musical melodrama. He's still one of the sharpest lyricists in rock.


This album's bon mots include: "I've had kisses that made Judas seem sincere," "How am I supposed to know if you're high when you won't even dance?" and "Southtown girls won't blow you away, but you know that they'll stay." And his distinctive delivery even manages to turn a line like, "Gonna walk around and drink some more" into an anthemic singalong.

Granted, his voice is still a dealbreaker -- either you love his adenoidal machine-gun bark or you hate it. But even if you don't enjoy the way he says things, you know he's saying something. That's why he's one of the most exciting guys in indie-rock right now.

And why Boys and Girls in America is one of the year's best albums. We're already waiting for the followup.

Track Listing:

1. Stuck Between Stations
2. Chips Ahoy!
3. Hot Soft Light
4. Same Kooks
5. First Night
6. Party Pit
7. You Can Make Him Like You
8. Massive Night
9. Citrus
10. Chillout Tent
11. Southtown Girls

Is Ann Coulter Among the Prophets?
by Robert Stacy McCain

http://www.chroniclesmagazine.org

“And they worshipped the dragon which gave power unto the beast, and they worshipped the beast, saying, Who is like unto the beast? Who is able to make war with him?”—Revelation 13:4

Signs and omens have been everywhere this year. Amid wars and rumors of wars, one occasionally glimpses evidence that truth is now being revealed in ways that might astonish even battle-scarred veterans of the culture wars.

I knew the Apocalypse was upon us when I picked up Phyllis Chesler’s The Death of Feminism and discovered that Chesler, bearing decades of liberal feminist credentials, had praised as “prophetic” Jean Raspail’s Camp of the Saints. What next? Will we see Cornel West invoking Robert E. Lee? Or George Will paying tribute to M.E. Bradford?

Let him that hath understanding consider the significance when the latest best-seller by Ann Coulter—Sean Hannity’s favorite TV guest—cites Joe Sobran. Like Raspail, Sobran is one of The Great Unmentionables, whose existence is not even to be acknowledged by respectable people in the conservative movement. Once you have been denounced as an Unpatriotic Conservative in the pages of National Review, your name disappears, with the resulting void serving as a warning to anyone else who might dare to offend the arbiters of conservative respectability.

And yet, there it was, on page 201 of Godless, where Coulter recognizes Darwinism as “the creation myth” of the Church of Liberalism and refers to evolutionary cultists as “the Darwiniacs”—adding, “as author and columnist Joe Sobran calls them.” Not content with that offense to the Straussian archons, Coulter thanks Sobran in her acknowledgements, numbering him among her “long-suffering, magnificent friends.” Coulter has even gone out of her way to call attention to her thoughtcrime. On the day her book was released—June 6, 2006, making use of the number of the beast as a publicity stunt—Coulter paid tribute to Sobran in an interview published by Human Events, calling him a “magnificent writer” who had given her “the greatest advice a writer could ever get.”

Coulter herself has survived banishment from National Review without suffering any discernible loss of popularity, and this survival evidently inspired in her an even-greater loathing of the pieties of political correctness. How else to explain her designation of Willie Horton as the “martyr” of the Church of Liberalism? She devotes a 17-page chapter to revisiting Horton’s crimes, the Massachusetts prison furlough program that turned Horton loose, and the way in which Horton’s furlough became an issue in the 1988 presidential election. Though Democratic-primary rival Al Gore was the first to use the Horton furlough against Massachusetts Gov. Michael Dukakis, Democrats did not begin shouting “racism” until Republicans followed suit.

No serious student of the 1988 presidential campaign has ever expressed doubt that the South Carolina-born Lee Atwater, campaign boss for George H.W. Bush, knew exactly what he was doing when he summoned forth the dark specter of Willie Horton. A murderer serving life without parole, Horton was furloughed as part of a program staunchly defended by Dukakis and other Massachusetts liberals. He then kidnapped and tortured a Maryland couple—pistol-whipped, bound, gagged, and sadistically tortured the man, then forced him to listen to his fiancée’s screams as Horton repeatedly raped her. This incident would have been a scathing indictment of Dukakis’s commitment to public safety whatever Horton’s race, but because Horton was black, his crimes held a deeper symbolism.

The Willie Horton ads turned Dukakis’s boast of being a “card-carrying member of the ACLU” into a fatal campaign liability. In reaction, Democrats accused Republicans of having appealed to primal racial fears of the sort that once inspired lynch mobs and made D.W. Griffith’s Birth of a Nation the original Hollywood blockbuster. Republicans have spent nearly two decades denying this, and Coulter is not about to give liberals any satisfaction:

Since none of their other defenses of Dukakis’s furlough program were working, the Democrats reverted to their default argument: they accused Republicans of racism. This was consistent with author Peter Brimelow’s definition of “racist” as “someone who is winning an argument with a liberal.”

(See? There she goes again, bringing up the name of yet another conservative banished from polite society.)

I only wish that Coulter had acknowledged the extent to which the liberal criticisms were fair. One need not be a liberal to say that a black rapist represents a symbolic fear to many Americans, nor is it racist to question whether this symbolism is strictly irrational. Is it racist to admit into evidence Eldridge Cleaver’s testimony about the implications of rape as “symbol” and “metaphor”? Yet Coulter, while boldly violating the Republican taboo against discussing the 1988 ads, still seems compelled to respect other taboos—or risk providing ammunition to those who regularly accuse her of fomenting hatred. Coulter clearly understands that, when liberals express a desire for honest, forthright “racial dialogue,” what they actually mean is: Shut up.

The initial indignation over Godless had nothing to do with Willie Horton, however, but with Coulter’s treatment of the “Jersey Girls”—the group of women widowed in the World Trade Center attacks who gained fame as prominent critics of the Bush administration. Coulter styles Kristen Breitweiser and her cohorts “the Witches of East Brunswick” and accuses them of deploying their grief for partisan gain after demanding over one million dollars in federal compensation for their loss:

These self-obsessed women seemed genuinely unaware that 9/11 was an attack on our nation and acted as if the terrorist attacks happened only to them. The whole nation was wounded, all of our lives reduced. But they believed the entire country was required to marinate in their exquisite personal agony. Apparently, denouncing Bush was an important part of their closure process. These broads are millionaires, lionized on TV and in articles about them, reveling in their status as celebrities and stalked by grief-arazzis. I’ve never seen people enjoying their husbands’ deaths so much.

Here, quite apart from partisan or ideological allegiances, can we all agree that Coulter has taken hyperbole entirely beyond defensible limits? As much as anyone might wish to criticize the publicity seeking and griefmongering of Breit­weiser et al., it is both cruel and false to say that they are “enjoying” the deaths of their spouses. In reading that offending sentence, I wondered how an editor could have failed to demand that it be recast, or why Coulter would have insisted it stand as written. Indefensible as argument, it makes sense only as a punch line. Its stark clarity is its only conceivable excuse, and I suspect that Coulter demanded that it be printed for the same reason that Lyndon Johnson once sought to accuse a Texas political foe of barnyard bestiality: “I just want to hear the S.O.B. deny it.”

The usual “respectable” Republican types have joined many genuine conservatives in lamenting Coulter’s penchant for such rhetorical abuses. Coulter is vulnerable to the charge of committing the same sins of which she accuses liberals. (Imagine her reaction if any liberal had accused Horton’s rape victim of “enjoying” it.) Even if turnabout is fair play or if two wrongs could make a right, even if one might enjoy Coulter’s high-wire act as a sort of showbiz spectacle, one might also wish that some friendly editor would take the time to talk her out of the most egregious of her excesses.

Yet that would spoil the fun of periodically turning on the television to see Coulter running rings around Matt Lauer or whatever other liberal spokesman has drawn the unenviable assignment of confronting her in a live interview. A lawyer by training, Coulter is quick-witted and tenacious, with a carefully honed knack for making liberal antagonists look foolish.

Thus with the “Jersey Girls.” Coulter’s attack on Breitweiser is part of a chapter in which she correctly points out that liberals have hit on an ingenious strategy: They would choose only messengers whom we’re not allowed to respond to. That’s why all Democratic spokesmen these days are sobbing, hysterical women. You can’t respond to them because that would be questioning the authenticity of their suffering.
She includes in this category various individuals (Valerie Plame, Rep. John Murtha, Cindy Sheehan) whom she treats as examples of a single phenomenon:

What crackpot argument can’t be immunized by the Left’s invocation of infallibility based on personal experience? . . . If these Democrat human shields have a point worth making, how about allowing it to be made by someone we’re allowed to respond to?

That Coulter was criticizing the Oprahfication of politics was a point lost in the immediate uproar over her “Witches of East Brunswick” line. Her point will be understood better by the thousands who buy her books, among whom are many College Republicans who will seek to emulate her defiance of liberal sensibilities. This is why liberals so hate Coulter: If she can get rich by sarcastically denouncing the myths and martyrs of the liberal faith, she will inspire others to similar impiety, and liberals must dread that nightmare future when cable TV news is fully stocked with Ann Coulter wannabes, as talk radio is now dominated by Rush Limbaugh clones.

Most genuine conservatives probably do not relish a future in which political debate is conducted in one-liners, even if liberalism is the butt of the joke. And Coulter’s enthusiasm for the war in Iraq will annoy those readers of Thucydides who understand that Nicias was right in opposing the Sicilian campaign, even if Alcibiades won the debate in Athens. Still, Godless has much to recommend it.

In her 20-page chapter on abortion—the “holiest sacrament” of the Church of Liberalism—Coulter is unrelenting. “No Republican is as crazily obsessed with any issue as the Democrats are with abortion,” she observes, labeling them the “Abortion Party.” Coulter anticipates that some will respond by pointing to pro-life Democrats and is ready to show that these commitments are routinely discarded by Democrats with national ambitions:

Showing the raw principle of the modern Democratic Party, among the Democrats who have abandoned pro-life positions to become pro-choice are former president Jimmy Carter, Senator Dick Durbin, former representative Richard Gephardt, Representative Dennis Kucinich, the Reverend Jesse Jackson, and [former vice president] Al Gore. . . . It’s easy to imagine a person going from being pro-abortion to anti-abortion based on new information—ultrasounds, medical advances, pictures of babies smiling in the womb. But it’s hard to see how new information could produce the reverse conversion.

On abortion, Coulter thus takes her stand with one of the most influential, though least prestigious, of the Republican Party’s constituencies, the Religious Right. Here again, she invites censure from the GOP elite, who scarcely conceal their embarrassment at their party’s reliance on the votes of devout Catholics and hard-shell evangelical Protestants. And her proclivity for adding insult to injury is further evidenced when she concludes with three chapters (82 pages) attacking Darwinism.

Her critique of Darwinian evolution will offer few surprises to the reader who has followed the development of the Intelligence Design (ID) argument over the past two decades. Coulter acknowledges the assistance of ID’s leading theorists (Michael Behe, David Berlinksi, and William Dembski) and also mentions Berkeley law professor Phillip E. Johnson, who has explored the philosophical terrain staked out by evolutionists. And, in the end, she presents the same argument, really, that Johnson made a decade ago in his book, Reason in the Balance.

Johnson, however, is not a long-stemmed blonde with a caustic wit, nor does he have Sean Hannity’s private number on speed-dial. Coulter’s notoriety enables her to reach many thousands who would never read a Berkeley law professor’s book, let alone anything by Joe Sobran or Peter Brimelow.

Conservative intellectuals may disdain Coulter as a shallow popularizer, but, so long as she’s popularizing the right ideas, she is doing the Lord’s work. She goes where angels fear to tread and seems to have been blessed with some mystical protection against the conservative establishment’s desire to rid itself of inconvenient associations. The SPLC can scream all it wants about Coulter’s friendships—in May, she wrote a column about immigration that cited VDare.com—and she’ll just toss her blonde mane and laugh.

This apparent immunity to rebuke is enviable, as was noted en passant by Samuel Francis a few years before his death. Coulter had just got herself banished from National Review Online and had responded by calling Jonah Goldberg and Rich Lowry “girly boys.” Noting a series of neocon attacks on Coulter in 2003, Francis dryly observed, “it may be that Miss Coulter kind of ODs on the hyperbole. I know the problem myself.” Don’t we all? But we cannot all be blue-eyed blondes, and, in the Age of Media, many must toil in thankless obscurity while a favored few reap fame and fortune.

Rather than succumb to envy, however, we the obscure ought to count our blessings and remain steadfast in faith. For the signs indicate that the day is coming when “the first shall be last.”

Robert Stacy McCain is coauthor, with Lynn Vincent, of Donkey Cons: Sex, Crime, and Corruption in the Democratic Party (Nelson Current).

This article first appeared in the September 2006 issue of Chronicles: A Magazine of American Culture.

I DID NOT HAVE SEX WITH THAT NOMAD, OSAMA BIN LADEN
by Ann Coulter

September 27, 2006

It's just like old times. Bill Clinton delivers an impassioned speech, and within 24 hours the Web is bristling with documentation, establishing that nearly every sentence was a lie.

The glassy-eyed Clinton cultists are insisting their idol's on-air breakdown during a "Fox News Sunday" interview with Chris Wallace was a calculated performance, which is a bit like describing Hurricane Katrina as a "planned demolition." Like an Osama tape, they claim he was sending a signal to Democrats to show them how to treat Republicans. Listen up, Democrats: Let's energize the undecideds by throwing a hissy fit on national television!

The Clintonian plan for action apparently entails inventing lunatic conspiracy theories, telling lots of lies, shouting, sneering, interrupting, and telling your interlocutor, "(Y)ou've got that little smirk on your face and you think you're so clever" — all for asking a simple question. To wit: "Why didn't you do more to put bin Laden and al-Qaida out of business when you were president?" The only thing Clinton forgot to say to Wallace was, "You'd better put some ice on that."

Let me be the first to welcome Chris Wallace to the Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy! If the son of Mike Wallace is a member, can Chelsea be far behind?

According to Wallace, Clinton's aide, Jay Carson, demanded that the interview be stopped a few minutes into Clinton's tantrum — just before the part where he threw the lamp at Wallace. The last time Clinton got that red in the face, the encounter ended with a stained dress. Even Muslims thought Clinton overreacted. But the Clinton Kool-Aid drinkers tell us this was a masterfully planned set-piece by their leader.

I also think Jessica Savitch's slurred, incoherent broadcast on "NBC Nightly News" in October 1983 was intentional. Others say it was drug-addled breakdown that ended her career, but obviously Savitch intended to speak in garbled gibberish on air as a brilliantly executed prelude to her death in a ditch weeks later.

And when Stephen Colbert did a routine at the White House Correspondents Dinner that bombed, I think he planned it that way.

Then there was Capt. Joseph Hazelwood's meticulously planned off-loading of 11 million gallons of crude oil off the Exxon Valdez.

Clinton shouted so many lies during his televised meltdown, only the World Wide Web can capture them all. These are just a few.

Clinton yelled at Wallace: "What did I do? What did I do? I worked hard to try to kill him. I authorized a finding for the CIA to kill him. We contracted with people to kill him. I got closer to killing him than anybody has gotten since."

This is so crazy it's worthy of an Air America caller. Clinton has consistently misrepresented the presidential directive about political assassinations. Clinton did not order bin Laden assassinated. He did not even lift the ban on intelligence agencies attempting to assassinate bin Laden.

What he did was lift the ban on political assassinations — provided that assassinating bin Laden was not the purpose of the mission. So if U.S. forces were engaged in an operation to capture bin Laden, but accidentally killed him, they would not be court-martialed.

Clinton said, "All the right-wingers who now say I didn't do enough said I did too much — same people." As proof, he cites his humiliating withdrawal from Somalia, claiming, "They were all trying to get me to withdraw from Somalia in 1993 the next day after we were involved in 'Black Hawk down,' and I refused to do it."

He added, as if it mattered, "There is not a living soul in the world who thought that Osama bin Laden had anything to do with 'Black Hawk down.'"

In fact, what Republicans objected to was Clinton's transforming a U.N. mission in Somalia to prevent mass starvation into a much grander "nation-building" exercise — something the Democrats now hysterically support in Darfur and oppose in Iraq.

Democrats long to see American mothers weeping for their sons lost in a foreign war, but only if the mission serves absolutely no national security objectives of the United States. If we are building a democracy in a country while also making America safer — such as in Iraq — Democrats oppose it with every fiber of their being.

When Clinton's "nation-building" in Somalia led to the brutal killing of 18 Americans, some of whose corpses were then dragged through the streets, Clinton did what the Democrats are currently demanding we do in Iraq: He cut and ran.

Republicans didn't like that either, and it had nothing to do with whether it was al-Qaida we were running from. It could have been Islamic Jihad, Hezbollah, al-Dawa or the Viet Cong. We ran, and the terrorists noticed.

Osama bin Laden told "ABC News" in 1998 that America's humiliating retreat from Somalia emboldened his jihadists: "The youth were surprised at the low morale of the American soldiers and realized more than before that the American soldier was a paper tiger and after a few blows ran in defeat."

If this is the message that Clinton is hoping to telegraph to the American people, I hope the voters are listening.

COPYRIGHT 2006 ANN COULTER

From ABC News:
Secrets of 'South Park'
Cartoon Co-Creators on Tom Cruise, Mohammed
and the Time They Came Close to Packing It in
By JAKE TAPPER and DAN MORRIS

Sept. 22, 2006 — - Comedy Central's vulgar, profane, hilarious animated hit "South Park" begins its 10th season on Oct. 4 in an uncertain place.

In the past year, the show and its creators, Trey Parker and Matt Stone, won their first Emmy and were also honored with a Peabody for best electronic media. But the year was also fraught with moments of censorship that caused the show's creators to wonder if the world had changed so much in the last 10 years that "South Park" could really no longer thrive.

"What we've stood behind for 10 years is: It's got to all be OK or none of it is," Parker told ABC's "Nightline." "Because as soon as you start picking, 'Well, OK, we won't do this,' then all of a sudden the ones you did about that shouldn't be OK either. So we were starting to say, 'I don't know that this is a world that 'South Park' can live in.'"

"South Park" has been vilified as crude, disgusting and nihilistic, and the eagerness of Stone and Parker to impale every sacred cow they can reach is a major reason for its success. After all, in the fictional town of South Park, Colo. -- home to third-graders Kenny, Kyle, Stan and the evil Cartman -- everything is fair game. Even the Prophet Mohammed, who appeared as a superhero in a July 2001 episode called "The Super Best Friends."

"People told us at the time, 'You can't really draw an image of Mohammed,'" Parker says. "And we were like, well, we can. We're not Muslim, so it's OK."

In 2006, however, when Stone and Parker wanted to depict Mohammed in an episode, Comedy Central wouldn't let them. After all, Muslims worldwide had rioted over insulting depictions of Mohammed in a newspaper in Denmark.

It seemed odd to the creators of "South Park," who had been and were still allowed to depict Jesus in any number of profane ways. In fact, the episode in question, "Cartoon Wars," shows a cartoon (supposedly created by al Qaeda) in which Jesus defecates on President Bush.

Open Season on Jesus

"That's where we kind of agree with some of the people who've criticized our show," Stone says. "Because it really is open season on Jesus. We can do whatever we want to Jesus, and we have. We've had him say bad words. We've had him shoot a gun. We've had him kill people. We can do whatever we want. But Mohammed, we couldn't just show a simple image."

During the part of the show where Mohammed was to be depicted -- benignly, Stone and Parker say -- the show ran a black screen that read: "Comedy Central has refused to broadcast an image of Mohammed on their network."

Other networks took a similar course, refusing to air images of Mohammed -- even when reporting on the Denmark cartoon riots -- claiming they were refraining because they're religiously tolerant, the South Park creators say.

"No you're not," Stone retorts. "You're afraid of getting blown up. That's what you're afraid of. Comedy Central copped to that, you know: 'We're afraid of getting blown up.'"

"At the same time, just like we always do, we managed to get something on and say something about how we can't say something about Mohammed," Parker says.

"South Park," from its very beginning has been about mocking that which is held most sacred.

It began as a short film, "The Spirit of Christmas," made as a video cartoon for an entertainment executive to send to friends that featured Santa Claus and Jesus fighting.

Its creators have stayed true to the spirit of "Spirit," taking on Tom Cruise (implying that the twice-married father is gay), as well as Cruise's religion (Stan declares that "Scientology is just a big fat global scam"). But when the episode "Trapped in the Closet" (Cruise hides in the closet and refuses to come out) was scheduled to be rebroadcast, Comedy Central pulled the plug.

"We were told that the people involved with 'Mission: Impossible: III' demanded that show be pulled off the air," Stone says. "And it was."

Media behemoth Viacom, which owns Comedy Central, also owns Paramount Studios. At the time Paramount wanted Cruise to promote M:I:III. After weeks of negative publicity, Comedy Central agreed to broadcast the show.

'I Thought This Might Be It'

In addition to the Cruise and Mohammed shows, Comedy Central hesitated before agreeing to rebroadcast an episode featuring some unseemly bleeding by a statue of the Virgin Mary that upset many Catholics.

"Going into the last run was the most sort of scared I've ever been," Parker says. "I went into the run just going, 'Wow, how many times are they going to tell us we can't do something before we bail?' Because we're ready to bail. We're ready. … We wanted to say some things, shake things up a bit. And I think we've done that, and I think we've done it in a bigger way than we ever will in the future. So it'd be nice to make some more shows and some more movies, but it'd also be really nice to go to a farm and raise some goats and have some kids. You know what I mean? I mean, that would be really nice, too.

"As soon as we can't make the show we want to make, we're not going to make it anymore. At the beginning of the last run I thought we were really close. I thought it was like this might be it. But then, you know, we were able to still do a Mohammed show and do it the way we wanted, which was to do it and then say, 'All right, Comedy Central, you're a network, you have a right to do with this what you want, so we're making it this way. And then if you want to take out the image of Mohammed, that's fine, you can do that, but we're also going to make the show about you taking out the image of Mohammed.'"

But the normally über-candid Stone and Parker hold their tongues a tad when explaining what happened behind the scenes that convinced Comedy Central to re-broadcast the episode.

"We've done exactly what we need to do to get out what we wanted to get out and not get sued," Parker says. "And unfortunately, that makes us have to stop short at explaining exactly what happened. The forces of the deal made it so that depending on what we say, they can turn it around and finally turn it all into a lawsuit."

"Now we sound like crazy Scientologists," Stone says.

As for Cruise, Parker acknowledges that "he's got total reason to be offended."

That isn't the issue, Stone says. "The thing is, he's sued people for implying that he's gay before. Which is funny. You know, I mean, people have implied we're gay, and we haven't sued anybody. I don't give a s--- if somebody says I'm gay. That's the difference. That's superfunny."

"We don't wish Tom Cruise any ill will," Parker says. "He's just kind of a freak, you know? He's like Michael Jackson."

"How can you not make fun of him?" Stone asks.

South Park and Atheists?

In addition to garnering the show tons of media attention, the episode caused a disturbance within the "South Park" family. Musician and actor Isaac Hayes, who played the character Chef and is a Scientologist, quit.

"We knew that that was a possibility and we were sad that he decided to quit," Parker says. "We held off on doing a Scientology show for years because of Isaac's personal religious belief. And after a while, we were like, you know, we've made fun of everything else. There's just too much funny stuff there. We have to do it. And if he quits, that's his right, and then he did so."

Stone, who was raised Jewish, says he's not religious. Parker says he considers himself religious, but it would take him a long time to explain it. Both say they believe in God.

"I believe there's something going on that we don't know," Parker says. "That's as far as I can go."

"Recently, atheists and people who hate religion have, like, really glommed on to our show because we make fun of a lot of religions," Stone notes. "But neither one of us is anti-religious at all. I mean, I'm fascinated by religion."

"All the religions are superfunny to me," Parker adds. "The story of Jesus makes no sense to me. God sent his only son. Why could God only have one son and why would he have to die? It's just bad writing, really. And it's really terrible in about the second act."

But Parker says atheism is more ludicrous to him than anything else.

"Out of all the ridiculous religion stories -- which are greatly, wonderfully ridiculous -- the silliest one I've ever heard is, 'Yeah, there's this big, giant universe and it's expanding and it's all going to collapse on itself and we're all just here, just 'cuz. Just 'cuz. That to me, is the most ridiculous explanation ever," he says. "So I think we have a big atheism show coming."

The two offer mock-apologies to anyone offended by their show.

"Part of living in the world today is you're going to have to be offended," Stone says. "The right to be offended and the right to offend is why we have a First Amendment. If no speech was offensive to anybody, then you wouldn't need to guarantee it."

Parker says "South Park" mocks that which is dearest to him all the time -- though few people know it.

"A lot of people don't realize this, but probably the one person that gets made fun of in "South Park" more than anybody is my dad," he says. "Stan's father, Randy -- my dad's name is Randy -- that's my drawing of my dad; that's me doing my dad's voice. That is just my dad. Even Stan's last name, Marsh, was my dad's stepfather's name. So my dad grew up Randy Marsh. And he is, by far, the biggest dingbat in the entire show. And we've had him, you know, with his pants down, drunk, throwing up, you know. And my dad was a great dad. He's a great dad. And my dad is constantly like: 'Why did you do that to me?' And I'm like, 'Dad, I'm just having fun.' I hold my father very dear. But it doesn't mean I'm not going to rip on him."

South Park Conservatives

Atheists aren't the only ones to have "glommed on" to the show and claimed it as one of their own. Conservatives have as well, starting with commentator/blogger Andrew Sullivan, who first coined the term "South Park Conservatives" to describe an independent, somewhat libertarian mind-set.

Libertarian New York Times columnist John Tierney recently wrote that he had "bad news for the GOP regarding that promising new bloc of voters, the "South Park Republicans." It turns out they're not Republicans, at least not anymore."

"We would love to think that we could control a group of people and take over the country in a new political party," Stone says. But they have their doubts. And in truth, they say they're not necessarily all that conservative, it's just that they enjoying poking fun at liberal orthodoxies and celebrities, and it's far more rebellious to lean right in Hollywood than to lean left.

"We're probably more conservative than most Hollywood liberals, but that doesn't mean a whole lot," Stone says.

"At the end of the day, we know our job is to entertain and make people laugh," says Parker. "We never get to a writers' meeting and sit down and go, 'What statement can we make about this?' That never happens. We always start with the show. What is Stan feeling? What's his emotion? What can he go through with the kid? And a lot of times, it will come to me Tuesday, the day before the show airs, and we're getting done with the show. And we're like, 'Oh, we've kind of said that.'"

So who did they vote for? John Kerry or George W. Bush?

Parker says anyone interested can look at their show that ran just before the 2004 election called "Douche and Turd." In it the South Park Elementary School students are forced to choose between a Giant Douche and a Turd Sandwich as a new school mascot. The character Stan protests, saying he doesn't find either option attractive, and is decried by the school, his parents and P. Diddy for not voting.

"When people ask how did you vote, it's like: 'Watch that episode. You'll know exactly who we voted for,'" Parker says.

One of the reasons "South Park" can stay more topical than other satiric animated shows like "The Simpsons" or "Family Guy" is because Parker, Stone and their team turn the show around in a week. Thursday morning they begin sketching out the show, and it airs the following Wednesday night.

"Thursday morning, we show up with a big cup of coffee and go, what should next week's show be about?" Parker says. "And then it's basically a race. It's six days and we're working about 90-95 hours. And we're talking about a 90-hour production process."

It's grueling -- and not at all like the pizza-and-bong-fueled image of the creative process fans envision, they say -- but it allows the creative team to respond to what is going on in the news that moment, as in their Emmy Award-winning episode "Best Friends Forever." In that episode, the character Kenny goes into a persistent vegetative state, arousing all sorts of right-to-die issues, like those that were being debated at that moment in the United States because of the Terri Schiavo controversy.

Despite the attention for the hot-button episodes about Cruise, Mohammed or Terri Schiavo, Stone and Parker say their favorite episodes deal with the kids of South Park acting like kids.

"When the show first came out, there were a lot of people calling it 'Peanuts on Acid,'" Parker says. "I was a big Charlie Brown fan as a kid."

"And I was a big acid fan," says Stone.

The beginnings of the show focused mainly on "this is how kids talk," Parker says. "This is what four little boys do when left alone. These are the things they say. Here's how kids really are."

"They're selfish," Stone says. "They're little bastards. And society makes them better. It's not 'Society corrupts them.'"

"See," Parker says, "that's probably the most conservative viewpoint we have."