fries with that?

A wise friend once told me that there are two constants in life.  One of course is change.  Change is inevitable.  Whether something is good or bad or in the middle, rest assured, it isn't going to stay that way.  I think it was Generation X author Douglas Coupland who said, "Nothing is ever very, very good or very, very bad for very, very long." 

The other constant is irony.  And I don't mean in some kind of Alanis "I dropped out of college before we covered that in English 102" Morissette way.  I mean that life is going to consistently hand you situations that make you look up to Heaven and say to God, "You've got to be kidding me, right?  This is Your idea of a funny, funny joke, isn't it?"

To which God just chuckles and pats you on the head.

Ironic is Joe Lieberman whining that the Senatorial race is all about partisan politics.  Ironic is the right wing Axis of Weasels (The unholy trinity: The Patterico, The Tacitus, and The Holy Goldstein) trotting out an Online Civility Pledge.  (And then breaking it within 48 hours.  Tsk. Tsk.)  Or Michelle "Internment Camps For Dirty Japs Were Great!" MalKKKin calling Jane a racist.

But the winner of this week's Golden Foot in the Mouth award, the prize for the number one forehead-slapping, rock-thrown-from-a-glass-housiest remark goes to (and what would we do without her?) Ann Coulter for this statement: 

Congresswoman Maxine Waters had parachuted into Connecticut earlier in the week to campaign against [Sen. Joseph I.] Lieberman because he once expressed reservations about affirmative action, without which she would not have a job that didn't involve wearing a paper hat.

Okaaayyyyy.  I'm going to let you sit back and take that in for a second.  Take deep breaths.  In.  Out.  It's okay.  I know, I know.  Yeah, I don't know why they haven't sewn her lips shut, either.  It's not like she needs that mouth to eat with or anything.

Really, I could end this post right here.  As Annthrax slides ever further down the razor's edge of ridiculousness into the rubbing-alcohol pool of obscurity, she's coughing up whatever ideological hairballs she can to try and keep people's attention from wandering.  The nature of her pathology has become undeniably clear.  She is the Republican Courtney Love.  Every time she opens her mouth, she sells less of her own books and more of ours.

But no, I think we need to talk about this now.  Ann's on about minute 14 and thirty seconds of her 15 minutes of fame and I want to get my licks in before she pulls a Tucker Carlson and does a complete career face-plant.  Once she splatters herself all over the sidewalk, it won't be fun anymore, so let's get her!

I think it's pretty clear by now to anyone who's paying attention that most of our Punditocracy are from uniformly wealthy backgrounds.  Born in little socioeconomic veal pens and fed through a tube until they're old enough to wear a school tie or a set of pearls, they're then sent forth squalling and bleating on to the talk shows to chum the waters and distract people from the real issues.  They're not politicians.  They're clearly not scholars.   They've never had to work a day in their lives.  They spend ten or fifteen minutes a day banging out a thousand words of deeply overwrought and equally deeply under-researched prose, and then (if you're Coulter) put another rock in the crack pipe, or (if you're, say, Jonah Goldberg) order a whole pizza for lunch and spend the balance of the afternoon playing Minesweep and shooting spitballs into Kathryn Jean Lopez's unfortunate hair.

These people are creatures of cradle-to-grave entitlement.  Ann Coulter may have the figure of a starving Somalian villager, but all similarity ends there.  They go straight from the care of their ethnic nannies to prep school to private universities, on to law school, chichi internships, "foundations", think-tanks, and editorial boards.  They've never had to ask themselves if they could afford to go to the emergency room for a broken rib.  They've never had a job where they broke a sweat unless it was as a lifeguard at the country club or a golf caddy, and that was when they were 14.

We call it Wingnut Welfare for a reason.  Reich Wing Affirmative Action.  It's an intricate web of familial and corporate connections dating back more than a hundred years, and without it Ann Coulter would be hard pressed to find a job that didn't involve a meth-lab, a corner lamp-post, and a public defender.

What exactly is it that she's a supposed authority on, anyway?  What are Cliff May and Ryan Lizza really qualified for besides being crash-test dummies or focus group testing for Heineken commercials?  And yet, these pampered, do-nothing Opinionati are the people who are shaping public discourse about the estate tax, affirmative action, and the minimum wage.  And I find that pretty goddamn ironic.  Don't you?