iowa underground blog

Three cheers for the Cedar Rapids Gazette. It would appear she of the prodigious adam’s apple has reached a tipping point in her career – and is finally pissing off and offending those to the right of the political spectrum. It’s not quite ‘ding dong, the witch is dead’ yet, but it’s atleast a start, eh?

Via Editor & Publisher

By Sarah Weber

Published: July 12, 2006 5:05 PM ET

NEW YORK Ann Coulter is no stranger to controversy, but her latest adventures have several newspapers questioning whether carrying her syndicated column is worth the trouble. The Shreveport (La.) Times is currently leaving the decision of whether or not to keep Coulter up to its readers. But the first newspaper to officially drop Coulter’s column since the latest uproar began seems to be The Gazette of Cedar Rapids, Iowa, where she had appeared for about 14 months.

Opinion Page Editor Doug Neumann told E&P, “Our decision was made before the plagiarism allegations. It did come after the publication of [Coulter’s] book, but I would say it didn’t directly play any role on our decision.”

However, Neumann surmised that Coulter’s incendiary book may have played an “indirect” role in the final decision. “I think it was the book that began to unwind support among her readers,” Neumann explained.

“Liberals have never liked her, and we’ve always gotten complaints [from them]. But the complaints that mattered the most were from the conservative readers,” who felt that their views were being misrepresented.

Coulter’s syndicate, Universal Press, cleared her of plagiarism charges earlier this week.

Though The Gazette may be the first to drop the outspoken conservative columnist in recent months, Neumann emphasized, “It’s not uncommon for opinion pages to change their line-up.” The daily has long published conservative Cal Thomas and replaced Coulter with another conservative, David Limbaugh.

“We’ve always had a rich line-up of conservative columnists,” said Neumann, “and we still do.”

related digg thread
Also, via ‘Crooks and Liars’, Donny Deutsch Shatters the Coulter Myth

• pdx

I just need to address an odd notion that the “conservative media” operate on a higher moral plane:

When a caller to his radio show questioned the prospect of democracy spreading in the Middle East by noting that people are “vot[ing] for Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas on the West Bank,” Hannity replied: “Well, you could vote for Hillary Clinton tomorrow, too, for crying out loud.”

I guess when you spend your days out of touch from the real world, you begin to believe anything. Can we have a serious debate about NASA staging the moon landing in a Hollywood studio?

• Sousy

There once was a president who made a decision
That was met with almost universal derision
“I may not be a law-abider
But, by God, I am the decider
And I want Rummy to keep fucking up this mission!”

• loquacious

Ever since Karaoke Sinatra (aka Brian) of Iowa Voice (aka Voice-Mart) posted an opening salvo calling posters on Iowa Underground ‘whackjobs’, we’ve had occasion to poke fun at this sad-sack conservative – if only because he’s such a terrifically easy target.

Take, for example, the following excerpt from one of his recent posts:

As anyone could expect, I’m a person who values my privacy and my personal info. I’ve actually had this issue come up before earlier this year, with a liberal blog that posted my personal info (along with other stuff they weren’t allowed to publish) and I had to threaten legal action and contact their host to get it all removed.

To say I’m against such postings is an understatement. I’ve said it before, we live in a crazy world these days, and with the political atmosphere as divided as it is these days, it’s quite a risk to have that stuff out there for anyone to read. Who knows WHAT anyone is capable of these days?

As those who pay attention to what’s going on in Washington already know, cons frequently exhibit a tendency towards being rather thick in the head – and Karaoke Sinatra is certainly no exception. For example, would anyone that really values their privacy and personal information openly advertise their full name, address and side career on the internet in the first place? When one uses their own first and last name for a domain name and repeatedly links to it on their blog, precisely what claim to privacy are they making? Hi, my name is John Dough, I live at 123 Apple Tree Lane and graduated from Wappelo County Highschool in 1985 and oh by the way here’s my phone number, too. Now forget I told you that or I’ll send my make believe lawyers after you!

At a certain point, musn’t one accept atleast some responsibility for one’s own actions? Karaoke has made each bit of information publically available himself, that he’s now complaining others have somehow unearthed with the help of a secret cabal of private investigators and internet forensic specialists – when all it took was following a hyperlink. It’s this same hypocrisy and tone deafness that allows him to insist he’s above invective in one breath, and in another throw out ‘whackjobs, moonbats, nutcases’ to those he happens to disagree with. It’s this same hypocrisy that allows him to preach the propaganda of conservative, rugged individualism in one post, and in the next openly beg for money to pay household bills. It’s very much the mentality of someone that dines on a daily dosage of Bill O’Reilly, Rush Limbaugh and Michelle Malkin – the mendacity, hubris and underlying tone of victimhood simply knows no bounds.

Having said that, there’s a few corrections in order. A poster on Iowa Underground’s forums happened upon Karaoke’s highschool alma-matter personal contact info. – information openly provided by Mr. Sinatra in the first place – and re-posted it on the forum. Since the information contained an address and home phone number and wasn’t germane to the thread, it was removed. This had absolutely nothing to do with lawyers or host providers. It had to do with the standards that have been in place on Iowa Underground since day one. I also removed a song of his I had uploaded to Iowa Underground’s server space after he reminded me it was copyrighted. Hey, if someone can yell COPYRIGHT VIOLATION! while mimicking the songs someone else created in the first place, more power to them. Of course these are all distinctions Karaoke Sinatra isn’t interested in you knowing about. Much better to smear several people at once and allude to the possibility of his family coming into harm’s way by those whackjob, moonbats that haunt Iowa Underground.

You’re a sad man, Karaoke. Using Karl Rove as your spiritual guide will probably not prove to be one of your more fruitful decisions in life. Here’s hoping you get an actual job again one day so you can find better ways of spending your time other than stewing in your own paranoia.

• pdx

What leads people to believe this kind of nonsense?

The press had better hope we win this war, because if we don’t, a lot of people will blame the media.

• Sousy

Forgive me, but when entrepreneurial theocratic fascists deigning to speak on behalf of God™ lose a round, it’s my obligation to take notice and gloat a little. From The Houston Chronicle comes this glorious tidbit straight from Heaven™:

Robertson Loses Broadcasters’ Board Seat

© 2006 The Associated Press

VIRGINIA BEACH, Va. — Christian broadcaster Pat Robertson, criticized by some evangelicals for comments about Venezuela’s president and Israel’s prime minister, lost a bid for re-election to the National Religious Broadcasters’ board of directors.

Robertson, founder of the Virginia Beach-based Christian Broadcasting Network, was one of 38 candidates for 33 board seats during the NRB’s recent convention. The group represents mostly evangelical radio and TV broadcasters.

NRB President Frank Wright said there was no broad effort to distance the group from Robertson. But “there was broad dismay with some of Pat’s comments and a feeling they were not helpful to Christian broadcasters in general,” he said in Wednesday’s Washington Post.

In the past few months, Robertson suggested that Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez should be assassinated and that Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s stroke was divine punishment for pulling out of the Gaza Strip.

Ouch, Pat! 33 board seats, only 38 candidates – and you couldn’t make the cut. That’s gotta hurt.

Far be it from me to be an optimist at this early juncture, but if the past few weeks are any indication of where this country is heading – it almost feels as if it’s atleast begun the process of waking up from it’s 6 year dalliance w/ BushCo. and its associated tendrils’ neverending stream of bullshit. It’s possible we’ve just been travelling through a brief rip in the fabric of the space-time continuum, however – where rationality and sanity are still valued – so I’ll reserve any semblance of true celebration until November of this year.

Wikipedia has the skinny on his holiness here.

Find a restroom, wouldya Marion?
Kthx.

• tristero

I’m amused.

I won’t detail further, but instead point you to the forums here and here.

• Sousy

Here’s the list.

Very disappointed not to see a single Iowa educator represented on King Wingnut’s McCarthy’esque list of most ‘dangerous’ college professors. Iowa Profs, you’re just not trying hard enough! Now get back out there and start kicking, offending, and otherwise besmirching some GOP ass!

And for any of you near Boston University, if you happen to stumble across Howard Zinn...RUN, do not walk, the other way. VERY dangerous man, that guy. He may cause you to start thinking for yourself – and that’s an absolute threat to the kind of people Horowitz would like to see this country populated with.

Here we see Dave basking in the after-glow
of an assault and battery by campus pie terrorists.
I believe he called the perps, ‘campus fascists’.
Secretly, you know he just loves the attention.
More on pies and Republicans from our vaults: here.

• tristero

I’ll give ‘Iowa Voice’ credit where credit is due. It takes alot of balls to beg for money on the internet while simultaneously preaching the rhetoric of personal responsibility.

I’ve come to the conclusion there must be some kind of hypocrisy gene inherent to GOP true believers. That, or they simply have a blindspot recognizing irony when it comes to their own behavior. You know, like Bush lecturing to us about energy independence in his SOTU speech last night while appointing Exxon execs to direct the EPA and govern our foreign policy. Or William Bennett preaching to us about ethics while throwing millions of dollars away on gambling sprees. Pat Robertson smiting segments of the population on behalf of God while calling for the assasination of Democratically elected political leaders. Karl Rove telling us who is and is not patriotic while outing a CIA operative for reasons of petty, political pay-back. The list goes on, and it’s a long one.

It’s quite clear that far too many Republicans have no sense of shame. There is little they won’t shill for or speak out of the other side of their mouth on as long as it means securing another political ‘victory’ or reaping some semblance of power and financial gain.

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The Prince of ‘no, you go’ is throwing down the gauntlet and challenging members of his Pennsylvania fiefdom to pony up for bumper stickers as a way of, you know, serving their country and fighting the war on terrorism. Beats the shit out of taking actual shrapnel, no?

Brief sound snippet here:

Or see video of the call to action via Santorum Exposed

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