Peggy on Civility & Censorship
In a most excellent column today, the Athena of punditry weighs in on political discourse, taking to task both Ann Coulter and Bill Maher for intemperate remarks in recent days. It’s interesting that the media paid more attention to the conservative’s statements. While people talked about canceling Ms. Coulter’s column, there has been no outcry for HBO to cancel Mr. Maher’s show.
Personally, I wish they would both just go away.
Maher said “a lot of lives would be saved if Vice President Cheney had died” and Coulter insinuated that Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards was a “faggot.”
As their ideological adversaries responded to their remarks, Peggy wisely notes:
Conservatives said they were chilled by Mr. Maher’s comments, but I don’t think they were. They were delighted he revealed what they believe is at the heart of modern liberalism, which is hate.Liberals amused themselves making believe they were chilled by Ms. Coulter’s remarks, but they were not. They were delighted she has revealed what they believe is at the heart of modern conservatism, which is hate.
The truth is many liberals were dismayed by Mr. Maher because he made them look bad, and many conservatives were mad at Ms. Coulter for the same reason.
Now, while I do wish both would just go away, I agree with Peggy and don’t believe either of these posturing pundits should be censored. To be sure, our political discourse would benefit from a healthy dose of civility:
Our country now puts less of an emphasis on public decorum, courtliness, self-discipline, decency. America no longer says, “That’s not nice.” It doesn’t want to make value judgments on “good” and “bad.” We have come to rely on censorship to maintain decorum. We are very good at letting people know that if they say something we don’t like, we’ll shame them and shun them, even ruin them.But censorship doesn’t make people improve themselves; it makes people want to rebel. It tells them to toe the line or pay a price. People who are urged in the right direction and taught in the right direction will usually try to discipline and improve themselves from within. But they do not enjoy censorship from without. They fight back. They are rude in order to show they are unbroken.
So the best way to promote civil discourse is to remind pundits that they might get a better hearing if they tried less to win accolades from their ideological confreres and did a better job of making their case. I have little stomach for either Ann Coulter of Bill Maher for they pose as pundits when more often than not, they make outrageous attention in order to get media attention. In that way, they’re not much different from the media-hungry denizens of Hollywood.
Anyway, Peggy has penned a great piece on political discourse. And instead of taking my word for it, just read the whole thing!
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Peggy Noonan wrote: “Actually, it was your grandmother who said “That’s not nice.”
That was then, this is now.
Grandmas who said “that’s not nice” weren’t the gamdmas of today. Now, grandma dates and/or is on her third husband. Grandpa has a pony tail, cusses loudly in public, and rides a Harley with illegal mufflers.
Grandma’s kids have their own kids with two or three different “partners”. Mom speeds through school parking lots trying to beat some other mom to the head of the pick-up line while talking on her cell phone. Dad is a loud and obnoxious oaf who scratches his crotch in mixed company, belches in public, and redefines “aggressive driving”.
And, as parents, they teach their little fartlings that the only way to get ahead is to be loud and pushy… that other people are obstacles to be butted out of the way. That’s when the kids aren’t being tended by MTV and Survivor.
And then we all tut-tut when our politicians “look (and act) like America”.
Face it. Politicians say idiotic things that they know to be codswollop just because they want to be heard above the noise that passes for discourse these days.
Comment by Robert — March 9, 2007 @ 6:41 pm - March 9, 2007
[...] Original post by GayPatriotWest [...]
Pingback by Politics: 2008 HQ » Blog Archive » Peggy on Civility & Censorship — March 9, 2007 @ 7:01 pm - March 9, 2007
I (mostly) disagree with Noonan.
1. A private action is not censorship. No private individual or business can censor another — only a government or public agent can do that and only when an individual’s freedom of expression is forcibly limited. Maher was fired by ABC and Coulter’s column was pulled, but these are private actions and in no way impinge their freedom to express themselves. Free speech is a liberty, meaning it isn’t furnished by others. There is no ‘right’ to work for this or that media outlet or to have one’s column published. Just as if the National Endowment for the Arts refuses to fund a specific ‘artist’ (we could spend a few MB defining that term, I’ll bet) cannot be considered censorship, the firings of Maher and Coulter do not concern censorship — they concern sponsorship. Refusing to finance is not a limit of free speech. This is the marketplace at work and yes, it works.
2. “That’s not nice” is kind of like saying “Just say ‘No’”. It may be true, but it’s not particularly practical or practiceable because of the climate. Audiences are constituencies and constituencies love red meat. They love having their resentments validated and media outlets love generating ratings because they love advertisers because advertisers love audiences because… I happen to think that the world is large enough and audiences are smart enough to accomodate a very wide range of expression. I don’t think ‘niceness’ is necessarily ‘grandmotherly’ (corellation is not causality), although I appreciate Noonan’s sentiment. I do think that our tendency to place too much emphasis on the opinions of certain people or to readily allow them to embody and represent our own doctrines only puts us at the mercy of not merely what is said, but how it is said. And on this point, I agree strenuously with Noonan. Our identification with media figures makes us wince at their foibles because they indirectly become our foibles.
3. What Noonan complains about is a lack of niceness, but what I complain about is a lack of rules, of a commonly understood framework for discourse. There are countless stories of students being shouted down in classrooms across the country for expressing viewpoints not shared by the professor. Often times, teachers do not establish a code of conduct or atmosphere of respect by demanding that each student be heard fully without interruptions and then responded to with respect and without personal attacks. Noonan is correct in blaming Political Correctness, but the solution isn’t about being nice (because you’ll simply be walked on) — it’s about ensuring fairness. Noonan makes much of a limit of expression being akin to shutting a safety valve, but I would argue that in a society, one has greater freedom when reasonable, universally-applied limits are placed upon reasonable public behavior. Traffic laws are not a necessary evil because they are not evil. They do not limit freedom, they increase it. It is completely justified to blame Coulter for what she said. It is also easy. It is less easy to blame CPAC, but it is certainly justified to do so.
My $0.02.
Comment by HardHobbit — March 9, 2007 @ 7:40 pm - March 9, 2007
P.S. I should add that lest anyone think I’m implying legal limits on speech (other than the traditional potboilers such as “Don’t yell ‘Fire!’ in a crowded theater”), I’m not. My traffic analogy was not a good one because I’m advocating law. Sorry for any confusion.
Comment by HardHobbit — March 9, 2007 @ 8:03 pm - March 9, 2007
Fox News debate is officially dead
Comment by markie — March 9, 2007 @ 8:52 pm - March 9, 2007
Markie,
Was it ever alive to begin with?
HardHobbit,
Why is being nice being equated with ‘being walked on’? When did being nice become an evil thing?
I agree that there is a true lack of respect these days. Just in reading this blog, I see complete lack of respect for others with differing views. How do you encourage geniune respect? By acknowledging that the other guy might be right, perhaps. So no more vilifying democrats for being democrats, no vilifying republicans for being republicans.
Can you tell me what the point of respect is and who exemplifies that?
I’ve read GayPatriot and Andrew Sullivan and I see Andrew Sullivan showing a helluva lot more respect, so he gets my respect, despite the fact that he’s conservative and I’m liberal.
Does anyone here at GayPatriot exemplify the quality of respect? I suppose if Ann Coulter actually demonstrated respect towards others she would get some in return. But that would end her career as a so-called ‘personality’. I guess a trade off she is willing to embrace, trading respect for attention.
Comment by Elais — March 9, 2007 @ 11:09 pm - March 9, 2007
I respect someone by assuming that they aren’t a complete ninny who can’t deal with vigorous disagreement.
Comment by Synova — March 10, 2007 @ 12:35 am - March 10, 2007
I see complete lack of respect for others with differing views….So no more vilifying democrats for being democrats, no vilifying republicans for being republicans.
You have to be respectful to get respect in return. In my experience, GP folks actually are respectful of libs if they are respectful themselves. However, I don’t know of anybody here who will just bite on a pillow just for the sake of “civil discourse”. If you’re honest, and few libs on here are, you tend to get more respect.
To be honest, I actually think a lot of libs get far more respect than they deserve here.
Comment by ThatGayConservative — March 10, 2007 @ 12:41 am - March 10, 2007
Further, I have little interest in whether some a** clown on the internet respects me or not. If you’re a total d*ck, I’ll tell you.
Comment by ThatGayConservative — March 10, 2007 @ 12:43 am - March 10, 2007
Just one more:
and many conservatives were mad at Ms. Coulter for the same reason.
I wasn’t. What I was dismayed about were how several conservatives, Bruce & Dan included, jumped on the lib’s bandwagon. Everybody was in a rush to see who could be the most offended and just about everybody actually proved Ann Coulter’s statement to be true.
Comment by ThatGayConservative — March 10, 2007 @ 12:49 am - March 10, 2007
grandma get out the bar of soap and washes potty-mouthed conservative’s mouths out
Comment by markie — March 10, 2007 @ 5:21 am - March 10, 2007
Have any of you actually bothered to find out what Maher actually said, beyond a misleadingly snipped quote? Does the context of the conversation in which he made the remark matter at all? I don’t think “liberals were dismayed because he made them look bad,” they were dismayed because conservatives siezed upon the opportunity to misconstrue his remarks as a way to deflect attention from Ann Coulter and the outrage her fag joke provoked.
Certainly the political discourse would benefit from a “healthy dose of civility,” but it’s Coulter who’s the problem here, she’s the one who’s tossing insults. And her defense is that it wasn’t homophobic because was just a “school yard taunt?” At least now we’re clear–she regards political discourse as a realm where school yard taunts are appropriate. It’d be nice if conservatives could just say they want no more of this without having to scramble for examples of liberals doing the same thing. If it’s about elevating the dialogue, why make it a game of tit-for-tat?
Comment by cymatic — March 10, 2007 @ 7:11 am - March 10, 2007
peggy noonan is a moronic idiot who can’t be taken seriously.
Comment by rightiswrong — March 10, 2007 @ 10:13 am - March 10, 2007
Elais (#6),
Re. “…you’ll simply be walked on…” I admit I wasn’t very clear there. I’ll try again.
There will always be rude people and hoping that they’ll adopt a nicer, more civil tone is an exercise in futility. I don’t disagree with Noonan that more self-discipline among individual contributors to political discourse is desirable, but in our political climate where cheap points are easily scored (Rosie O’Donnell on The View, for example), rudeness has become part of the debate arsenal and in front of a live audience, the ruder the better. By definition, self-discipline can only be requested of another — it cannot be enforced and considering what gains rudeness offers, such a request is hopeless.
Ultimately, it’s also misplaced. In a debate, it’s crucial to have guidelines so that each participant can explain their positions. Many political pundits criticize the style of our Presidential debates because they “aren’t true debates” (which is false — they are). They would rather we simply turn on the microphones and let the argument begin. It’s not too much of a stretch to conclude that the winner would be the candidate who interrupted the most, had the most cheap one-liners at his/her disposal, etc., and the more self-disciplined of the debaters would thus be walked on. In a more structured framework, this kind of rude and crass ‘debate’ is far more difficult to successfully achieve and works to its practitioner’s detriment because a comparison can be easily made in the minds of the audience. Thus, being civil is more desirable.
But ensuring this kind of framework is up to the organization sponsoring the debate and not really up to the participants. While Coulter and Maher were not in debates when they made their respective statements, the idea of holding sponsors more responsible for what can/cannot be said still holds true. I have no problem with someone like Ann Coulter exposing herself for what she is, but I do have a problem with an organization like CPAC inviting her to be a featured speaker. If there were consequences for making statements intending to shock, less would be made.
Comment by HardHobbit — March 10, 2007 @ 11:54 am - March 10, 2007
And #12 is a brilliant example of why Peggy Noonan wrote this article in the first place.
Do you kiss your mother with that mouth? Or are you just in a self-loathing mood today?
Regards,
Peter H.
Comment by Peter Hughes — March 10, 2007 @ 12:21 pm - March 10, 2007
“Have any of you actually bothered to find out what Maher actually said”
Yes. I saw it. There is no “context” that makes it all nice and okay.
Comment by rightwingprof — March 10, 2007 @ 4:28 pm - March 10, 2007
HardHobbit
Now I understand your meaning. Thank you. Much agreement with the rest of your post.
ThatGayConservative
Do you think conservatives get more respect here than is warranted? I can’t imagine all conservatives are good and pure and holy and somehow automatically a better person just by being conservative and more worthy of respect.
That you say that libs get more respect than they deserve sounds a like painting all libs with a broad brush and disrespectful to boot.
Comment by Elais — March 10, 2007 @ 4:49 pm - March 10, 2007
You’re part of the problem, not the solution. A politics is civility deems respect a virtue, and not something to be granted quid pro quo. There are plenty of civil, reasonable voices in the blogosphere; this one is generally neither. That’s fine, of course; you’ve got an angle to mine, and do a good job of it, but calls for civility do come off as a bit hollow.
Comment by jpe — March 10, 2007 @ 9:10 pm - March 10, 2007
Check out this video clip. That woman reporter is absolutely correct. The Democrats obsession with Bush at the exclusion of all us is leaving us totally blind to the perils of surrender in Iraq.
http://hotair.com/archives/2007/01/14/video-upis-pentagon-reporter-says-media-is-ignoring-consequences-of-withdrawal/
Comment by Vince P — March 11, 2007 @ 1:21 am - March 11, 2007
Maher said “a lot of lives would be saved if Vice President Cheney had died”…
+++++++++++++++
when such statements are not severely condemned by the left, then how far is the left from creating such actions……..
Comment by The Texican. — March 11, 2007 @ 1:34 am - March 11, 2007
Wow, here is the same reporter on CSPAN relating her most recent trip to Iraq
http://hotair.cachefly.net/video/2007-02/hess.wmv
It’s amazing to me how low the Democrats have fell.
How any of them can think that surrendering Iraq is the right thing to do is totally bizarre.
The fact NOT ONE OF THEM will state the consequences of surrender means they only understand all to well what will happen.. and that is truely evil.
Comment by Vince P — March 11, 2007 @ 1:39 am - March 11, 2007
Context didn’t matter a d*mn to the libs when they went ape over Coulter. Pretty much everybody was saying that she called Edwards a faggot when she clearly didn’t.
Pardon me, but I don’t recall anybody ever saying that conservatives are “good and pure and holy” etc. I sure as hell didn’t.
For the most part, the libs that hang around here like Ian, rightiswrong, Keogh, Vaara etc. come in with their usual arrogance, condecension and hate. In those cases, YES. I do believe they get way more respect than they deserve. As to whether or not I’m “disrespectful to boot” regarding these folks, I really don’t care.
Let’s take rightiswrong for example. Right up front you know there’s no interest in “civil discourse” and/or “respect”. Further, to my knowledge, he/she/it has never displayed any reason to get any.
Just get it through your holier-than-thou head that a lot of folks are tired of biting a pillow for the libs. They’re not willing to roll over and play dead anymore and want liberals stopped no matter what.
Comment by ThatGayConservative — March 11, 2007 @ 2:00 am - March 11, 2007
I saw his comment about
and I was going to reply about how untrue that is but you know what.. I just dont give a fck about these crazy hating leftists.
Let them think what they choose , let them advocate for the destruction of Iraq so that Bush wont get a “win”
let them destroy our defenses and ruin this country. They hate this country and they must be sure to harm it at every chance.
The future is bleak if they continue like this for much longer.
Comment by Vince P — March 11, 2007 @ 2:12 am - March 11, 2007
Long story short, the libs come around with their usual KOSsak hate, flinging their poo everywhere. Then when we don’t take it, they get sand in their vaginas. They’re totally baffled about how we don’t bend over, lube up and accept what they offer as goespel truth.
Then we get the usual slap on the wrist about “civility” and “civil discourse”. We DON’T do what the liberals want and they get all pissy because the country isn’t “bipartisan” and “united”. The reality is that “bipartisan” to liberals means that we STFU and bite the pillow when liberals speak.
My question is, whose problem is it if you vagina is full of sand? It ain’t my problem and it ain’t Bruce or Dan’s. The way I see it, if you don’t like it here, you can take your happy a$$ back to MorOn.org or DU where they will gladly enjoy your steaming piles. As for myself, and I daresay several others, we’re tired of the constant liberal lies and assaults. We’ve had enough of the War on Truth and are sick to death of the liberals who berate us and what we believe in on a daily basis. Sorry, but you’re not going to find folks who will just roll over and take it lying down.
I post at the pleasure of Bruce & Dan. If they want to ban me, that’s their perrogative. Not yours. And if they did so, I wouldn’t piss & moan about it like the other douchebag oxygen thieves they’ve banned in the past. It’s not my blog, but the way I see it is that what you’re complaining about is YOUR problem. Not mine.
Comment by ThatGayConservative — March 11, 2007 @ 5:35 am - March 11, 2007
ThatGayConservative : I want you to stay
Comment by Vince P — March 11, 2007 @ 5:58 am - March 11, 2007
I always love to check in here and watch gay right-wingers furiously demanding civil treatment and excusing their own invective as “truth.”
Comment by Max — March 11, 2007 @ 10:51 am - March 11, 2007
That just shows how obssessed and deranged you are Max.
Comment by Vince P — March 11, 2007 @ 10:59 am - March 11, 2007
What I never hear reported in comparisions is that Ann Coulters remarks were a bad joke about political correctness and Bill Mahers coments were a serious statement — there is a difference
Comment by PAUL — March 11, 2007 @ 1:18 pm - March 11, 2007
Careful, Vince. Using the “d” word against another commenter isn’t nice.
Comment by vaara — March 11, 2007 @ 1:48 pm - March 11, 2007
Mmm, hmm, sure, Vince.
I like this: “I have little stomach for either Ann Coulter of Bill Maher for they pose as pundits when more often than not, they make outrageous attention in order to get media attention. In that way, they’re not much different from the media-hungry denizens of Hollywood.”
Isn’t GPW a resident of LA? Doesn’t he run a blog? Didn’t the blog get covered in the Advocate? Isn’t GPW a media-hungry denizen?
Comment by Max — March 11, 2007 @ 4:43 pm - March 11, 2007
Max: Why are you asking me? I have no idea what you’re talking about , or care.
Comment by Vince P — March 11, 2007 @ 5:46 pm - March 11, 2007
16 and 20.
The quote “a lot of lives would be saved if VP Cheney had died” is not a quote of what Bill Maher said–it’s a quote of Noonan’s innaccurate paraphrase of what he said. According to the transcript of the show the closest Maher came was this: “But I have zero doubt that if Dick Cheney was not in power, people wouldn’t be dying needlessly tomorrow,” or this: “I’m just saying that if he did die—other people – more people would live. That’s a fact.”
You may not agree the content of his statements but it’s not really what the right-wing noise machine is claiming he said. Read the whole transcript here:
http://www.safesearching.com/billmaher/transcripts/t_hbo_realtime_030207.html
In particular read what his guests have to say about the comments that appeared and which were removed at the Huffington Post (these are the comments which lamented the fact that Cheney was not killed in Afghanistan). Maher is clearly prodding the discussion by taking an extreme pro-free speech position but he is not saying that he himself wishes Cheney had been killed. In addition, he allows the guests (when they’re not talking over each other) to offer their sensible critiques of his questions and statments. As much as some people would clearly like to pretend, it’s simply not that outrageous or out of bounds. Certainly not by the standards set by right-wing radio and Fox News shows.
Can we forget Coulter’s jokes like: “We need somebody to put rat poisoning in Justice Stevens’ creme brulee,” or saying of John Murtha that he’s “the reason soldiers invented fragging?” These weren’t “devils advocate” positions in a high-spirited but reasonably intelligent discussion, these were just cheap, nasty and violent laugh lines.
Comment by cymatic — March 11, 2007 @ 7:12 pm - March 11, 2007
I love how we’re to believe that the most immature and disrepectful group in America today.. and thats the Leftist, pretend to be oh so sensitive to the mean and bad Ann Coulter.
God people.. give it a rest.
Comment by Vince P — March 11, 2007 @ 7:21 pm - March 11, 2007
#32
Certainly not by the standards set by right-wing radio and Fox News shows.
For instance….
Comment by ThatGayConservative — March 11, 2007 @ 9:04 pm - March 11, 2007
I said this about civility in a comment on Wizbang.
“Nevermind civility. I can handle uncivil persons. The worship of outrage is what I think we should do away with. It shuts down communication, vilifies the other, and ensures that no questions need be answered, no argument presented, and no case made.”
Comment by Synova — March 11, 2007 @ 9:16 pm - March 11, 2007
I didn’t hear Ann’s previous comment about Murtha as quoted by cybele in #32.
Now THAT is funny, and oh-so-apt.
Murtha is lucky that his own platoon didn’t kill him in action and make it look like an “accident.” And yes that is my opinion. Deal with it.
Regards,
Peter H.
Comment by Peter Hughes — March 11, 2007 @ 10:08 pm - March 11, 2007
If only Murtha had the guts to go to our soldiers to announce his slow bleed. Even the WaPo spanked him.
Comment by ThatGayConservative — March 12, 2007 @ 3:04 am - March 12, 2007
As much as I “winced” at what Coulter said, I bristled at Maher. Coulter is known to be acerbic and, many times, immature. However, she can also hit the nail right on the head when it comes to modern liberalism. Maher, on the otherhand, has offered nothing but hate-spew everytime he opens his pie-hole, since it’s all his hate-filled liberal comrades understand. Kind of like how Islamo-fascists only understand violence and hate. Coulter angered libs way before her most recent “screw-up”, whereas Maher has never not screwed-up, but is held to a different standard, which is business as usual for “the left”. More conservatives were annoyed with Coulter than libs were with Maher, which shows where the country’s character is. Libs, in their warped view, are somehow “entitled” to say hateful things and not have to answer for them. Again, business as usual for that mob.
Comment by LesbianNeoCon — March 12, 2007 @ 1:54 pm - March 12, 2007
Question of the day: Both Ann Coulter and Bill Maher are captured by al-Qaeda. You have the chance to save only one of them. Which one would it be?
(I will weigh in with my answer after everyone else has taken a shot.)
Regards,
Peter H.
Comment by Peter Hughes — March 12, 2007 @ 1:56 pm - March 12, 2007
#39 – Duh, Peter!!!!
Maher will probably volunteer for the next attempt on Cheney’s life.
Comment by LesbianNeoCon — March 12, 2007 @ 2:00 pm - March 12, 2007
#22…there’s no respect and civil discourse, true. but, lest we forget it’s the filthy republican party that has started this culture war; and they alone are to blame for it. bushco used gays for his political benefit and gay people in this forum are either ignorant or just idiots. what is it for you?
lets face it, the republican party is a joke, an absolute joke. the republicans put profit over people and they have serious contempt for privacy…republicans want to tell women what they can and can’t do with their bodies; they want to tell people who they can and can’t marry; they want to tell people how and when they can die and they have no problem with warrantless spying on one another.
the bushco administration picked an illegal and immoral war with an enemy who did not attack us. this war has cost thousands of american lives and at over $2 BILLION a week that we’re adding to the national tab only hurts our future generations. of course the people on this forum can’t see the forest for the trees.
wake up before it’s too late.
Comment by rightiswrong — March 12, 2007 @ 9:13 pm - March 12, 2007
To: iiswrong:
By Evan Sayet:
In my series of lectures entitled “Regurgitating the Apple: How Modern Liberals ‘Think’”, I summarize the dominant force in today’s Democratic Party’s philosophy by saying that “in order to eliminate discrimination, the Modern Liberal has opted to become utterly indiscriminate.”
The Modern Liberal is convinced that rational and moral thought is so contaminated by one’s predispositions and prejudices that the only way to eliminate the evils of discrimination from society is to eliminate all thought. It’s why the “think” in the title of my talks is in quotation marks. The reality is that Modern Liberals not only do not think, they consider thought to be an act of evil.
…
It is not a surprise, in fact it could be no other way, then, that in San Francisco — the most Liberal city in America — thousands of people marched down the street recently in favor of Hezbollah, the vicious terrorist organization seeking not only the destruction of the democracy of Israel, but an oppressive Caliphate the world over.
Nor is it surprising to see these same folks championing Tookie Williams, the founder of America’s most vicious and murderous terror gang. Nor is it surprising that in France — the de facto capitol of today’s Democrat party — Jews are murdered on streets named after cop killers and terrorists.
…
It’s why the Democrats adore the United Nations, where there is utter indiscriminateness of thought, with no special rewards for good and free and democratic nations like, say, Australia, nor any special punishments for the most murderous of terror states like The Sudan. Here, too, indiscriminateness of thought does not bring about indiscriminateness of policy, but rather an incessant attack upon one of the great states of the world, Israel.
Comment by Vince P — March 12, 2007 @ 9:19 pm - March 12, 2007
#41 – Life is so easy for those who live by using talking points and spew illogical, hate-filled rhetoric.
Unfortunately, these same people have lives more shallow than a puddle.
Regards,
Peter H.
Comment by Peter Hughes — March 13, 2007 @ 10:15 am - March 13, 2007
Peter –
Let’s save Maher, addict him to heroin, then withhold fixes.
Comment by HardHobbit — March 13, 2007 @ 4:26 pm - March 13, 2007
#39 – Okay here is the answer:
You would have to save Maher first since he’s already identified himself as a wuss. Yet because Ann is a strong conservative woman, she will already have kicked Islamic tail, overpowered the guard and converted him to Christianity.
Maher, on the other hand, would be trying to convince the guard to let him go and would have willingly converted to Islam.
See? There really ARE “two Americas” out there.
Regards,
Peter H.
Comment by Peter Hughes — March 13, 2007 @ 5:22 pm - March 13, 2007