California Conservative

It’s First Amendment Week at Loyola Marymount University (LMU), the perfect venue for James Carville and Ann Coulter to square off on a college campus. After the University of Connecticut’s anti-speech tantrum last month, Media Drool, Free Republic and I were invited to see how left-coast students behaved south of Berkeley.

Although a few socialists suffered from intellectual seizures, the hundreds of other students who packed the Burns Back Court quickly revived them in ways that almost seemed, well, Republican. Having my own college-aged kids, I was relieved that some students haven’t yet been body-snatched by America’s hoards of moonbats.

Because this was a new event for LMU, organizers had their guests speak separately, followed by questions from the audience.

After the audience watched a short video of the importance of free speech and civility, Carville warmed up the crowd with self-depreciating jokes about his academic record, attributing his 4.0 average on his blood-alcohol content, followed up by his disappointment that Surgeon General Joycelyn Elders’ masturbation classes might have motivated the homework and extra credit that would guarantee his only high marks.

Carville’s a funny guy, but once he finished his opening remarks, his speech degraded into the predicable bumper-sticker blather that generated some tepid-to-raucous applause and cheers:

Bush Lied! (applause) Bush is incompetent! (applause) Bush is dangerous! (applause) Republicans are corrupt! (applause) – the same nonsense that the Times (pick one) hopes to revive their crippled newspapers with.

At one point, a grown-up (who identified himself as Carville’s personal friend) cheered when Carville said Bill Clinton didn’t kill anyone when he lied about sex. Although people like Carville still frame Clinton’s admitted felony perjury in terms of sexual indiscretion instead of an Equal Protection issue, when Coulter later discussed the 14th Amendment the friend leaned to his wife and whispered, “What’s the 14th Amendment?” Southern Democrats are very funny when they aren’t wearing hoods and robes.

To his credit, Carville performed like someone whose wife had kicked him out and found an old script under the sticky cushions of Michael Moore’s couch. He was engaging and fun to listen to – a good representation of the political party that should have imploded when the Civil War snuffed their final defense of slavery.

One of the funnier comments (to me) wasn’t made by Carville or Coulter, but from a student who sat amid large group of youthful male admirers and screamed, “I love you Ann Coulter – I want to have your baby if you promise not to eat it!”

Unlike Carville, whose anti-Bush haiku was more suited for applause, Ann’s relentless delivery of facts and content made applause all but impossible. Her fact-riddled lecture required the attention of scholars, while those who struggle with concepts like the Constitution, due process, freedom, and civil rights were often left pages behind.

This was apparent throughout her speech. At one point when she criticized Democrats who doubted that brown-skinned (Iraqis) were suitable candidates for Democracy, someone behind me gasped, “What did she say about brown-skinned brothers?”

To her fans, Coulter’s charm comes not only from being smart AND attractive, but from the apoplexy she provokes in Democrats who can no longer rely on rape, torture, and lynching to silence uppity and educated Republicans who are no longer intimidated by the niceties enforced by the Jim Crow laws of political correctness.

To their credit, The Loyolan Managing Director Natalie Nordseth and Advisor Tom Nelson put on a great show for LMU’s deserving audience, and I look forward to future presentations.

See Free Republic for more - photos at Media Drool

Cross-post at ex-Liberal in Hollywood

This entry was posted on Saturday, January 21st, 2006 at 12:59 pm and is filed under Academia, Author: Clark Baker, Liberals, Youth. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.