Working Families

Because of the increasing boredom caused by Coulter columns, I am providing a new service. For the busy corporate executive or the dad with 3 kids on his hands: Speed Coulter! Her entire column, but in far fewer words. Here goes...

Title: Working Families From Malibu To East Hampton
Rich people support Gore (gratuitous Hamptons reference).
Regular people support Bush.
Movie producer Stephen Bing supported Gore.
Stephen Bing is a bad person.
Liberals are therefore bad people.
Bad liberals, bad, bad (incorrect Russian history reference).

Now if you still feel the need to read more, here it is:

Working Families From Malibu To East Hampton
by Ann Coulter
July 31, 2002

HAVING DRAGGED A group of Manhattan elites back from the Hamptons last week to attend a fund-raiser at a tony Chelsea night club, Al Gore criticized the Bush administration for "working on behalf of the powerful, and letting the people of this country get the short end of the stick."

This is slightly amusing. Yes, there is some ironic humor in speaking of "the people" while at a chichi club. Of course, both parties pull this kind of nonsense so it's not that funny. And the Hamptons reference is gratuitous (Coulter has no evidence that anyone actually came from the Hamptons, she just likes mentioning it as evidence of elitism. I wonder if she got turned down for a summer share?)

Back when he was exhibiting the Democrats' renowned good sportsmanship after he lost the presidential election, Gore managed to fund his tantrum with donations sent in from such ordinary Americans as dot-com multimillionaire Steven Kirsch ($500,000), former Slim-Fast Foods chief S. Daniel Abraham ($100,000) and Minneapolis multimillionaire Vance Opperman ($100,000).

Gore also got some help from the Manhattan "working poor" such as Loews Hotels scion and tobacco company beneficiary Jon Tisch ($50,000)--who must have been on a break from demanding that West African peddlers be thrown off the streets of Manhattan; songwriter and ex-wife of pardoned financier Marc Rich, Denise Rich ($25,000); and investment banker Jon Corzine ($25,000), now representing working families against "the powerful" in the U.S. Senate.

Also warming to Gore's pledge to fight for "working families" were many Hollywood billionaires. Notorious inseminator and Hollywood "producer" Stephen Bing ponied up $200,000. (In Democratic Party parlance, "producer" evidently means "a do-nothing who inherited a lot of money.") Actress and traitor Jane Fonda gave the Gore-Lieberman fund $100,000.

Yes, a lot of rich people gave Gore money. I never liked the man anyway. But a lot of rich people gave Bush money, too. Which Coulter knows.

George W. Bush limited donations to his Election Recount Fund to $5,000 or less and still raised $13.8 million--four times more than the $3.2 million collected by Gore. Americans saw what the Democrats were up to, and thousands upon thousands of small contributions poured in to Bush from across the country.

Gore's Tantrum Fund took in $2.1 million from just 38 individuals--or, "working families." He had 84 donations above Bush's $5,000 maximum--totaling about $2.8 million. Of those, 30 were from California and 23 from New York. (Jane Fonda lists her address as Georgia.) Only $56,216 of the Gore-Lieberman fund came from donations of $200 or less. Bush raised more than $3 million in individual donations of $200 or less--more than the entire amount raised by Gore's Tantrum Fund.

This could be true, I have no way of checking

The genuine and spontaneous outrage of ordinary Americans against a small band of Democratic royalists was pointedly ignored in news accounts about the recount funds. The Washington Post's headline was: "Bush Far Outspent Gore on Recount." The Chicago Tribune's was: "Bush spent 4 times as much as Gore in Florida recount." The AP headline was: "IRS: Bush spent four times as much as Gore on Florida recount."

The thousands of small donations sent to Bush from average Americans all across the country was said to demonstrate "the powerful fund-raising abilities of the Republican Party"--as The Washington Post obtusely put it.

Three points:

First, of those ordinary Americans who voted, more of them voted for Gore than Bush. Fact. Pure and simple. A fact usually ignored by Coulter. Perhaps she doesn't like those other ordinary Americans much.

Second, that Gore, IN THIS ONE SITUATION, raised money from rich Hollywood types and Bush got his from broader donations might have something to do with the fact that Bush's party was 100% behind him while the Democratic machine was definitely waffling in Gore's defense. Gore probably put the touch to rich individuals because his party didn't give him the tools to raise it any other way. (And this is just recount fund-raising. During the general campaign both candidates received buckets of money from rich elitists.)

Third, despite Coulter's bizarre attempts to prove otherwise, the average Republican voter is richer than the average Democratic voter. Fact. This doesn't mean they are bad, this doesn't mean that all rich people vote Republican, it just means that when Coulter claims the Democrats are the party of the rich elitists, she is blowing mostly smoke.

(Of course, the reality is that both parties are deeply beholden to rich elitists, but that's another essay, one Coulter chose not to write.)

Meanwhile, back at the Party of the People headquarters, the Democratic National Committee recently took in its largest single donation ever: $5 million from "producer" Stephen Bing--our featured Democrat this week.

What follows is Coulter's indictment of one Hollywood rich schmuck. How showing that this guy is a bad apple proves anything about Democrats or liberals I do not know. "That white kid kicked a puppy! All white kids are evil!" Logic, it is so wonderful when mangled.

Yes, Bing sounds like a jerk. And attacking him is very convenient, deadline-wise: Coulter can just peruse the August 2002 issue of Vanity Fair to get all the dirt she needs for this column. No muss, no fuss, no boring research. But proving that Bing is a jerk (which Vanity Fair already did) doesn't have much to do with politics in America. Are there no Republican jerks? And Bing has money. So do many Republicans. Does it make me a better person than Coulter because she makes far, far more money than I do? Why is she wasting our time?

In the current Vanity Fair, Bing is described by other Hollywood billionaires as a self-effacing, modest man. As evidence, they note that he has only one maid. "Name anyone else with his wealth who has only one maid," Man of the People Rob Reiner says. "You'd be hard-pressed."

I'd be hard-pressed to think of one of my friends who has a maid. Marie Antoinette did not flaunt her wealth in such a way as "progressive" liberals in America do.

Rich Hollywood progressives raved about how Bing helps out strippers when they're down on their luck. (And, one may surmise, also down on their knees.) "I've helped so many," Bing says, "you'd have to get me the names." That's "self-effacing" for a liberal.

Bing's admiration for the underclass is mainly shown by his predilection for siring children out of wedlock. This seems to be the new status symbol among liberals, with Bing currently leading Jesse Jackson 2-to-1 in disclosed illegitimate children. (Q: How do you empty a room full of rich liberals? A: Ask for a paternity test.)

I am a liberal. I have one kid. I have one wife. We had the one kid in wedlock. All the liberals I know with kids did it the same way. Sheesh.

In a romance borne of progressivism, the mother of one of his illegitimate children, Elizabeth Hurley, crossed a Screen Actors Guild picket line. Bing gallantly paid her fine to the union. So much for the little people.

Also, he plays the blues on the piano. I take it back: He is a man of the people.

Interestingly, Bing doesn't make a fuss about the estate tax. His professional accomplishments amount to having dropped out of Stanford--which we can assume he did not enter on the basis of his SAT scores--and then spending a decade writing a single episode of "Married With Children." Bing's credentials as a producer are as credible as his belief that women are attracted to him for himself.

The current Democratic Party is a crowd of idle, rich degenerates, the likes of which hasn't been seen since the czar's court. When not occupied with abortions or strippers, they busy themselves denouncing the Cossacks as "the powerful."

Comparing the Democratic Party to the Czar's court is particularly goofy. The Czar and his family were conservatives. They hated liberals. And they never would have denounced the Cossacks: the Cossacks WORKED for the Czar. Finally, in defense of the Czar, his court wasn't really degenerate. They were really rather boring and middle class in their morality. (Rasputin, who hung around them, was another matter.) Coulter must have been asleep during History 101.

As for trying to prove that one idle, rich degenerate is proof of a idle, rich, degenerate party: piffle! I am a Democrat and I am neither idle, nor rich, nor degenerate. This kind of ad hominem attack is pointless. Yes, some Democrats do bad things. So do some Republicans. This does not mean that their parties are bad. Enough for now. I need to go off and help my stripper girlfriend get an abortion while we both denounce the Cossacks in unison.

©2002 Carl Skutsch. All rights reserved.
All opinions expressed herein are those of the author unless otherwise noted
(and it goes without saying that they make more sense than Coulter's opinions.)

graphics & design by pixelforge