Republican Sex Kitten

            Last weekend, I was fortunate enough to attend Austin City Limits (ACL).  A three day long music festival with dozens of bands spread out over 8 stages.  Bands such as the Red Hot Chili Peppers, the Black Keys, Iggy Pop & the Stooges (yeah I didn’t know Iggy was still around either), the Civil Wars, and Weezer were just a fraction of the lineup.  Listening to old, new, and obscure music groups is only part of the fun.  ACL offers other amenities such as walking around in an unforgiving sun all day, torrential down pour of rain which turned Zilker Park into a muddy cow pen, smelly hippies, a constant cloud of smoke which reminded me of my art teachers office, consuming massive amounts of alcohol, and eating food that a county fair in Missouri wouldn’t sell to the public.  In short, best weekend ever.  The capstone to this forty-eight hour odyssey of boozing and no sleep was the mad dash back to Dallas which started at 4:30 a.m. Monday morning.  My friend's lame excuse for this twilight drive was that he had to be at work by nine o’clock.  I made the drive from Austin to Dallas in 2 ½ hours probably because all Texas Highway Patrol officers were still in bed.  To say I was a wreck by the time I made it home is an understatement, however, I decided to act like a champ and save going to bed until that night.  After washing the smell of THC out of my hair, I decided to browse through my DVR list.  What I ended up watching was last Friday’s episode of Real Time with Bill Maher.  I admit to being a habitual watcher of that show.  The panel looked like an interesting group but it was his interview before the panel that caught my attention and the ire of this writing.  Bill’s guest interview that week was none other than Republican Sex Kitten, Ann Coulter. 

            Ann was there to spew out more of her unintelligent drivel and by that I mean she was promoting her new book.  The central theme of her book is that racism died after the 1970’s and only exists as a made-up attack plan when the liberals on MSNBC can’t find anything else to lob at Republicans.  Trust me, you can find everything you need to slander Republicans from the real things they say and do every day.  That’s not what raised my blood pressure.  What set me off was when Ann delivered the standard attack quote that Republicans have been throwing at President Obama for the last two years.  Obama is the most divisive and liberal president in our nation’s history.  With no sleep and on the edge of sanity, I snapped.  I’m not trying to give the impression that I was Bruce Willis upon realization that my father’s watch was not in my suitcase.  I snapped in the nerdist way, I started collecting facts and gathering my thoughts so I could write out my frustration.  This may seem like nothing to get excited over but then again, you probably don’t know me very well.  Our most divisive president?  Holy hyperbole Batman!  Let’s take a look at some real divisive Presidents.

            James Buchanan, President from 1856-1860.  Historians label him as the one person who not only hastened but guaranteed the coming of the U.S. Civil War or as Conservatives like to call it, the war for states to exercise the right to buy human furniture.  Warren Harding, President from 1920-1923.  His administration was so corrupt that his entire cabinet at one point was under indictment.  His own Attorney General and his allies in Congress were caught stealing money from the Veteran’s Bureau after the end of World War One.  Harding survived impeachment proceedings because he died in 1923 at Christmas time.  Funny story, he was in a posh hotel in San Francisco with one of his mistresses and suffered a massive stroke after having sex.  He’s the only President with the distinction of coming and going at the same time.  No discussion of divisive Presidents would be complete without mentioning Richard Milhouse Nixon.  The only Republican president with fewer invitations to political events than George W. Bush.  Nixon ran on a platform for the immediate end of American involvement in Vietnam and he had a secret plan, that he could not share with anyone until he was in office.  Why does that sound so familiar?  I’m sure it will come to me later.  And boy did he keep his promise! By way of increasing the war in Vietnam, bombing Cambodia, and invading Laos.  Forty percent of all U.S. casualty rates happened during Nixon’s first term.  On top of all that, you had the Watergate Scandal and other little hijinx such as conspiracy to murder journalists.  Obama wishes he had the nuts to act like these wacky presidents. 

            Now, what about that dirty little word that Obama keeps getting labeled with?  No, not that one you racist! I mean liberal!  Obama has two liberal acts.  One is Obamacare, which won’t be enacted until 2014 but according to Conservatives we should all be speaking Chinese right now.  The second one is when he and Joe Biden came out in support of gay marriage.  Notice, all they did was come out in support.  I doubt they will do anything to make it reality.  The President, who can be labeled the most liberal ever, surprisingly, is Lyndon Johnson.  Just look at his legislative accomplishments: The Voting Rights act, the Civil Rights act, the Higher Education Act, Medicare, Medicaid, and the Housing Reform Act.  The Voting Rights and Civil Rights acts were so divisive that it changed the political landscape of the country.  Johnson remarked to an aide, “You know what we have done? We just handed the south to the Republican Party for the rest of our lives”.  From reconstruction to the 1960’s, the south was Democratic Party all the way and now it has become a safe haven that is staunchly Republican. 

            Ann Coulter's writings have something in common with the political speeches of Rick Santorum.  You don't need facts if you believe in your heart that what you are saying is right.  Keep things in perspective and would it kill you to read a book every now and then?