Controversial conservative author, icon and columnist Ann Coulter is in hot water again — and this time she’s accused of being anti-Semitic.

Coulter has been denounced before. In fact, most Americans are already free members of the Ann Coulter Outrage Of The Month Club, with a new edition of outrage usually shipped right around the time she has a new book coming out.

But this time you wonder if she’s going to recover as quickly because at issue is less bomb throwing — if you watch the video (below) it doesn’t seem like she’s trying to create controversy and even tries to clarify her comments after the commercial — than showing a fundamental attitude that many people who are Jewish (and who aren’t) will interpret as antisemitism.

Not all Jews will feel that way, of course. Her Jewish allies on the right will say they know she isn’t anti-Semitic, defend her, spin the words on the video (and the utter, visible consternation of the Jewish host that heard her say them). Why? Because she blasts liberals (whom they hate) and Democrats (whom they hate). So she needs to be defended and her comments need to be explained away (or, better yet, attack those who are criticizing her ).

The irony remains: this time Coulter truly did NOT seem to be trying to throw a bomb to sell books. She was just explaining what she felt — that Jews were not “perfect” and suggested that if they were they’d be Christians (like her).

What is likely to be Coulter’s authentic case of foot-in-mouth rather than her standard foot-shoved-up-someone’s-you-know-what came on CNBC

Appearing on Donny Deutsch’s CNBC show, “The Big Idea,” on Monday night, columnist/author Ann Coulter suggested that the U.S. would be a better place if there weren’t any Jewish people and that they needed to “perfect” themselves into — Christians.

It led Deutsch to suggest that surely she couldn’t mean that, and when she insisted she did, he said this sounded “anti-Semitic.”

Asked by Deutsch whether she wanted to be like “the head of Iran” and “wipe Israel off the Earth,” Coulter stated: “No, we just want Jews to be perfected, as they say. … That’s what Christianity is. We believe the Old Testament.”

Deutsch told E&P’s sibling magazine, Adweek, today, “I was offended. And then, and this was interesting, she started to back off and seemed a little upset.”

Asked to gauge her reaction, Deutsch said, “I think she got frightened that maybe she had crossed a line, that this was maybe a faux pas of great proportions. I mean, did it show ignorance? Anti-Semitism? It wasn’t just one of those silly things.”

Readers are urged to watch the segment on the You Tube below and judge for themselves. Make sure you sit through the commercials and watch it through to the end.

Our view? She was not trying to whip up sales for a book but showed disdain for Jews — even though she insisted it wasn’t — that could further limit her audience and could impact her speaking appearances.

How bad is it? This bad:

The National Jewish Democratic Council launched on an online petition to CNN, Fox News, NBC, CBS and ABC urging them to no longer use her as a commentator. “While Ms. Coulter has her freedom of speech, you have the freedom to exercise better judgment,” the petition says. “You wouldn’t put people who claim Martians roam the earth to frequently comment on science. It is time to stop putting Ms. Coulter on the air to comment on politics, thus giving her free publicity and attention.”

Shmuel Rosner, U.S. correspondent for the Israeli newspaper Ha’aretz, kills Coulter with snark in a post titled: ‘Is it okay for Ann Coulter to want all Jews to become Christian?”

Blogging can sometimes be a silly business. For example, when one has to deal with controversies over things that were said by commentator Ann Coulter. Nevertheless, people say she’s an influential celebrity, so we have to take her words seriously. I’ll try, but I have to warn you that it won’t be easy.

He then lists the various ways people react to Coulter.

How REALLY REALLY bad is it for Ann Coulter?

Bad enough that the lively Republican mega-blog Red State contains a post that says this:

With all the phony kerfuffle over the phony Limbaugh comments last week, here comes Ann Coulter with guns-a-blazing — basically sounding the al-Qaida line against infidels…only this time about Jews and Christianity.

I’m sure a lot of you are fans of her. But she basically needs to shut up and go away forever.

There’s more so here’s a big chunk:

She’s said that we should ponder murdering Supreme Court justices…wished that the 9/11 attackers had targeted the New York Times building rather than the WTC…and various other just dazzlingly odious things. Yes, I realize that usually she’s just trying to be irreverent and perversely humorous.

But there’s just nothing funny about these things. There’s nothing funny about a “we must convert you” mentality about religion in an age where we’re fighting people to the death who take that very outlook extremely seriously. There’s nothing funny about poisoning high officials’ desserts for political gain.

Every Republican candidate for office needs to denounce her, and right quick, and never have the slightest bit to do with her again. She’s gone too far — and it’s not the first time.

The problem:

It will never happen.

Already there are rumblings among some on the right from people who are trying to a) defend her, b) rationalize her comments, c) say she didn’t really mean what she said and point to her comments right after the commercial (which many Jews and her interviewer feel confirm her attitude).

If you think about it, this has been a catastrophic week for people on the far-right in America in terms of winning over people to their side.

First, there is a major political attack on a 12-year-old kid and his family because the boy dared to counter President George Bush’s speech on Bush’s children’s health care veto. The spectacle was denounced by Democrats, many independents and turned the stomachs of some non-lockstep Republicans.

Now you have Coulter saying that Jews — who do vote — need to be perfected and suggesting that the United States would be more Utopian if only Judaism didn’t exist.

The problem for the Republican Party: it is chasing away voters and, by 2008, could find that it has lost soccer moms (they have kids and are struggling with health care), chasing away Jews (will Coulter’s comments be condemned by GOPers and, if not, will the Democrats use a clip of her comments with her appearing before adoring Republican audiences or with GOP candidates or use them in fund-raising letters to Jewish voters?).

What will likely happen?

–Outrage will continue.

–She’ll still be on Fox News and pack conservative crowds in when she speaks.

–She’ll further explain it and Rush, Sean, Hannity, Mark and others will blast the “liberals” supposedly upset about this only because she is a conservative.

–Some conservative Jewish talk show hosts will defend her and this will be pointed to by her supporters and sympathetic weblogs. You might call this the Some Of My Best Friends Are Perceived As Bigots defense.

But if Maureen Dowd had said that about Jews? Or if Barbra Streisand had said that about Christians? Those who are defending and will defend Coulter would be screaming for their scalps on a plate. But they won’t when it comes to Coulter because she’s on their “team.”

Still, the bottom line is that this time Coulter did NOT throw a bomb.

She just spoke her mind (which showed what was inside of her).

Which was worse.

WATCH THE VIDEO AND MAKE UP YOUR OWN MIND:

BUT THAT’S JUST OUR VIEW. HERE’S A CROSS-SECTION OF SOME OTHER VIEWPOINTS:

–Mac’s Mind says Coulter is right:
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If being “perfect” means being like you, I’ll pass on it, thank you…

Oh, we’re up to it again!

And here I thought I was so busy writing about issues, reading, working on some long-range writing projects and driving hundreds of miles doing special programs in elementary and high schools. I KNEW I was forgetting to do something. And TimesOnline’s Daniel Finkelstein has reminded me.

Finkelstein (uh, oh..that name) has a post noting an interesting comment by Professor Richard Dawkins suggesting that a) Jews monopolize American foreign policy and b) if only atheists would have that kind of influence, then the world would be a much better place.

Read Finkelstein’s short but potent post HERE. (Finkelstein always writes some of the most provocative and entertaining posts on the Internet).

I have to get going now. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice left me a message and wants me to fax over my agenda, so she can set American foreign policy. But it’s so hard to do that right now. First I have to issue orders to America’s banks, since I control them, too.

Actually, it isn’t that “the Jews” influence foreign policy (although Condi can’t issue an order without the check list from ME). There are some people in the United States who may be Jewish who work in that area who may be Conservative or Orthodox or Reform and probably don’t agree with each other on religious practices, let alone foreign policy.

And the biggest influence of “the Jews” in America isn’t on foreign policy.

It’s on the profit margins of Chinese restaurants.

P.S. America did actually have a Jewish President: Abraham Lincoln. He must have been Jewish. He was shot in the temple.

BBC: French mime artist Marceau dies

The French mime artist Marcel Marceau has died at the age of 84, his family has announced.

The performer was known around the world for his portrayal of a white-faced clown with battered hat.

Born in Strasbourg in 1923, Marceau studied under mime master Etienne Decroux in Paris.

His daughter Camille said he died on Saturday evening, adding that details of the burial at Paris’s Pere Lachaise cemetery would be given out later.

Silent films

Marceau, whose real name was Marcel Mangel, became world famous for his 1947 creation of Bip, the sad, white-faced clown in a striped jumper and a battered silk opera hat.

Mime artist Corinne Soum-Wasson, who was a friend of Marceau’s, told the BBC he was an “extraordinary person”.

From his BBC obituary:

Marceau was born Marcel Mangel in the Alsatian town of Strasbourg on 22 March 1923.

He was brought up in Lille, where his Jewish father was a butcher.

When World War II came to France, his father was captured and sent by the invading Nazis to Auschwitz, where he died. In 1944 Marceau joined his elder brother in the Resistance, later joining the French Army.

They often tell you that the best advice in real estate is “location, location, location.”

Someone should have also given that advice to some neo-Nazis who chose to operate….in Israel:

In a case that would seem unthinkable in the Jewish state, police said Sunday they have cracked a cell of young Israeli neo-Nazis accused in a string of attacks on foreign workers, religious Jews, drug addicts and gays.

Eight immigrants from the former Soviet Union have been arrested in recent days in connection with at least 15 attacks, and a ninth fled the country, police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld said, in the first such known cell to be discovered in Israel.

The suspects are all in their early 20s or late teens. A court ordered them kept in custody, and the news photo shows them covering their faces with their clothing which merely helped showcase their myriad tattoos.

News of the arrests came as a shock in Israel, which was founded nearly 60 years ago as a refuge for Jews in the wake of the Nazi Holocaust and remains a most sensitive subject. Any forms of anti-Semitism around the world outrage Israelis, and the discovery of such violence in the country’s midst made the front pages of newspapers and dominated talk on morning radio shows.

The gang documented its activities on film and in photographs. Israeli TV stations showed grainy footage of people lying helpless on floors while several people kicked them, and of a man getting hit from behind on the head with an empty bottle.

And there is apparently evidence galore: weapons, explosives, a photo of one of the neo Nazis who chose to operate in a Jewish state holding a gun and a sign that says “Heil Hitler.” (See our post below on the funniest song in films).

Basically, it’s a skinhead group — although it looks like more of a bone-head group, given where they chose to conduct their operations.

Meanwhile, Israeli officials say the group’s existence shows societal failures — and are trying to ensure that Israelis do not start accusing Russian immigrants of being anti-Semitic (NOTE: This writer had a cousin from Russia who settled in Israel, although he later permanently relocated to Canada):

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The concept of the coincidence — like bumping into a long-lost friend on the street whom you had dreamt about the night before — has undergone a metamorphosis of a sort as my dotage approaches. I have come to see these “events” as being more predestinated than merely coincidental. And usually for a reason.

So it was when I brought home two movie DVDs the other day that I pretty much had chosen at random from a selection of nearly 4,000 titles.

One movie, Everything is Illuminated, had caught my attention because it stars Elijah Wood, he of Lord of the Rings fame, and I was curious to see if he had the chops to act outside of his rather limited role as Frodo Baggins. (He can.) The other movie was Wondrous Oblivion, which I picked up because I liked what little I knew of its story line: Gawky English schoolboy is tutored in the finer points of cricket by a Jamaican neighbor in 1960s London. I also had heard that the soundtrack was really good. (It is.)

Not to give away the plots, let alone the endings, but the “coincidences” between these two coming-of-age movies are fairly amazing.

Everything is Illuminated is a 2005 release based on Jonathan Safran Foer’s autobiographical novel and was directed by Liv Schreiber. The story: A young and neurotic American Jew (Wood) travels to the Ukraine to try to find the woman who saved his grandfather from a Nazi massacre during World War II. With the help of two locals – a gruff old man who is seemingly anti-Semitic and his disco-dancing grandson, as well as the old man’s show-stealing dog – they locate the woman living in a cottage in a sunflower field after myriad adventures accented in hilariously fractured English. The old man turns out to be a Jew who survived the massacre and the ending is, to say the least, bittersweet.

Wondrous Oblivion is a 2003 release written and directed by Paul Morrison. The story: Eleven-year-old David Wiseman (Sam Smith) is the son of German Jewish émigrés and had a grandparent who died in a Nazi death camp. He is crazy about cricket but no good at it. When a cricket-loving Jamaican family moves in next door in their poor and prejudiced London neighborhood , David is drawn to father Dennis (Delroy Lindo) and daughter Lilian (Yasmin Paige). He ends up being caught in the middle and has to choose between fitting in with his bigoted white neighbors and class-conscious school chums or standing up for his new friends. David, as well as his parents, do the right thing and the ending is, to say the least, quite sweet.

Well, you coulda knocked me over with a feather.

This is because the coincidences between these two very good (if not brilliant) movies are deep and both offer the same rather profound lesson: From the clash of cultures and prejudice can come understanding and comity, virtues that are in notably short supply in today’s screwed up world.

The citizens of Iran had better depose Ahmadinejad before he causes more trouble for the world:

Iran: Israel the standard bearer of Satan

President Ahmadinejad again predicts Jewish state’s demise; Meanwhile, Revolutionary Guards threaten to ‘punch’ United States

Talk about Chutzpah!

Sudan: Jews behind Darfur conflict

Sudan’s defense minister, Abdel Rahim Mohamed Hussein, has accused “24 Jewish organizations” of “fueling the conflict in Darfur” last week in an interview with a Saudi newspaper.

Hussein was interviewed during an official state-visit to the Saudi kingdom last week.

A journalist from Saudi Arabia’s Okaz newspaper asked Hussein: “Some people are talking about the penetration of Jewish organizations in Darfur and that there is no conflict there?”

“The Darfur issue is being fuelled by 24 Jewish organizations, who are making the largest amount of noise over the issue, and using the Holocaust in their campaigning,” the Sudanese defense minister replied.

Hussein added that the Darfur conflict was driven by “friction between farmers and herders and shepherds. Among the biggest problems is that of water, which is used to exploit the differences and fuel the conflict.”

“Are these Jewish groups supporting (the rebels) financially?,” the interviewer from Okaz asked Hussein.

“Yes, they provide political and material support through their control over the media and across American and British circles,” Hussein said, adding that Jewish groups were using “all means to fuel these conflicts.”

He added that Western reports of 200,000 people dying in Sudan were false, and said: “We talk about 9,000 dead as a result of either government or rebel actions.”

Also

Several days ago, Sudan’s Interior Minister, Zubair Bashir Taha, lashed out at Sudanese refuees who had sought asylum in Israel, and accused “Israeli authorities of encouraging the Sudanese refugees to come to their country.”

He added that his ministry was “very confused” by Sudanese citizens who came to Israel.”

The Sudan Tribune quoted a Sudanese refugee as telling al-Jazeera television: “We were surprised when we came here. We met good people, who welcomed us and gave us food. We feel that we are extremely happy. We hope that the Israeli government would find a solution for us and our children. We came here to look for a better place.”

I have scant seen more blatant religious bigotry than the reaction of the Family Research Council, a Christian Right stalwart, to the historic prayer of Hindu Chaplain Rajan Zed before the US Congress.

It’s disgusting, and despite (and because of!) its attempt to include Jews under its hateful ideology, it is one of the key reasons I will always see them as a threat to my religious liberty and equal standing in American society. These are the words of an enemy, not a friend.

Jackson Diehl’s Washington Post op-ed (”A Shadow on the Human Rights Movement“) deserves to be posted in full:

Where does the global human rights movement stand in the seventh year of the 21st century? If the first year of the United Nations Human Rights Council is any indication, it’s grown sick and cynical — partly because of the fecklessness and flexible morality of some of the very governments and groups that claim to be most committed to democratic values.

At a session in Geneva last week, the council — established a year ago in an attempt to reform the U.N. Human Rights Commission — listened to reports by special envoys appointed by its predecessor condemning the governments of Cuba and Belarus. It then abolished the jobs of both “rapporteurs” in a post-midnight maneuver orchestrated by its chairman, who announced a “consensus” in spite of loud objections by the ambassador from Canada that there was no such accord.

While ending the scrutiny of those dictatorships, the council chose to establish one permanent and special agenda item: the “human rights situation in Palestine and other occupied Arab territories.” In other words, Israel (or “Palestine,” in the council’s terminology), alone among the nations of the world, will be subjected to continual and open-ended examination. That’s in keeping with the record of the council’s first year: Eleven resolutions were directed at the Jewish state. None criticized any other government [My emphasis].

Genocide in Sudan, child slavery and religious persecution in China, mass repression in Zimbabwe and Burma, state-sponsored murder in Syria and Russia — and, for that matter, suicide bombings by Arab terrorist movements — will not receive systematic attention from the world body charged with monitoring human rights. That is reserved only for Israel, a democratic country that has been guilty of human rights violations but also has been under sustained assault from terrorists and governments openly committed to its extinction.

The old human rights commission, which was disparaged by former U.N. secretary general Kofi Annan for casting “a shadow on the United Nations system as a whole,” frequently issued unbalanced condemnations of Israel but also typically adopted half a dozen resolutions a year aimed at the worst human rights abusers. For the new council, Israel is the only target. Eighteen of the 19 states dubbed “the worst of the worst” by the monitoring group Freedom House (Israel is not on the list) were ignored by the council in its first year. One mission was dispatched to examine the situation in Darfur. When it returned with a report criticizing the Sudanese government, the council refused to endorse it or accept its recommendations.

The regime of Gen. Omar al-Bashir, which is responsible for at least 200,000 deaths in Darfur, didn’t just escape any censure. Sudan was a co-sponsor on behalf of the Arab League of the latest condemnations of Israel, adopted last week.

This record is far darker than Kofi Annan’s “shadow.” You’d think it would be intolerable to the democratic states that sit on the council. Sadly, it’s not. Several of them — India, South Africa, Indonesia — have regularly supported the Organization of the Islamic Conference and the Non-Aligned Movement in their assaults on Israel and defense of Cuba, Belarus and Sudan. The council’s chairman, who rammed through last week’s decisions without a vote, is a diplomat from Mexico.

The European Union includes countries holding eight of the council’s 47 seats. It has made no serious effort to focus the council’s attention on the world’s worst human rights violators. According to a report by the independent group UN Watch, the European Union “has for the most part abandoned initiating any country-specific resolutions.” At one point before last week’s meeting, the European Union threatened to quit the council, effectively killing it. Yet when the meeting ended, Europe’s representative, Ambassador Michael Steiner of Germany, said that while the package of procedural decisions singling out Israel “is certainly not ideal . . . we have a basis we can work with.”

What about Western human rights groups — surely they cannot accept such a travesty of human rights advocacy? In fact, they can. While critical of the council, New York-based Human Rights Watch said its procedural decisions “lay a foundation for its future work.” Global advocacy director Peggy Hicks told me that the council’s focus on Israel was in part appropriate, because of last year’s war in Lebanon, and was in part caused by Israel itself, because of its refusal to cooperate with missions the council dispatched. (Sudan also refused to cooperate but was not rebuked.) Hicks said she counted only nine condemnations, not 11.

Never mind how you count them: Is there a point at which a vicious and unfounded campaign to delegitimize one country — which happens to be populated mostly by Jews — makes it unconscionable to collaborate with the body that conducts it? “That could happen, but I don’t think we’re anywhere near there,” Hicks said.

That’s the human rights movement, seven years into a century that’s off to a bad start.

I disagree with Diehl on only one point. He says the target of the delegitimization effort is a country that “happens” to be populated mostly by Jews. I would use the word “because” instead. Perhaps that’s what he really means; if so, why not come out and say it?

The evidence that they are a farce and a sham continues to grow unabated.

Today in news about Israel: The UNHRC decides Israel needs constant monitoring, but Cuba and Belarus can go free….Hamas thinks all of Israel is “occupied” and thus all of its strikes (including, presumably those on civilians) are against “forces” within the theater of occupation–this is supposed to persuade America to engage with it….BBC apologizes for accurately calling Jerusalem the capital of Israel, apparently agreeing with Hamas that Israel does not legitimately control even its pre-1967 territory.

I’m going to watch some West Wing episodes and pretend today didn’t happen.

Of the 2,700 or so posts that I have written since Kiko’s House came kicking and screaming into the blogosphere, I count fewer than 10 on Israel, several of them on the sad decline and death of Ariel Sharon, a man whom I once loathed but came to admire, and only a couple on Israel and its Palestinian neighbors.

The chief reason for this is the utter intractability and predictability of the relationship between the two peoples, which has to be the ultimate current events film loop of my lifetime – which coincides almost exactly with the lifetime of the state of Israel.

The ability of the Israelis to do things nearly as self destructive and ultimately futile as the Palestinians is a never ending source of amazement to me, but the whole mess also quite frankly boring and I’ve felt like I have little or nothing to add to the cacophony . . . er, debate.

If that seems a little harsh, then screw you. But before you go away in a huff, let me tell you a story.

We’ll call it The Story of Three Davids.

In many respects, Shaun David Mullen is a mirror image of David No. 1 — my grandfather, David Snellenberg.

Like me, he was as bald as a billiard ball, enjoyed an occasional cigar, questioned authority, enjoyed baseball, had a deep love of America and was a student of its history. He introduced David No. 2 as a young boy to journalism and as a result every one of the thousands of my bylines in newspapers from Philadelphia to San Francisco to Tokyo during a long career included my middle initial — “D” as in David — in his honor. (I’ve dropped that as a blogger because it seems, well, too officious for the medium.)

Granddaddy Snellenberg and I had something else in common: A deep ambivalence about David No. 3 — that would be the Star of David, or the nation of Israel.

Granddaddy came by this view honestly. You’ll have to judge for yourself whether I do.

Please click here to read more at Kiko’s House.

The controversial Norman Finkelstein has been denied tenure by DePaul University.

It’s a very strange thing, in a great many ways.

O no, Universities are definitely not “left”:

University lecturers threatened yesterday to provoke international condemnation by forcing their union into a year-long debate over boycotting work with Israeli universities.

Delegates at the first conference of the new University and College Union in Bournemouth voted by 158 to 99 for “a comprehensive and consistent boycott” of all Israeli academic institutions, as called for by Palestinian trade unions in response to Israel’s “40-year occupation” of Palestinian land.

The union’s leadership must now circulate calls from Palestinians for a boycott of Israeli universities to all branches throughout the country.

Disgusting, annoying, hypocritical little socialist anti-Semites.

More:

Tom Hickey, a Brighton University academic and union executive member, who led the move, said: “There will be adverse effects on individuals, but this is not targeting individuals or trying to break contacts with them.” The vote reflected “the deep concern people have”.

A boycott might involve refusing to work with journals published by Israeli companies or collaborate on research contracts with Israeli academics.

The deep concern people have? How about expressing concern over the fact that Palestinians voted for an organization, pardon me, party, whose charter says that Israel should be destroyed?

Continue reading this.

Alan Berg; (1934-1984) In the late 1970s and early 80’s this was the Denver radio talk show host who was THE model for imitators (Limbaugh, et al) yet to come. Alan was also acerbic, witty, odd and fat with opinion… which included hanging up on callers and calling out guests, the likes of which included well known ones. After several public fracases on air, his bosses gave him ’space’ and some talking to.

He came back, not chastened, but less intent on seemingly taking pride in stripping the bark off saplings on-air… he still discussed homophobia, rotten politicians, cowardly people who attacked the weak…. and there was one thing in particular that he wouldn’t back away from talking about, chastising, condemning and putting down. He didn’t pick on the poor, the frail, the undefended: He chose Roderick Elliot and Frank “Bud” Farell, who wrote “The Death of the White Race” and “Open Letter to the Gentiles,” and other people from the white supremacist groups… the groups who openly espoused hatred of blacks, Jews, leftists, homosexuals, Hispanics, other minorities and religious groups.

One such group known as “The Order” apparently felt threatened by his online scathings of their reasons for being. Some think it was when he took out after Colonel Jack Mohr, a member of the Christian Patriots Defense League, that Berg was targeted by The Order.

Berg, a tall (6′2″) Jewish man who made some folks hopping mad but whom others saw as a courageous hero… well, Alan loomed around Denver and was greeted by name on most any street he chose to walk down. Off-air he was kind to many; a man’s man, he mentored others in radio. Gave much. Those of us who knew him from his earlier days as a fine custom shirt merchant knew him as an honest, funny man who walked slumped over like Ichabod Crane and had a haircut more reminiscent of the long haystack worn by Herman and the Hermits.

Others knew him as the once-workaholic Chicago criminal trial lawyer who started having bad seizures and then developed severe alcoholism. His wife Judith brought him here to get help. Help he got. Never drank again. And when he finally had a seizure he couldn’t recover from, the docs discovered a brain tumor and removed it. He was finally at rest from the seizures that had assaulted him for years.

Eventually he worked his way up in talk radio, setting the airwaves to smoking… and so it went and so it went. He took all kinds of death threats and hate mail for his on-air comments about white supremacist groups.

Alan was an eccentric, so tall a man, yet he drove a classic VW Bug, one of his pride-and-joy-toys. So one June night in 1984, Berg, now age 50 years old, left the radio station, folded himself into his car, took himself and his now ex-wife, Judith, out to dinner, dropped her off and drove home. It was a sweet June night, the temperature is warm this time of year from winds that come down off the Rockies. In June, the sky literally is often turquoise blue with pink clouds at 9:30 PM, just after sundown…

No doubt just that weather alone made him feel great driving. He pulled into his own driveway. Got out of the car. The murderers leapt; Alan was massacred in the driveway, 13 bullets to body and face. Gone.

Members of the white supremacist group the Silent Brotherhood, affiliated with The Order, had waited in a car across the street, waiting for Berg to come home.

There was an oddity, an irony:

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I’ll bet you didn’t know that Ice Cream was dangerous!

FSU Monitor: FAR-RIGHT GROUP DISRUPTS KOSHER ICECREAM MARKETING EVENT.

Members of a far-right party disrupted a public event by a company marketing kosher ice cream in Lviv, Ukraine, according to a May 17 report by UCSJ’s Lviv monitor. The leader of the regional branch of the Freedom Party, a successor to the National Socialist Party of Ukraine, led a group of party youth activists in storming the building. Screaming “Ukraine won’t be sold to kikes!” and “Down with the kike-communist government of Yanukovych-Kuchma!” the youths smashed display stands and got into a brawl with security guards. Police arrived 5-10 minutes later and detained some of the attackers who were released three hours later after paying fines. No injuries were reported.

Where does the money come from to fund Pastor Fred Phelps’ church congregation air travel and hotel stays all over the country? The Phelps’ church is composed of about 35 family members whose sole activity besides maintaining a website www.godhatesfags.com appears to be protesting the funerals of gay people, military and most recently Jerry Falwell’s funeral as well. This, about Reverend Falwell from Phelps’ website:

“As a young man, Jerry Falwell was a Calvinistic Baptist preacher who told some truth. But he soon ran after gain, teaching what he ought not for filthy lucre’s sake. Lying about God’s Word to anyone who would listen to his satanic bilge, Fraudwell cozied up to Christ-rejecting Jews, Catholic boy-rapists and is second only to Graham in culpability for the lies spread in the name of God in doomed america. He recently boasted that he had 20 years left, but the Lord his God had a different, glorious, omnipotent perspective on the matter: Thou fool, this night thy soul shall be required of thee. Luke 12:20.”

On Phelps’ website there are the following postings letting others know where the Phelps’ clan will be standing next to ‘protest’ funerals along with their signs: God Hates Fags, It’s Too Late to Pray, and God Killed your Son Because You Love Homosexuals, and Fag Lover.

The following are listed under the title “LOVE CRUSADES.” WBC stands for Westboro Baptist Church which is Phelps’ home base. I place the list here in case you would like to write a note of condolence to the families of the warriors. I would recommend addressing your letter in care of the church or chapel address listed below.

WBC to picket funeral for Air Force Staff Sgt. John T. Self - at 12:15 p.m., Wed., May 23 - at West Heights Baptist, 328 W. Oxford St., Pontotoc, Mississippi.

WBC to picket funeral for Army Sgt. Allen J. Dunckley - at 9:45 a.m., Thur., May 24 - at Calvary Chapel of Philadelphia, 13500 Philmont Ave., Philadelphia, PA.

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Pam at Pam’s House Blend has found a press release from the Fred Phelps Westboro Baptist Church Clan.