Pound the brown hall

Today in the dingbat factory: Brent "Walter Peck" Bozell foams at the mouth over Hollywood's insufficiently grovelling treatment of Christians; David "I Wish My Brother Rush Was Here" Limbaugh pens the world's dumbest column on Iraq and Iran; and Rich "Smirkalot" Lowry pens a 'shut up bitch' column about diversity at the Washington Post. (In fairness, professional crazy old coot Burt Prelusky provides a rare dissenting voice, trashing The Pursuit of Happyness for being sappy and predictable and for glossing over the ugly aspects of investment brokerage. Go figure.)

My favorite bit, though, is from Mary Katherine Ham's squealy celebration of the vindication of the Duke LaCrosse players, who it turns out are guilty not of rape, but merely of being drunken whoremongers. In attacking the "media image" of these fine white athletes, she attempts to claim that, far from privileged toffs, the boys are in fact the product of working-class north Jersey and other humble settings:

Many of the players are indeed well-off and attended prep schools, but they’re not, for the most part, the Martha’s Vineyard-dwelling elitists the media makes them out to be. Here’s how the AP describes their homes:

"Finnerty hails from Garden City, N.Y., and lived in a Dutch colonial house on a cul-de-sac. A lacrosse net and equipment were visible in the yard,which abuts a golf course. The Seligmanns’ home — a two-story red-brick house with twin white columns — sits about 17 miles west of Manhattan and within 1½ miles of three golf courses.

A Dutch colonial and a two-story brick home on cul-de-sacs, near golf courses? They’re not destitute, but I know plenty of folks whose homes would fit those descriptions, who aren’t the country’s elite by any stretch of the imagination.

Delightful! In an attempt to prove that these are just regular ol' ordinary boys whose parents are, I guess, garbage collectors and court clerks, Mary Kate uses an AP report that they live in stylish suburban homes bordered by golf courses, but THAT doesn't mean they're rich, because she knows lots of people like that and they're totally not rich! And, of course, if she was really part of the nation's elite, her ear for her own tone would be diamond-crusted platinum instead of tin.