Over at Rightwing Nuthouse, Rick Moran has some nice things to say about me and my quest to get David Letterman fired in his post, “It’s Important to Have the Right Attitude.”
Update: This is post of the day at Legal Insurrection — thank you, Prof. Jacobson! The dear professor asks, “Never? Ever?” Yes, professor. Never. Ever. And I will remind you that my beloved life partner was too disabled to work due to her multiple sclerosis when I told her she was the love of my life and we would spend the rest of our lives together, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health, until death parted us. I know all about taking on a challenge that looks impossible and bringing it to a successful conclusion. (New readers: see my post, “Gay Marriage.”) So it looks like I have something positive to contribute to the party, after all.
The extremely youthful would-be comedian and unfunny hack, Steven Crowder, who has no discernible sense of humor and ethics that primarily are directed at the behavior of people other than himself, is on his high horse at Big Hollywood about freedom of speech — oh, and calling for Republicans to “grow a sense of humor” about entertainers who fantasize on TV about the daughters of people they hate being raped.
OK, Steven, if you are so brave, and humor and freedom of speech mean so much to you, then do a video of yourself performing Letterman’s EXACT SAME JOKES about Gov. Sarah Palin and her daughters from June 8, 9 and 10, including the entire flight attendant rant quoted here by Michelle Malkin, only substitute the names of Michelle Obama and Malia and Sasha. Then post your video on YouTube, see if PJTV will carry it, and announce it to the world via Big Hollywood and Twitter.
But, I have some advice for you before you do: (1) make your will; (2) pre-arrange your funeral and pay for it; (3) give someone durable general power-of-attorney over your affairs and tell them where all your financial records and important papers are; and (4), give someone durable medical power-of-attorney and tell them your wishes about feeding tubes and being kept alive if you are in a persistent vegetative state due to, say, a brain injury — just in case, oh, I don’t know, your routine pisses off people who decide to “stone you old-school.”
I’m waiting, funny boy.
Update: Little Miss Attila: “One, and It’s Not Funny!,” also about Crowder’s piece telling Republicans to “grow a sense of humor,” and “Pride and Truth,” her comment on her struggle with her memories of being raped at age 14 — the same age as Willow Palin, who was targeted in Letterman’s joke about attending a Yankees game with her mother, Gov. Sarah Palin.
I wrote in my “About me” page that my transformation from liberal to fiscal conservative during the fall of the 2008 presidential campaign made me wonder if that was what turning into a werewolf felt like. (Roger Simon, founder of Pajamas Media, wrote in his book, Blacklisting Myself, that he had similar emotions during his transition from Left to Right, but he compared it to getting a sex change.)
These feelings came up first, and were the most intense and bewildering, when I began to read Ann Coulter’s columns and laugh until tears ran down my face. I was enjoying AND agreeing with the work of the conservative anti-Christ! What was happening to me? I could tell I really had the fiscal conservative monkey on my back when I began to go through her column archive at her Web site, www.AnnCoulter.com, laughing and laughing, saying “Tell it, sister!” and then calling Cuban Diva BFF to read Coulter’s columns aloud to her so we could laugh and say “Amen!” together.
Then I went to CPAC and caught a glimpse of Ms. Coulter in person while she was being interviewed on Radio Row. Just seeing how petite she is touched my heart, especially in comparison to how large she looms as a devil in Left-wing minds, and I was inspired to write my first humor post, “Scent of a Woman.” I hope if she ever reads it, it makes her smile and she can feel that there is real love, respect and gratitude in my heart for her and her body of work.
Imagine my surprise this morning when I checked my sitemeter to see how my campaign to GET DAVID LETTERMAN FIRED is coming along and I spied several links of visitors coming from Ann Coulter’s site. Holy cow!
Ann Coulter — ANN COULTER!!! — linked me, she really linked me!:
Ann Coulter linked my fight to GET DAVID LETTERMAN FIRED!!!
I have to admit, I called Cuban Diva BFF as soon as I saw the links from Ms. Coulter in my sitemeter and didn’t click to see Ms. Coulter’s site until I could share my wonder and joy with her. (Cuban Diva BFF has a generosity of soul that multiplies the joy of anyone who shares their good news with her.)
Cuban Diva BFF lives in Manhattan and is friends with one of Ann Coulter’s body guards. Think about that. Ann Coulter needs body guards because of things she says.
Another conservative columnist whom I love and respect, Michelle Malkin, also needs body guards because she is such an effective and sharp-witted journalist with a conservative point of view.
Like Michelle Malkin, I know what is it like to get beaten up and run out of town by totalitarian feminists because that’s what happened when my late life partner and I conducted a six-year campaign in the 1990’s to get a group LED BY THE TOP LESBIANS IN THE DISABILITY RIGHTS MOVEMENT in Washington, D.C., to make good on their pledges to choose wheelchair-accessible meeting venues. I fell in love with Michelle Malkin for her column on the “Sisterhood of the Protected Female Liberal Journalists” because she made sense of what had happened to me on a much smaller scale so that for the first time I could understand why I had been shellacked, abandoned by almost everyone I thought would have my back and driven out of the lesbian community. Well, actually, I realized I could no longer go into it because I would be with a vulnerable person, my quadriplegic life partner, whom I could not be sufficiently sure of being able to protect every minute.
Which reminds me, have you people forgotten that Gov. Palin was invited by Comcast in October 2008 to go to Philadelphia to do the ceremony of dropping the puck to start a hockey game with the Philadelphia Eagles and how viciously she was booed AND ACCUSED OF BRINGING HER SEVEN-YEAR-OLD DAUGHTER, PIPER, ALONG WITH HER A HUMAN SHIELD! Gov. Palin loves hockey! Her daughter loves hockey! She brought her daughter to a hockey game! Not only did the crowd feel free to boo Gov. Palin and felt no shame about including her daughter, afterwards a man was inciting the crowd to attack Gov. Palin with cries of, “Let’s stone her old-school!” (See here and here.)
These are some of the reasons why I am determined to GET DAVID LETTERMAN FIRED!!!
David Letterman deliberately and viciously and with malice-of-forethought made vile, sexist attacks repeatedly on both Gov. Palin and her innocent teen-age daughters in order to destroy her career and force her out of politics in order to protect her children. We cannot stand idly by and tolerate the sexism and vicious attacks on our conservative politicians, journalists and columnists AND THEIR FAMILIES. If we do not show our loyalty and guard their backs and take out their enemies persistently and consistently, we really must consider that they could be murdered, especially in light of the recent spate of killings by fanatics.
We also must consider that if conservatives do not show their loyalty and fight for our conservative politicians, journalists and columnists, we really will have fewer talented women — and men — willing to fight for us.
My heartfelt thanks not only go out to Ms. Coulter, but also to HillBuzz — which made me realize I had to get busy on this fight — and Instapundit, The Other McCain, Little Miss Attila and more blogs than I can keep track of right now for linking and supporting the battle to GET DAVID LETTERMAN FIRED NOW!!!
Yes, I know David Letterman apologized a second time on Monday, June 15. But just for the raping-the-fourteen-year-old-no-wait-the-eighteen-year-old-new-mother-right-in-front-of-her-own-mother joke. Just for that one joke. Not for calling 14-year-old Willow a prostitute (“keep her away from Elliot Spitzer”) on Tuesday, June 9. Not for calling characterizing Gov. Palin’s great beauty as a “slutty flight attendant” look, nor his insane rant about the evil type of flight attendant Gov. Palin would be.
Yes, I know Gov. Palin graciously accepted Letterman’s apology on Tuesday, June 16.
Yes, I know that Al Sharpton is trying to frame his successful campaign to get Don Imus fired as right and just because he, Sharpton, was protecting an entire race, while the campaign to get Letterman fired is invalid because Letterman’s remarks were only directed at three individuals and therefore not offensive. Sharpton is wrong. Letterman was sexist. His malicious remarks and sham apologies were an attack on all women. And he was particularly sexist and degrading toward a woman he hated, a woman he wanted to goad and bait by publicly humiliating and attacking her teen-age daughters in order to damage her politically.
I also know Jim Treacher is callingfor everyone just to get along now. No, Jim, wrong call. Even Michelle Malkin, who is one of the most courageous persons on the planet and who ought to know better because this kind of all-out assault is so frequently used against her by both men and women on the Left, is only calling for viewers to change the channel. Big Hollywood, which linked my post calling for Letterman to be fired early yesterday, went all squishy by the evening and was more concerned with REAL problems, like someone getting on Letterman to spout global warming dogma.
No, no, no, no, no, NO!
Letterman is a shameless, relentless, sexist bully. His insults did not just attack Gov. Palin and her daughters. They were a warning to uppity women everywhere that scorched-earth destruction would be their fate WHILE ONLOOKERS LAUGHED if they EVER disagree with David Letterman and his pals on the Left. Uppity women not only can count on being attacked personally, but just in case they are brave enough to face attacks on themselves, they have been served notice that their innocent children now are hostages and will be harmed for their mothers’ political beliefs. THAT IS HOW CRIME FAMILIES OPERATE!!!
This is American Sharia, assholes. The practitioners of Sharia in Muslim countries are at least consistent in their contempt for women and in their practice of gender apartheid: you, on the other hand, want sexual slavery for some women in this country; others, whose opinions you prefer, can live in relative peace and freedom. You will allow it.
If you are giving women and girls the “gift” of not being badgered for being female, and threatened with misogyny and sexual assault, they are not truly free-only living in a state of grace, contingent upon performing the right tricks, spouting leftist verbiage like seals at Sea World, balancing balls on their noses in the hopes of getting fish thrown into their mouths.
And any woman who doesn’t understand this fundamental truth about the misogynists living among them could be in for a rude awakening at any point, because that attitude will infect those who harbor it.
I also predicted this week that if we are too lazy and foggy about our priorities to do the consistent, persistent work to get Letterman fired, that there will be millions more emboldened to imitate him and make our lives a hell. Bill Maher’s nasty remarks about Sarah Palin on his HBO show on Friday night prove that point.
Stop the abuse! Stop the intimidation of women! Don’t let bullies get away with attacking the innocent children of the people they hate to cow them into toeing their ideological line.
Nip it! Nip it in the bud! FIRE DAVID LETTERMAN NOW!!!
P.S.
I put most of my time today into answering comments and did not finish researching my post gathering all the Letterman sponsor contact data and putting it into tables so it can be mailmerged. To get started anyway, go to HillBuzz here and FireDavidLetterman.com here.
P.P.S.
Yes, as a matter of fact, I AM relentless in my pursuit of a goal. But I only want Letterman fired. Over at The Other McCain they are made of sterner stuff and are posing the question, “Who will rid me of this gap-toothed comedian?” And while I was there I saw Smitty had some excellent advice for young Steven Crowder, a callous and unfunny hack who lectured his betters yesterday at Big Hollywood because he is OK with humor that intimidates and bullies women. Word, Steven: (1) to expound on humor convincingly, you must HAVE a sense of humor — a snotty sense of superiority is not a substitute; and (2), if you do not know why Letterman should be fired for his malicious and unfunny attacks, you do not understand the problem and should step aside and get out of the way of people who do.
I predicted that if we — a coalition of conservatives and liberals who oppose sexism — do not do the work necessary to get David Letterman fired, that this would embolden the small fry bullies by the millions.
Well, I hear tell the first one has hatched and on Friday night was already speaking in complete sentences.
I just checked my inbox and found the e-mail below from a representative of eBay. I have put all my work so far into stirring up the resistance and writing my “Fire David Letterman” Kit. I never e-mailed eBay. I plan to work on the same sponsors targeted by HillBuzz because coordinating our efforts will have more impact. However, since eBay’s representative made the effort to contact me, I feel encouraged that our pressure on sponsors is being felt and that we can, indeed, get David Letterman fired. Here is the e-mail from eBay:
Dear Ms. Yockey,
I am sending the following letter on behalf of eBay Inc. Please feel free to contact me with any questions.
Dear Ms. Yockey,
I would like to inform you that eBay has no current advertising affiliation with the CBS Late Show with David Letterman. As part of eBay’s regular online advertising, some eBay ads may have appeared on cbs.com.
These ads do not indicate eBay’s support for particular shows, nor do they suggest support for the views expressed by Mr. Letterman.
We appreciate your initiative on these issues, but I assure you that eBay has no affiliation with Mr. Letterman’s show.
Sincerely,
eBay Corporate Communications
###
– – –
Taj S. Meadows
APCO Worldwide
700 12th Street, NW
Suite 800
Washington, DC 20005
d. 202.478.3697 | m. 805.453.1141 | f. 202.446.1325 overseas mobile. 202.375.3010 e. tmeadows@apcoworldwide.com<mailto:tmeadows@apcoworldwide.com> | w. www.apcoworldwide.com<http://www.apcoworldwide.com/>
This is Part Two of your handy “Fire David Letterman Kit,” complete with sample letters, mailmerge instructions and contact info. Here are the topics I plan to cover in the complete kit:
Part One — Why we are angry and our cause is just: videos and timeline of David Letterman’s offenses.
Part Two (this post): Overview of the tools to use to get David Letterman fired.
Part Two (this post): How to do a mailmerge
Part Three (next post): Table of contacts you can copy and paste into Word for your mailmerge data
Part Four: Sample letters
Part Five: Sample e-mails
Both Sebastian Gray* and I have a lot of experience in activism. Mine was for my late life partner, Margaret Ardussi, and ranged from learning how to work government and legal systems and letter-writing, to getting lawyers, elected officials and the media involved. [Maryland state senator Ida Ruben (D, Montgomery County) saved our lives, literally, several times.] Some of the organizations I won battles with include our condo association, a hospital, the Kennedy Center and the state of Maryland. My specialties were disability rights and Fair Housing laws. I also wrote the first edition of the most authoritative guide on the rights of people with disabilities to keep animals in all forms of “no pets” housing — you can find the current edition here. The happiest day of my life was when I won my battle with a bureaucrat and got Margaret restored to home hospice care. That’s why I keep telling everyone that mastering these skills will empower them for the rest of their lives.
However, Sebastian has more experience in gaining victories with letter-writing campaigns, so I will be linking his posts at HillBuzz where necessary. Here is an e-mail he sent me providing an overview of the hierarchy of what to do to get the most impact from your efforts:
Here is the most effective way to reach corporate America:
(1) Well-written letters FedExed directly to C-suite** and board members
(2) Well-written letters mailed by USPS to C-suite and board members
(3) Well-written letters faxed to C-suite and board members
(4) Phone calls to C-suite and board members
(5) Well-written letters emailed to C-Suite and board members
(6) Phone calls to customer complaint lines (which are seldom listened to)
The trouble with efforts like this is that most people in today’s world go straight to 5 and 6, and are thus ineffective.
FedEx is most effective because it costs money to send FedEx, so people listen as it’s rare to get massive complaints by FedEx. The US mail also costs money, so it’s listened to. Phone calls and emails are easiest for people to send, but they carry less weight.
Posting sample letters is smart. [I told Sebastian I will be posting sample letters. They will be in Parts Four and Five.]
The best thing to do is to focus on three advertisers and direct everyone’s attention to breaking them: we chose Olive Garden, Mars candy, and Kelloggs.
Once we knock one of those sponsors off, we’ll replace that sponsor with Burger King, and then when another goes, we’ll put in some other product. But all firepower needs to be directed at three targets instead of 100, and the effort is maintained by not stopping when we “win” against one, but instead setup a new target and keep going.
It’s the Al Sharpton Way.
And it works.
Here is an excellent post from Sebastian TODAY on the difference between Democrats and Republicans in persisting until they achieve their goal — which, in this case, is to take down a prominent sexist bully before we are swarmed with them BY GETTING LETTERMAN FIRED! It is NO FREAKING ACCIDENT that this campaign is being pressed by a Democratic gay man (Sebastian) and an ex-Democrat newly conservative Republican lesbian (me) because we both have Democrat activist TENACITY OF PURPOSE!!! WE. MUST. WIN. THIS. FIGHT.
*Sebastian is a centrist Democrat in Chicago and part of HillBuzz, the gay male collective of Hillary PUMAs who volunteered, donated, traveled and campaigned their hearts out for McCain/Palin as soon as the Democratic National Committee ratifed Obama’s theft of the nomination from Hillary Clinton. Sebastian and his HillBuzz friends are staunch supporters of both Hillary Clinton and Sarah Palin. I don’t know anyone else who has been doing a better job of calling out sexism and working to defeat it than HillBuzz.
**The “C-suite” is comprised of all the top executives whose titles start with “C,” for “chief,” for example, chief executive officer, chief financial officer — see Wikipedia here for a list of possible C-suite titles.
The EASY way to send as many personalized letters as you like — how to do a mailmerge
You may feel daunted about the prospect of individually addressing and personalizing each letter you write, even if you use “Save As” to create a new copy of your letter with the intention of deleting the previous addressee and putting in a new one. Not to worry. Using mailmerge will automate the process.
“Mailmerge” is when your word processing software can take data from a table you create and enter it at the right place in letters you set up so the program knows where to put the data that make the letter look unique and personalized. For this campaign, I will find the contact data, put it into the data tables and write the sample letters set up correctly. This info will be in Parts Four, Five and Six of my “Fire David Letterman” Kit.
Microsoft’s tutorial on how to do a mailmerge is here. Both the PC and Mac versions of Microsoft Word have the mailmerge feature. However, Pages, the word processing program in Apple’s iWork suite, does not have mailmerge capability.
You can use mailmerge not only to create personalized letters, but also to address envelopes, mailing labels, even make name badges. Knowing how to create a mailmerge letter will empower you as an activist for the rest of your life. Plus, it is very handy for sending out personalized Christmas letters.
Sebastian Gray, at HillBuzz, wrote about the difference between Democrats and Republicans regarding putting in the effort required to get what you want from government and corporations on June 12 when he predicted it would require 30 days of persistent, consistent effort to get David Letterman fired. He also wrote:
As a lifelong Democrat, I’m frequently perplexed by some of the behavior of all the Republican friends I made during the McCain/Palin campaign when those of us here at HillBuzz led Democrats for McCain efforts with our whole heart and soul.
Republicans give up so damn easy at just about everything.
OMG, he was right!
I just spied posts by my beloved Little Miss Attila and online friend Dan Collins at Protein Wisdom that they are inclined to accept David Letterman’s apology to Gov. Sarah Palin and her daughters, Bristol and Willow, set to air tonight. Both announced they will drop their campaigns to have Letterman fired now that it has dragged on for an exhausting three out of the 30 days that Sebastian predicted would be required to get Letterman fired.
Attila! Dan! Conservatives HAVE to finish this battle! If we don’t press it until Letterman is fired, as we said we would, we will be SWARMED with bullies who have been emboldened by our timidity and laziness. If you think committing to spending 15 minutes a day writing letters is a pain, I guarantee you that when you have multiplied your enemies with your weakness YOUR LIVES WILL SUCK ON A SCALE YOU CANNOT IMAGINE!!!
A newly conservative and newly Republican lesbian — me — and a centrist Democrat gay man — Sebastian Gray at HillBuzz — are telling conservatives how and why to do this, and leading the charge, BECAUSE, BEING GAY OR LESBIAN MAKES YOU A BULLY MAGNET, AND TO SURVIVE, WE DEVELOPED OUR LIBERAL ACTIVIST SKILLS, SO WE KNOW HOW TO DEAL WITH BULLIES!
I just heard Wolf Blitzer on CNN read the apology David Letterman reportedly will make on his show to be aired tonight, Monday, June 15, to Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin and her teen-age daughters Bristol and Willow. Letterman’s show is taped on weekday afternoons between 4:30 and 6:30 pm at The Ed Sullivan Theatre in New York City, so his apology was recorded this afternoon. Letterman repeatedly insulted and degraded Gov. Palin and her daughters on his CBS show, “Late Night with David Letterman,” last week on his shows that aired on June 8, 9 and 10, including snide and insincere remarks he called an apology in his show on Wednesday, June 10.
The New York Times story on the apology today notes that Letterman said in his latest apology he was told Gov. Palin attended the Yankees game he mentioned in his insults with former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani and said, “I should have made the joke about Rudy.” What? Instead of Alex Rodriguez?
The New York Times story also claims that protests aimed at pressuring CBS to fire Letterman have not yet had any effect:
CBS executives said Monday that they had exercised no pressure on the late-night star to offer any apology and that they had seen no real impact on advertisers from the protests.
This is why the campaign to get CBS to fire David Letterman must continue and expand with more and more people sending letters and e-mails of protest to CBS, Letterman’s sponsors and the sponsors of Letterman’s racing team to notify them that their products will be boycotted until Letterman is fired. It also will be important to send letters and e-mails of protest to anyone who appears on Letterman’s show to impress them that doing so will put a long-term stink on their careers.
CBS is still playing the “This will all blow over” card. No. It. Won’t.
Persistent, consistent effort on our part will persuade sponsors to drop Letterman’s show and CBS to fire David Letterman.
If we don’t take out this bully, we’ll be swarmed by the millions who will follow his example.
Update:Thank you, Prof. Reynolds, and welcome, Instapundit readers! Please join this campaign to get David Letterman fired. I will have my posts with the complete “Fire David Letterman Kit” finished either late tonight or mid-day tomorrow. Just 15 minutes a day of consistent and persistent work will get this done. Plus, you will learn skills that will empower you for the rest of your life! See this through!
Note to commenters: If you write a comment and have a blog and enter its URL, my blog will automatically link your blog’s most recent post at the end of your comment. You’re welcome!
Prof. Reynolds links a blog with the full apology from the CBS transcript. IT. WILL. NOT. DO. Letterman is apologizing like there was only one vile joke he made — the one about Willow or Bristol Palin getting raped while their mother was watching a baseball game. No, no, NO! Scroll down for my post on how Letterman piled on his degrading insults, day after day, and ONLY stopped when it began to look like he was in real trouble. He is NOT sorry for what he did. He is sorry he’s going to lose his career over it. Boo hoo, Dave! Boo hoo hoo!
Update: A commenter here pointed out that there are lots of other problems in the world that ought to have priority, so we should let go of getting Letterman fired. No, no, no — and Eric Hoffer, author of The True Believer, explains why: because “fault-finding men of words” like Letterman are what bring down capitalistic and democratic societies where individuals are free and clear the way for totalitariam mass movements (for more, see my post, “Why ridicule is Obama’s Kryptonite“):
Hoffer explains on p. 138 how the media are able to create the grounds for a fanatical mass movement like Obama’s:
It is easy to see how the faultfinding man of words, by persistent ridicule and denunciation, shakes prevailing beliefs and loyalties, and familiarizes the masses with the idea of change. What is not so obvious is the process by which the discrediting of existing beliefs and institutions makes possible the rise of a new fanatical faith. For it is a remarkable fact that the militant man of words who “sounds the established order to its source to mark its want of authority and justice” often prepares the ground not for a society of freethinking individuals but for a corporate society that cherishes utmost unity and blind faith.
However, while ridicule is Obama’s Kryponite, since he is now the prevailing order, Hoffer explains why it does not affect the masses he has inflamed with “hope” for “change” (pp. 138-140):
When we debunk a fanatical faith or prejudice, we do not strike at the root of fanaticism. … The freedom the masses crave is not freedom of self-expression and self-realization, but freedom from the intolerable burden of an autonomous existence. They want freedom from “the fearful burden of free choice,” freedom from the arduous responsibility of realizing their ineffectual selves and shouldering the blame for the blemished product. They do not want freedom of conscience, but faith – blind, authoritarian faith. They sweep away the old order not to create a society of free and independent men, but to establish uniformity, individual anonymity and a new structure of perfect unity. It is not the wickedness of the the old regime they rise against but its weakness; not its oppression, but its failure to hammer them together into one solid, mighty whole.
That is why we must work to get David Letterman fired like the fate of our nation depends on the success of our efforts — because it does.
Update, 6/15: Stacy, of The Other McCain, thank you for your blog post, “On Relentlessness,” link and support.
