Unlike most conservatives I did not fawn over Ann Coulter. There are a number of reasons*, but I just never adored her the way many do, nor nursed some unrequited love the way some do. In fact, I even wrote recently saying it was a good thing she went to law school as she can't do basic math. But she has finally won me over.

How?

Well, it was by doing something more provocative than even saying we should go and convert the Moslems. More likely to work up people than defending Joe McCarthy. Even more like to raise hackles than Michelle Malkin's defense of internment camps.

She defended smokers.

Worse yet, she confessed to belonging to our shrinking group. Despite opening herself up to the horrible persecution we suffer, the scorn, the opprobrium society heaps upon us, she bravely confessed to indulging in the demon weed. People think it is brave when Hollywood celebrities or politicians "come out" and admit they are gay? In today's society, it is like to increase ticket sales and votes. However, when Obama admitted to smoking (and shamefully immediately promised to stop, playing into society's prejudices), he was criticized for the first and last time by the media.

So bravo Ms. Coulter. You have finally won my adoration.

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* One reason is a theory I developed in my twenties that blondes are inherently evil. My idea was that we dark haired people have all the blackness in us grow out through our follicles, while blondes, having light hair, leave all that darkness bottled up in their black little hearts. Then again, I think I see some roots in Ms. Coulter's photo, so she may only be masquerading as evil. (Calm down blonde readers, it is not a serious belief. It was simply a good line to pick up brunettes, which I found amusing enough that it survived any need to pick up anyone. Though should Rev. Wright, or someone like him, get wind of it, he may draw even more conclusions from it, so I better watch who I tell. Then again, I think I actually heard someone propose the Caucasian "melanin deficit" was responsible for our immorality, so I think someone has seriously proposed what I created as a joke.)

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POSTSCRIPT

By the way, my tale of persecution is not as frivolous as it seems. Smokers (if we ignore the persecution of the devoutly religious) are the only group it is safe to discriminate against. As I have said before, it is probably less offensive to smoke crack than a cigarette along a public street. Or that child molesters are viewed with less scorn. Not only are we not allowed to smoke anywhere indoors in many states (including private clubs and even TOBACCO SHOPS), but we have been chased to a point thirty feet or more from doorways in many locales. A few have even tried to prevent us from smoking outdoors at all, and some have tried to ban smoking in our own homes if they adjoin other houses.

As I have said many times, smoking causes lung damage, but it is not the cigarettes, it is the pneumonia form being chased outside in the winter.

The height of silliness has to be the twin stadia in Baltimore, which ban smoking anywhere in their open air areas, despite the fact that a major elevated highway runs along two sides of the stadia, and a garbage incinerator sits less than a mile upwind, much less than a mile. The idea that inhaling garbage fumes is safe but tobacco is not shows just how far smoking hysteria has moved from a real public health belief and turned into a moral crusade. Which is why I say it is persecution and not any sort of "public health" issue. (The banning of smoking in "cigar bars" and tobacco stores proves it as well. If people go somewhere known for cigar smoking, they are accepting "second hand smoke", why should the state prevent them from doing so? And it isn't as if employees are unaware of the likely presence fo smoke when they take the job.)

Spell Check Complaint: I haven't complained about my spell checker in a while, but once again, the staff at Firefox are showing their ignorance. Most know, I think, that "blonde" is an individual with "blond" hair. The hair is without an e, the person has an e. Except that Firefox seems unaware the word "blonde" exists. Silly programmers. (And I won't even bother to mention the obvious, that the word "stadia" also elicits endless complaints, despite being both the proper plural of "stadium" used as a sporting arena, and the plural of "stadium" used as an ancient unit of measurement. But what do I expect from a spell checker that denies "indices" and "Moslem" are real words?)