Ron from UWO, take it away!

Yesterday's e-mailer "Ron" from UWO gives us the dirty low-down:

Hi CC,

This is a reply I tried to post in the thread on the post you made, but could not due to length limits.

This is Ron from UWO. I assure you that it was real. And there were many people at the event that were of comparably limited civility. They endorsed this event as an opportunity for civil discourse, but the only person who showed any respect for civility was Ezra Levant.

During set up, one of the hosts - his name was Andrew Loewen (I've probably spelled that wrong) - made the following quips:

* "Testing. Testing. Obama is a socialist. Testing." (lots of crowd approval)

* After apologizing for a few set-backs in them getting things underway, he said that they must have a liberal on their staff... Big pop from the audience.

* In reminding people that no laptops were allowed, he said that if a security guard catches you with your fingers in your laptop, you may lose your fingers when he slams it shut on them. And of course many in the crowd laughed approvingly. Good old conservative authoritarianism.

Other statements, mostly from Coulter:

* Throughout the event, the speakers kept giving the impression that conservatives are the original and most loyal defenders of free speech, while liberals continue to trample it. There was a recurring theme of liberals being stupid, incompetent, hypocritical, and uninterested in protecting free speech. Coulter also dropped a few fairly mild insults to gays.

* During the Q & A a 17 year old female Muslim student quoted Ann Coulter's statement encouraging 1) the US to invade the Islamic nations, kill their leaders and convert their citizens to Christianity; and 2) for Muslims to be banned from airplanes, and that if they need to fly they should take their magic carpets. The girl asked if 1) she should be forced to convert, and 2) given that she doesn't have a magic carpet, what should she do if she needs to fly somewhere. Coulter didn't much address the first question, but addressed the second one by telling her to take a camel! (not that camels fly but, you get the drift).

There were some inappropriate behaviours done against the event. One person sent out a fraudulent email telling everyone that the event had been moved to a different far-away facility. Inappropriate, uncalled for and immature. Also, apparently a politician in Ottawa - don't know who or what rank - tried to put limits on what Coulter would say. I'm not sure how he went about this. However, I think she should be able to say what she wishes.

General event information:

Every seat in the auditorium was filled. A friend told me that there were 700 seats, but I think that might have been an over-estimate.

My estimate is that something like 60-65% of the crowd were Coulter-supporters.

Ezra Levant introduced Coulter. Y'know, the only thing that made me question him was that he spoke well of Ann Coulter. I tended to either agree or to disagree but not be outraged by most of the rest of what he said.

Coulter got multiple highly enthused standing ovations, and very energetic and approving responses to comments that progressives in the audience found ridiculous. I'm new to London. I had no idea how many far right conservative Christians there were around here. I saw a number of people holding Coulter books to be signed. One person wore an NRA hat. A number asked questions in which they described the pathetic watered down healthcare bill as a socialist takeover.

What did Coulter talk about? She spoke of double standards in holding liberals versus conservatives up to scrutiny for encroaching upon political correctness boundaries (e.g., how Harry Reid was easily forgiven for his comments that Obama has a good chance of being elected because of his light skin complexion and his ability to turn off his black accent; a few other comments by other liberals such as Bill Clinton were given, and she compared the media response to the big Barrack the Magic Negro Rush Limbaugh thing). That was a big theme. And then there was just lots of liberals are stupid, incompetent, naive, and not strong at protecting freedoms. Oh, another big thing was that she accused the US news media of not subjecting Obama to much scrutiny, but just cheering him on and telling him "good job" for everything he does. She also said that he did not bring executive experience to the Presidency, and she spoke of the way the media spoke of the milestones of this first black president as if they were speaking of the milestones of an infant ("look! he's taking his first steps!").

Coulter said a number of things that I chuckled at. The funniest thing she said, in my opinion, was "Whenever a Democrat gets elected, my taxes go up and my World Trade Center goes down!" That's funny stuff.

Kathy Shaidle didn't do anything attention-grabbing, nor was she involved in the presentation.

There's a brief admittedly poorly organized summary of the event.

-Ron

Oh, wait ... additional hilarity at no extra charge:

Hi CC,

One thing that I forgot to mention. I don't know how this went by me, but that line that she made that I thought was funny - the "when liberals are in power my taxes go up and my world trade center goes down" - uhhh, Bush was in office at 9-11, and had been for 8 months... This leads me to wonder if perhaps I misheard her, but I don't know what else she might have said. Whom else is she going to attribute raised taxes to? The fact that no one seemed to call her out on that one makes me wonder if I might have misheard something, but I don't know what else she could have said...

-Ron

Dear UWO:

Please identify any UWO students who were there and applauding Ann Coulter ... and expel them. Those are not teachable people.

AFTERSNARK: I'm still waiting for Ezra Levant to hurry up, take Coulter's advice and get "perfected." God knows, he's inferior enough as it is.

BONUS TRACK: Really, you can never get enough of this: