Can You Out-Kersten Kersten? A Contest.
By Brian Lambert
The record will show that it was about 10:30 yesterday morning when I first heard the phrase, "The dark basement of the soul." It came in an e-mail, and I thought maybe the sender was high on absinthe and opium. Was she channeling Edgar Allan Poe by way of some sweaty evangelical preacher? "The dark what of the what?"
It turns out it was a line from yesterday's Katherine Kersten-o-gram in the Star Tribune. By noon, the entire column, titled "Violence, sex industries pry into our soul's dark basement", had achieved the status of a Kersten classic. Every pillar of her dogma was waxed and illuminated. Fear of gladiatorial combat. Fear of stripper poles. Fear of crotch shots. Fear of liquor shots. Fear of animal-like moans. Fear of . . . well, you get the idea. It was right up there with her forty-part series sowing fear about The Flying Imams, terrorist bicyclists, and, of course, the Inver Grove Heights bomb-making madrassa, otherwise known as the TIZA Academy. (Almost as significant: As of this morning, the Strib had not yet mysteriously lost all of the comments to her column. Apparently none of her readers complained about a major advertiser.)
As we know, Ms. Kersten writes . . . in public . . . because Star Tribune management felt it was overdue for someone to counterbalance the pro-gladiatorial, pro-crotch shot, and pro-animal-like moan worldview of brutish males such as Doug Grow and Nick Coleman. But countering those two violence-drenched pornographers is a big, tough job. Do you have any idea how many Minnesotans are obsessed with gladiatorial stripper-pole moaning? A lot.
So I got to thinking: The Strib needs help. This is too much for one person. Which is where you come in. With the assistance of MSP Publishing's marketing department—and this is real—we are offering a swank dinner for two—a $100 gift certificate to r. Norman's—to whoever out there produces the best 500-word column that "Out Kerstens Kersten". (E-mail your submission to blambert@mspmag.com).
Fans of The Dark One, as we know her, are familiar with the essential components of her jeremiads. In addition to what I just mentioned, it's probably best to read Powerline.com for a few days to anticipate what she'll fear next. Then mix in a line or two from some obscure Cato Institute or Heritage Foundation white paper (look for something on Muslims' genetic unwillingness to assimilate); insert a glowing reference to woefully under-equipped and mercifully departed U.S. Attorney Rachel Paulose; decry the shallow logic of the dim; silly people who think citizens must pay for safe bridges; and tie it all up, if you can, with a comment about the valor displayed by Dick Cheney and/or Halliburton in fighting the War on Terror.
But those are just suggestions. Do as you see fit. Consider next Monday, August 25 your deadline, and we will post the best and let you vote for the winner.
I don't claim to be good at this. But here's my shot . . .
The Udder Depravity of the Modern Dairy Barn
As a child, my father and I, followed closely behind by my mother, made annual visits to the Minnesota State Fair. Dressed in my shawl and dark, ankle-length dresses, these remain happy memories for me. Memories of a time when families visited the Fair without fear of pornographic assault. It was a warm, golden time when America was reassured by the moral strength projected by Richard Nixon's White House. A time when families were buttressed against cheap Hollywood vulgarity by spiritually anchored programming such as Hee Haw and the Rev. Jimmy Swaggart's Camp Meeting Hour, which my father ordered on LPs and played for us Sunday nights on the Victrola.
I wish I could say that that golden glow still permeated today's Great Minnesota Get-Together. But sadly, the golden light has turned a pale, sinister, sickly yellow. That was the light that sifted in, like Satan's fetid breath, through the windows of the Dairy Barn yesterday evening as I guided my young children, ages twenty-three and twenty-seven away from the bacchanalian excesses of the "Midway."
For those fortunate enough not to have faced this gauntlet of bodily defilement and lascivious intent, it is a place where young men, their bodies defiled by tatoos of twisted, demented Islamic-like design taunt and leer at young women, many of whom indulge in permissive displays of under garments and straps, the most intimate of attire best concealed until long after marriage.
And the "Midway," ("Midway" to what? I ask. Hugh Hefner's torture room?) is accessible only by running the length of the state-sanctioned debauchery of the so-called Beer "Garden." It was here where I saw one young couple, lacking any sign of parental supervision, entwined in the lewdest of carnal embraces. The young man, his face sotted with alcohol, flaunted his bestial grasp of the young woman's bare shoulder and waist. Had I ventured closer, I'm certain I would have heard their animal-like moaning and gladiatorial slurping. I doubt either had given a thought to the sanctity of the act they were performing much less family planning.
Seeing no reason why I as a parent should be forced to explain this repugnant scene to my children as a consequence of the all-condoning, all-accepting liberal culture, I turned my family away yesterday, skirting the Beer "Garden" by way of the Hippodrome. This path took us close to the booth of a Christian broadcaster, a solitary candle of hope amid a whorl of high-tech paganism.
As Sir Ducky Landsdowne IV recently wrote in his much-discussed paper for the Blackwater Institute's Middle Eastern Studies newsletter, "Western culture has not only abdicated moral rectitude to Muslim fanatics, it feeds their hostility with constant massive doses of its own self-degradation." (Sir Landsdowne will speak at the next gathering of The Center of the American Experiment on the topic of "Taxpayer Validated Muslim Extremism and the Myth of Global Warming." Tickets are still available.)
My hopes of reclaiming the innocence and cultural nurturing of my youth, by confining my family's visit to the animal exhibits, was dashed almost as soon as we entered the Dairy Barn. The fresh-faced agrarian children of my girlhood, their skin a gleaming, buttery white, their eyes a vivid blue, their 4-H stalls festooned with "Dump the Hump" stickers and "Wanted" posters of homegrown liberal terrorists like Abbie Hoffman and Tom Hayden, had been replaced by sad stew of sullen-eyed, self-involved brats. (I'm sorry. There are no kinder words. Sometimes one must be blunt.)
I had only finished recoiling from the shock of seeing two Madagascarian females (I think) moving unimpeded by security through the building even though they were cloaked head-to-toe in gauzy brown cloth (but not so tight as to reveal what might very well have been the explosive-laden belts of suicide bombers), when my children and I were confronted with a sight of nearly unspeakable, gut-churning depravity.
Before us, on a stool in a stall covered with fresh straw, a young man with long, stringy, greasy hair wearing a T-shirt that read, "A President's IQ Should Be Three Digits. Obama '08" was tugging, slathering and stroking the engorged long pink things under a cow. And this in full view of anyone who happened to pass. I may have emitted an animal-like sound of my own as I grabbed up a towel and thrust it over the eyes of my children.
Has the cesspool of anything goes, permissive liberal hate dogma dragged us so low we vilify the leaders who have kept us safe from homicidal Muslim fanatics on $10 T-shirts, and we allow unkempt children to masturbate farm animals in public? Apparently so.
I stand at the door to the dark basement of our collective soul and cry for lost virtue.
© 2008 MSP Communications, Inc. All rights reserved
I'm in - but I'm doing Nick.
LAMBERT: Knock yourself out. But the dinner goes to the Best Kersten.
Posted by: 108 on August 19, 2008 at 12:23 PM
I really need to thank Kersten for writing about Sneaky Pete's. I am so shocked that I think I need to do an in-person visit ASAP.
Seriously for a minute, this is the trouble with the Republican party and conservative movement. On one hand they slap the libs for smoking bans, fast food rules, and the such claiming the "nanny state". Then they turn around and complain about Ultimate Fighting and hormonal people. I'll send Kersten the full first season of Swingtown (CBS this summer), that should wake her up.
P.S. Brian, you had me concerned that sheep were going to end up in your Kersten's Kersten
LAMBERT: "Sheep"? Do I look like a Republican Senator?
Posted by: Dave on August 19, 2008 at 12:32 PM
You, sir, have reached a new low.
I will protest this so-called Kersten "competition" until such time as you deem to allow a concurrent "ClaudeNRick" (TM)contest.
Oh, please, please, please!
LAMBERT: No one could do Claude 'n Rick better than you.
Posted by: bertram jr on August 19, 2008 at 2:04 PM
How dare the Star Tribune offer an alternative to the weekly rendition of:
Twins Stadium
Tim Pawlenty
The Bridge Collapse
Indian Nicknames
The Gas tax is too low
Posted by: Michael Thomas on August 19, 2008 at 2:24 PM
On an installment basis, albeit unintentional, the dinner really should go to Bertram, Jr.
Posted by: jim Leinfelder on August 19, 2008 at 3:13 PM
I think Kersten needs a good [bleep]. On her desk. With her saddle shoes on.
LAMBERT: I'll bet you say that to all the girls.
Posted by: A Son of Mississippi on August 19, 2008 at 3:14 PM
“Withering Glance”
Transcript of column for September 7, 2008
___________________________________________________________________
CP: Ricky, you MUST see the new pastel cotton sweaters over at Macey’s – they’re brill!
RN: You know, my grandmother’s doilies were so delicate, almost as if YOU made them!
CP: Stop! Not on this scribe’s allowance!
RN: Say, been to the Eagle lately, I hear the twinks are storming the place – sigh!
CP: The brunch is to die for, but not so much that stench of sweaty man leather from
the night before!
RN: Hey, gross, but when I was prepping at Gloucester, we never missed an episode of Knott’s Landing. I was all, you know, popped collars and chinos!
CP: Ooh. Brill!
RN: Natch!
CP: Are we an “item”?
RN: OK!
LAMBERT: THAT might get you one soft shell taco ...
_______________________________________
Posted by: bertram jr on August 19, 2008 at 3:25 PM
da mihi castitatem et continentam, sed noli modo
Kersten needs, not a lock on the door to her dark basement of the soul, but a window, which might just save her from obsessing about these timeless distractions.
Me, I'm more grossed out by a president who in all grave and earnest seriousness tells us he's giving up golf for the troops, and then doesn't. bring it on, kitty!
Posted by: jim Leinfelder on August 19, 2008 at 4:00 PM
Kind of makes me wish I had (mis)spent the last few years reading her column!
Of course, with all due respect to your advertiser, it'll take more than $100 worth of steak and ambiance to make me goose her perceived "value" by clicking on a link.
I'm *certain* they've noticed!
LAMBERT: According to insider scuttlebutt the suits love her traffic.
Posted by: Pat B on August 19, 2008 at 4:17 PM
It's amusing how you let a writer with less than a hundredth of your panache and many fewer IQ points than you get under your skin. What does your psychiatrist have to say about it? Time to increase the Abilify?
LAMBERT: Oh, lighten up. Do I sound obsessed with Ms. K? The great irony, as I see it, is that the Strib -- Anders Gyllenhaal -- felt the need for not just a conservative, of which he would have had the pick of several, but a neo-con, someone fully in step with talk radio's core droolers. But instead of a Hannity-like carnival act, he picks a bona fide wonk, someone with less cultural affiliation with the exurban blue collar right wing than either Coleman or Grow. It would also help if she could tell a joke once in a while.
Putney Swope?
Posted by: Recovered liberal on August 19, 2008 at 4:47 PM
"Midway" to what? I ask. Hugh Hefner's torture room?
** Brilliant!
Posted by: chuck on August 20, 2008 at 8:44 AM
Obama frolics in Hawaii while Russia advances on Georgia....and ponders Oprah as last ditch running mate, while the MSM is silent on Saddleback.
Bush speaks to a VFW group today while on "vacation"...
And still Leinfelder is consumed.
Posted by: bertram jr on August 20, 2008 at 9:01 AM
Try this one out...will the MSM ignore, or will they relegate to the bunker with his white granny?
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/uselection2008/barackobama/2590614/Barack-Obamas-lost-brother-found-in-Kenya.html
Posted by: bertram jr on August 20, 2008 at 9:05 AM
BL - The great irony, as I see it, is that the Strib -- Anders Gyllenhaal -- felt the need for not just a conservative, of which he would have had the pick of several, but a neo-con, someone fully in step with talk radio's core droolers. But instead of a Hannity-like carnival act, he picks a bona fide wonk, someone with less cultural affiliation with the exurban blue collar right wing than either Coleman or Grow.
True. There was a deeply ironic quote from down in FL this year in which Gyllenhaal stated he was looking for a conservative columnist for his paper there. I neglected to post it at the time.
BL - because Star Tribune management felt it was overdue for someone to counterbalance the pro-gladiatorial, pro-crotch shot, and pro-animal-like moan worldview of brutish males such as Doug Grow and Nick Coleman.
I know this is a joke, more or less, but let’s revisit history again anyway. The very weird redundancy of Coleman’s hiring notwithstanding, the Strib’s credibility problem re bias was most acute in the spring of 2005 – after Coleman mocked the Powerline bloggers for being citizen journalists in Rathergate (and apparently we approve of citizen journalism, but we actually don’t, is that how it works?). He also erroneously claimed the bloggers were funded by nefarious rw think tanks, and suggested that customers pull their money from TCF, because… one of the PW guys works for TCF and Bill Cooper is known to be a Republican. The bloggers and Bill Cooper demanded retractions and apologies, and Cooper threatened to pull his ads. Instead of apologizing and dealing with Coleman’s casual use of rhetoric (provocateur, I know), Gyllenhall hired Kersten. Which was, as you note, insufficient on a variety of levels.
LAMBERT: Just so I'm clear. Right-wing columnist ... fine. But get one with broader life and professional experience and someone with a demonstrable sense of humor. After that, let 'em say what they want. (And like Coleman, they'll have to take their hits. It comes with the territory.)
Posted by: 108 on August 20, 2008 at 9:33 AM
People don't understand that Kersten is a Movement conservative. She was never a journalist. She helped found the Center of the American Experiment, and was on the board for many years of the execrable, Orwellian-named Institute on Religion and Democracy, only leaving when the conflict was pointed out to the Red Star. As we all know the CAE is an arm of the Republican Party, so hiring Kersten as a "news" columnist was like giving the job to the chief propagandist of the local Republican Party.
LAMBERT: Gyllenhaal put blinders on to all that. I remained convinced that he hired Kersten as a sop to the Powerline boys more than to any unserved audience of garden variety Republicans.
Posted by: Rob Levine on August 20, 2008 at 10:34 AM
Where's my gift certificate?
LAMBERT: Where's your thought process?
Posted by: bertram jr on August 20, 2008 at 2:22 PM
Yes, I, too, noticed the phrase "dark basement of the soul", but I'm afraid channeling Katherine Kersten would actually put me down there. The prospect of a hundred dollar gift certificate isn't worth the anguish. Anyway, I'm too busy, what with the lap dances at Sheiks and the smack in Northfield.
LAMBERT: It's exhausting being a loathsome liberal sybarite, isn't it?
Posted by: frogster on August 21, 2008 at 7:10 AM
Alas, Brian, a gift certificate to r. Norman's is not really a gift.
(Cue the quip about elitist dining habits and man-of-the-people naivete.)
LAMBERT: But then not all of us have sauteed prawns and vichysoisse for breakfast.
Posted by: Adam Platt on August 21, 2008 at 8:52 AM
You sir, are a genius.
LAMBERT: I expect YOU to put up.
Posted by: Rob Levine on August 21, 2008 at 9:48 AM
Somehow I always thought she'd be a candidate for her own "MadLibs" tablet.
I'm working on a version of Kersten Jeopardy. "I'll take Evil Muslims for $300, Alex."
LAMBERT: "What is anyone darker than Grover Norquist?"
Posted by: MNObserver on August 21, 2008 at 9:50 AM
Tell me I didn't nail "ClaudeNRick" (TM)...
Say, are we meeting up at the Fair this year? I'll be at the AM1280 "The Patriot" booth, which I understand is directly across from the DFL hut.
LAMBERT: Thanks for the heads up. I'll alert security.
Posted by: bertram jr on August 21, 2008 at 11:16 AM
Yes, Claude and Rick are so intellectually dishonest in their column, so disingenuous, only cherry-picking obscure think tank studies paid for by corporate interests to support their style tips.
LAMBERT: Good God man, don't you understand? They're GAY!
Posted by: Jim Leinfelder on August 21, 2008 at 12:22 PM
A future Nick column about the convention, as channeled by 108
Minnesota is no stranger to infestations. Laura Ingalls Wilder wrote about the locust plagues in 1875 that devoured her family’s Walnut Grove farm. Even before, our first Minnesotan’s, (the Lakota and Ojibwe) noted a different plague - homesteaders like the Ingall’s that devoured their land. But hold on to your hat Nellie. 150 years after statehood, we’ve still got devouring hordes, but we’re not talking locusts or farmers.
The Republicans were in town. That sound you may hear is Laura Ingalls and Little Crow revolving in their graves.
It’s no small irony that a state that was remiss in celebrating its low moments on its 150th anniversary invited the Republicans into town on a weekend where it should’ve celebrated the vast contributions of labor. Instead, we hosted a political party that continues to erode the living standards of working families.
For all the talk of riots and protest, not much acrimony came to pass. As the crowds dwindled on Sunday I did spy one activist in front of the XCEL nursing a bandage.
“We were in a conga line, chanting no more blood for oil,” said Tiffany Wildflower Dekulak, of Portland, Ore. ‘I stepped in a pothole and tripped. I gashed my knee and needed 12 stitches.”
Sweet mother of Samuel Gompers! The roads in this state aren’t even good enough for a decent protest. That sound you hear is Carol Molnau cackling somewhere.
“I broke two urine bombs on myself. That ended up being OK, Rosie Odonnell and Rachel Maddow invited us into their bus – we got more. But I don’t have health care insurance. We had all these Republicans here, with all their money, and I’m going to have to use my Mother Jones ACORN Alinsky grant to pay for doctor bills. I was hoping to use that money for a National Geographic trip to Mongolia, where I was going to organize yak shepherds to lobby for better working conditions. It’s a very acute problem over there.”
A very acute problem, indeed.
The barricades were mostly unmanned on Sunday, and as I maneuvered my bike and 6 foot frame (I’m quite tall and virile) through them I also encountered the Mayor. He was sanguine now as the convention ended. “I’ve explained this to you about 12 times, Nick’, the Mayor said. “It was a good event for the city. It went well. Good business and good exposure.”
Good for business, but at what cost.
As quiet returned to St. Paul on Monday a lone janitor, Charles Johnson, swept refuse and litter in front of the science museum. What did Charles think of working on Labor Day cleaning up for the Republicans?
“Republicans?” Johnson said. “I had no idea. That was them at the XCEL huh. That’s scary and crazy and sad. But no biggie, I’m on time and a half today. We just got finished with the Star Wars show too. One group talking about X-wings and S-foils, another talking about S-Corps and the Marine Corps. Hard to tell one from another. Maybe one group was a little better heeled though. They wore ties.”
“No matter, still a big mess,” Johnson said as he loaded a dumpster.
Dumpsters and a big mess. Indeed.
LAMBERT: Well, other than noting that you need a copy editor for punctuation, and that you are one rank bastard ... that is pretty funny.
Posted by: 108 on August 21, 2008 at 1:19 PM
Which, of course, is the PERFECT REASON to publish their every man-thought in a major metropolitan daily newspaper...
Posted by: bertram jr on August 21, 2008 at 1:45 PM
You're shortchanging KK; she's multi-untalented. Besides routinely barfing up the dumber right-wing spin points, the also writes [bowel] moving portraits of people that make the Readers' Digest "Most Unforgettable Person" anecdotes look like Dostoyevsky.
I had an exchange with Anders Gyllenhaal when he revamped the comics pages which included getting rid of the brilliantly drawn 9 Chickweed Lane and adding the moronic Mallard Fillmore. I challenged him on MF and he replied that he was obliged to have a conservative comic and that MF was the funniest conservative comic he could find.
LAMBERT: Glyllenhaal was the odd duck, if you ask me.
Posted by: john sherman on August 21, 2008 at 7:04 PM
Bertram (if that is indeed your real name, Brian Maginnis):
Honestly, now, how much time DO you spend obsessing about Claude and Rick? People will say you're in love.
LAMBERT: If anyone has Claude's and Rick's birthdays, bertram would like to send them personal gifts. Something nice, but, you know, a little naughty.
Posted by: Kristin Tillotson on August 22, 2008 at 10:57 AM
Huh, huh, huh.
I haven't had to Google while reading an article or its comments in a long time. "Putney Swope", "Grover Norquist", and, for crying out loud, "bacchanalian".
SO glad I wandered over from the restaurant reviews... Virgin territory for me, but I'll be back. Thanks!
LH
LAMBERT: We do what we can.
Posted by: Snoozer on August 22, 2008 at 6:58 PM
Perhaps one of the many black leather foundation garments that Bertram picked up on his annual shopping spree in Sturgis.
Posted by: jim Leinfelder on August 22, 2008 at 8:09 PM
I'm convinced by Kersten's Sunday column that she penned that self-caricature in order to get that steak dinner from you. I wonder if she will bring her husband (omg, could there be such a guy?) or her Dwight Eisenhower blow-up doll to rNorman's.
LAMBERT: I'll have to check the rules. Katherine may not be eligible in a Kersten parody contest. It's like insider-trading.
Posted by: A Son of Mississippi on August 24, 2008 at 8:30 AM
Give it up, guys, today, the sabbath no less, KK wrote: "We baby boomers like to think we invented and defined the sexual revolution."
There is some absurdum impervious to reductio ad absurdum.
LAMBERT: It makes me wonder if maybe Norm Coleman and she partied down in the mud at Woodstock. Those two crazy boomers.
Posted by: john sherman on August 24, 2008 at 12:55 PM
I reckon she got wind of the contest and pecked that one out in an effort to, once and for all, drive a stake into the trembling heart of parody after its desperate eight-year struggle.
LAMBERT: Trouble is, THAT could be a winner. The judges are in a quandry.
Posted by: Jim Leinfelder on August 24, 2008 at 7:48 PM
I have my special silver steak knife all ready to go. For my entry, I am submitting KKs Strib column from today. Perfection!
The contest did not exclude me from turning in someone else's work!
We should take a collection up and send KK a case of Chapstick. Katy Parry would be proud.
LAMBERT: Had I imagined so many would try to slip past the spirit of this contest I would have had the legal department vet the rules.
Posted by: Dave on August 24, 2008 at 8:21 PM
I'm not a BOOMER according to the Boston Globes "Brainiac" who more carefully dissects the generations according to cultural, economic and generational influences that codify a epoch. By the Brainiac's standard, and I get many arguments from friends on this, I am a OGXer not a Boomer.
A OGXer (Original Generation X) is a person too young for Woodstock or the Flower Power march on the Pentagon, too young to be drafted in Vietnam, just the right age to experience the economic downturn, stagflation, energy crisis of the late 70s upon entering the job market yet too old for the PC Generation (PC stands for both Personal Computers and Politically Correct Generations).
What Norm Coleman and Kersten have succeeded in doing is creating a Boomer label of self-indulgent hypocrites who smoked dope, practice free love, refuse the draft, let their freak flag fly, bash the system and then turn around and become "the system" while wagging their finger of righteous superiority in every ones faces. They try to paint a picture of domestic tranquility in marriage, courage through sending other peoples kids into war, and family values (Coleman's "Yes Dear" Take Out the Garbage ad campaign) when they have NONE.
Kersten inventing the sexual revolution? I don't think I want to be around to document that history.
LAMBERT: I would think that in the interests of accuracy
and avoiding ridicule Kersten's editor would have swapped out all those "we's" for "they's".
Posted by: Robb on August 25, 2008 at 1:20 PM
Sorry to disagree here but I think your contest is missing the true issue. Instead of poking fun at one of the issues at the Strib, why not take open auditions to become a columnist. The Strib will evidentally let anyone write for them. How about calling this contest "looking for actual talent". One week you have KK writing about how my moral compass is apparently broken and then the next week Nick Coleman is trying to make some old lady that doesnt seem to like to follow rules some folk hero because she stood up to big bad business. Throw in CJ who has yet to write something readable and add to it Souhan, quite possibly the worst columnist in the entire world (no small feat)who has no idea how to be funny, clever or cute but has not stopped trying. Where is the talent? Anyone wondering why the circulation numbers are falling need only try and read these clowns. Between them all, I think Nick is 10x worse. He is a poor writer, never bothers with even pretending to get the other side of the story and honestly, he isnt a real nice person. Lets just say his personality fills his stories.
Think about this. You could become a talent scout for the Strib.
Just something to consider.
LAMBERT: You have half a good idea. But, I have to say you're dead wrong about Nick. I don't doubt the guy drives the Nancy Barnes' and dweebie editors of his world nuts - I saw him do it to the sour shut-ins who ran the Pioneer Press. But Nick is a decent and talented guy -- who might be less abrasive to his handlers if they showed him a little appreciation from time to time. Every columnist operates on a certain over-active ego. But as long as the ego comes with the ability to deliver good stories - and provoke a response -- why get all worked up about it.
Posted by: twinkie on August 25, 2008 at 2:51 PM
KK and Worm Coleman humping in the mud, there's an image that would do more to promote the cause of celibacy than all the promise rings, creepy oedipal dances and KK columns put together; it might even cure priapism.
LAMBERT: Now, is that being nice?
Posted by: john sherman on August 26, 2008 at 10:33 AM