The LaSalle Loon
 Easily the most frequent
caller to C-SPAN's Washington
Journal, the man I keep on file as The LaSalle Loon —
he most often claims to be from LaSalle, Michigan — is so full of
hate, he continuously violates the 30-day rule in order to purge
himself.
Today's call marks a record for him, in that it's been nineteen days
since his last spitttle-drenched contribution. I was beginning to
wonder if he'd at last sloughed off his restraint and located a
vulnerable liberal in his proximity, then assaulted him, and having
been arrested, had just enough sense to use his one phone call to
contact his attorney instead of ranting to Washington Journal. Or maybe
the problem had been that he was unable
to kill a liberal and had a complete breakdown, and was currently
strapped to a gurney in some dingy state hospital, yelling to
passers-by outside his locked room, "I'm not crazy. I'm a Republican!"
But, no, neither scenario was the case. He reemerged from his
relatively long silence with his wonted locution, beginning with his
deceptively restrained "Good morning" before letting the malediction
fly.
Today's topic was the showdown in Congress over the judicial
nominations. The LaSalle Loon begins by attacking the previous
caller, who had labeled the current government as fascist, a term I
myself never use because I know how it sounds, but I'm fast coming to
embrace it as more than just rhetoric to describe the modern American
zeitgeist. Once having completed his initial salvo, he launches
into an attack on Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg as the unmatched example
of a liberal activist.
Ginsberg had been in the ACLU, he says, the same organization — he selectively points
out — that represented NAMBLA. Ignoring the fact that Ginsberg
wasn't in the ACLU when that case was presented by them, he forgets to
mention that the ACLU also represented Ollie North and the KKK.
That's because LaSalle Loon sees with blinders, and there's no sense
letting facts create a more accurate picture of what the ACLU is really
about, thus sullying the purity of his hatred. No, no. He
has to taint and smear, preferring his hair-trigger assessments based
on his disdainful partisanship. Like this call from April 17th. The guest journalist was a
woman from The Christian Science
Monitor, brought on to discuss the Bolton nomination.
Mr. LaSalle immediately accuses C-SPAN of presenting a woman from "the
John
Travolta school of religion." What a moron. He thinks
Scientology and Christian Science are the same. The stupid loon
lives in a complete solipsistic state,
and all things outside of himself are part of a blurry otherness.
Scientology or Christian Science, it's all the same to him. |
Note how he can't contain himself, how as he winds down
to the end of the call, he isn't quite satisfied, hasn't quite purged
himself of the poison coursing through his veins. So he rummages
through his cobwebbed skull until he blunders into the question he
hopes will be the coup de grâce. As if exposing some
insidious feature to her character, he asks the journalist — Gail
Russell Chaddock, I believe — "What happened to the hyphen in your
name?" If she had a hyphen, what would it indicate for
LaSalle Loon? That she was maybe a feminist? Heaven forbid!
The West Virginny Coot
This
is my second favorite C-SPAN loon and like LaSalle Loon, he, too,
violates the 30-day rule, though not nearly as frequently.
Claiming to be from different locales in West Virginia, the Virginny
Coot hoarsely slogs through his supercilious inanities with the
feebleminded assurance that advanced age equates to
enlightenment. Stiff with caked-on anachronisms, Virginny Coot
sees this whole partisan clash over the judicial nominees as a vestige
of the communist conspiracy. Oh, yes. And he cleared it all
right up.
Considering the difficulty of getting through on Washington Journal,
it's puzzling as to what motivates a man like this. Something
like a compulsion must be at work here, since the value of the message
doesn't square with the effort of the delivery In the first call
recorded by Virginny Coot, he pontificated on the mindset of the people
holding various political affiliations. It was a totally useless
comment, regardless of it fulfilling a need to make a doltish old man
feel like he's still got it on those young whippersnappers.
Really, he's just dirty and stupid. In another
call,
he at first addresses the topic of illegal immigration, then concludes
with another nugget from his calcified sagacity: the reason more calls
come in from Democrats than Republicans is because Democrats are at
home receiving government checks. Isn't that just the cutest
thing? Consider the first call, in
which he said he watches C-SPAN all the time because he can't
work. Is that thick, or what?
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