THE ROBERT W. WHITAKER ARCHIVE

Being old and crotchety is no fun unless you get to crochet. But now I have to say something good about somebody. Oh, well. Let's get it over with.

Representative Lindsey Graham of South Carolina was on a Crossfire segment December 15, and he did the best job think I have ever seen a conservative do.

First, let us review what the routine Southerner or respectable conservative does on this sort of program. He crawls a lot. He tries desperately to deal respectfully with the frantic accusations of the leftist.

Once Arianna Huffington took a different tack and knocked the liberal for a loop. When one Clinton supporter was loudly restating the Clinton spin, she said he was "getting hysterical." The fellow stopped suddenly. Like all liberals, the LAST thing he expected was to be called down by a respectable conservative! For a liberal on a talk show, having a conservative say something like that is like getting bitten by a bunny rabbit. It's a completely unexpected shock.

Arianna really took the wind out of that lib's sails.

She never did it again.

Needless to say, no other respectable conservative ever did such a thing again either. A good Republican never repeats anything that worked the first time.

Until Lindsey Graham on Crossfire this week.

To start with, Graham very carefully made sure that, when the camera turned to him, he was drinking coffee. Usually when one is introduced, he sits there with a silly gin on his face, trying to look serious. Graham made it clear he would take all this only as seriously as it deserved.

Bill Press, the Crossfire liberal, is in a constant state of hysteria. But of course no respectable conservative would ever mention it. After all, being picked on is what a respectable conservative or a Southerner -- and God knows it is if you're both -- is there for.

But as Graham spoke, he waited for Press to draw his breath to interrupt, and he said, "Now, please let me finish." Press, of course, said he wasn't about to interrupt, so Graham said, "Well, I guess I misread your body language then."

Press treated Graham as he had never treated any conservative before. He actually let Graham talk.

Bill Press had found out that, if he tried to push him, this rabbit would BITE.

And Graham continued to make fun of Press. Liberals and Yankees cannot STAND that. Humor reflects a sense of proportion, and the one thing liberals and Yankees depend on is that respectable conservatives live and die by the words and moods of their liberal masters.

Someone with a sense of proportion puts THEM in proportion, and in reality, they are very, very small.

When dealing with self-important liberals, it is important to remember that

"Satan, proud spirit, cannot bear to be mocked."

So Graham's humor was devastating.

At the end of the segment, Lindsey described the crazy soap opera story Clinton had concocted about Monica Lewinsky being a stalker. He ended by saying, "When we get back from the break, I'll tell you how this comes out."

Poor Press. Fortunately, he had a nice obedient moderate Republican to deal with after the break.

Germany and the Soviet Union were buddies until June 22, 1941. That was the day Germany, which shared Poland with the USSR, attacked the USSR on the common front they shared in Poland.

So the Germans thought, "OK, now you know what we were really after all this time was the Soviet Union."

Wrong.

Right after Germany invaded the USSR something incredible happened. Rudolf Hess, the Number Three man in the entire Nazi Government, flew straight to Britain to arrange for a peace settlement with Britain and the freeing of France so Germany could take care of Stalin.

Hess was a World War I hero as a combat pilot. This was a heroic mission that was typical of Hess.

I knew someone who served with him in World War I. He called my friend before he left. Hitler knew all about it.

The number three man in the United States Government is the Speaker of the House. Can you imagine, in the middle of a war, the Speaker of the House flying unprotected into an enemy country and trying to make peace?

That's what happened. Germany simply could not understand that Churchill lived in 1814. Edward R. Murrow and Roosevelt said Hess was nuts. Hess spent the rest of his life in prison.

I think we are also at that point that as a political movement we could promise liberation, liberation from PC and the goofs that lord it over us.

Comment by Simmons

ME:

The platform plank Simmons is advocating will begin:

"The established religion of the United States of America, Political Correctness, is hereby disestablished."

Those who oppose this plank will be antidisestablishmentarians. I bet you never expected to see that word used in a sentence!

Ann Coulter's new book, "The Church of Liberalism" is a straight steal from my "Political Correctness is not LIKE a religion, it IS a religion." So this concept is no longer a far out idea.

All outstanding student loans will be paid out of the giant reserves universities have. Harvard University alone has several billion dollars. The rest will be charged to professors and deans and contributors who have contributed tax-exempt funds to the Political Correctness seminaries we call colleges and universities.

We just got several million votes right there.

Other platform sentences:

"Under American laws, all monopolies are illegal. Two men in the same business are subject to criminal prosecution if they DISCUSS prices in their common filed of business."

"By the same token, anyone who discusses graduation from a Political Correctness seminary as a qualification for hiring is subject to prosecution under the Clayton Anti-Trust Act."

A few million more votes from people who qualify for Mensa but never finished college.

A million votes here, a million votes there, and it adds up to serious political clout.

If a white man commits a crime against a black man, he should be more severely punished for it because it is a "hate crime." If a black man commits a crime against a white man, it should not be punished more severely because that would be discrimination.

Everybody got that?