Pies Thrown at Ann Coulter
Tofu Pies Missed Colter, Spattered Backdrop – Misdemeanor Assault

Ann Coulter

Coulter first came to national prominence as a legal correspondent and pundit for MSNBC, which fired her for insulting a Vietnam veteran. The conservative National Review dropped her column after she responded to the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, by stating that America should “invade their [terrorists’] countries, kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity.” In an interview with The New York Observer, Coulter stated that “[m]y only regret with [Oklahoma City bomber] Timothy McVeigh is he did not go to the New York Times building.” USA Today also removed Coulter as a columnist covering the 2004 Democratic National Convention after she referred to the gathering as the “Spawn of Satan convention.” She has become a highly visible pundit on the cable news circuit, noted for her particularly coarse and inflammatory invective directed at Democrats and progressives.

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Media Matters is sponsoring a call to ask CNN to drop her.

Since the link went to the CNN contact page, I just wrote in with my own positive suggestion: to create a total hate show, which I am sure many Americans would love. That would separate out these extreme haters from actual coverage and responsible debate. In turn, the mild genre separation might make it a little easier for some viewers to develop some sense of discernment.

But back to the topic of projectile editorial expression, which is much more interesting than Coulter. My main gripe with this event is that pies are much too slapstick, clownish. If we are going to disregard science and go back in time, then might we not also take seriously the methods by which audiences of the past found ways to express their views – before voting, before public debate, and before there was really much in the way of “media”?

The use of ripe fruit as a projectile expression of audience opinion has a long and honorable history in the elocutionary arts. In an earlier day, before the tomato’s first fateful trip across the Atlantic, the classical civilizations around the Mediterranean made use of the pomegranite for this noble and glorious purpose.

The magnificent Illiad of Homer, say experts, still bears in its rhythms the traces of its oral origin. And those same experts have recently begun to realize that it was not by accident that the Blind Bard, after any particularly bad pun, makes reference to fruit, usually as an offering to the gods. Both poet and his works were clearly influenced by an audience that knew what they liked, and how to use a basket of past-their-prime pomegranites to get their point across.
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Ancient Greece and Rome were famous for their orators, but the flying fruits that refined their skills are seldom credited. Who remembers that Demosthenes began his peculiar training, not with sea-stones, but with an involuntary mouthful of pomegranite seeds? And who now recalls that the immortal Marcus Tullius ‘Chickpea’ Cicero received his nickname from the handfuls of soggy garbanzos flung at him by his early audiences?

During the Dark Ages of Western Europe, an occasional turnip or mangel-wurzel might have been hurled, but, for the most part, crops were eaten, and oratory waned. Although it was not until the tomato reached Europe’s shores that popular grocery-honed eloquence reached its height, yet it well might be that legends of fruit-tossing, recovered from Arab and Classical sources, were the catalyst that sparked the Renaissance. Public speakers, writers, musicians, artists of every kind received public praise, a patron’s support, or a volley of fruit as their work merited. Shakespeare, who spoke of “judgment ripe” certainly ducked or caught his share of offerings from the groundlings. Could it be an accident that an Age named “Enlightenement” followed so closely upon the tomato’s arrival?

(from “The Tomato” by Godfrey Saran-Crowley – note that there is creativity going on here)

Of course, I’m not suggesting that even a streaming volley of overripe fruit and rotten eggs would make much difference to certain speakers. However, sometimes I think that some of our speakers might need a little immediate feedback once in a while – just to move them along to that next level of achievement. Surrounding oneself only with those who aren’t allowed to disagree is never very healthy.

No, no, no I’m not advocating that you throw fruit, I’m only just daydreaming… Oh, never mind.