Ann Coulter and the Quest for the Larry Craig Memorial Bathroom Stall

by Pa Rock
Tourist

It has been a long, hard day on the road. I woke up at my apartment in Goodyear fifteen hours ago, drove to Phoenix, caught a flight to Minneapolis,and flew from there to Kansas City. Carla met me at the airport in Kansas City and gave me a tour of the places here that are important in her life. As we talked and got reacquainted, forty years of our divergent lives slipped quietly away. We capped off the evening at a restaurant called the Peachtree that specializes in soul food and soulful jazz. Carla's good friend, Millie Edwards, was singing there along with a very talented keyboard player and bassist. I could have listened to that sweet music all night long!

Today was my first visit to the great state of Minnesota, brief though it was. There was a blanket of snow on the ground that was truly beautiful from the air, especially to my old Ozark eyes that have been deprived of the sight of snow for a couple of years now. I saw lots of barren, white countryside as we were descending. It reminded me of flying over the tundra on a flight out of Sweden a few years back.

The Minneapolis-St. Paul Airport does not appear to be too large, though I did hear a couple of overhead pages about boarding for the Tokyo flight. One of my main objectives while there was to try and locate the Larry Craig Memorial Bathroom Stall. But try as I might, I couldn't find any signs pointing to the most famous tourist attraction at the MSP Airport - or probably in the entire state of Minnesota for that matter! I'm sure there must at least be a brass marker somewhere, but I missed it. Oh well, maybe I'll break down and ask for directions during my return flight next Sunday.

I did cruise through a couple of bookstores at the airport - a weakness of mine. One of the things that I enjoy doing in small bookstores is finding books by Ann Coulter and Bill O'Reilly and turning them around or around and over. When I am in larger bookstores, my thing is to take Coulter and O'Reilly books and hide them. I get a kick out of hearing befuddled sales clerks telling people, "That's odd. We had two-hundred-and-fifty copies of that book just before lunch."

Ann Coulter, a bitter, right-wing opinionator who is to journalism what Nancy Grace is to law enforcement (completely useless), has a new piece of trash out entitled Guilty, which she has been shamelessly hawking on any media outlet that will put up with her. (You undoubtedly heard about her flap with the Today Show where she finally bullied her way onto the program.) One of the Minnesota bookstores today had just a few copies of Guilty, and I quickly turned them all around so that Annie's face wouldn't unduly distress the harried travellers who wandered in for a candy bar or newspaper. There was another bookstore, however, that had at least a hundred copies of her latest bound doggerel forming a ceiling-to-floor wall of fear. I debated what action to take and finally left it alone. That is another challenge that will have to wait until the return flight next Sunday!