The pride of the Red States used to be Houston, home of Enron and Tom DeLay, the nation's most polluted city and, with its lack of zoning, a model of dysfunctional urban planning. Houston just lost her crown to Cincinnati.
That crown now rests atop the demented dome of Jean Schmidt, Cincinnati's newly elected U.S. representative who, in her first banshee-rant on the floor of Congress, called Rep. Jack Murtha, a highly decorated former Marine drill instructor, "a coward." Murtha had, of course, just called for an Iraq troop withdrawal. He regularly visits the damaged, paralyzed, limbless Iraq veterans at Walter Reed Hospital. A Democrat more hawkish than any Republican, Murtha is a man with inviolable credentials. It's doubtful whether he'd have made his speech unless he had the tacit approval of the Joint Chiefs of Staff who watch in dismay as madmen like Bush and Rumsfeld destroy their military.
Schmidt, on the other hand, is a crazed harpy who isn't worthy of entering the U.S. Capitol, even as a member of the visitors gallery. Which makes her the perfect representative for Cincinnati, the "reddest" city in the nation, and the poster girl for the Republican Party in the 2006 election. All any Democrat in any district in America has to do to be elected is quote Schmidt calling Murtha a "coward."
The outcry from Schmidt's remarks, which would have elicited standing O's in Cincinnati, was such that she rescinded them as soon as she said them. Though they were stricken from the Congressional Record, their spirit lives in another Weird Sister, Ann Coulter, who wrote this week: "There is no plausible explanation for the Democrats' behavior other than that they long to see U.S. troops shot, humiliated, and driven from the field … These people are not only traitors, they are gutless traitors."
Although Schmidt is already political toast one week into her first and only term, three weeks ago she was the toast of Cincinnati. Her outburst about Murtha was a carry-over from her campaign, during which she repeatedly questioned the patriotism and bravery of her opponent, Paul Hackett, a Marine veteran of the current Iraq quagmire and soon to be Ohio's next Senator. Though she's now seen as a freak everywhere but in her hometown, Schmidt is just the latest to embody Cincinnati's collective ignorance.
Schmidt's district, which includes the gated suburbs, was, prior to this election, the nation's most Republican district. The voters could have elected Hackett, but they preferred the beetle-browed familiarity of Ms. Schmidt, whose level of discourse is as simple and subtle as a hog call. She may be par for Cincinnati's course, but she's the worst thing that could happen to a state party already mired in a corruption scandal.
If Cincinnati had any sense of shame, voters would demand a recall of the last election or force Schmidt to resign. But Cincinnati is a blight on our national landscape. When H.L. Mencken wrote his classic essay, "The Sahara of the Bozart," he had in mind the entire South, but he may as well have been talking about Cincinnati today: "It is amazing to contemplate so vast a vacuity. One thinks of the interstellar spaces, of the colossal reaches of the now mythical ether … it is almost as sterile, artistically, intellectually, culturally, as the Sahara Desert … Free inquiry is blocked by the idiotic certainties of ignorant men." And women.
Lest we forget, this is the city that coddled the nation's most racist sports team owner for years (Marge Schott) and still thinks Pete Rose, who gambled on games in which he played and hung with the Mob, is a hero and role model. Rose did so much damage to the National Pastime that, though he's baseball's career-hits leader, he was left off this year's Hall of Fame ballot, the last time he's eligible.
In a 1996 interview on ESPN, Schott, the Cincinnati Reds' CEO, said, "Everything you read, when Hitler came in he was good. [The Nazis] built tremendous highways and got all the factories going … Everybody knows he was good at the beginning but he just went too far."
During her tenure, Schott made remarks that seem almost unbelievable in retrospect. She regularly used words like "Jap" and "fruits," and publicly referred to players Eric Davis and Dave Parker as "million-dollar niggers." She was said to wear a swastika armband at home.
Jean Schmidt is the spawn of Marge Schott. Ann Coulter should think about settling down with a good Nazi man in Cincinnati.
