By Debbie Schlussel
Well, you didn’t exactly need to be Einstein or a rocket scientist to predict that no illegal aliens would take up the clueless Julie L. Myers a/k/a The ICE Princess on her silly program to voluntarily leave the country.
As I predicted, no-one took the incompetent chieftess of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) up on her “offer.” Shocker: Zero illegal aliens signed up to leave. Who’d-a-guessed?
I told you, last week, that aliens with final deportation orders have only a 1 in 20 chance of being caught and detained–that doesn’t even mean certain deportation.

(Julie Myers Diet Coke by David Lunde/Lundesigns)

If ICE can only locate and detain 31,000 of the 550,000, that means if you are an illegal alien on the loose with a final deportation order, you only have an 5.6% chance of being detained. And that’s being liberal. Illegal aliens probably have an even lesser chance of being picked up by one of ICE’s 84 fugitive teams.
With the 5.6% chance, that means ICE will only round up only 1 of every twenty illegal aliens with a final deportation order. If I’m an illegal alien in America with a final deportation order, I like my odds–A LOT!–and I’m not going to voluntarily leave . . . even if an airhead Blackface expert Valley Girl, who will be out of a job before I lose my meatpacking job, tells me I should.

Here’s some of the comical coverage of “The ICE Princess Had a Party & No-one Showed (Not Even a Blackfaced Costume)”:

No one showed up Tuesday as a new federal program encouraging illegal immigrants to leave the country began a two-week trial, and several illegal immigrants said there’s no reason to expect anyone will.
“I know people who have been caught and deported. But most are never caught,” said Robert Hernandez, a 28-year-old construction worker from Honduras who has lived in the United States illegally for four years.
“To turn yourself in so you can go home and live in a village with no work? If I wanted to do that, I would have stayed in my village. I wouldn’t have risked my life to come here in the first place.”
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement launched Operation Scheduled Departure in five cities, and none found any takers by the day’s end. . . .
Angel Martinez, a 45-year-old construction worker from Mexico City who has lived in the U.S. illegally for 15 years, said most illegal immigrants will ignore the offer, especially as they “remember what life was like, how hard it was” before they moved to the U.S.
Martinez was waiting outside the ICE office while his 19-year-old son [DS: probably also illegal] visited a friend inside who had been detained by authorities after he was stopped for speeding and found to be an illegal immigrant.
“It’s stupid. You would have to be crazy,” he said. “Who would want to turn themselves in?”

Yup, things are so bad that illegal aliens have no prob waiting outside the ICE office in full view. They know nothing will happen to them.
BTW, I hear the FBI is giving up on investigating Cosa Nostra and is offering an “Operation Tony Soprano Turn Yourself In” program to emulate The ICE Princess’ great idea. Zero takers.

By Debbie Schlussel
**** SCROLL DOWN FOR UPDATE ****
Lori Lowenthal Marcus informs me that the trial of our friend, Salah Uddin Shoaib Choudhury, began today. As readers know, I’ve written about the plight of Mr. Choudhury and he has quoted me in some of his work.
Choudhury–a Muslim, one of the few truly moderate ones–is on trial in Bangladesh, under penalty of death, for daring to advocate ties with Israel, trying to travel there to deliver a speech, and for attacking extremism in Islam. For those “crimes against humanity” he not only stands trial but may lose his life. Yet there is virtually no media coverage. He is an independent journalist and the editor of “The Weekly Blitz.”

Salah Uddin Shoaib Choudhury:
Courageous Muslim Faces Death for Praising Jews, Christians
But the mainstream media journalists who usually pay special attention to the plight of other journalists are turning a blind eye. The only one who has really been covering it is the fantastic Jerusalem Post investigative reporter Michael Freund, who turned me on to the story.
Lori sends this e-mail from Choudhury to Richard Benkin, the American who long ago took up his cause. I urge you to send him an e-mail of moral support:

From: Salah Choudhury salahuddinshoaibchoudhury@yahoo.com
To: Richard Benkin drrbenkin@comcast.net
Sent: Wednesday, August 6, 2008 10:08:12 AM
Subject: Shoaib’s Trial Begins
HELLO FRIENDS!
GREETINGS FROM DHAKA.
TODAY, AUGUST 6 2008, FINALLY THE TRIAL BEGAN WITH THE PLAINTIFF GIVING HIS TESTIMONY IN THE COURT. TOMORROW [THURSDAY] IS THE DATE FOR CROSS EXAMINING THE PLAINTIFF.
SO, NOW REALLY MY LUCK HANGS INTO PENDULUM OF BEING EITHER ACQUITTED FROM THE CHARGE BY THE COURT, OR ACCORDED CAPITAL PUNISHMENT. THE PROSECUTION IS POSSIBLY HOPING TO SEE ME DEAD. THAT IS MY PERSONAL OPINION ALTHOUGH.
WITH BEGINNING OF THE TRIAL, BANGLADESH GOVERNMENT HAS FINALLY LEFT A STRONG MESSAGE TO THE INTERNATIONAL COMMUNITY THAT THEY DO NOT CARE UNITED STATES OR EUROPE OR US CONGRESS OR EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT OR AUSTRALIAN SENATE OR MILLIONS OF MY FRIENDS AND SUPPORTERS AROUND THE WORLD.
SO, TODAY [WEDNESDAY] I WENT TO THE COURT AT 9:00 AM AND HAD TO STAND IN THE DIAS TILL 5:00 PM. TOMORROW WILL BE THE SAME THING.
AS I SHALL FACE THE TRIAL, I WILL REMEMBER, MY FRIENDS AND SUPPORTERS AROUND THE WORLD ARE SPIRITUALLY WITH ME, PRAYING FOR ME AND I AM NOT ALONE.
LET US REMAIN STRONG, AND LET US DEFEAT THOSE ENEMIES OF PEACE TOGETHER. G-D IS WITH US AND WE SHALL WIN.
REGARDS
SHOAIB

Adds Lori:

Please at least send Shoaib an email and let him know you care about him, are praying for him (if that is something you do) and that you hope he – this apparently lone, loving moderate Muslim – will be spared the death sentence. I have never had a friend in real danger of being murdered by a government decree. If that happens, G-d help us all. Please, let him know that you believe his light must not be extinguished.

I’m sending him one, but I’m also asking you, my readers, to stop buying items made in Bangladesh. Various clothing, towels, and cloths you find at Target, K-Mart, Wal-Mart, and higher-end stores are made in Bangladesh. The country is one of the most extremist Muslim countries on the planet–and that’s a tough contest. They are virulently anti-American, anti-Semitic, and now they are trying to murder this innocent man for being peaceful and tolerant. We should not be supporting an economy that fosters this type of behavior and sentiment.
Boycott Bangladesh. And PRAY FOR SALAH UDDIN CHOAIB CHOUDHURY.
****
Choudhury has repeatedly been put on trial for these charges.
Flashback from my November 2006 entry on the Choudhury trial:

Before the trial began, Bangladeshi government thugs beat him.
Today’s Wall Street Journal editorial on the trial exposes his other “crimes.” He’s apparently being charged with “praising the Jews and Christians.” Yup, welcome to the Islamic state, where that sort of thing is not tolerated:

On Monday in a Bangladesh courtroom, a judge read the following charge to a defendant [Choudhury]: “By praising the Jews and Christians, by attempting to travel to Israel and by predicting the so-called rise of Islamist militancy in the country and expressing such through writings inside the country and abroad, you have tried to damage the image and relations of Bangladesh with the outside world. For which, charges under section 295-A, 120-A, 124-A, 105-A, and 108A are brought against you.

Hmmm . . . Why didn’t the introduction of “Sesame Street” in Bangladesh stop this? Apparently–and way too predictably, kumbaya “We Are the World” BS doesn’t work very well.
Time for more elephants to get angry with Bangladesh.

**** UPDATE: Reader Raymond points out the hypocrisy of the Bengladeshis:

I find it ironic that Choudhury is being persecuted for his friendship with Jews and Israel when the National Assembly Building in Dakah was designed by architect Louis Kahn – an American JEW.

By Debbie Schlussel
We’re constantly told the fairy tale that American Muslims are different from their violent, extremist, co-religionist thugs around the world.
What makes them different here, since they believe in the same hateful Koranic and Hadith precepts, since they hear the same violent, jihadist sermons at their mosques, etc? We’re frequently told that because Muslims here enjoy prosperity and economic opportunity, they’re different here. Meanwhile they’re suing America left and right, claiming they’re shut out of prosperity and economic opportunity.
And of course, we know that economic opportunity and socio-economic status has nothing to do with it. It’s about an ideology, called Islam. There are plenty of wealthy people who believe in it, and several of them were among the 9/11 hijackers and other terrorists before and since.

Bottom line: Muslims in America are NO different than their brothers and sisters in Europe and the Middle East, just a few years behind in critical mass and the level of bending over of non-Muslims. But soon, they will catch up.
That brings us to the book, “The Jewel of Medina,” written by Islamopanderer Sherry Jones. Ms. Jones wrote this book about six-year-old Aisha, one of Mohammed’s wives, which included some sex scenes. It was set to be published and sold throughout America by Random House. But Random House reneged because of threats of violence, NOT from so-called “extremists” on the fringes or from Europe or the Middle East, but from threats of violence from mainstream American Muslims and American Muslim leaders.
And no “moderate” Muslims spoke out, but for Asra Nomani, a Muslim apostate and former Wall Street Journal reporter. Nomani, a friend of the late Daniel Pearl’s, is an outcast in most of Islam because she had a kid out of wedlock and tried to pray in a mosque on equal footing with the men.
Her op-ed in today’s Wall Street Journal should tell you a little something about your “moderate” American Muslim friends and neighbors, if you don’t already get it: They’re not peaceful. Muslims–AMERICAN Muslims, along with pan-Islamist professor Denise Spellberg of the University of Texas at Austin–threatened violence against Random House employees and its buildings. (Note how Ms. Spellberg had no prob with “The Last Temptation of Christ” movie, but “defile” Islam. No way, Hussein!)
And don’t worry, there’s no “FBI investigation into hate crimes” over these threats. Nope. The publisher just buckled:

Starting in 2002, Spokane, Wash., journalist Sherry Jones toiled weekends on a racy historical novel about Aisha, the young wife of the prophet Muhammad. Ms. Jones learned Arabic, studied scholarly works about Aisha’s life, and came to admire her protagonist as a woman of courage. When Random House bought her novel last year in a $100,000, two-book deal, she was ecstatic. This past spring, she began plans for an eight-city book tour after the Aug. 12 publication date of “The Jewel of Medina” — a tale of lust, love and intrigue in the prophet’s harem.
It’s not going to happen: In May, Random House abruptly called off publication of the book. The series of events that torpedoed this novel are a window into how quickly fear stunts intelligent discourse about the Muslim world.
Random House feared the book would become a new “Satanic Verses,” the Salman Rushdie novel of 1988 that led to death threats, riots and the murder of the book’s Japanese translator, among other horrors. In an interview about Ms. Jones’s novel, Thomas Perry, deputy publisher at Random House Publishing Group, said that it “disturbs us that we feel we cannot publish it right now.” He said that after sending out advance copies of the novel, the company received “from credible and unrelated sources, cautionary advice not only that the publication of this book might be offensive to some in the Muslim community, but also that it could incite acts of violence by a small, radical segment.”

Nothing “small” and “radical” about them. This is the mainstream of Islam. In America.

After consulting security experts and Islam scholars, Mr. Perry said the company decided “to postpone publication for the safety of the author, employees of Random House, booksellers and anyone else who would be involved in distribution and sale of the novel.” . . .
“I’m devastated,” Ms. Jones told me after the book got spiked, adding, “I wanted to honor Aisha and all the wives of Muhammad by giving voice to them, remarkable women whose crucial roles in the shaping of Islam have so often been ignored — silenced — by historians.”

Sucker. This woman, Jones, is definitely your typical attendee at “Lunch in Tul Karem.” This is what happens when an infidelette fool tries to help Muslims. She gets burned.
This idiot authoress, Jones, sent her manuscript to Denise Spellberg the UT professor, who then frantically called her friend Shahed Amanullah, editor of a MAINSTREAM popular Muslim website, who got the death threat train going.

“She was upset,” Mr. Amanullah recalls. He says Ms. Spellberg told him the novel “made fun of Muslims and their history,” and asked him to warn Muslims. . . .
Says Ms. Spellberg: “I walked through a metal detector to see ‘Last Temptation of Christ,'” the controversial 1980s film adaptation of a novel that depicted a relationship between Jesus and Mary Magdalene.

Soon Amanulllah sent out a mass e-mail to American Muslims, it was posted on Muslim web sites, and then another Muslim,

Ali Hemani proposed a seven-point strategy to ensure “the writer withdraws this book from the stores and apologise all the muslims across the world.”

Then, Ms. Spellberg, who has a contract with Random House to write about Thomas Jefferson’s Koran, threatened Random House, and of course they obliged. An editor wrote:

“She thinks there is a very real possibility of major danger for the building and staff and widespread violence. Denise says it is ‘a declaration of war . . . explosive stuff . . . a national security issue.’ Thinks it will be far more controversial than the satanic verses and the Danish cartoons. Does not know if the author and Ballantine folks are clueless or calculating, but thinks the book should be withdrawn ASAP.” . . .
On a May 21 conference call, Random House executive Elizabeth McGuire told the author and her agent that the publishing house had decided to indefinitely postpone publication of the novel for “fear of a possible terrorist threat from extremist Muslims” and concern for “the safety and security of the Random House building and employees.”

Of course, your “moderate,” “peaceful” Muslims at CAIR, MPAC, ISNA, ICNA, MAS, MSA, etc.–none of them have said a peep. Why? Because they have no prob with the implied death and bombing threats and with the censorship, blackmail, and extortion. This is their way.
The geographic boundaries that constitute America do not block out the extremism that constitutes Islam. They only welcome it in.
And there is more we must consider about this disturbing case. Denise Spellberg is Exhibit A of why I tell Americans not to rely on the Jews for their terrorism analysis. Far too many of my fellow co-religionists-in-name-only bend over backward for our enemies in the “Religion of Peace.” They lend them legitimacy, a legitimacy we cannot afford to let stand.
Spellberg is a far-left Jewish woman, who has devoted her life to spreading the BS propaganda that Islam is peace, that America has a “forgotten” Muslim history (no, we don’t), etc.
She is the one who started these terrorist threats on their path. She is the one who warned Random House that they’d all be blown to Kingdom Come if the book was published. Why is she not being prosecuted? If I contacted Random House and said that if they published her sleazy “Thomas Jefferson’s Koran” lie, that the building would be blown up and its employees murdered, do you think I’d be free today? No, I’d be behind bars.
Instead, Ms. Spellberg delivered a paid lecture sponsored by the Schusterman Center for Jewish Studies at the University of Texas, and she is identified as a faculty member of the Schusterman Center for Jewish Studies.
In that capacity, she lectures on stupid things, designed to make Jews and Christians find an artificial commonality with Islam. But here’s what I don’t, as a Jew, and you don’t, as Christians, have in common with this bitchy, terrorist co-religionist of mine: We don’t threaten book publishers with violence if they publish something we don’t like. We don’t tell them that their employees will die if a book is distributed.
E-mail Denise Spellberg and tell her that terrorist threats and censorship are not welcome in America.
Let me tell you a little something about the “Schusterman” whose name is in the Schusterman Center for Jewish Studies. Charles Schusterman was a Jewish oil baron in Oklahoma, who came from nothing. He amassed millions from offshore oil drilling throughout the world. He was a proud Jew and very pro-Israel. I met him several times, and he was a donor to my campaign for the Michigan House of Representatives. He would be turning over in his grave, knowing that his good name was now associated with this Jewish pan-Islamist terrorist.
Sadly, Mr. Schusterman, who passed away in 2000, no longer controls the Charles and Lynn Schusterman Foundation, which apparently paid Ms. Spellberg. Mrs. Lynn Schusterman has given millions to left-oriented, allegedly “pro-Israel” speakers and college programs run by left-wing staffers at the pro-Israel lobby, AIPAC. Schusterman also funds many anti-Israel, left-wing Hillel [a Jewish organization on most college campuses] foundations and their directors of the same ideology.
Still, I think you should complain to Mrs. Schusterman and her daughter Stacy Schusterman about their surname being used to further terrorist threats in America.
Since she is a staff member of the Schusterman Center, they pay Denise Spellberg’s salary and sponsor her lectures, and that should end, accompanied with a condemnation. Maybe you will get through to them.

By Debbie Schlussel
Barack Hussein Obama’s Muslim advisor, Mazen Asbahi, has been forced to resign from the Obama campaign because he sat on the board of an Islamic investment fund along with an extremist imam, Jamal Said.
Sadly, though, it was not Asbahi’s views that forced him out. In the past, Asbahi, a Chicago lawyer, has defended the dastardly way Islam treats women and told the rest of us, it’s not for us to judge. So, defense of honor-killings, polygamy, and the denial of most rights to women did not bother the Obama campaign.
Either way, I say, Aleikum Salaam, Syed Asbahi (Buh-Bye, Mr. Asbahi).
An important note, the article about Asbahi’s departure was co-“reported” by Wall Street Journal fabricator Amy Chozick, whom I’ve exposed as a fraud, a liar, and not a reporter who does the least bit of investigating and fact-checking.

Mazen Asbahi: Obama’s Top Mujahid Sent Packin’
Take whatever she writes with a grain of salt and consider it bull-poop. The woman takes the phrase “talentless hack” to new (low) levels.

By Debbie Schlussel
You do realize that she didn’t understand anything she read off the teleprompter, except the part about “Bitches.”
Question: How much money did the ‘rents, Rick and Kathy, spend on this?
Question #2: Is she competing with Mary Carey for the “Most Political Porn Star” title?

See more Paris Hilton videos at Funny or Die

By Debbie Schlussel
There’s something fishy about former New York Times film critic Elvis Mitchell’s run-in with border agents at the Detroit-Canada border.
Mitchell currently hosts “TCM Presents Elvis Mitchell: Under the Influence,” on cable’s Turner Classic Movies. And I just don’t buy his story about why he lied about and concealed almost $12,000 in U.S. currency he snuck in and out of Canada, along with those illegal Cuban cigars.
He’s now fighting Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in court to try to get the money back. But I don’t think he should get it. Something weird is going on here. Why would you take almost $12K in cash over the border? What was he doing with the money? And why did he lie about it to police? I don’t believe his excuses for a second:

Movie Critic Elvis Mitchell:
Caught in Border Shenanigans @ Detroit-Windsor Tunnel

Nationally known film critic Elvis Mitchell — who grew up in Highland Park, graduated from Wayne State University and reviewed movies for the Free Press in 1987 — is trying to get back nearly $12,000 he carried in a cigar box through the Detroit-Windsor Tunnel.
Mitchell was entering Detroit in a cab from Windsor on April 26 when a luggage search turned up $11,817 in U.S. currency and 15 Cuban cigars, according to Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
The agency wants to keep the cash because Mitchell didn’t declare it in Detroit or three days earlier when he flew to Toronto from New York. Anyone carrying more than $10,000 outside the country or into the United States must report it.
Mitchell said he grabbed the wrong box when he left home in New York and was too embarrassed to disclose the money.
“An awful and dumb situation,” Mitchell said Monday.
The government on Friday filed a request in U.S. District Court to keep the money.
It is unclear what happened to the cigars.

Why would he be “too embarrassed to disclose the money”? I don’t get it. I think he didn’t disclose it for a reason. What’s he involved with? What do you think?
Also, for any ICE or CBP agents reading, why does ICE get the cash? Wasn’t this stuff found by Customs and Border Protection agents at the border?
Kudos to the sharp agents who caught Mitchell.

By Debbie Schlussel
In today’s Wall Street Journal, columnist Bret Stephens–with whom I usually agree–has a column claiming we’ve won the war in Iraq and that it’s over.
As evidence, he cites a bet he made with respected writer Francis Fukuyama in May 2003 for $100. Fukuyama bet that Iraq would be a mess five years after the invasion. Stephens says that Fukuyama wrote him a $100 check to settle the debt.
But here’s the thing. We haven’t won. We put our Shi’ite enemies in power. We completed the Shi’ite crescent. We energized the Shi’ite revival and strengthened Iran and Hezbollah. Not sure how that’s winning.
As for whether or not things are a mess in Iraq and whether or not the war is over and we’ve “won”–whatever that means–why is it, if things are so great there and we’ve “won”, that we are now taking in THOUSANDS of Iraqis as U.S. citizens, with the estimate being that we will “absorb” 30,000 Iraqi immigrants, most of them to Michigan, by year’s end?

Iraqi Refugees: Shukran [Thanks] America, For
“Winning” in Iraq & Letting Our People Invade Your CountryWaleed Wadie and Rahib Al-Cholan–caught in serious sex stings in Michigan.
Even normally welcoming far leftists, like the gulag-masters of Detroit’s “The Metro Times” are saying our economy–especially in downtrodden Michigan–CANNOT handle the influx and that they will compete for American citizens’ jobs:

[Detroit Mayor Kwame] Kilpatrick dropped an interesting piece of information that’s not getting a lot of press. He said that the city Planning Department was addressing issues related to the 18,000 Iraqis “coming to America” soon, presumably a significant number of them headed to the Detroit area. . . .
I headed to Seven Mile and John R where there are lots of empty storefronts with Arabic writing on the front. It looked like the kind of place people who had been living in a war zone would be familiar with. This used to be a thriving Chaldean neighborhood and business district.

It thrived only because Michigan and federal taxpayers sent a ton of money in grants and aid to the corrupt American Arab and Chaldean Council–headed by pro-HAMAS/Hezbollah ADC activist Haifa Fakhoury–to revive it, then the AACC pocketed a lot of the money.

I went into a bakery, one of few places still open. People there. said that Iraqi refugees have been filtering in over the past year but they weren’t settling in Detroit, mostly favoring Warren, Sterling Heights, Shelby Township and Southfield.
I called the Arab-American and Chaldean Council in Southfield and spoke to vice president for community relations Nabby Yono. He said that about 30,000 Iraqis will enter the United States by the end of the year with as many as 60,000 over the next few years. Based on past immigration patterns he expected 25 to 30 percent of them to settle in the Detroit area. According to migrationinformation.org, there are already roughly 32,000 foreign-born Iraqis in Michigan.
At the Arab Community Center for Economic and Social Services in Dearborn, director of communications Hannan Deep hadn’t heard about such a large number of refugees coming here so quickly. But she said ACCESS facilitates required health assessments for about 125 Iraqis a month.

ACCESS, as I’ve written, is funded by your taxes and United Way contributions and involved in facilitating Medicaid and immigration fraud, illegal aliens, and supporting Islamic terrorist groups. It also indoctrinates people into radicalism.

“A lot of these refugees are dispersed throughout the United States,” says Deep. “Eventually they hear that we have this community in the metro Detroit area and they end up coming because they feel more comfortable here.”
Nobody I talked to was real clear on what’s up. Some didn’t want to talk. But with Michigan leading the nation in unemployment, it’s hard to see how our economy is going to easily absorb a large number of newcomers. . . .
“Most of them are coming under the family reunification program,” Yono says. “Some of them maybe get assistance from family and friends. We are a country of immigrants, your father, mother, grandfather, whoever, came from somewhere. American people are good people.”

Puh-leeze. Most of these people will be on public assistance and milk the system for every tax-paid penny they can and will get. Being good Americans is different from being suckers. We will be paying Medicaid, welfare, job training, English as a Second Language education, etc. for these people.
Is this really America “winning” in Iraq, Bret Stephens? If things are so great there, why must we take in tens of thousands of them? Why can’t they return to and stay in the wonderful Iraq, where we’ve “won”?
Huh?
Time to return Francis Fukuyama’s hundred bucks.
60,000 new Iraqi refugees on American soil. Is that really “winning” in Iraq? . . . Or is it LOSING?

By Debbie Schlussel
**** SCROLL DOWN FOR UPDATE ****
And here’s the latest in “In Your Face” gay news . . .
Lance Bass–the former “‘N Sync” singer who outed himself as gay–is the talk of Hollywood, with speculation that he will star on the next edition of ABC’s “Dancing With the Stars.”
As you’ve probably deduced, the discussion centers on whether the gay Bass will dance with a man or a woman on the show, which usually has a professional dancer of the opposite sex partnering up with each has-been, D-list celeb on the show.

Pro dancer and show regular Cheryl Burke says:

I don’t think America is ready to watch two men dancing.

Gay Dancing: Don’t Expect to See Either of These on ABC’s Dancing Show . . .

Um, it’s not that we’re not “ready.” It’s that we don’t want it shoved in our face. What you do behind closed doors is your business. But don’t make us watch.
And if it does happen, Bass will be the laughing stock and the first contestant voted off . . . unless Elton John’s harem monopolizes the phone lines on which people vote.
**** UPDATE: Reader Ari disagrees with me:

You said “Whatever you do behind closed doors is your business.”
That’s not true.
Everybody pays when people are irresponsible sexually. We pay for thousands of bastard children born to irresponsible teenagers. We pay for the uninsured to get care for VD with our tax dollars and higher prices of medical insurance. We pay for AIDS research because the disease is spread by what two men do behind closed doors.
I would agree with you that it’s nobody’s business, but we’re all paying for it. That makes it OUR business.

He has a point.

By Debbie Schlussel
**** SCROLL DOWN FOR UPDATE ****
I’m not surprised that Kathy Hilton–Exhibit A of parental malpractice in America–has the chutzpah to attack John McCain for using an image of his daughter in a campaign ad.
McCain’s the bad guy for using a picture of someone we all know is a dingbat and a whore in his ad. But she’s done nothing wrong by raising her daughter to be a porn star and professional airhead.
That’s the way it is in today’s America. Up is down, right is left. And Michelle Malkin criticized the McCain campaign for mocking the porn-star daughter of campaign contributors, even though that daughter and those contributors are complete embarrassments–and John McCain is right.

Rick & Kathy Hilton: Far Too Many Americans Are Like Parents of Paris; Let 10-Year-Olds See Violent Flicks
And, sadly, Kathy Hilton is just a wealthier, higher profile version of far too many parents in America. Researchers found that 35% of “tweens”–kids aged 10-14–in America say their parents let them see R-rated movies in which savage beatings, severed heads, murder, rape, and torture are depicted on the big screen.
As I’ve noted, I was aghast at the violence in the recent Batman movie, “The Dark Knight,” which you know plenty of young kids went to see. I remember that–at the screening of “300”–I watched a father answer questions from his daughter, who couldn’t have been older than eight, about the sex and blood in the movie.
While a big part of the problem is Hollywood, the other major component of the problem is absentee and/or neglectful parents, who ought to be sued for malpractice. They’re raising yet another generation of dishonest, stupid, desensitized morons . . . just like Kathy Hilton did with daughter, Paris.
I remember as a kid how my father–before he saw “Star Wars”–worried the movie might be too scary for young kids. After he saw it, he thought it was great and took us to see it. Few parents preview movies these days. They just take their kids to see it with them for the first time or lazily send them with friends as a baby-sitting technique. I also remember when I was in 8th or 9th grade, and my father didn’t want me to go see “Risky Business,” since it was about and glorified prostitution and pimping.
Today, I think few parents would think twice about that. According to a “Pediatrics” magazine study, I’m right. And in many cases, over 20% of 10-year-olds say they’ve seen these violent, bloody movies. If you allow you 10-year-old to see these movies, you should be on birth control or have a vasectomy:

Researchers know what your tween saw last summer: savage beatings, severed heads, murder, rape and torture.
In a study released Monday in the journal Pediatrics, researchers from Dartmouth Medical School estimate more than 2.5 million children ages 10 to 14 watch the typical violent, R-rated movie.
A few movies, such as Blade, Hollow Man and Bride of Chucky, claim what researchers say are huge child audiences — as many as 7.8 million, including an estimated 1 million 10-year-olds. . . .
Previous studies have found violent media can increase aggression and desensitize to real violence, and many violent films are marketed during kids’ TV shows.
Worth and colleagues asked 6,522 children if they had seen movies from a list of 534 released in the past few years. Researchers plucked 40 R-rated movies with “the most extreme examples of graphic violence” and found that, on average, 12.5% of kids had seen each movie.
The study didn’t ask whether children saw them in theaters, on video, on cable TV or on the Internet, but more than one in three said parents let them watch R-rated movies “sometimes” or “all the time.” Even among kids who said their parents never let them watch such movies, 22.6% had seen at least one.
Children with TVs in their bedroom saw more violent movies, and African-American boys were much more likely to have seen them. More than 80% said they had seen Blade, Training Day and the horror spoof Scary Movie.

Yes, far too many American parents are just like Kathy Hilton, with sons and daughters just as useless and vapid as Paris Hilton.
But John McCain is the bad guy.
**** UPDATE: Reader Sean writes with some good suggestions (and points):

Amen to your post about absentee parents who let their kids see almost anything. My wife and I check out websites like www.kids-in-mind.com or www.screenit.com to preview exactly WHAT is in these movies.
There are even some movies that are PG-13 that should really be R so we trust our judgment, not that of the film industry. Our boys are 14 and 12, and they don’t like the fact that we preview the movies either online or in person, but that’s how it goes.
The same is true with video games. Rated M? Fuggedaboutit! They are certainly rough and tumble boys, but we make sure that they know that Hollywood’s version of reality is not acceptable in our little corner of the world.
We see plenty of parents who are reaping what they’ve sown now that their middle schoolers are becoming unruly and out of control in part because of years of exposure to violent movies and games. We vowed not to go down that road.

By Debbie Schlussel