When men of the right physically attack a liberal woman, it’s called misogyny–not to mention criminal assault. When men of the left physically attack a conservative woman, it’s called making a clever political statement.


That seems to be the case with the two thugs who threw custard cream pies at Ann Coulter last week while she was giving a speech at the University of Arizona (you can see photos of  the handsome youths here on the Smoking Gun blogsite, which also links to the police report on the Coulter incident). According to one of the alleged perps, Phillip Edgar Smith, a 24-year-old student at Arizona (shouldn’t he have graduated by now?), the anti-Coulter pair were “throwing the pies at her ideas not at her.”


Nonetheless, flying parts of the pies did hit Ann, and although she nimbly dodged their full brunt, both her face and dress got smeared with custard. The pair also did some $3,000 worth of damage to the muslin scrim behind her speaker’s podium, according to University of Arizona officials.


Tucson police have charged Smith and his 24-year-old pal William Zachary Wolff with felony criminal damage and misdemeanor counts of disorderly conduct, vandalism, and assault without injury. They took the incident seriously. Not so our male friends on the left, who have been passing around this video of the crime for chuckles of the strictly sexist variety. Here’s James Wolcott, contributing editor of Vanity Fair:


“Ann Coulter may be a travesty of humanity, as unacceptable a hank of flesh draped on a hanger ever to be foisted upon an ignorant populace hungry for more ignorance. Her racism, her character slurs, her whirlwind talent for rewriting history, her ability to leave a glossy coat of slime on any issue she discusses (when she licks a stamp, it curls up and dies), these are condemnable.


“But credit where credit is due. The skank can shift a– on a dime.


“When a pair of hooligans tried to attack her with pies during a speaking appearance, an episode broadcast on cable news today, Coulter didn’t freeze like a deer in the headlights. She showed lightning reflexes, ducking away from the lectern and running backstage on high heels, which any woman will tell you is difficult to do. Because of her quick getaway, the flying pies wildly missed their target, sparing her a humiliating cream pie bukkake facial that would have made the papers and been downloaded millions of times on the internet.”


Isn’t that chivalrous? As our friend Michelle Malkin puts it:


“Now, can you imagine if two thugs…attacked Molly Ivins or Maureen Dowd? Every thumb-sucker on the Left would be wailing about the Culture of Hate and the Degeneration of Civility and The Death of Free Speech and Violence against Women.”


But that’s only when women of the left get attacked. When the target is Ann Coulter, our oh-so-sensitive liberal men get to release their inner chauvinist.