Regarding the inimitable Ann Coulter and last night’s USA Today brouhaha: Human Events Online has posted a hilarious line-edited version of the spiked column. This is apparently the real thing and the paper’s editing remarks are in CAPS.

Read all the way through and you’ll see that it seems that nobody at the newspaper understood Ann’s joking reference to John Kerry and the Democrats as “The French Party.”

COULTER: I’d say I love all these Democrats in Boston so much I want them to go home, but I don’t. I want Americans to get a good long look at the French Party…

USA Today: WHAT DO YOU MEAN BY “THE FRENCH PARTY”? I DON’T GET IT.

A quick Google search of “French Party and Kerry” would have solved the mysterious riddle. And it’s not as if the reference is limited to obscure conservative circles. The Washington Post picked up the French Party jibes in March and then there’s this helpful background article from none other than…USA Today.

The paper has been quite sincere in its outreach to conservative writers (present company included and I’m grateful), but its reaction to Coulter is ridiculous. Anyone who has ever gotten past her byline knows that the spiked column is classic Coulter. By signing her on, the paper signaled that it knew what it was getting. It then got what it got–pure, unadultered, 100 percent proof Coulter–and proceeded to freak out big time. Talk about buyer’s remorse.

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On a totally tangential note, reading the paper’s painful deconstruction of Coulter’s humor reminded me of when we first started teaching knock-knock jokes to our toddler.

First, we repeated a couple of tried-and-true ones and tried to explain them:

Parents: Knock-knock. Who’s there? Boo. Boo-who? Don’t cry.
Kid: Huh? I don’t get it.
Parents: Boo-who. You know, it sounds like boo-hoo. Like crying. Get it?

Parents: Knock-knock. Who’s there? Orange. Orange who? Orange you glad we told this joke?
Kid: Huh? I don’t get it.
Parents: Orange who. You know it sounds like Aren’t you.
Kid: HUUHH????!

But after getting the rhythm and cadence down, the little one ventured into jokeland with her own original knock-knocks.

Kid: Knock knock.
Parent: Who’s there?
Kid: Blue.
Parent: Blue-who?
Kid: Pink. Purple. Orange. Red. Butterfly!

Eruption of laughter all around. Repeat 100 times.

Let’s put it this way: She gets knock-knock jokes better than USA Today gets Ann Coulter.