Carl Levin to Ann Coulter: the political history of a pie in the face
| Washington
A protester hit Sen. Carl Levin (D) of Michigan with a pie on Monday in the upstate town of Big Rapids. The protester in question 鈥� Ahlam M. Mohsen, a resident of Coldwater 鈥� was arrested and was due in court Tuesday on assault and disorderly conduct charges.
The pie in question was apple, according to news reports. Senator Levin took the incident with good humor, saying he was sorry the filling was not blueberry, which is his favorite.
However, a source with considerable knowledge of fruit-based pastries, who asked to remain anonymous because the whole thing is kind of silly, said that Levin would have been sorry if blueberries had been his attacker鈥檚 ammunition of choice.
Blueberry is very staining. Levin鈥檚 shirt would have been ruined.
鈥淚 tried to get some out of a cloth napkin just this week,鈥� says this source, 鈥淚t leaves a little dark purple swatch鈥�.
This isn鈥檛 the first time Ms. Mohsen has been up in Levin鈥檚 face about something. She and a friend were arrested at Levin鈥檚 Lansing state office in January, 2009, after they staged a sit-in to protest US war policies.
On Monday, as a compatriot of Mohsen鈥檚 read a statement accusing US senators of war crimes, Mohsen herself circled behind Levin and then squashed a pie into the lawmaker鈥檚 face.
In a statement issued later, Levin said that Mohsen and her colleague 鈥渄idn鈥檛 hurt me, but they hurt their cause even more than their extreme words already had done.鈥�
Pastry protest has a long history in US politics. Since the 1960s those opposed to the actions of people in power have occasionally made their point pie any means necessary.
But generally pie-throwing has been a form of political theater aimed at those some deem pompous. In its heyday it was a sort of anarchic gesture with leftist overtones. Thus from the 1970s through the early 鈥�90s, an ex-Yippie named Aron Kay, also known as 鈥淭he Pieman,鈥� hit such notables as McGeorge Bundy, G. Gordon Liddy, Daniel Patrick Moynihan, and William F. Buckley, Jr.
Mr. Kay matched pie fillings to targets. Thus New York Mayor Abe Beame got apple crumb. (Get it? The Big Apple? And Kay judged Mayor Beame a crumb.)
More recently, two men threw custard cream pies at conservative author and activist Ann Coulter during a 2004 speech at the University of Arizona. The pair 鈥� Zachary Wolff and Philip Edgar Smith 鈥� called themselves 鈥�.鈥�
Asked why pie, Mr. Smith said he and his Al Pieda colleague were 鈥渢hrowing pies at [Coulter鈥檚] ideas, not at her,鈥� according to a police report filed after the incident.
Coulter suffered minor crumb stickage in the incident. Her ideas remained intact.
