The recent Cornell major-legitimacy dustup between Ann Coulter and Keith Olbermann lit more than a few contempt-fueled fires.  To recap, Coulter calls herself an Ivy Leaguer because she’s a Cornell alum, but Olbermann is not because he’s a Cornell alum.  Olbermann responds on “Countdown” by stating that he is indeed an Ivy Leaguer because he’s a Cornell alum and how dare you?  So obviously, somebody’s not getting invited to somebody’s St. Patty’s Day Party.

But what are Ms. Coulter’s feelings about that other arch-liberal, smug Cornellian television host, Bill Maher?  Well, Maher graduated from Arts & Sciences, so he’s an Ivy Leaguer by her standards.  The two of them yesterday concluded a three-day speaking/debate tour in three cities and The New York Times reported that they may even be “tight.”

In a predebate telephone interview, Mr. Maher said that he and Ms. Coulter were good friends — “Not dating, as people try to say on the Internet, but friends” — and that he respected her resolve. “Unlike so many people in America, she was not afraid to get booed,” Mr. Maher said.

Ms. Coulter likewise said that she respected Mr. Maher’s bipartisan approach to “Politically Incorrect.” “Unlike most snoozefest political shows, Bill booked guests who didn’t all agree with one another[.]”

If nothing else comes out of this, the Maher-Coulter-Olbermann holds the slot the most polarizing, ear-splitting, and self-congratulatory Ivy love triangle so far this month. Now for the Brown alums to chance to take the spotlight. C’mon Jim Axelrod. You know you want to say something regretable.

Ann Coulter’s spat with Keith Olbermann over Cornell bragging rights began the way all great battles of the mind do — Does this Rush Limbaugh make the GOP look fat? — and ends the way our comment boards do, a degenerative slinging of acceptance rates and SAT scores eventually boiling down to one guy pointing at his diploma and screaming about how smart he is.

Welcome back to the Great Ivy League Snob Off. Let’s meet the contestants:

In the first corner: Cornell grad and MSNBC gravitas junkie Keith Olbermann, who says conserva-pundit Rush Limbaugh is a know-nothing plebe who couldn’t tell the Constitution from his left foot. He’s so dumb, he flunked ballroom dance! (True story. Check his Wikipedia.)

In the second corner: Cornell grad and journeyman blowhard Ann Coulter, who jumps to Limbaugh’s defense with an astonishingly baffling 900-word diatribe about how Olbermann is not the “scary smart” messiah his fans think he is, but an Ivy League fraud:

Keith didn’t go to the Ivy League Cornell; he went to the Old MacDonald Cornell. … Keith went to an affiliated state college at Cornell, the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences (average SAT: about that of pulling guards at the University of South Carolina; acceptance rate: 1 of every 1 applicants).

Touché, Coulter. You hit us East Coast intelligentsia right where it hurts– the threat of farm dirt, and athletes! This is even worse than the time we realized Obama went to some weensy school in LA* before transferring to Columbia. Her opponent reeling, the skeletor in the right wing’s closet delivers a bony little knock-out punch:

Olbermann’s incessant lying about having an “Ivy League education” when he went to the non-Ivy League ag school at Cornell would be like a graduate of the Yale locksmithing school boasting about being a “Yale man.”

A metaphor involving blue collar labor? Low blow.

But wait! Olbermann’s still got some fight in him. After the jump: The response that may require us to banish Keither Olbermann from the Ivy League forever.
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