VALLEY GIRL. Here's a Cathy Seipp article in her best Althouse-for-Angelenos tradition. She tells us that "[Mel] Gibson probably can be fairly described as right-wing," except by the Los Angeles Times, in which case it is a "non-sequitur." Then she tells us "knee-jerk anti-Semitism is now far more commonly found on the Left than on the Right," a charge she defends with exactly two anecdotes, one in which the Leftist blood libel is about "tourism" (there's an angle Der Sturmer missed!) and another in which a guy in a coffee shop blames Israel for the first Gulf War. (The guy's liberal credentials are "a blond ponytail" and involvement with a film crew, two members of which disagree with him; presumably they are not liberals, as no further ponytails are mentioned.)

There is also mention of "commenters at some lefty blog" deriding a previous Seipp article -- presumably commenters to my own post, because who else would bother? As you may recall, that earlier Seipp story was all about how Los Angeles liberals are obsessed with their area codes -- an accusation supported, again, by anecdotes, and one piece of on-record testimony: that of the famous ultra-liberal Mickey Kaus. This classic ended with the line, "And if the rest of those liberal [area code] 310 elites can’t get in touch with the rest of us, their elections will continue to be as lost as their area codes."

A good laugh all around. Seipp, however, thinks we were just laughing to keep from crying:

I can always tell when these things hit home because the lefties start flailing about with odd accusations — in this case that I’m one of those “gated conservatives” (Silver Lake’s a gated community?); that the West Side is “actually quite conservative” anyway (I guess so, if you define “quite conservative” as “overwhelmingly registered Democrats”); and that, of course, I have no liberal friends.

The truth is that because I live in L.A., most of my friends are liberal, just like if I lived in Rome most would be Roman. Unlike those tolerant Lefties, I don’t limit my friends to people who share my political opinions.

If Seipp is able to have friends who are liberals, while Lefties "limit [their] friends to people who share [their] political opinions," one of the following corollaries must obtain:

1. Liberals and Lefties are not the same thing, and Lefties cannot be friends with liberals because Stalin said no or something.
2. Liberals and Lefties are the same thing, and Seipp, by some osmotic process, is able to be friends with liberals without liberals being friends with her.

Which is it? I eagerly await your deranged comments.