Yeah yeah yeah -- Zell Miller called Maureen Dowd a "highbrow hussy from New York City." Who cares? It's a free country, and he's chosen to forsake personal dignity to spend his golden years as a cartoon right-wing buffoon, the silver-haired male Ann Coulter. (By the way, Michael Ledeen's suggestion that Miller would make a good Secretary of State isn't looking particularly astute.)

However, please tell me I'm not reading too much into this:

Miller also suggested "that red-headed woman at the New York Times" should not mock anyone's religion: "You can see horns just sprouting up through that Technicolor hair."

Horns?

The obvious meaning of this is bad enough -- and typical of buffoonish conservatives. (Funny how it's "hate speech" when John Kerry merely acknowledges Mary Cheney's open lesbianism, but it's not hate speech when Miller says this, or Rush Limbaugh says Tom Daschle is Satan.)

But is Miller just saying Maureen Dowd is the Devil? Or is there another meaning to this?

Dowd was raised Catholic in the city of Washington; Miller thinks she's a native of New York. Am I leaping to an Alvy Singerish conclusion if I speculate that perhaps Miller's got an equally erroneous theory about her religion -- and a rather nasty way of putting forth that theory?