Boy, what a disappointing bout of television watching. It was bad enough we had to sit through watching Jay "Badly Imitating Foreign People's Accents is Hilarious!" Leno in the first place, but to not get any kind of payoff in the form of George Carlin and Ann Coulter going at it like hungry wolverines on last night's Tonight Show was just...unsatisfying.

Carlin's a really bright guy, who's pretty much figured out his nice, happy (er, curmudgeonly happy) place in the world. In his usual stand-up routines, he professes an apathy towards human endeavors like politics and nations themselves, though we suspect that beneath his dismissive übermensch attitude towards the rest of humanity, there's a deep-seated disgust with the foolishness of some individual humans, and a sincere need to try to correct it — or at least call it out. We don't know Carlin personally, and we're loathe to psychoanalyze, but he just seems too smart and too perceptive to really not care.

Coulter, on the other hand, is batshit fucking insane. Other bloggers have already covered her insipid diatribes quite well (as have we, twice thus far), and the Rude Pundit has offered, perhaps, our favorite Coulter analysis of all time. We'll just sum all that up by comparing her to the senators who voted for a ban on gay marriage (only much, much worse) — either she actually believes the foul fucking bullshit coming out of her mouth, and is therefore a fucking lunatic, or she's just playing to the right-wing crowd to get her slice of the pie, in which case she is, quite simply, a cunt. Yes, we're potty mouths, folks, but we don't use that word very often. Ann Coulter is one of those "special" people who just really, really deserves it.

So the pairing should have been interesting...but no. Carlin did one of his routines that we've seen before (we're not slamming him — he's a stand-up comic, and that's what they do, so that's not a negative), then chatted with Leno for a bit. Coulter came on, Carlin made a couple of highly innocuous jokes, and there was no confrontation.

To be sure, Coulter did make a fool of herself. No matter what Leno said, no matter how he tried to direct the conversation, she kept coming back to her talking point du jour: a "shocked! Shocked, I say!" whine questioning why those she attacks in her book don't seem upset at being called "godless."

Note to Ann: you are a fucking idiot. As in, holy shit you're fucking brainless. There are several reasons why none of us give a shit that you call us "godless." First and foremost, there is little need to respond to your attacks. Intelligent rationalists simply refute your bullshit talking points and move on.

But more to the point — would you be insulted if we called you a "believer in the Christian God"? Of course not, you twit. You don't see that as a bad thing, though in our view, we're outright calling you delusional. You calling us "godless" is the identical scenario, you twisted imbecile: we don't see that as a bad thing. Period. Only you and your tribe think that. Get it? We doubt it.

Like we said, though, it was a disappointing and unsatisfying match. No sparks, no claws, nothing of interest. We didn't expect anything from Leno, but we were really hoping for a damn good Carlin smackdown on Coulter. No go. Maybe he was under orders — from his agent, or the producers, or Coulter's people, or Leno himself — to be on his best behavior. Too bad. It might have been good television for a change.