Coulter Jumps The Shark …
MichaelW on Mar 03 2007 at 4:01 am | Filed under: Domestic Politics, MichaelW's Page
… for good. Michelle Malkin (via Capt. Ed) with the eyewitness account:
***4:15pm update***
Ann Coulter just finished her riff on Al Gore, tossed out some cute jokes (”You can understand why Hollywood is concerned about global warming. You know what heat does to plastic.”), and ended with a cheap one-liner about John Edwards being a “faggot.” (Paraphrasing) She said she would refrain from commenting on Edwards because “if you say faggot, you have to go to rehab.”
A smattering of laughter.
Not from this corner.
Crickets chirping.
Flashback: Last year’s bomb about “ragheads.”
Obviously the caricature of Republicans as homophobes has some basis in fact. But this is just beyond stupid. As Capt. Ed put it:
At some point, Republicans will need to get over their issues with homosexuality. Regardless of whether one believes it to be a choice or a hardwired response, it has little impact on anyone but the gay or lesbian person. We can argue that homosexuality doesn’t require legal protection, but not when we have our front-line activists referring to them as “faggots” or worse. That indicates a disturbing level of animosity rather than a true desire to allow people the same rights and protections regardless of their lifestyles.
I tend to look at someone like Ann Coulter as a barometer of the country’s general political direction. When she could make wry observations about some of the unfortunate tendencies of liberals (and their fellow travellers) and sell a million books, you knew that the conservatives were in ascendency. When she has to call candidates rude names to get some lukewarm attention, it would seem that the liberals are on the rise.
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[...] Not much. Who pays for the attention whore? Anybody paying attention? Captain’s Quarters, Outside The Beltway, Riehl World View, Ankle Biting Pundits, A Second Hand Conjecture, Ace of Spades HQ and Fausta’s blog [...]
Oh good heavens.
Look, no one is more disgusted by the republican hostility toward homosexuality than I am. So much so that I find every single anti-gay marriage initiative and the proposed constitutional amendment about a hundred-thousand times more offensive than what Coulter said. In hindsight she probably should have called Edwards a \”twink\” instead, and that way only gay folks would have understood what she said, but then it wouuld have ruined her punchline about rehab.
It was a slam against Edwards and the political correctness culture. And although her use of the word \”faggot\” may have been insensitive, it wasn\’t homophobic. My God, let\’s not get like them, please? The PCers that is, not gays…
yours/
peter.
I don’t know, Peter. That’s a pretty charitable reading of Coulter’s remarks if you ask me. And I’m not sure where you get this:
How do you figure? From what I’ve read, and from listening to the audio, it was a throw-away remark to end her speech. She didn’t bring up anything about PC culture until the rehab remark. And even if you agree with her about the overreaction of lefties to un-PC comments, inferring that Edwards is a “faggot” in order to get a rise out of the crowd was (a) uncouth, and (b) really stupid, esepcially given the venue.
yours/
peter.
[...] –A Second Hand Conjecture:”I tend to look at someone like Ann Coulter as a barometer of the country’s general political direction. When she could make wry observations about some of the unfortunate tendencies of liberals (and their fellow travellers) and sell a million books, you knew that the conservatives were in ascendency. When she has to call candidates rude names to get some lukewarm attention, it would seem that the liberals are on the rise.” –Hot Air:”I’m no fan of John Edwards, but that’s just a stupid joke. It’s over the line. The laughter it generated across the room was more than a little annoying. Last year it was “raghead.†This year it’s calling John Edwards a “faggot.†Two years in a row, Coulter has finished up an otherwise sharp CPAC routine with an obnoxious slur that liberals will fling at conservatives for years to come. Thanks, Ann.” –Chris at My Space:”I couldn’t stand Ann Coulter before this incident, but now I really despise the crazy blonde nutjob. I can’t believe intelligent Republicans and Conservatives uphold her bigoted writings and comments. Some even worship the ground she walks on. Sad….Sad…Sad… If Ann Coulter is the epitome of a culture warrior, well I guess I’d rather be a secular progressive anyday.” –James Joyner (blogging from the conference): I would note that, an hour after the speech, people are still lined up around the block for autographed copies of her book. Granted, most of them are young kids of college age. Some of them are older than I am. [...]
[...] UPDATE: Others: The Moderate Voice, Jules Crittenden, The Volokh Conspiracy, QandO, Done With Mirrors, Right Wing News, The News Buckit, Right Voices, Sean Hackbarth, Riehl World View, Ace of Spades, Captain's Quarters, A Second Hand Conjecture, Ankle Biting Pundits, Winds of Change, OTB, Fausta, Flopping Aces, [...]
I agree with Mike W. She knows her audience, and plays to it. The only thing is, I think her audience is getting smaller. I just blogged about it (shameless blog-whore message).
Peter,
Damn the Jam are great, and yes, it does kind of put it in perspective doesn’t it?
Anyway, I’ll leave my substantive comments in one place over in my thread.
CPAC 2007 [Weekend Open Trackback]…
CPAC 2007. Blogosphere round-up: Captain’s Quarters, GOPProgress.com, Jules Crittenden, Hot Air, Riehl World View, Right Wing News, The American Mind, Power Line, Right Wing Nut House, The Corner, A Blog For All, Roger L. Simon, Sister Toldjah, The S….
Go figure, no one inside the conservative moment understands how this looks outside the base. It’s another symptom of the hate and disdain radiating from the conservative movement. Not disdain for ideas; not hatred for the ideas that go contrary to the movement, but hatred of the people who oppose the movement. Disdain for the people who have differing ideals and concepts.
As books are published equating liberals with terrorism, that liberals are somehow godless and evil. you have more and more people in the conservative movement who begin believing the people who are ‘liberals’ are evil, are godless, are no better than the dirty terrorists.
I’ve given up on the Republicans at this point. Maybe it’s a bit of a ‘baby with the bathwater’, but I cannot support a party that is so totally controlled by closed minded people who are full of hate.
If you want me back, change your party, ’cause I haven’t left the party, the party left me.
- Mark
I understand Mark, and though I am not a member of the party, I understand your feelings. Of course, the same kinds of things are emanating from the base of the Democrats as well, just from a different angle. It is sad. What are we to do?
I sometimes wonder if homosexuals are not to the GOP what “the nigras” were to the Democrats? Everyone needs a boogeyman to wind up the masses while they do their dirty work.
And the democrats who used “the nigras” wound up becoming republicans because the democrats realized that having real “plain” people for boogeymen was a dangerous and unethical premise and tactic.
[...] This response seems to me to capture the underlying truth: I tend to look at someone like Ann Coulter as a barometer of the country’s general political direction. When she could make wry observations about some of the unfortunate tendencies of liberals (and their fellow travelers) and sell a million books, you knew that the conservatives were in ascendancy. When she has to call candidates rude names to get some lukewarm attention, it would seem that the liberals are on the rise. [...]
Al,
Some became Republicans, some did not. I have seen no evidence that racism is a Republican phenomenon as opposed to a human phenomenon. In fact, I see little difference in the amount of antipathy towards gays between the people in the parties, though I do see a difference in how they play the issue politically.
[...] A Second Hand Conjecture has some good comments: I tend to look at someone like Ann Coulter as a barometer of the country’s general political direction. When she could make wry observations about some of the unfortunate tendencies of liberals (and their fellow travelers) and sell a million books, you knew that the conservatives were in ascendancy. When she has to call candidates rude names to get some lukewarm attention, it would seem that the liberals are on the rise. [...]
Obviously, there are demonstably bad people in both parties with regards to bigotry, prejudice and following a politic tenent to an illogical extreme. But there is a reason Nixon developed the “southern strategy” and there is a reason that the republican party has either courted, or allowed itself to become engulfed by, people and gruops who believe that homosexuality is so wrong that it should be outlawed, allowed to be subjected to legal discrimination, and/or used as a wedge issue (it is commonly excepted that it is a Rovian tactic to use “Fear of Gay Marriage Amendments” to get conservatives to turn out for general elections to give republicans the bleed-over vote) and I am purposely leaving at the legitimate issue of changing the definition of marriage to include gays. You lie down with dogs, you get fleas. I am drawn to the democrats becuase, at this time and on so many issues, they are divesting themselves of fleas while the republicans give them refuge.
No argument with most of that, though Democrats have continued to play those cards as well in the south. As for fleas, the Democrats have plenty of their own, though different ones, including pandering to the anti-gay sentiment in the African American community (which Rove does as well.)
Well, I live in a rural area of Indiana and I know full well that are wide variations in what a democrat or a republican believes and I do align myself with repbulicans when the democrates are not on board with significant issues. But in this case we are talking about Coulter and those who cheered her use of the word faggot. This is no time to dig through democratic trash or to simply chalk it up to the human condition. Republicans - and conservatives - can either continue to own her or they can disown her, or at the very least completely disavow and rebuke her remrks and those who cheered.
Well, we have a long history of doing so, and if the blogosphere and major conservative and libertarian publications are an indication that is happening. I am happy about that and I think you should be as well. Now I can not vote for Republicans and one less of an excuse for doing so.
Isn’t is wonderful when agreement can be found?
With all the hand-wringing and shrieking here I don’t know if you’re a bunch of liberals or wimpy conservatives. Sounds like someone needs to pass around the smelling salts to get you all back on your feet.
The lady is great. She has said nothing comparable to the slander that is thrown at conservatives and Republicans all the time by liberals.
She’s prepared to go bare knuckle where most of you guys aren’t. From Australia it looks like a lot of you supposed conservatives need to grow a spine. Until you’ve got the balls to match Ann Coulter, and stand up for yourselves, you’ll be going nowhere.
Sorry, first time at this website and it appeared to be a rather rational place for discussion and argument. My bad.
“When she could make wry observations about some of the unfortunate tendencies of liberals (and their fellow travellers) and sell a million books, you knew that the conservatives were in ascendency. When she has to call candidates rude names to get some lukewarm attention, it would seem that the liberals are on the rise.”
Really? You don’t think those two things are, say, similiar? “Wry observations”? Bit of a euphemism for calling millions of Americans traitors, no?
Ann Coulter has earned notoriety thru her immoderate statements and smirking epithets. An entity who would call Edwards a faggot (which he is not) would certainly not object to being referred to as a cunt (which most would agree she is.)
The truth hurts, eh Greg.
Coulter didn’t just call liberals traitors, in her book “Treason” she meticulously documented the treachery, from Roosevelt, with his highlevel harbouring of Soviet spies and agents of influence despite numerous warnings about many of those individuals, onwards through successive decades to the present.
Of course we all know what Ann is thinking— if she isn’t already laughing— and that’s how all of the sturm und drung over her use of the word “faggot” just proves her “rehab” point. We’re all just living up (down?) to her joke.
yours/
peter.
Mike from Oz:
Look around a bit here at ASHC and I think you’ll understand what we’re on about. I won’t say that we’re above taking a good rhetorical swipe at a political or ideological opponent, but using grade-school epithets to degrade someone is looked down upon here, no matter who does it. When you think about it, there were far funnier, much less juvenile and much more informative ways of making fun of Edwards. Coulter should have chosen one of them.
Obviously I don’t. If you do, make your point. Silly questions are rather pointless, don’t you think?
If you had actually read Treason you’d understand how insipid your comment is. That you’d make such a comment, only underscores the fact that you haven’t read it.
C’mon, Peter. She made a cheap joke intended to get a certain reaction. Making fun of PC culture is one thing. Calling a political opponent a “faggot” is just stupid and juvenile. I’d think that you’d expect better from her.
I have no idea whether Edwards is homosexual and I am sure no one else here does.
Given the tendency of many individuals to hide their homosexuality, including in marriage, it is one of those characteristics where others can be sure about the positive (when the person is “out”) but not the negative.
So John Davis’ assertion that Edwards is not, is something he cannot know and just another example of liberals believing that something is a fact just because they say it is.
I am, of course, assuming that when Davis says Edwards is not a faggot he is not using the alternative definitions of “a ball of chopped liver bound with herbs and bread” or “a bundle of sticks”. If by some chance Davis intended one of these definitions, then we might be able to agree Edwards is not a faggot — though the chopped liver bit has a certain resonance with Edwards persona.
MichaelW claims I have not read the book “Treason” — a “fact” of which he can have no knowledge.
In fact I finished reading it a week ago and have a copy at hand.
Michael, if you have read the book, here is a quick test: How many pages of references are there at the end of the book, and how does this compare with most scholarly works?
If you haven’t read the book and don’t know, just be honest and admit it, don’t make up an answer.
No, just bad editing on my part. Only the first paragraph was meant for you.
If you’ll look at the blockquotes, I meant to address Greg, not you, with those comments.
I’ll weigh in on “Treason,” though the next post here does so in more length. The book is very inaccurate, and her references are abused. She bases it on a lot of truth, as most propaganda does, and then uses subtle and not so subtle techniques to distort what those truths mean.
This isn’t just me or other non-conservatives, conservative magazines such as National review and The Weekly Standard found the books sourcing and misrepresentations embarrassing. David Horowitz, a man who himself is quite willing to think the worst of liberals gave it a poor review on the same grounds.
Peter,
I understand where she was going, but she didn’t set up the joke at all, so the point was lost. Either way it was crude. As I said, not a big deal, but I think it is alright to complain about it. That it is being complained about so widely might be giving you the impression we are outraged more than we are, the complaint seems amplified from everybody.
I think the reason it is being so widely complained about is that people are tired of her, and when so many people are tired of her and everyone is complaining at the same time it gives the impression that each individual is more concerned with Ann’s stupid joke than we are.
Or maybe she can buy some faggot offsets.
yours/
peter.
[...] There is now hope for the politically incorrect who have praised or defended Ann Coulter, but do not wish to give up their guilty pleasure. I know you wish stay in the good graces of enlightened souls such as myself. I know I have criticized all of you, but now, taking a cue from Al Gore, the well coiffed John Edwards has taken your plight to heart and is encouraging homophobic offsets: [...]
Coulter’s Treason is a dangerous book. If you read it, you’ll actually learn that the “McCarthyism” era has been spun by liberal anti-anti-Communists to such an extent that what really happened is something different and forgotten. That McCarthy was a ‘witchhunter’ was a myth; yes, there were Commie spies in US Govt. Doubt it? Just google “Venona Files”. We now know that there was serious damage done to our national security by domestic Communists on the Soviet payroll, all the way up to Alger Hiss, the highest ranking spy in US American history since Benedict Arnold. We now know that McCarthy’s ‘list of names’ was real and there was a real State Dept security risk and the administrations were trying to cover it up.
In other words, McCarthy was a Govt whistleblower on major executive branch scandal.
Coulter has rhetorical excesses, kind of an anti-liberal Howard Stern, that take Democrat failures and bad associations (with dicators, communists, etc.) into the over-the-top charges and over-generalizations (”Democrats lose wars”). IMHO the outrage schtick ala shockjocks is to get attention. But many of the points (Ie how the Democract lost the Vietnam war) are a valid antidote to the liberal PC pablum that is far more distorted view of history.
Btw, someone asked about footnotes. They go from 293 to 339, of 46 pages.
“A half century later, when the only people who call themselves Communists are harmless cranks, it is difficult to grasp the importance of McCarthy’s crusade. But there’s a reason ‘Communist’ now sounds about as threatening as ‘monarchist’ — and it’s not because of intrepid New York Times editorials denouncing McCarthy and praising Harvard educated Soviet spies. McCarthy made it a disgrace to be a Communist. Domestic Communism could never recover.” — Ann Coulter, P. 33
“Among the most notorious Soviet spies in high-level positions in the Roosevelt and Truman administrations — now proved absolutely, beyond question by the Soviet cables — were Alger Hiss at the State Department; Harry Dexter White, assistant secretary of the Treasury Department, later appointed to the International Monetary Fund by President Truman; Lauchlin Currie, personal assistant to President Roosevelt and White House liaison to the State Department under both Roosevelt and Truman; Laurence Duggan, head of the Latin American Desk at the State Department; Frank Coe, US representative on the International Monetary Fund; Solomon Adler, senior Treasury Department official; Klaus Fuchs, top atomic scientist; and Duncan Lee, senior aide to the head of the OSS.” — Ann Coulter, P. 44
“McCarthy was a popularizer, a brawler. Republican elitists abhor demagogic appeals to working-class Democrats. Fighting like a Democrat is a breach of etiquette worse than using the wrong fork. McCarthy is sniffed at for not playing by Marquis of Queensbury Rules — rules of engagement demanded only of Republicans. Well without McCarthy, Republicans might be congratulating themselves on their excellent behavior from the gulag right now.” — Ann Coulter, P. 70
“The idea of a bowed and terrified liberal minority during McCarthy’s ‘reign of terror’ is poppycock. Then as now, all elite opinion was against McCarthy.” — Ann Coulter, P. 92
“Contrary to today’s image of McCarthy as a despised Torquemada, McCarthy was given a rare state funeral with a private memorial service in the Senate chamber, his seat covered with flowers. St. Matthew’s Cathedral bestowed him with the highest honor the Catholic Church can confer, performing a Solemn Pontifical Requiem Mass before one hundred priests and two thousand well-wishers. Seventy senators attended his funeral, as did J. Edgar Hoover. Thirty thousand Americans lined up outside the Washington funeral home where McCarthy lay to pay their final respects from early in the morning until late at night. Condolences poured in to McCarthy’s wife, amounting to more than seventy bags of mail.” — Ann Coulter, P. 123
PJ,
I am as devout an anti-communist as they come. I am aware of the venona files and have read the work of Haynes and Klehr who did the research on them and other matters that Ann uses in her book. As I said, and exlpain in detail in the Carnival of Fisking post after this one, she has lots of true facts. However, she uses them selectively, and at times pretty much make stuff up with a footnote which doesn’t support what she says, to paint a picture that is very incorrect. Very Greenwald like.
Rehabilitating McCarthy is one example of someone who may not be what many on the left wish to paint him as, but he was still a dangerous lying demagogue. It was conservatives who did him in, famously William F. Buckley, because they saw what he had become.
Most of the facts in her book are true as far as they go, but as a whole it is a misleading book. The men who did the research behind the Venona cables wouldn’t endorse her use of them either. Read Horowitz, or National Review or the Weekly Standard if you don’t trust reviews in places such as the New York Times. They all slammed the book.
By the way, Coulter is good at what she does, as is Greenwald. I understand how convincing they seem to the people who read them. It takes a lot of work to uncover how the truth is being twisted, especially if you are predisposed to see the other side a certain way anyway.
Ann Coulter and Faggots: What Goes Around……
By Andrew L. Jaffee
How does a civilized society deal with someone like Ann Coulter who steps out of the bounds of decent political discourse? Remember that she called John Edwards a “faggot” last week, and characterized Muslims as “…