I have pretty much ignored Ann Coulter for the last year or so. As her celebrity has grown — actually since she appeared on the cover of Time Magazine — she has had to make ever more outrageous and off the wall statements in order to maintain her position as a "controversial" commentator. This has often placed her at odds with many of us who, while generally in agreement with much of her critique of American liberalism, nevertheless recoil in horror and disgust at her rhetoric.
She has descended into a black hole of necessity from which there is no escape, where she is forced to please her rabid base of red meat conservatives usually by going beyond the bounds of decency and proper public discourse in order to make a point that could have been made without resorting to the kind of hurtful, hateful, personal attacks that have become a hallmark of her war with liberals.
Make no mistake. Ann Coulter is a brutish lout, a conservative ogre who should be denied a public platform to spout what any conservative with an ounce of integrity and intellectual honesty should be able to see as unacceptable. To descend to the level of your opponents in order to criticize them is not an excuse. And for such a gifted wordsmith, Coulter does not have the excuse of ignorance.
I have been told not to take what she says so seriously, that this is her "shtick." I, like the Queen of England, am not amused. Neither I think, are the 9/11 widows who are using their position as victims of that tragedy to try and influence the public debate over what to do about the War on Terror and domestic security. We may violently disagree with their politics. We may even scorn their portrayal by liberals as unbiased observers with some kind of moral authority that immunizes them from criticism. But as Coulter proved on the Today Show in an interview with Matt Lauer, this kind of rhetoric is uncalled for and wildly inaccurate to boot:
LAUER: On the 9-11 widows, and in particular a group that had been critical of the administration:COULTER: "These self-obsessed women seem genuinely unaware that 9-11 was an attack on our nation and acted like as if the terrorist attack only happened to them. They believe the entire country was required to marinate in their exquisite personal agony. Apparently, denouncing Bush was part of the closure process."
Mr. Lauer then quotes from Coulter's new book Godless: The Church of Liberalism.
These broads are millionaires, lionized on TV and in articles about them, reveling in their status as celebrities and stalked by griefparrazies. I have never seen people enjoying their husband’s death so much.
There's more but I won't pollute the site by republishing it. Crooks and Liars has the video.
Article comments
— go to most recent comments1 - Nik
If we all just ignore her, she'll go away.
2 - Chris Evans
This woman is disgusting.
I'm glad Matt Lauer kicked handed her her ass like Katie Couric did.
3 - Michael J. West
Her fifteen minutes are over. She might as well move out of the way for the heir-apparent brutish conservative lout, Michelle Malkin.
4 - Michael J. West
A blogger named Peter Daou says that Lauer lost the argument with Coulter and did it by not focusing in on her words. Says he could have easily won it by saying this:
"There are two possible explanations for your statement. Either you believe it, in which case you're deranged. You don't believe it but said it for shock value, in which case you don't belong within a thousand miles of this network. Choose one."
5 - Rick Moran
The difference between Coulter and Malkin is night and day.
Malkin is tough on the left - on their ideas. And I have never seen such an outpouring of personal antagonism as the left exhibits toward her. The unspeakable epithets thrown her way by supposedly respected and popular liberal bloggers is so far beyond the pale that it truly begs the question as to whether they hate Michelle for her ideas or whether they hate her because she is a "race traitor" - a Filipino woman who happens to be a conservative.
Unspeakable, nauseating remarks of a highly personal and racial nature are the hallmark of leftist criticism of Malkin. It's sickening and undeserved.
6 - tommyd
MAnn Coulter is no conservative. She's a piece of shit. Malkin is another dirtbag. Preaching hatred amongst Americans, since many ignorant idiotic Americans buy into this "patriotic" blather.
These sick and deranged women call for killing as many foreigners as possible and then claiming "that's war", yet MAnn Coulter never found the motivation to go and see what war actually looks, feels, and smells like. MAnn also shrieks that anyone who disagrees with War, Neoconservatism, and Dubya Bush are "traitors".
Well, the truth is that MAnn Coulter and her ilk are actually the traitors to America and a huge barrier towards addressing and solving the many problems facing America.
7 - zingzing
rick--you have a link to any racist remarks about her?
8 - Dave (aka Jeliel³)
I feel better knowing that some cons are not sidding with The Freak. Phew!
9 - Michael J. West
Rick, I've not made any highly personal or racial remarks against Malkin. Not on this thead or anywhere else, ever.
That said, I consider her writing, like Coulter's, to be dishonest and frequently provocative only for the sake of provocation. I don't believe she's gone as far and as outrageous as Coulter has, but nor do I believe you have to go as far as Coulter in order to be considered dishonest and extreme.
10 - zingzing
um, malkin's second book is called "In Defense of Internment: The Case for ‘Racial Profiling’ in World War II and the War on Terror." she says that interning the japanese was a good thing, and only says that to justify dispicable treatment of muslims and others. she's a whacko.
11 - Aaron Fleming
The hilarious barbie doll of the extreme right; not to be taken seriously.
But yeh I echo Dave's remarks that it's nice to see a conservative treating her commentary as the horrible nonsense it really is.
12 - Zack
Only thing she's concerned with is how to sell more of her piece of crap book. More people talk about what she has done good or bad, she achieves her goal.
I feel sorry for her not being able to feel compassion. Her lack of most fundamental human emotion.
13 - Dawn
Did you just now figure out she was cruel, heartless, psychotic bitch? Sheesh, I thought that was like, common knowledge.
Now, can you please explain Rush Limbaugh?
14 - Ron Olivier
No apology is needed. Ann said what a lot of people are thinking but afraid to say, which is her point. Everyone has to accept these women's views just because they are widows. If they choose to use their husbands deaths to criticize foriegn policy, goverment officials and get to instruct congress on what to do, I have every right to call them on it. These were 4 woman out of thousands who lost people and only 4 who felt they had speical rights.
15 - zingzing
and they have a right to use their husband's deaths to criticize our government. it's a people's government. you have a right to call them on it, and i have a right to say you're being just a tad unamerican. she can criticize them without being so damn mean about it. it's like walking up to a grieving daughter or son at their mother's funeral and saying, "bah, she was a bitch anyway." it's heartless.
16 - Ron Olivier
They have right to criticize whom ever they choose. I didn't hear any boo hooing with their insults and accusations towards goverment officials. Why? You can't criticize widows. I didn't also hear any outrage when Cindy Sheehan called the president a murderer. That also is heartless.
17 - gancom
Coulter is in it for the money, she found a niche and once that money rolls in it's hard to change her formula. She has begun to dig a big hole that she can't and will never be able to climb out of.
18 - Sphinx
This so-called conservative writer is a perfect example with what is wrong with America. Few things are more "Godless" than a skanky psycho making a few bucks on the backs of tragedy victims? Looks like somebody needs to lay down the crack pipe or, at least, use it for another purpose.
19 - Dave Nalle
Rick, nice to see someone else who can tell the difference between Coulter and Malkin. Coulter is all about her pit bull, pull-no-punches personna and to hell with truth or reason or politeness. Malkin is ascerbic and certainly relentless, but she deals in facts and fairly reasonable analysis, even if a lot on the left disagree with her.
People on both left and right hate Coulter because she's annoying and basically an evil bitch. The left hates Malkin because she's effective and hard to argue against - hell, they probably hate her more than Coulter because of that.
Dave
20 - Rene
I didn't write this but came accross it in another blog and it expresses exactly how I feel about conservatives:
I wish progressives would be more strategic about all this. Sure, Ann Coulter is beneath contempt. But, her rantings and ravings are exactly what the American people need to see to get a good idea of what the Republican Party really thinks. The more it is exposed in the mainstream media, the better off Democrats are.
The strategic Republicans are more likely than not having fits right now about how to get her back to the Hannity and Colmes sideshow, and similar fare. They do not want her to be so blatant and open about the thought processes of the American Right. The reason? They want the soft sell. They want to control the PR message, and the spin. When Coulter is on the rampage, she turns off viewers by the thousands, who are revolted by her image, the hate and lunacy that emit from her, and the aftertaste, which is as unpleasant as that encountered when vomiting up one's own bile.
So, let her carry on, and be grateful that she is doing a much better job of turning moderate, swing voters into sure Democratic votes this November.
By: jurismark on June 06, 2006 at 07:37pm
21 - Ray Ellis
Ann Coulter has no POVor intelligence. She's from that Morton Downey school of shock without substance.
Matt Lauer, though hardly a benchmark of journalism, nailed her on the Today segment--or rather, his cameraman did.
Her body language betrayed her as having not one cincere bone in her body.
22 - romulus
ann coulter tells it the way it is. the fact that she is upsetting so many liberals just proves how accurate her points are.
23 - Eric Berlin
I seriously wouldn't be surprised if Coulter kept a copy of Mein Kampf under her pillow.
24 - Rick Moran
Zing Zing:
Take your pick of any link found hereon google. You'll see comments from Kos, Firedoglake, Crooks and Liars, Glen Greenwald, and a host of lefy bloggers that, if a conservative said something like this about a liberal, would be thrown in jail for hate speech.
25 - Rene
But conservatives to say stuff like that don't they Rick? Isn't that what this article is all about?