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 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, an 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.”
“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 my site by republishing it. Crooks and Liars has the video.
There are ways to criticize the widows without saying something so wrong, so hurtful. And what do you think their children would think if they heard Coulter’s remarks? Are they to be in the line of Coulter’s wildly off target fire as well?
This rhetoric is not designed to advance debate or even make any kind of a salient point about the political activism of grief stricken parents like Cindy Sheehan and the anti-Bush September 11 widows. The remarks were designed to hurt other people’s feelings in a deeply personal and entirely inappropriate way. Can you imagine some liberal commentator making similar remarks about Debra Burlingame, sister of Charles F. “Chic” Burlingame, III, captain of American Airlines flight 77, which was crashed at the Pentagon and who is fighting to keep the 9/11 Memorial from being hijacked by the anti-American left? We would be all over that worthy and deservedly so.
The anti-Bush 9/11 widows are not immune from criticism for their political positions nor even for the tactics they use to advance those positions. But to say that they are “enjoying” their status as widows is so far beyond the pale that anyone who makes such a statement deserves the most severe censure possible. And the networks who use Coulter as some kind of “Spokesman” for the right should be told in no uncertain terms by as many of us as possible that she doesn’t speak for any conservatives that we want to be associated with.
Coulter owes those women an apology. Failure to give it only reveals her to be a shallow, bitter, bitch of a woman whose hate filled mouthings will eventually lead to her destruction.
UPDATE
Confederate Yankee takes Coulter’s message - that grief does not bestow absolute moral authority - without mentioning her brutalization of the widows.
His point is well taken but he seems to be able to make an even stronger case than Coulter without resorting to the degradation of grief stricken widows.
UPDATE 6/7
It appears that one lefty blog in particular (although I’ve seen similar sentiments expressed elsewhere on the left) believes that I and other conservatives are trying to “distance ourselves” from Coulter’s idiocies.
An interesting concept, that. The fact that most responsible conservatives who see fit to dignify Coulter’s outrageousness in the past year or so by commenting on her over-the-top remarks end up strongly criticizing her, I wonder how much more “distance” the left wants us to maintain.
But my commenter SSheil put it nicely:
I think this post (and several others relating to the same topic) is illustrative of what I see is generally the largest difference between blogs on the right and left. As with Rick’s blog, most blogs on the right are not shy of taking our leaders, writers and speakers who represent the Right to task when they individually or collectively “step on their d*cks.â€
When was the last time you saw one of Ted Kennedy’s incoherent rants brought to task by Kos kids or readers over at DU? Or Pelosi? Or Dean? Or Durbin?
I think I hear crickets chirping…
NOTE: A WORD ABOUT THE TOWER AD FOR COULTER’S BOOK
The answer is, yes I could request that the ad be taken off this site. But since I don’t believe in stifling debate (witness the insulting, degrading, comments from most of you directed towards me below), I will not make that request.
Such freedom of speech (and the freedom to abuse that right) used to be self evident in America. Nowadays, if you disagree with something written, many feel no compunction whatsoever about agitating for the offending literature to be banned.
Times have changed…
UPDATE
A few days ago in that same space, there was an ad for An Inconvenient Truth., a movie that most global warming skeptics (and even some advocates) believe is an execreable piece of propaganda.
I suppose I could have asked that it be removed since I don’t like propaganda being advertised on this site. I wonder how many people swearing at me for allowing the Coulter ad to run would be swearing at me for taking down the movie ad?
UPDATE 6/8
For the classically liberal perspective on Coulter’s remarks, you could do no better than visit my brother’s blog, The Vivid Air. And, no TBogg, my ignorant friend, not my “greater” brother. Since, as Jim points out in the comments, I have 6 other brothers, you are going to have to come up with some other shallow, simple minded way to criticize me. He’s just older, wiser, not quite as good looking, but considered by most to be a reasonable sort of fellow.
He can’t be all bad. He hates Kerry as much as Bush.
LAST WORD
Jim points out that he doesn’t “hate” Bush. Indeed, we in the blogosphere tend to toss that word around with a casual disdain for its meaning and by so doing, delegitimize the argument made. Separating the human being from the policies being promulgated or opinions expressed would serve us all well.
6:30 pm
[...] Update: Rick Moran, Coulter fan: “a shallow, bitter, bitch of a woman whose hate filled mouthings will eventually lead to her destruction.” [...]
6:31 pm
I hope you are jocking about Ann Coulter!
She is doing great work in exposing liberals.
6:45 pm
I think that Coulter has a point. Just as Sheehan has reveled in her son’s death, so have some of these women. Many are affiliated with Code Pink and other outrageous groups. Burlingame on the other hand, doesn’t self identify by any group affiliations and misuse her status as a widow to promote these groups’ causes. Burlingame speaks for herself on her own beliefs not with the groupthink espoused by Sheehan and the other moonbats.
6:46 pm
Rick, I am inclined to agree with you as Coulter’s comportment is concerned. And not on this single issue either. She does seem to feel a need to feed her rabid fans, or else she is the bitter and acerbic supposed “spokesperson” for the right. So either it’s an act or legit, but in either case Coulter, while intelligent, is becoming known as the conservative version of (at least partly) the insufferable spokesperson. Kos for the Socialist left, Art Sippo for Catholicism and Coulter for the right. Or so they label her, but I didn’t nominate her for that role and I’m much prefer a more even-tempered representitive.
6:49 pm
Re: Stevie Key’s comment:
Coulter does speak toward many valid issues, however no one is able to get past the angry rhetoric, and this is becoming true of even some of her fellow conservatives. Rick is not the first non-lefty to have shown misgivings about Miss Coulter. Just as “Screw them” Kos give us fodder due to his intolerant rantings, so too Ann for those who disagree with the conservative point of view.
7:05 pm
I don’t think you’re quite getting her tact, wit and methodology.
The left typically have plenty of personal anger. Never seen any in Coulter. Seen her angry and incensed *about* things while simultaneously quite lacking in the internal ugly anger that is so often vomited at her by those that hate her. And you got to love her response: a chuckle.
7:12 pm
Coulter has a valid point. You cannot use your victimhood status to silence debate. Now her style of expressing that is the subject of Rick’s post.
May I suggest to Rick, to stick to the issue, and not to the fluff? Coulter’s style of expression is her own business and some may put it to her insensitivity, and some may put it to her passion. Let us not debate something which is fluff in nature and a matter of taste.
Let us debate something that is hard fact, that has significance, and that is a hot burning issue today with all the obfuscatory political correctness that masquerades as “sensitivity and tolerance”.
7:17 pm
In any age, at any time, from either side of the political spectrum, it is unconscionable to say that a widow is glad her husband died.
It is hurtful, spiteful and uncalled for. It has nothing whatsoever to do with political correctness nor is it simply “fluff.”
HOW you criticize someone is just as important in a democracy as what you say. That is my beef with Coulter.
7:43 pm
She and Ted Rall would make a lovely couple.
7:47 pm
Clearly she was referring to the things–finacial windfall and celebrity status– that she referenced just prior to saying that they were “enjoying their husbands death”, not that they were glad that they died. A no insignificant difference.
8:14 pm
WORD! There is a place for comon decency even in political debate even as the blogosphere has become the scene of perpetual political roadrage syndrome.
I basically like Ann Coulter’s commentaries but it is a bad kind of like. I like the way she so effectively engages in button-pushing rhetoric against those that push my buttons. That said, she does sometimes go a bit too far and can be embarrassing.
Most of the time I find myself laughing at her columns because face it, many times she IS funny … and correct. Sometimes she goes a bit far though.
I agree. She should apologize for being mean but not for telling them that there comes a point when it is time to move on.
8:17 pm
Rick:
OK, you don’t like Coulter, but what proof do you have that she is doing what she is because she is “forced to please her rabid base of red meat conservatives”? Perhaps she actually believes what she says?
And what is your basis for claiming that she has to offer up “ever more outrageous and off the wall statements in order to maintain her position as a “controversial†commentator”? I’ve been (sortof) listening to her since the days of Clinton and I think she’s been rather consistent over that time. And since I don’t see a lot of challengers to her title as the conservative b***h, she’s under no pressure at all to up the ante by becoming even more outrageous.
As for the specifics of what she said, are you upset with Coulter’s general implication that some widows ‘enjoy’ their husband’s deaths? Or is it her specific allegation that these particular women are doing so? I wouldn’t think it was the former that bothered you, for while we’d all like to believe that no widow would enjoy the death of her husband, we know that isn’t the case in real life (case in point: the widow who made herself a widow). As for the latter, since Coulter is the one who did the research on these ladies and what they are doing, why assume she is wrong on this?
Consider this: the widows Coulter takes on sure don’t seem to be hating what they’re doing. Nobody is having to drag them to the microphone. By (my) definition, something that isn’t bothersome has to be either benign or enjoyable… which means that Coulter has a 50-50 chance of being right.
As for the impact on their kids, if the moms are doing something wrong, they need to be called on it. Did you (the royal you) refrain from attacking Clinton during Monica-gate because you didn’t want to hurt Chelsea’s feelings? Or did you (rightly) put the blame for what happened to Chelsea on the insensitive lout she has for a father?
And, finally, I wouldn’t be too sure that some liberal somewhere isn’t taking shots at Debra Burlingame…
By the way, if I contribute a few bucks, will you put in a preview button?
8:23 pm
Hmm, one of the commentors over at the Confederate Yankee raises a good point:
True on all accounts, however, the hyperbole is EXACTLY why we’re discussing this matter right now..Would it national or blogosphere news if you had made the argument you just did without resorting to hyperbole…I can see the headlines “confederate yankee makes great point about moral authority”…all over the place. Sometimes it takes hyperbole and shock to get those who normally dont respond to reason to begin on their path….
Posted by: redxiii at June 6, 2006 07:42 PM
Emphasis mine. At least she does get people talking about the issues, that’s for sure. I just hope they are thinking about the ISSUE (a select group of 5 particular 9/11 widows .. not all of the widows) and not about Ann.
8:41 pm
Rick - you are putting too many words into what she says - you are not being reasonable. If the widow happens to enjoy a new car bought by the compensation due her husband, would it be wrong to make a factual statement that she actually enjoys driving a new car without accusing the speaker or the widow of insensitivity? Is the speaker saying that she does not grieve her husband? Is the speaker saying that she caused the death of her husband to gain a car? Stop seeing monsters in the clouds. This is the kind of narrow rationality the language-obsessed meaning-challenged cultural leftists use to make argument, IMO.
It is so obvious that Coulter is saying that this groups is reveling in the extra status they have gained as they are using this power to stifle debate - by virtue of the fact that they are direct victims. She is NOT saying that they are enjoying the death of their husbands.
“HOW you criticize someone is just as important in a democracy as what you say. That is my beef with Coulter.”
There is no rule to tell you how to say something - especially not in a democracy. How she says it is a matter of non-scientific taste and perception. Leftists obsessed with language will see dark clouds and insults. Those who wish to deal with meaning and content will see a valid issue expressed in an unusual way. Of course you are welcome to express your interpretation on this. But IMO, that takes away from the content.
No, in a democracy, it is not the case that “how you say it is as important as what you say”. That may be true in Southern Waziristan. But certainly not in a mature, educated, open and liberal democracy - where meaning and content trumps style and protocol.
Yes, I will contribute for a Preview button and a scroll bar too. For some reason, the scroll bar does not appear on my page. That is, it is hidden under the maroon right bar, and cannot be accessed.
9:27 pm
Came back to add a few thoughts and found them (plus a few) stated better than I could in 12 and 14. Some good points in 11 and 13 too, but can’t agree with the apology thing.
Rick, been reading you for a while and love your writing. I have a question I’ve thought of asking that I’ll ask now: what the heck happened to your brother?
9:42 pm
There seems to be a perception that conservatives have to talk with reason and civility. And while I agree with that in principle, conservatives took the moral highground in the 70’s and 80’s with little to show for it. At while at the same time they were accused with impunity by the left and media to be social security slashers, senior citizen and child gougers, racists, etc., etc. Well reasoned arguments held little sway. The old axiom, you can’t argue with irrational people.
The conservatives finally figured out you gotta fight fire with fire, and took off the gloves with great success. The media remains strongly entrenched with the left and perhaps is getting worse. If you don’t believe, name a broadcaster who you would consider “conservative” on any of the major networks. In the 04 election, there were a host of anti-Bush books and critics, all of whom were guaranteed an eager audience on the morning shows. Pro-Bush stuff was relegated to Fox, which is still referred as the great anti-liberal bane.
So what is Coulter is the dragon-woman and the flamethrower. For heavan’s sake there is a multitude of whackier ones on the left. As dumb as the left thinks we are, I mean we know the diff when Ann is rolling in the frags grenades for effect. And frankly, in spite of her take no prisoners style, she’s often not that far off mark. And it’s delightful to see the lefties pulling out their hair out and about to absolutely go into hysteria when she run’s a few magazines of rhetorical tracers into their sensitive litlle ego’s. They can dish it out, but can’t take it. I note she hasn’t been invited back on to Maher’s show after tap dancing on his head and the his atheist-left audience.
So lighten up, dudes and ladies, and let the girl have some fun.
10:12 pm
Whether you like it or not, (and I love it), She tells it the way she sees it and doesn’t pander to anyone. Gosh imagine if more people were like that instead of always worrying about who will be offended. We are so worried about making someone feel bad in this country we, and that means both right and left, do not stand by our convictions. I respect people more when I know where they are coming from like their opinion or not.
10:14 pm
Hey Rick,
I just watched the video at Hot Air. The point seemed well made to me, what’s the beef?
10:57 pm
Rick — I’m with you 100%. Anyone who thinks that her words have a chance of persuading those who disagree with her to change their minds lacks an understanding of human nature. Her meanness has exactly the opposite effect.
10:58 pm
Kind of thought this would be the reaction to your piece. Let’s agree to disagree.
11:21 pm
Coulter is most likely refering to the group of 9-11 family members that turned grief into greed within 30 days of 9-11. You should have saw and heard the bunch that didn’t think 8-10 million dollars was enough when we really didn’t owe them a thin dime. I watched them during the 9-11 hearings and they are a bunch of self serving, point the camera at me bitches, just like Sheehan, but a few are much better looking than the witch.
11:21 pm
Jsut remember, these widows were given millions of tax payers dollars as compensation and yet still spew their venom at the same administration that awarded them.
Ask the Murray Federal Building or the Waco survivors or even the families of those who were lost at Pearl Harbor where their multi-million dollar compensation checks are coming
If this is democracy then I need to tear up my civics books
12:04 am
#21 has identified the group I think she had in mind. I forget how many (possibly 4-6) that formed a group that I referred to as the Weepy Widows. I actually thought I was being very respectful considering their behavior. It was a first in my lifetime to refer to a widow this way. This small group of politicos formed and decided they would speak for the nation. They demanded until they got the 9/11 Omission Camera Hounds. Then they had TV appearance after appearance…..they were stars. Never have I seen anything like it, until Sheehan. You have to compare this group to Sheehan.
Their only goal was to attack the White House. That’s it. They appeared on Hardball after every sensational MSM tibit. This group has to be seperated from all other victims. They as a group, no more spoke for the widows than Sheehan speaks for the military families.
I laugh at Coulter but she does go over the top. Unless someone had followed that small group of widows, I can understand why you would be offended. Fact is they lost the automatic respect that I would have accorded them.
12:16 am
Coulter On Anti-Bush 9/11 Widows (Video)
Click to Download (.wmv) If you haven’t heard by now, Ann Coulter appeared on this morning’s Today Show to promote her new book Godless and, as could be expected, it wasn’t without controversy. Matt Lauer confronted Coulter about a…
12:40 am
Haha…well, I guess you can’t be right about everything. You still wallow a bit in the ultra liberal plantation….but we forgive you…
Your still reasonable, which is a lot more than can be said about most….
1:48 am
Rick,
I normaly agree with you but I think you just had your
‘Dixie Chick’ moment.
3:23 am
After reading what Ann Coulter said, her point was to personally attack the widows. She did not raise a point of substance. She said their points are wrong because they have impure motives, pure ad hominem argument. What Coulter’s motives are, I can’t imagine. From reading the comments, I understand that Coulter is funny; perhaps this was supposed to be comedy? I agree with the post above, these statements by Ann Coulter were offensive and insulting.
5:02 am
Ann Coulter Trashes 9/11 Widows on Today Show (Video)
Ann Coulter has managed, once again, to inflame Left and Right alike with comments she made on the “Today” show with Matt Lauer.
Here’s a transcript of the most controversial part:
LAUER: On the 9-11 widows, an in particular a gro…
5:09 am
Rick- I know that you know this but you’re a very clear thinker. It’s appreciated.
5:12 am
My friends:
I’m sorry, I don’t buy into the parsing exercise some of you are using to try and excuse what Coulter said. I hope I made it clear that the point she was trying to make about the fallacy of grieving relatives having some kind of moral authority that immunizes them from criticism is valid.
But to those who don’t think that the way you say something impacts the legitimacy of what you are saying, I have to say I think you’re wrong.
And as for evidence that Coulter has somehow gotten out of control recently, I can recall when Coulter was considered a leading intellectual in the conservative movement. Her remarks the other day to Matt Lauer didn’t take much thought and by no means can be considered representing a mainstream conservative point of view.
In short, I think there are boundaries that shouldn’t be crossed regardless of the provocation or issue. Coulter has crossed it.
6:11 am
Rick,
That’s exactly her point crossing boundaries - watch the video again - she acknowledged crossing the boundaries because the widows time and time again crossed it while using their tax payer incomes and status a war widows has cover to nto garner any criticism. You never post anything these “widow” millionaires have said but Anne chronicles their vile march into politics quite accurately - that’s why she’s ever been sued - love her or hate her - she’s a relentless researcher
Face facts - Coulter said it because it was true and it was right to do
6:30 am
When Ann calls someone names she should not be excused, but when you call her names you should?
6:46 am
Rick,
“Thou doth protest too much, methinks”. In my opinion Coulter does not spew the hatred and is not equivalent to say a Rosie O’Donnell or Rhandi Rhodes who have larger forums. And honestly, I’m a bit tired of seeing the Sheehans and “911 Widows” propogandarizing (word?) for the most part unchallenged. Of course we all grieve with them- but when you turn that grief into “absolute unqeustionable moral authority” then your grief not into a moral crusade but a self-serving politico. And being a self-serving politico is fine- just don’t tell me I can’t challenge and expose you.
Graet blog the rest of the time.
6:48 am
Sorry for the spelling- it’s a tad early on the right coast
7:20 am
[...] Of course she is only talking about the liberal ones. Rick Moran over at The Rightwing Nuthouse condemned Coulter’s remarks as mean-spirited and served only to inappropriately attack these women on a deeply personal level rather than advance anything even remotely resembling political discourse. He refers to her as "a shallow, bitter, bitch of a woman whose hate filled mouthings will eventually lead to her destruction" unless she publicly apologizes for the remarks. Moran also brought up a very valid point. What if it had been a liberal commentator who ripped on the September 11th widows who fall on the conservative side? He mentions the case of Debra Burlingame, the sister of American Airlines flight 77 captain Charles F. “Chic” Burlingame III. She is "fighting to keep the 9/11 Memorial from being hijacked by the anti-American left" and says if she were attacked the same way Coulter attacks the liberal widows, conservatives would be all over them. The same goes for the conservative versions of Cindy Sheehan too. [...]
7:36 am
[...] Rick Moran over at Right Wing Nut House smacks Ann Coulter for her behavior yesterday on the Today Show. Specifically addressing the remarks that have gotten a lot of attention in the blogosphere regarding the 9-11 widows. I won't reprint the remarks here, they are all over the blogosphere. Moran says this: There are ways to criticize the widows without saying something so wrong, so hurtful. And what do you think their children would think if they heard Coulter’s remarks? Are they to be in the line of Coulter’s wildly off target fire as well? [...]
7:40 am
Rick #30. Precisely. It’s part of the inherent problem in adopting a shock-jock persona (others include Stern and Madonna). You must keep pushing the envelope to garner attention, inevitably leading to more and more egregious transgressions of social norms. Coulter had a valid point to make; she crossed the line in making it. But I suspect in Ann’s world that there’s no such thing as bad press.
8:42 am
Ann Coulter, a “shallow, bitter bitch of a woman”
For a long time, I’ve felt that of the most visible right-wing bloggers, Rick Moran of the ill-named blog Right WIng Nut House spoke with the most sincere, even admirable voice. (Everything’s relative.) I almost always disagree with him, but…
9:02 am
It’s easy to find the info this morning. I believe she is talking about the Jersey Girls with ringleader Kristen Breitweiser.
I am usually fairly moderate except when we speak about some of these moonbats and the MSM. Their aim is always the same. Destroy the country and in particular attack the WH and military. This group is no different. They did NOT conduct themselves as widows. So you say how does a widow conduct themselves? That we can not attack back because of their statis?
That is precisely Coulter’s point. They put an old man that that served in the military out as their mouthpiece. He says on TV that our guys “killed in cold blood”. How do you ignore that fool? They send a CIA husband out to call the President a liar but you can NOT answer the lies because he can hide behind CIA. They sent these Jersey Black Widows and they sat on my TV almost everyday……forever…..trashing the WH. They appeared as TV stars of our foreign policy. We have to sit with our mouths shut BECAUSE they are WIDOWS. Another example was their own grieving mom that was supposed to have the “absolute moral authority” to speak for all of us. This is what you wrote (Rick) about Sheehan on 9/16/05.
Cindy Sheehan is a living photoshop image. Set her down anywhere on the planet, put a microphone within 10 feet of her, and out of her mouth will spew the counterintuitive, the illogical, and the jaw dropping rants of a half-crazed, drooling dervish; a maddening combination of weepy radicalism and angry ideologue.
And..Should we pity her loss? Yes, but for how much longer? When does her radicalism negate whatever sacrifice she has given in the effort to defeat Islamism, that other radical ideology whose rhetoric about the west and America is so similar that it could have been born of the same mother’s tongue?
Now this is much milder than Coulter but at some point someone has to recognize that we are forced to battle “victims” because the other side sets it up that way. Look at the current military/MSM Iraq fiasco. Are we suppose to take the word of media and Murtha that our boys are killers, just because they have finally produced women and children victims?
I hate having to defend Coulter because I do not like the “ragheads, etc”. I quit reading her a while back because of it. But on this one point, she does shine some light on something that is very ugly. This time the ugly turned out to be 4 widows with a political ringleader and the full MSM in tow.
9:09 am
I really am kind of puzzled.
I thought I made it very clear that there are ways to criticize these women without accusing them of such slanderous calumny. In fact, everyone who has criticized the “Jersey Girls” in the comments has done an infintitely better job of it than Coulter did.
Coulter should be recognized for what she is - a shameless dealer in hate speech. She has crossed the line between making fun of someone (something she used to do so riotiously well) and being hateful and hurtful. It is a fine line and she seems to have abandoned herself to the latter in order to sell books and maintain her image as a “controversial” commentator.
9:30 am
Rick,
Coulter’s black humor may be shrill and open to ridicule, that is how she got Matt to ask her questions about it. Just like she got them from Katie, the Eva Braun of morning TV. Ann isn’t the problem, the Matt Laures’ that are shocked that the motives of these widows could be challenged is. Don’t be naive, Haditha coverage, like the 9/11 widows, is to deflect attention from the real perpetrators of Haditha & 9/11, to attack the Bush Administration.
9:31 am
I think this post (and several others relating to the same topic) is illustrative of what I see is generally the largest difference between blogs on the right and left. As with Rick’s blog, most blogs on the right are not shy of taking our leaders, writers and speakers who represent the Right to task when they individually or collectively “step on their d*cks.”
When was the last time you saw one of Ted Kennedy’s incoherent rants brought to task by Kos kids or readers over at DU? Or Pelosi? Or Dean? Or Durbin?
That is why I am a person of the right - and proud of it. Not proud of comments like those supposedly representing the right like Ann Coulter. But proud of a segment of our community that take’s those comments and the commentors to task.
Keep up the good work, Rick. Keep fighting the good fight - not the fight for any particular ideology but a fight for what is and should be right.
9:43 am
you’re absolutely right. incredibly insensitive, and if she wants to go around saying such things - why surely she leaves the door open for people to say, ‘ah well in that case the entire Bush administration is thoroughly enjoying the death of all those people..’
10:09 am
When was the last time you saw one of Ted Kennedy’s incoherent rants brought to task by Kos kids or readers over at DU? Or Pelosi? Or Dean? Or Durbin?
Fair enough, SShiell. When somebody on the left behaves as universally offensively as Ms. Coulter did, I, for one, will be all over it.
Hell, I’ve attacked fellow Dems for far less, so you can certainly count on me.
10:19 am
Ted Rall makes Coulter look like a boy scout - plus he draws savage cartoons the likes of which used to be seen only in public restroom toilets.
And I guess every commenter who refers to Bush and Republicans as “Hitler” and Nazis” is okay in your book?
There isn’t enough time in the day to criticize that number of pople.
10:28 am
Methinks thou doth project too much jealousy, Moran. What you consider ‘idiocies’ are just the opposite. Apparently, even right wingers (Rinos) have a hard time actually hearing the truth. While this country is disintegrating before our eyes you have to attack a true patriot. Get ready for HRC’s Brave New World–you are helping to make that real!
I don’t agree with any conservative on every issue but Ann leaves her envious detractors in the dust as she speaks much truth, without apology. We need more conservatives like her out there speaking truth to idiots.
10:37 am
Hey, Rick. Just think. If Kerensky had had Ms. Coulter at his side, we here today might never have heard of Lenin, Stalin. Thanks for the post. Enjoyed it and the comments that flowed from it, and I’m sending (more) $$. Nice work.
10:41 am
Obviously you don’t understand the argument that she’s trying to make, so I’ll try to use small words to explain it to you.
Democrats are using people who are obvious victims (9/11 widows, Cindy Sheehan, etc) to make their arguments for them, rather than making them with logic and intelligence. These people are people that those of us who disagree with them look like asses for attacking their ideas because the mainstream media and Dimwitocrats love to point out that we’re ‘attacking widows’ or ‘attacking someone who just lost their son in a war’ rather than attacking their stupid statements and positions.
Anne Coulter just has the intestinal fortitude to SAY the things that others merely think. Or to think the things that others who are so brainwashed as to not to allow themselves to think don’t.
10:45 am
I’ll forgive your nauseating condenscension but only because it’s apparent you are too ignorant to have read the entire post.
For the last time…there are other ways to skewer these moonbat ladies than accusing them of “enjoying” the fact that their husbands are dead. What part of that don’t you understand?
I was trying to count syllables there and I think I used a couple of words that had more than two so I hope I made it sufficiently clear…
11:00 am
hey your part of the fifth column and a liberal infiltrater.ann coulters not about politics but about truth.yes it would be sweet of her to say drippy things about these women whose husbands died.lets face it not every person that suffers tragity is jesus christ ok.for instance when a person sues someone or complains about someone or something else making their life miserable i.e. bush ,the war, ann coulter there is usually something else wrong with these people. depresion,finances , being an idiot.for instance if i sued you for writing this article because you made my life miserable that would be like saying life would be a better place if you didnt give your opinion but thats not fair to you .is it.besides ive heard of ann coulter i aint never heard of you though.what are you out there doing for the truth you big baby.you liberals whine too much
11:11 am
Mr. Wolverine:
Congratulations on perhaps the most incoherent, ignorant, worst grammatical comment ever left on this site.
I’d give you a prize but I’m fresh out of dogsh*t.
11:20 am
Rick, as a liberal, I commend you for taking Coulter to task. I must point out, though, that many (most?) of your commenters are batshit insane.
11:25 am
hey rick you just got done saying coulter was insulting and insensitive to people. you are a very insulting person yourself.arnt you little man.and if you need dog*hit just puke up your breakfast.
11:43 am
Rick: Not being a widow myself, I can only guess at what goes through the minds of those who are. Having said that, I don’t think it’s inconceivable that a widow might very well enjoy aspects of her husband having died. She hooks up with someone who’s better in bed. She cashes the huge insurance check and ‘enjoys’ (yes, pun intended) a richer lifestyle than what she had before.
Or, just to hypothesize a bit, she finds herself adopted by those sharing a certain political viewpoint and ‘enjoys’ being on the Today Show, invited to all sorts of political events and being treated as a celebrity instead of the bland suburban housewife she once was.
This isn’t to say that such a person wouldn’t give everything back to have her husband alive… it is just that not every widow finds every aspect of the circumstances of her widowhood terribly distressing. And, by my definition, one enjoys what one doesn’t dislike.
So is it wrong for Coulter to have said out loud what a lot of people think?
12:05 pm
Ann Coulter can say and do as she sees fit. The uber left will hate it, the left will bray against it, forget the MSM, conservatives will wince; uber rights will hooray her; me, a traditionalist will say: go girl!!
You can’t always pick “good” targets,you gotta use what you have and the truth must also be said, whether we like it or not. Those who yell the loudest on our side need to visit KOS and/or read his comment section. What Ann is doing is sooooooo nice compared to that.
After all, I’ve watch tons of people fall in love with their 15 minutes of fame ala Sheehan. Once they’ve been bit they can’t give it up, no matter how disgusting they behave.
I may disagree with Ann but I will defend her right to say what she wants…she needs exactly the “freedom” the MSM and leftists demand from us but castigate us for.
12:15 pm
Rick,
Excellent post, unfortunately you are wrong about the major point of it. She does speak for conservatives, or rather for republicans who call themselves conservatives. As obvious as the points you made were look at the comments you got back. Ann Coulter is not a fringe republican.
12:22 pm
“Ted Rall makes Coulter look like a boy scout ”
Nice try Rick. But the fact is that Coulter and Rall are two peas on the opposite side of the same pod.
The relevant differences are:
Rall is a very minor figure on the left, whereas Coulter is a RW superstar. That tells you something about the RW. Y’all get together and feed her millions of dollars to do her number, whereas Rall labors on in obscurity.
And of course, it isnt just Coulter on the right. You got Savage, Ingrahma, Limbaugh, and jeez, just countless number of people who use this aggressive, over-the-top disgusting rhetoric as their shtick. And MANY of them make millions of bucks from this gig. Besides Rall, there really arent that many on the left who are anywhere near that level of slime, and the ones that are certainly dont get rewarded for it the way the right feeds and nurtures its crazys.
Even people like you, who seem to spend half their time trying to sound reasonable, routinely spend the other half of their time sounding like little Coulter-wannabes.
I appreciate that you are willing to take a stand against her truly revolting comments, but I do wonder if it doesnt come from a certain sense of embarrasment - seeing in her a pure version of your own dark side.
12:38 pm
Rick’s point is made very well by this thread. Annie is over-the-top entertainer, who’s sole purpose is to pander to the most extreme members of the Republican party. That segment of the party (90% of which the above respondents fit into) eat up anything and everything that Annie pens.
Mainstream America (Republcian or Democrat) is offended by the extreme comments made by Annie. It’s unfortunate that this type of behaviour is welcomed by members of either party. Annie’s not attacking a pol that is running for office, she’s criticizing a group of women who lost their spouses in one of this countries greatest travesties.
12:57 pm
Ann Coulter Book Reviews Up At Amazon
I somehow doubt that 180 people have already read Ann’s book (it just came out yesterday, for heaven’s sake!), yet there are already a number of libs going on the attack:
Pure tripe by the queen of hate. Why so bitter, Ann? Why so unfair and irrat…
2:06 pm
[...] Conservative bloggers denouncing her include Captain Ed, Allahpundit, Don Surber, Rick Moran, the Political Pit Bull, AJ Strata, etc.. [...]
2:09 pm
[...] Rick Moran calls Coulter a Conservative Lout. [...]
2:54 pm
Coulter Fall Out
3:06 pm
For decades the left has gotten away with diabolical tactics of singling out and exploiting individuals who they claim represent an entire cause - from Roe v. Wade, to Jimmy Carter, to Jesse Jackson, to the Dixie Chicks, Cindy Sheehan, Jane Fonda to the 911 Widows - and no coincidence that these individuals enjoy the spotlight, profit from the suffering of others.
I heard the quotes from the 911 widows and Ann Coulter is right. So was Zell Miller when he confronted Chris Matthews. There is sweet-sounding lies are the most seductive and damnable of all.
“I feel your pain.”
“It’s for the common good.”
“It’s for the children.”
Sorry, you can’t negotiate with scorpions.
Ann’s a straight-talker who dares say what should have been said many, many years ago in the public square as smooth-talkers seduced sleepy Americans out of their heritage, and revised our history to suit their personal agendas, and sell out America to America’s enemies around the world.
Crooks and Liars? That would be Joe Wilson.
Ann is right about him and his fellow traitors within, as well.
You can give lessons in decorum when the US troops risking their lives in Iraq and Afghanistan for the rest of the free world don’t have to PAY to get the truth out to their families back home, never mind to the cozy French politicians and BBC propagandists who shield their neighbors from reality as the barbarians rewrite current EU reality to push their sharia slavery.
3:18 pm
She’s as much your spokesman as you seem to think Michael Moore speaks for the left. Which is to say, not at all. But, then again, those of us who are center and left didn’t start this fingerpointing and utter tomfoolery that is dividing the nation. Those with an agenda and an axe to grind on the right began this war. Now that your generalisimma is blowing up in your faces, you’re backing away with all the haste of vampires running from the sunrise. She’s YOUR creation, so learn to deal with her. The rest of us have had to swat her off like a shitfly for years. Time for the right wing to take its whiny two-year-old with the stinky diapers someplace private and clean her up so the rest of us adults can live our lives in peace.
Do you wonder why those of us who you have excoriated as being un-American because we DARED to disagree about the war, because we recognized the utter ridiculousness of certain right-wing positions (on such things that are NO business of government or religions as marriage, child-raising, and medical decisions, and so many others) are now chortling with glee as Ms Cunning Stunt’s fervid and noxious spew is now backsplashing on you?
Shouldn’t be a mystery. Whenever you moralize, bloviate, and support such a boorish person, and use her to point your fingers at everybody who doesn’t live their lives the way you think we ought to, you point three fingers back at yourselves. And she’s just the middle finger of your overweening hatred of free, patriotic Americans who are supposed to be enjoying a free society, despite your side’s best efforts to enslave us all in thrall to some sort of feverish, ugly vision of America that never was.
Our country is bigger than you righties and your ugly spoor, thankfully. It’s about time to move back to the center of things and ENJOY building our country back into a great one. But first we have to remove the rightwing defilers of freedom and decency. Starting with Ms Cunning Stunts, and moving on down the line of Republican purveyors of greed and corruption.
Of course I expect to be censored here. That’s what you righties do when you don’t like something you hear from the reality-based community. It’s okay though… that’s your right to dig your head into the sand. Just remember what you leave sticking out when you do that…
3:22 pm
Coulter’s popular in large measure because she dares to say what the rest of the right believes but is too polite or too scared to say. She’s the id of conservatives. Bush better send her to Gitmo before the country sees the black heart of the modern conservative movement.
3:24 pm
Hey, Rick -
I’m basically a “liberal” or “libertarian” I suppose who somehow found my way to your blog but I do want to congratulate you. I believe there is too much tendancy on both the right and left to demonize other Americans simply because they vote Repub or Democrat. What is that? I’m a Registered dem but I’ve voted for decent repubs and I just don’t understand where all this seething animosity for each side is coming from. If we can’t agree to disagree on some issues and move on with more important things than our country really is lost.
Coulter really is a provacatuer with no real ideological arguments to make. Clearly 9/11 widows have and deserve some moral authority in this country - no matter whether they lean left or right - and perhaps it’s their authority that galls her most. She feels that she must skewer any sacred cows that might possibly contradict her senseless rants.
For other conservatives to say that this “steps over the line” for one states the obvious (Coulter helps no one with her rants except for the liberals she detests, who benefit when the far-right proves itself, as in this case, to be as crazy as bin Laden). But for another, it is nice to see that at least some conservatives have sense enough to know that this kind of nonesense hurts their own point of view as much as it does civil discourse. It makes those on the left think there are at least a few people out there who it would be worth having a discussion.
3:25 pm
“And the networks who use Coulter as some kind of “Spokesman†for the right should be told in no uncertain terms by as many of us as possible that she doesn’t speak for any conservatives that we want to be associated with.”
why did she get invited to the Conservative Political Action Committee conference, where she made her “ragheads talk tough…” remark to uprorious applause?
you may not support her any longer, and i congratulate you if you do, but you shouldnt pretend mainstream conservativism has rejected her, because they havent.
3:28 pm
Another Ann Coulter Controversy
Recapped. I agree with Rick Moran here: 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…
3:33 pm
I applaud both Rick, and the other conservatives who have their eyes open and are willing to look at the vitriol Coulter spews without partisan glasses. I cannot fathom how some people can defend her most recent actions, and frankly the fact that conservatives still support her makes me I’m ashamed to call myself one.
3:35 pm
Rick says: “For the last time…there are other ways to skewer these moonbat ladies than accusing them of “enjoying†the fact that their husbands are dead. What part of that don’t you understand?”
Rick, Coulter is CLEARLY saying that these widows are enjoying their “victimhood status” by abusing that to stifle debate. There is NO WAY you can arrive at your statement from the facts. Your gripe is simply with her rhetorical style - and what you say is MISLEADING.
This said, let me incidentally add that I am not a Coulter fan, and her comments about evolution and god reeks of ignorance of the methodology of science and the process of arriving at knowledge - so central for a functioning democracy.
3:37 pm
the 911 widows have legitimate concerns with how the government is being run. you’re deluded if you think no mistakes were made in the run up to 911, and you’re deluded if you think those mistakes arent still being made (the 911 commission’s recommendations still havent been implemented 5 years later). the only way to push for reform is to criticize those who are running bad policy. thats not partisanship. partisanship is when you defend someone no matter what they do.
3:48 pm
Well Rick, I think the feedback to your post pretty much sums up the ‘right.’
I’d like to give credibility to those on the right who say that their side doesn’t rely on espousing hate, but you post about keeping a civil discourse and your respondents crap all over you and praise the hate speech.
I’d like to give credibility to those on the right who say that their side uses logical arguments to come to their conclusions, but you post that Coulter’s arguments are illogical and the conclusions can instead be reached by using logic and your respondents crap all over your argument in praise of the illogical Coulter ones.
I’d like to give credibility to those on the right who say that their side ‘takes their leaders to task,’ but you post about a mistake by one of your leaders (i.e. Coulter) and your respondents get visibly upset at in their vehement support of her clearly indefensible position.
Whenever you want to be on the defensible, logical, responsible side, you just come on over buddy. We accept all kinds regardless of sex/race/orientation/religion - just as long as they can think.
Because unlike you guys, when one on our side makes a good point, no matter how different from our belief it may be, we will take it into consideration and judge it based on merit, not on what the talking point of the hour is
3:49 pm
Hello everyone! This is my first time visiting this blog, and I have to say I feel sick to my stomach. I am an old school conservative and all I see here are partisans. Lefty, righty if you think in these terms you are helping to destroy our country. The future of the U.S.A. is not a sport and should not be treated as such.
3:51 pm
Rick, this false equivalence thing is lame. When did Dean, or Kennedy, Pelosi, or Durbin, say anything as hate-filled as Coulter? Durbin, I surmise, got on your list because of that one time he said that torturing people in prisons with no access to lawyers and no charges brought was reminiscent of Nazi Germany. I’m darned if I see why it’s offensive to say that torture and dungeons are not American traditions. And Durbin was doing his job as a Senator — telling the public why he objected and they should object to policies he disagreed with. Coulter, in contrast, insults grieving widows so she can sell books.
And it’s not as though this is a one-off for Coulter (unlike that one expression of sheer disgust and horror by Durbin). Crack open her last 3 best-sellers. You’re only now noticing that Coulter is beyond the pale? How exactly did you miss it when she called all liberals, in all seriousness, “Traitors!”? I mean, it was only the title of her book, only in bookstore windows across America. She specifically indicted, by name, folk singers, politicians, and many others who have spent their lives trying to help people. Ex-military, lives in public service, whatever, they disagreed with Coulter, so they should be executed. An entire book of this crap. So tell me, what has Pelosi (or Kennedy, or Dean) said that compares to a whole book of hatespew? Not things you disagree with, things that demonize her enemies and call for their death? When?
And by the way, let’s not pretend Coulter’s alone. Not only is she joined in these sorts of obscene, vicious, lying rants by Limbaugh, Hannity, and others, but this comment thread shows that she has countless devotees among your fellow conservatives, including many of your readers. So many, that her books keep selling like hotcakes. So if you have finally noticed that Coulter might just be a tad uncivil, then maybe you need to take a good, hard look in the mirror and ask why you two share so many fans. Instead of consoling yourself with the false reflection that the other side does it too.
3:58 pm
“she’s a relentless researcher”
I am conservative but not a supporter and not blind - that has to be the most rediculous statement ever.
4:01 pm
Just linked to your site from C&L.
Yes, I am liberal, and I rarely pay attention to Coulter, although she always pisses me off whenever she opens her mouth. In the many years I have heard her crap, I have never, ever sent her an email…..she doesn’t deserve the recognition….until yesterday, after I saw her on the Today show. That was just too much, over the top.
Thanks for your input, Rick. I respect people who disagree with me, unless they use the type of rhetoric Coulter does.
Besides, I’m glad I heard a word I haven’t heard in a long time….”lout!” I’m trying to build up my vocabulary of words to use when confronting nut cases like Coulter, without using the standard 4 letter words!
Yes, Ann Coulter is indeed a “conservative lout!”
4:02 pm
Judging from the comments here, I think the collective sum of IQ’s hovers around a Tallahassee summer day.
How come you folks don’t fault all those 9/11 cheerleaders when they stump for the failed Bush policies?
Coulter and the rest of the “hate America” crowd so admired here only exemplify the ignorance prevalent in the red states. No wonder the Bush polls are so low.
4:10 pm
try and name one time when those dem. figures used language as abrasive and offensive as coulter. the reason no one on the left blogs ever says anything about the dem. leaders is that they never say anything like the filth coulter spews.
4:23 pm
For the record, Zel Miller wasn’t right when he attacked Chris Matthews, he misheard the question. I find it laughable that one would compare Ann’s “rightness” to an incident, a filmed incident, that was clearly and unquestionably wrong.
4:25 pm
“When was the last time you saw one of Ted Kennedy’s incoherent rants brought to task by Kos kids or readers over at DU? Or Pelosi? Or Dean? Or Durbin?
I think I hear crickets chirping…”
Rick, just out of curiosity, when was the last time Kennedy, in one of his “incoherent rants,” called for the forced conversion of the followers of an orthodox religion, or complained about their hygiene, or stated routinely that conservatives in this country are traitors, or that a Supreme Court justice should be assassinated? Yeah, I think I hear those crickets chirping as well…
4:32 pm
Confederate Yankee takes Coulter’s message – that grief does not bestow absolute moral authority – without mentioning her brutalization of the widows.
Uh, yes he did. He printed the paragraph that Lauer read. And his point was well-made? The “Doctrine of Infallibility?” Who made that up? Those women get to speak just like you or I or Coulter. They never said nobody else can’t speak. And the cool new hip and smart sounding-to-some “Doctrine of Infallibility,” well, it honestly seems more fitting to a statment like “You’re either for us, or against us,” doesn’t it?
And SSheil didn’t put it nicely, IMO, she or he put it strawman-ly. Please show me one example of Ted Kennedy or Nancy Pelosi or Howard Dean or Dick Durbin saying something close to the odiousness of this. Even close. And that’s a hallmark of Conservatives? I missed the taking to task of Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, Bill O’Reilly, Sean Hannity, Tom DeLay, Inhofe (just yesterday) etc., etc. etc.
Please attend your own crickets. That simply doesn’t stand.
4:38 pm
“When was the last time you saw one of Ted Kennedy’s incoherent rants brought to task by Kos kids or readers over at DU? Or Pelosi? Or Dean? Or Durbin?
I think I hear crickets chirping…â€
See, it’s reality-challenged idiocies like the above that make me think conservatives really do have a maximum IQ. Here’s the point: liberals do not call for their opponents’ death; conservatives do. It is not true that conservatives are all evil, but it is true that nearly all evil people are conservative.
4:38 pm
Ann Coulter has a valid point?! How did the widows silence anyone? Coulter published her attack on them in her book and then went on the TOday Show and Tucker Carlson attacking teh widows. How was she sielnced? Since when did Cindy Sheehan silence anyone? this is more right-wing nutia is in which hte right wing aways attacks those it disagrees with by claiming –boo-hoo–that the right wings are the victims. how runs Faux News? CNN? The right-wing runs the media, as Coulter herself as admitted on Faux News (”We have hte media. We have hte media.”). Yet all you supporters of Coulter can say is that she has a valid point about being a victim of women whose husbands were killed by terrorists. Enjoy your hatred of American victims of terrorism who dare speak up about the Bush terrifing incompetence and the numerous ways he has made us less secure after 9/11.
4:59 pm
Dejah Thoris:
Tars Tarkas is out today so I’ll answer your screed…
Can’t say much about your knowledge of history - pretty damn selective if you ask me.
And why is the default position of people who come here and insult me that I will automatically delete their comment?
You look pretty idiotic now, don’t you? Or at least more idiotic than you did by simply mouthing a bunch of idiocies about the right.
5:04 pm
Lefty here. I was going to congratulate you because you’re the first conservative I’ve seen who disavows Coulter. And you’re correct that here in the blue states, we often fail to distance ourselves from the crazier comments by Michael Moore or Hillary Clinton. The right has no monopoly on hate speech.
What the right has is a monopoly on POWER. And when people in power allow bigots and lunatics to speak on their behalf, without denouncing them, that’s irresponsible at best. At worst it’s speaking through a proxy.
5:11 pm
the lady is dead inside i saw flies buzzing around her on the today show
5:16 pm
I’m a conservative guy and I am sickened by comments like that. To slander widows of our nation’s largest catastrophe because they don’t have the same political views as you is sick. I don’t care if I believe in some of her views or not, she is a hatemonger. She is no different than the professor at Colorado, Louis Farrakhan, or anyone else who needs to resort to hate filled speeches to get their point across.
She’ll sell books though and make a lot in public speaking appearances now. This isn’t an issue of politics to me, it’s an issue of class. She has no class, and I personally would want nothing to do with someone who needs to insult widows to get on TV.
5:19 pm
Ann Coulter fills the necessary position of the “Court Jester” of the Right. Can you imagine what you would be writing if she were not? Considering the fact that she is one of a handful on this side of the aisle, and that the other side has thousands, she’s to be credited for holding her own. Does she occasionally hit the wrong key and sometimes make us wince? Yes. But consider what life would be without her. Are you right? Yes! But considering who and what she’s up against, much should be forgiven. Right?
5:20 pm
Good for you! As a Liberal, I don’t hold back from criticizing out of bounds statements on the left (Al Sharpton comes to mind) and it will take sane people both on the right and the left to bring civility back into our political discourse.
I don’t think Coulter’s rhetoric is a matter of “right” or “left” as many conservative Christians and Jews are likely to be terribly offended by the way she characterizes Christianity, e.g., in the excerpt of the books 1st chapter she goes on and on about “what” Christianity “is” yet never once mentions Jesus or any scriptural justification for some of her ideas. Also, her “view” that Jews are some kind of honorary Christian is quite problematic.
Be that as it may - everyone is entitled to an opinion, and I will defend that till my last breathe, but downrigh cruelty is deserves to be criticized. It is simply beyond the pale to claim widows, however much you may dislike their politics, are “enjoying” the loss of their husbands and then (!!!) to insinuate that perhaps their husbands would have divorced them if they had lived is just beyond the bounds of human decency. It would be better if she simply addressed the substance of what they believe. Also, in American culture, many many people have been moved to become politically active in the wake of personal tragedy or suffering.
My cousin is a Republican 9/11 widow. She has a lot of sympathy for the work of the Jersey Girls … though she does not agree with all their positions. She is outraged. Decent people do not mock the deaths of innocents. Period.
BTW - Tucker Carlson really called her on her crap … she just kept at it and by the end of the show he was just shaking his head. As I am sure much of the viewing audience was.
5:26 pm
Rick, although I disagree, I understand your position, but here’s what I’m incredulous about: You actually used the term “hate speech” in seriousness. Now, dude, that’s just wack.
Language, definitely a virus.
5:41 pm
It seems that the vast majority of you are either unwilling or unable to engage with anyone with whom you disagree on the level of substance rather than personal attack. Seriously, look at all of your commentary above, as well as Coulter’s, and you will find that that is all that is there. It’s very obvious that this strategy (ad hominem attack), while not particularly admirable, works to influence a very large portion of the population. Given this, it should not be a surprise when your opponents go to great lengths to attempt to innoculate their message (on any given issue) from such non sequitor distracting attacks by attempting to select spokespersons on whom such attacks are more likely to reflect poorly in the public’s eye.
In other words, if you folks actually had a single debating strategy other than ad hominem attack then you would have no trouble at all arguing with widows, war veterans or grieving mothers.
5:47 pm
So sardy…failed to add:
Ms. C may be a “Court Jester” but this lady’s no fool. Foolish or stupid “Jesters” didn’t last long in most courts. And as for her being a “Lout”, the lady may act that way sometimes but I think that’s usually a “put on” for the benefit of people like Matt “the Village Idiot” Lauer.
5:55 pm
Hello. I’m a liberal.
I’m wondering, do many conservative really think liberals are godless?
We concentrate on our divisions so much, I wonder if you think we have any values in common?
5:55 pm
I’m sick and tired of those whiney moonbats doing their Dan Rather on Ann Coulter. All liberals are traitors. Joe McCarthy was good. I really loved when Ann suggested we should assassinate Jimmy Carter. And wasn’t she right on when asking, “Where is the Aryan Brotherhood when you need them.” She was the only one who had the guts to say that Pat Tillman couldn’t have been a liberal and his family couldn’t possibly be angry about what happened to him. She’s been right from the beginning on Iraq. God is on our side and Ann is His Messenger. And to those who say she’s just Paris Hilton with a codpiece and an Adam’s Apple, I say you can’t stand being around a powerful and beautiful woman. Her and Michelle Malkin–man, what babes. And I hope she goes right on tweaking those Liberals; what we need is an army of Ann Coulters. If we had one, our troops would be winning over in Iraq and everyone here would be in church worshipping the Soldier on the Cross. A Dick Cheney twenty-one gun salute to Miss Ann.
6:02 pm
Did Ann Coulter disregard any of the advice in the Beatitudes in her new book about how godless I am because i’m a liberal? Or in her TV interviews? I pray she resolves her spiritual conflicts, but i shutter to think anyone would hear her and say she is following Jesus’s path.
6:06 pm
Ooops, Ann
In my blackest of black hearts, I have had thoughts along these lines regarding some of the 9/11 widows:“These broads are millionaires, lionized on TV and in articles about them, reveling in their status as celebrities and stalked by griefparrazies….
6:12 pm
Well said. And yet, I’m saddened by the fact that as I read this post, I see a huge skyscraper ad for her book on your blog. I understand the ads are served from a remote service, but I hope you’ll put the money where your sentiments are and ask the ad provider to block Coulter ads from your site.
6:16 pm
Good to hear you’re not fond of Coulter’s recent statements.
Perhaps you should take that huge right hand “ANN COULTER GET MY BOOK FREE” ad off your website, then.
6:22 pm
What seems so clear to me is that when liberals speak or write just as Ann Coulter did/does, we conservatives become upset and point out their nastiness. However, since it is Ann Coulter saying this conservatives are lauding her. Substituting rancor for intelligent debate is bad no matter which side does it. For those of you who support what she has done ask yourself if you would be so agreeable if one of these “Jersey Girls” mounted an attack against Lisa Beamer for profiting from her husband’s death and enjoying the bounty and attention that came from her book.
6:30 pm
Quoth # 13:
“Sometimes it takes hyperbole and shock to get those who normally dont respond to reason to begin on their path….”
I’m sorry, was that in reference to Ann Coulter or Osama bin Laden?
It’s funny… I’m a lifelong lefty and no one I know had ever even heard of Ward Churchill, and once he was exposed nobody defended him, and you never hear of him now. Yet Cruella Coulter not only has a permanent platform on Fox News, she also evidently has her own fan club on the Right, for whom there is no depth too low to stoop in the cause of smearing and demonizing liberals.
She’s a fine one to talk about the widows “enjoying their husbands’ deaths.” 9/11 was probably the happiest day of Coulter’s life. A bunch of New York liberals, minorities, and Clinton-voters died. Exactly what she always wanted–remember “if only Tim McVeigh had bombed New York”? Remember “if you must talk to a liberal, do it with a baseball bat”? Why wouldn’t she cheer on 9/11? What, you actually think she’s human? She’s no better than Fred Phelps.
6:53 pm
I think this post (and several others relating to the same topic) is illustrative of what I see is generally the largest difference between blogs on the right and left. As with Rick’s blog, most blogs on the right are not shy of taking our leaders…
So she IS one of your leaders.
Heh. Indeedy.
Nonetheless, I congratulate the poster, and Rick for picking up on it.
Funniest bit of subversive satire in ages.
Heh.
6:56 pm
What is very interesting to me is that — on liberal blogs — I often read exactly the same kind of remark that SSheil posted: just switch “right” and “left” in her post and there you have it: the message is “we’re fair-minded but they’re not.”
It makes me wonder if those of us on different political sides are simply patting our backs, or if we simply avoid the good, thoughtful blogs on the other side.
7:09 pm
The perhaps crazy thing here is that it has generally seemed to me, as someone who’s more left-of-center, that *liberals* have been a lot more willing to be critical of their own than conservatives. You cite Daily Kos and DU; I’d cite RedState and LGF. (I suspect either of us, if we dug, could find examples of self-criticism on either site, really, too, but the big-name group political blogs tend to by and large be echo chambers, I think.) Yet I recall many criticisms from the left of Clinton, for instance, and you’ll find many Democrats out there currently who aren’t exactly thrilled at the prospect of Hillary in 2008. (And many wondering why the hell we can’t come up with somebody else, then. But I digress.)
I’ve come to suspect that perhaps *both* sides are more self-critical on the whole than we’re willing to give one another credit for most of the time, because it tends to be the loudest people who attract the most attention from outside the circle. As squishy huggy feely stereotypically liberal as the idea may be, perhaps if both parties were a little more willing to both admit their own problems and to see the virtues in the other side’s arguments, there’d be a lot less unnecessary vitriol out there. And personally, I would not complain overly much if Ann Coulter and Ted Rall were both pickled and shipped to Antarctica.
7:23 pm
Of all the righties, lefties and in betweens my favorite for today,
“you had a Dixie Chicks moment”.
I hope you put in for overtime today.
Cheers!
7:25 pm
Thanks for the link, Rick.
I won’t speak for other lefty blogs, but I have never had a problem speaking out against over-the-top lefties when I feel they’ve gone too far, and if I’ve made a mistake or linked to a story that turned out to be wrong (vis. the Truthout Rove-indictment story), I’ve said so and atoned for it. If your friends think that we don’t do it, they need to read more blogs on our side of the fence. After all, we’re the party that taught you guys all about internal divisiveness.
7:29 pm
To the defenders of AC:
If 9/11 widows organized in SUPPORT of the war and campaigned for Bush, would (M)Ann say they were “enjoying” their widowhood? Of course not. This vile trash is spewed not because they spoke out, or were “untouchable” in regards to criticism (although it hasn’t stop herm…ah…her from doing it, right?) but because they are on the other side politically.
So you people would sell out your own decency to aid some crass political posturing. Pathetic is a truly lacking word for that.
7:30 pm
There are ways to say things. If I were just to say whatever crossed my mind without any consideration or respect for the other party, then the debate descends into these graceless diatribes which unfortunately dominate our current political discourse.
Her banter is the poster child for why nothing politically significant gets accomplished. I can easily say hurtful things about people but I choose not to, even with people I don’t agree with. I guess it’s part of growing up.
What is really unfortunate is that the media supplies microphones to these folks.
7:42 pm
Coulter simply smiled when Tucker Carlson basically said that this controversy was good for sales, and then noted her book was #3 on the Amazon.com list.
So much for taking a political stance.
Have you ever observed passive/aggressives? They smile and willfully remain silent when they flagrantly set a passionate response in motion. There is only one way to counter passive aggressives: ignore them. Coulter’s comments in regard to the 9-11 widows deserve nothing more.
BTW: freedom of speech is our fundamental right, and Coulter has a right to her opinions. I prefer taking the high road and engaging in a legitimate, thought-provoking dialogue.
My take on this? Coulter is simply selling books and promoting herself at the expense of the widows.
7:48 pm
i’m pretty far left, although i do think it’s best for everyone to govern from the center. i recognize that it’s unfair to govern from the extremes.
that said, i don’t have any problems with coulter’s rudeness. i just think her characterizations of the evilness of the left and the saintliness of the right is so distorted as to be almost completely in opposition to reality.
i like rudeness. it can be an artform.
http://rudepundit.blogspot.com
the rude pundit makes coulter sound like mr. rogers and behind all the scatological references, are well crafted arguments and insight.
8:10 pm
After reading the comments posted in regards to Mr. Moran’s criticism of Ms. Coulter, I was initially struck by the particularly poor writing skills evinced by so many of those posting. I imagined that perhaps I was simply picking nits, obsessed with spelling mistakes. However, the problem (implying only one is an act of charity on my part) doesn’t seem to be simply a question of hastily composed responses that would justify some measure of sloppiness. No, instead there are any number of basic grammatical and syntax errors that so hound the writers that attempting to fully divine what it is that they hope to convey becomes almost impossible. Coming to terms with why it is that Ms. Coulter was or was not correct to imply that 9/11 widows who do not support w. deserve ill will seems to have drained the mental abilities of those in question. Just as presidentin’ is “hard work,” so is the act of writing for the purpose of persuasion or argument. Such efforts usually succeed when undertaken in a fashion that is both clear and coherent. In contrast, they usually fail when commandeered by those on the fringes.
All things considered, I found the comments quaint: a quasi-remedial writing seminar for angry people who feel homosexuals and Mexicans are — in part — responsible for our nation’s current failure to cure Iraq. As for Ms. Coulter, she is an awful bitch deserving of all the calumny and vicious hatred that one could manage to mete out.
8:35 pm
The Coulter Controversy
Ann Coulter’s gimmick is that she’s basically a right-wing version of a left-wing pundit, except she usually doesn’t cross the line. I take that back: she usually doesn’t do a Mike Powell-esque long jump over the line.
…
8:37 pm
I think Ann Coulter is the perfect spokesperson for the new Republican Party. The Party that wants all the credit and none of the blame. Just like their leader, The Decider, he wants all of the credit and none of the blame. You see he is fighting the war on terror….Even though the worst terrorist attack in the nation happened on his watch. And since then the US was attacked by the anthrax terrorist who killed 5 Americans and sickened 22…..But as long as you listen to George, he’ll say we haven’t been attacked..See all the glory, non of the blame.
Take an honest look at Ann.
Ann is a 40 something, childless and unmarried woman who is a lawyer. Why don’t conservatives attack her for not fulfilling her womanly obligations according to God’s law? Is there something wrong with her? Why is she so angry at the widows? Perhaps it is merely envy at the fact that they were married and had families and Ann is jealous because she is single and childless and obviously a very sad and angry human. Come on, I am just engaging in some Coulteresque speculation on her mind…just as she sees fit to analyze the widows.
The Republican Party is becoming a sad caricature at the hands of Coulter and her like minded narrow minded friendly fascists who believe that to be an American one must be a Christian, a Republican and a supporter of George W. Bush…..Such a narrow construct leaves the true America ideal, as pushed by Coulter, to be that 29% to 33% percent of those who still trust and believe George W. Bush is an honest man and a great leader.
So enjoy your Rush Limbaughs and Ann Coulters and Reverend Pat Robertsons and Reverend Fred Phelps. They are your America.
-GSD
8:43 pm
I am also hearkening back to the hearings for Judge Alito. Remember the ourtrage and the breastbeating on the right at how much Mrs. Alito suffered at the hands of the Democratic Senators who were questioning Sam Alito.
Oh, yeah, right. I forgot, Republicans are only outraged when someone they like is insulted or attacked.
-GSD
9:16 pm
When you have 3000 people killed in related activity, you get a lot of widows and widowers. Out of this population there is a real mixture, so some will probably match up to Ann Coulter characterization, but a larger fraction probably will not.
From 9/11 on, we have had some that thought their $1,000,000.00+ pay outs by the government were too small and demanded more, much to the distraction of people of empathy across the nation.
The 9/11 families are much like the British royal family .. they didn’t ask to be put into their position and you want to like them, but they keep finding ways to push your nose in the dirt, so a little blow back should be expected.
9:22 pm
it’s not freedom of speech - it’s you taking money to promote Ann Coulter’s hate speech - it’s you being part of a network that would actually sell such an ad.
How do you sleep??!!
9:23 pm
I must say that as a conservative I am truly disturbed at miss coulters “opinions”.Any point she may have is forever lost in her approach in sharing it.In politics there is a higher ground (though rarely used)if we are truly in touch with main stream america as we contend to be so I wanna know since when the ideal time to insult those who cannot defend not only themselves, but also there families.
9:23 pm
[...] After seeing the attacks on Ann Coulter from The Anchoress, Captain Ed, Right Wing Nut House and other blogs, I have come to realize that the political blogosphere has finally become as trite and mundane once you get above the “B-listers” as the political publishers out there. It was inevitable, but I didn’t expect it to devolve into such a killjoy this quickly. [...]
9:29 pm
Tom W:
How do you sleep??!!
Very well thank you…especially after reading your meaningless, insufferable drivel. Reading ignorant, self important comments like yours acts just like a sedative.
9:43 pm
Since the 9/11 widows are accepting money for some of their appearances then you can say that they are “enjoying” their status as widows.
9:50 pm
Reverend Fred Phelps - is a democrat. He even campaigned for Gore.
Sorry to burst your fantasy.
9:55 pm
This Blog: “Ann Coulter is an outrageous fringe extremist who doesn’t speak for the right and shouldn’t be given a platform to spew her hateful rhetoric.
Advertisement right next to This Blog: BUY ANN COULTER’S NEW BOOK “GODLESS: THE CHURCH OF LIBERALISM”! CLICK HERE TO GET YOUR’S FREE!
This Blog: Some idiotic liberals also think we’re only now distancing ourselves from Coulter. Ho ho ho! We’ve been distancing ourselves from her for a long time, I don’t know what those crazy lefties are talking about when they say we haven’t properly distanced ourselves from her.
Irony: I think you should look three inches to the right of your screen.
10:02 pm
In her book she states “the 9/11 families marinate in their grief while becoming millionaires”…
Coulter has used and exploited 9/11 to FUND HERSELF from the moment the towers’ concrete turned to dust.
Her claims yesterday stating that no one is allowed to respond to “them” and yet she has NOT STOPPED responding to any thing and everything as long as there’s a dime to be made.
When someone TRIES to respond to Ann Coulter, the only get a littany of vulgarity as HER response.
She allows NO debate and NO opinion other than her own.
10:04 pm
Thank you for saying this RightWingNuthouse. I’m a lib and didn’t even know about your site but I think it’s crucial that voices of reason refute such disgusting comments coming from a portion of the political arena. Admittedly I probably wouldn’t agree with much of your politics, but still, credit to you for taking an ethical stand against dialogue that just is not defensible in any way shape, or form. Your stand should be recognized across party lines and by all who really want the best for Americans. Adam’s Apple should be shunned by everyone.
10:25 pm
Coulter war against conservative values?
Via Pajamas Media, James Joyner has what I guess should be called an Ann Coulter roundup, and Ann doesn’t seem to have too many friends in the right-of-center blogosphere. Whether it’s just her shtick or a form of trolling, conservatives…
10:49 pm
As long as she has no real facts, except accusations on baseless grounds, she is not worth listening to. Remember Iraq and the mad rush to invase based on false accusations and assumptions.
Btw, I voted Republican in the last election. Not sure if it means anything anymore.
10:50 pm
May all your fat, stupid, lazy, pot-smoking, IEP-dragging children burn in Holy Hell on national TV in front of a cheering nation.
I’ll bring the popcorn!
And Ann will bring… no one. She lives alone. And will die that way.
10:50 pm
“The answer is, yes I could request that the ad [for Coulter's book] be taken off this site. But since I don’t believe in stifling debate (witness the insulting, degrading, comments from most of you directed towards me below), I will not make that request. Such freedom of speech (and the freedom to abuse that right) used to be self evident in America. Nowadays, if you disagree with something written, many feel no compunction whatsoever about agitating for the offending literature to be banned.”
Come on. By that logic, you ought to be seeking out ads for, say, the next Michael Moore film. There is a rather self-evident difference between attempting to stifle a speaker’s rights and simply choosing not to support them financially. For example, I think Coulter is a soulless shill whose histrionics dilute any value that her arguments might have. I’m not going to buy any book she produces, but I’m perfectly fine with her being allowed to publish her vitriolic filth. Am I somehow oppressing her? Am I somehow required to encourage all of my friends and family to send her money before I can say that she’s out of line? Seriously, how hard must I advocate for her before I can criticize her? How much must I profit off her bile before I can condemn it?
This is just a completely disingenuous argument. If you still support her, just be honest about it.
11:05 pm
How exciting for some here to be represented by such crippled and failed approaches to…dialogue? Not really; rather, to simple - and simpletonic - rant.
Democracy doesn’t just suffer when persons like Coulter are ascendant; democracy’s elsewhere when that’s the case. Her attack on women who became widows in 9/11 can never tell us as much about such widows as it does about Coulter.
Enjoy.
11:32 pm
“The answer is, yes I could request that the ad [for Coulter’s book] be taken off this site. But since I don’t believe in stifling debate (witness the insulting, degrading, comments from most of you directed towards me below), I will not make that request. Such freedom of speech (and the freedom to abuse that right) used to be self evident in America. Nowadays, if you disagree with something written, many feel no compunction whatsoever about agitating for the offending literature to be banned.â€
Did he actually say that? How does not agreeing to run HUGE GIGANTIC banner advertisements for a person you’ve JUST stated doesn’t deserve a platform constitute censorship? It’s your site, you get to choose who you endorse and who you don’t. You’re telling me if NAMBLA wanted to advertise at your site you would be forced to run banners for them because to refuse would be to stifle the debate?
When “crazy lefties” accuse the right-wing of not distancing themselves from Coulter, this is precisely what they’re talking about. She lobbies for conservatives and caters to a conservative constituency. Conservative radio and TV stations book her over and over again and treat her as an ally. Right wing blogs from time to time disagree with the most repulsive of her comments, but link to her syndicated articles and promote her books, including this site.
Admit it. The right-wing is associated with Coulter, and more than willing to overlook her insanity for the simple reason that she’s useful to you and your cause sometimes. And when she’s not, when her rhetoric gets so hot, or racist, or inflamatory, or hateful that it ceases to become useful to you, you write a few paragraphs about how she doesn’t represent conservatives and then run banner advertisements for her book right next to that same post.
11:54 pm
These attacks on Coulter are a bunch of crap!
Standing on their husbands graves to raise themselves up high enough to have their voices heard and then they agitate for the defeat
11:54 pm
Reading some of these comments may very well have disturbed me more than Coulter’s actual words. I can’t decide what makes me want to vomit more, Coulter’s assertion that the deceased husbands may very well have wanted to divorce their wives (how can we be sure? she wonders)or the readers on this site who have exhausted themselves trying, by mostly pathetic means, to defend this sentiment.
You people are sick. This is not a partisan issue. Where is the patriotism in eviscerating fellow American whose politics you disagree with? Furthermore, for anyone who is really following this, her inspiration for writing this book(so she tells her friends at Fox) comes from her desire to pursue truth as per her deep Christian faith. Nice try. Hey Ann, Jesus doesn’t want your help.
12:50 am
Anyone who can make excuses for fascism, embraces Joe McCarthy, and intentionally attacks people who have lost their spouses in a most horrible attack is plainly unhealthy. Discourse is great, but this is not discourse. May she have the good sense to have a deathbed confession that she knew she played to the worst of America, a la master manipulator/spin meister Lee Atwater. Then there were the skills of Segretti ,et al. Back in the day when Republicans realized they were outnumbered in the general voting population, bad behavior was utilized to dispirit the “other side” so as to not go out and vote. Same thing today; but it’s shocking to see how bad behavior is accepted as a tactic and rationalized. What it is, is bad boorish behavior.
1:02 am
[...] If you want to argue that no one deserves such treatment, okay, I’m onboard with that. I’d love to have a more civil discourse on any number of issues. But, like Ann, I’m pretty sick of playing this game by their rules. For goodness sake, the people who are claiming to be outraged about this are the same folks whose political existence can be summed up by the appelation Chimpy McHitlerburton. So I find some of the outrage on the right a little confused. For instance, Rick Moran at Right Wing Nuthouse proves Ann’s point by going apoplectic over the affront to the Jersey Girls honor. After 1000 words about how wrong it is to critique the Jersey Girls he concludes by calling Ann “a shallow, bitter, bitch of a woman.” How in the world is this statement raising the level of discourse? Ann should apologize? Why don’t you apologize first, Rick, and show us how it’s done. [...]
2:02 am
A post above made a very salient point. What good does any conservative, or liberal for that matter, do for their cause if their argument, or the style of their argument, doesn’t change the mind of anyone, but rather only plays to those who agree with you anyhow. How has Coulter served the conservative cause by using such vile, disgusting, classless, insulting language? Obviously, the answer is the only thing she has served to increase, and I would argue the only thing she cares about, is increasing the size of her bank account. She does harm to the conservative cause by being so over the top, and is playing those conservative saps who gleefully buy her books like the fools they are.
2:55 am
Conservative cause? In what way has the conservative cause improved conditions in America for the past 6 years when the Conservatives are in power? Food for thought.
I only see many people exploiting this cause for monetary gain, publicity and public sympathy and then blame others for what they are doing. And I see few people actually call them out for it. Sad, isn’t it?
3:20 am
tough words - taken out of context. look we have all watched folks like cindy sheehan parade in front of the camera’s. smiling like an imbecile while in the company of some of the mose noxious people on the planet. somewhere in the thinking part of your brain don’t you suspect that she is using/and allowing herself to be used by msm and interest groups in order to attain “meaning” in her life as well as a larger bank account or at least expense account. what coulter was saying, and i agree one might be offended by how she says it, is that the left (in collusion with the media) uses victimhood to silence debate. harken back to Mauree “aging schoolgirl” Dowd’s declaration that no one could question the moral authority of someone like a Cindy Sheehan. Yes we can. Just like we can point out that the “jersey girls” have no standing when it comes to analysis on counter-terrorism strategies. Being related to someone who died does not give you expertise of authority to speak on the matter. My Grandfather died in world war 2 - that doesn’t give my father any standing to comment on military strategy.
3:52 am
I am confused why so many of my progressive liberal friends are so up in arms about Coulter’s remarks, even trotting out the old Adam’s Apple insult (I don’t see her Adam’s Apple), but were silent when Ward Churchill called every single person who died on 9-11 “little Eichmanns.”
It’s hypocrisy like this that makes us progressives look bad and why the public continues to reject us.
3:59 am
Ann Coulter Tackles the Menace of Widows and Grieving Mothers
In an appearance on the Today Show, promoting her autobiography, Godless, Ann Coulter courageously tackled the frightening menace of widows and grieving mothers.
4:09 am
Rick,
Congratulations on this entry. Not so much for the ideas you expressed, but for the fascinating responses your post has engendered. I’ve been quite engaged reading through them all.
But then that is the point, isn’t it? It’s all about entertainment. Whether Ann Coulter fans come to this blog and attempt to justify their admiration for their hero or not, many find her entertaining for precisely the reasons you found to condemn her. Sure, Ann says some pretty bizarre things that are mostly indefensible. But that’s why she’s so fun to watch. That’s how show biz works. There’s always somebody somewhere willing to do just about anything for a few bucks. Need someone to take off their clothes and insert degrading objects into their orifices and you have a line of wannabe porn stars stretching out forever. Need someone to fling horrible lies about people they have never met and you have hordes of desperate commentators willing to prostitute their dignity to fulfill that demand.
Lets not kid ourselves here folks. I don’t watch porn to learn about human anatomy and I don’t watch Ann Coulter to engage in political discourse. I’m cheap and easily entertained. My only interest is that people keep this dialogue going. The responses posted here are kind of like the “money shot†of the whole incident. Very satisfying, very satisfying indeed.
4:34 am
>>>Godfrey Daniel Said:
9:27 pm
Rick, been reading you for a while and love your writing. I have a question I’ve thought of asking that I’ll ask now: what the heck happened to your brother?
4:41 am
Depends on which of the six of us you mean, Godfrey. Terry is of course visible on “Nightline” most nights, and Greg is fighting the good journalistic fight down in San Diego; John and Larry are humanizing the face of American capitalism in different ways, and Jay is ruminating mysteriously on the fate of the world.
I read Rick nearly every day, but as a high school teacher and department chair by day and a community college instructor by night, life gets pretty raggedy-andy this time of year and I haven’t had the time to attend to my own blog, much less Rick’s. He takes quite good care of himself around here and doesn’t need any help from me - which in the case of this Coulter thing I would happily provide.
I am always impressed by the range of his readership, both in terms of political convictions one the one hand and on variations in the degree of intelligence/literacy and so on on the other.
I’ll bet he laughed at the “Dixie Cicks” comment, which was clever enough but inaccurate. The Chicks (as we have been discussing over on some of the music boards) ambushed their audience with a self-serving and uncalled for comment to people who had paid to hear some down-home music and not some crass pseudo-politics from the under-informed.
But you come knocking at the Nuthouse door and you ought to know that what you will get is first-rate commentary that will not be fettered to anyone else’s labels or preconceptions. Caveat emptor. It’s a Moran kind of thing - and in case anyone didn’t know, I am Rick’s classically liberal older brother….
…who believes by the way, that you right wingers had in Coulter’s comment your very own “Ward Chruchill moment.”
http://vividair.blogspot.com/
5:07 am
[...] Oh, and at least one conservative blogger agrees. [...]
5:11 am
….and BTW, Rick, a mild correction: I don’t hate Bush. I actively despise most of his policies, but I have as much grudging repect for his bulldog single-mindedness as I do disdain for the pusillanimous spinelessness (in their flight from the core values of the Democrat tradition) of so-called and mistermed “liberals” like Hilary and Kerry…
…whom I do in fact despise.
6:05 am
[Coulter is]“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.”
Hi Rick,
I agree whole heartedly with this segment I’m quoting from your article.
And isn’t it at least somewhat telling that so many of the responses to the article posted here, indicate so many conservatives are completely unwilling to cede the “obvious” point you make, even when it smacks them in the face, even when it’s so eloquently pointed out to them, over, and over even?
Oh they see it all right, they just choose not to acknowledge how over the top she is because she expresses what they feel.
People like Coulter, and those who support her, like those here, are completely repugnant to liberals sure, but they should be repugnant to conservatives as well.
To the folks who think it’s all about the show biz for Coulter…What does that say about Fox News that has her on fairly routinely in supposedly serious debates over important issues of the day?
Though you think you may have shored her up by claiming an “entertainment” defense, in the process you tore down Fox News as a purveyor of “entertainment” masquerading as “News”.
And yourselves for watching it and quoting it, and basing your opinions on the entertainment information you pick up there.
Not so entertaining any more is it?
If you’re going to insist on defending this piece of human garbage try not to undo the foundations for another conservative driven joke “Fox” Entertainment News.
Before opening your mouth, or stretching your fingers as it were, you should have a well thought out “consistent” argument that doesn’t simultaneously undermine some of your other equally ludicrous positions.
6:47 am
Dear Mr. Coulter
Most of us long ago figured out that you are a nut job who lacks the common decency God gave a cockroach…
7:17 am
Set Ann aside for a second and ponder this. Why is it that we have an endless parade of relatively minor but easily accessible stories that grace us each week? The MSM and cable news dig up these sensational mini-controversies to stir up viewership- and it works. So one week it’s Tom Cruise and post-partum depression, followed by Rush Limbaugh and prescription drugs, followed by the Terry Schiavo debacle, followed by Ann Coulter saying something crass. A month later, no one remembers how to spell Schiavo.
Do we have national attention deficit disorder?
7:34 am
Trying to equate Cindy Sheehan with the 4 “Jersey witches” as Ann Coulter called the 9-11 widows is like comparing apples and pears.
These wives voted republican before Sept 11 and since Sept 11 has fought to hold the administration accountable for its promises of providing security for America, which it failed with flaying colours in 9-11 and Katrina.
They supported tge findings of the bipartisan 9-11 commission who made it clear that US is as unprepared as it was in Sept 9-11. In what ways are these widows offending anyone by bringing the security issue into the public eye?
Politicians who exploit 9-11 to bolster their popularity like Bush needs to also sure that they have learnt the lesson of 9-11 to heart.
7:51 am
Ann Coulter, Marketing Genius
Ann Coulter is going to sell a lot of books.
She does this every time. Liberals hate her, some conservatives do to, but the rest of us appreciate her edgy commentary and controversial remarks for what they are: press-generating, book marketing plans….
8:20 am
[...] A final note: Perhaps some of my Lefty readers will feel that this analysis is unfair. Oh? Just yesterday, while conservatives denounced Ann Coulter, any number of “responsible” Lefties gleefully tagged Coulter as representing all conservatives, just one example of this smear: It’s interesting to see that some conservatives are distancing themselves from her, perhaps out of fear that she’s going to become the poster child for everything that is toxic about right-wing nutsery. It’s a little late for that, folks; she’s all yours and we’ll be all too happy to remind you of that. [...]
9:23 am
Just a thought from one of those “libruls”… we are not interested in your conservatard fascist philosophies - we’re not interested in your Ku Klux Christ either. It’s time for a national divorce. I’m watching out for a brave man or woman to start the west coast/new england secession process. You can have the hairy-knuckled, date rape slave states… err - I mean southern states - to yourselves to oppress gays, hang your ten commodements on every street corner and have the theocracy you drool for. Meanwhile - we progressives will be eating at the best restaurants and providing freedom to EVERY citizen in the new American Union.
9:25 am
My Goodness! So many made up words that you may have invented your own language.
9:33 am
Rick, this would be a good time for those few of you who realize what horrible person Coulter is to step back and ask yourself if you really want to be a member of any group of people that value her so highly.
9:36 am
Was Coulter’s comment as bad as Air America’s Randi Rhoades pretending to shoot President Bush on the air?
10:13 am
To #7 and all defenders of Ann labeling 9/11 widows as “bitches” and “harpies”.
You are completely wrong. A person, ESPECIALLY a citizen of the United States of America, has EVERY right to push forward their agenda, whether it is widows asking for answers, or whether it is a conservative lambasting them for doing so.
What exactly have these widows done except try and throw some light into murky waters your warrior president has clouded?
And to say that these people are “using victimhood to silence debate” (#7) is completely bogus. They are not trying to silence debate for Heaven’s sake, they are trying to crack the debate open in the middle! They want answers! They want a memorial! They want accountability!
Finally, a personal loss or experience is all we have in this world as a driving force (unless you count using religion as a sheild for your unwarrented convictions.) Natan Sharansky’s wife used his imprisonment as an impetus to get him released and fight oppression in Russa. That was not wrong, and neither are the widows who you and your fellows are so shamelessly slandering.
Is it so impossible for you to imagine yourself in their shoes? How would you feel if you lost your husband/wife like that? How would you react? Answer that, and then insult them again.
10:24 am
Just as a point of clarification; I know it’s important for you to have well-substantiated views - as on many radio shows, The Randi Rhodes Show has segments which are created and produced by staff. Those segments are their responsibility and are not previewed. After Randi Rhodes heard the segment that pretended to shoot President Bush, she apologized, several times, for the inappropriateness of the piece. I’m sure those who produced it got an ear-full. It would be more fruitful for critics of The Randi Rhodes Show to attack the accuracy of her information.
10:57 am
Why the complaints?
Ann Coulter is just your typical conservative, although just slightly less restrained than most. She’s getting lots of air time, press, radio time, etc. She says what most cons believe. Why would cons complain? She’s one of them. She IS they, and they are she. Yes, the archetypal conservative, the quintessential conservative: Ann Coulter. The heart and soul of modern conservatism. The direct descendant and heir of Buckley and Reagan, Ann Coulter.
11:03 am
In 1950 the junior senator from Wisconsin, Joe McCarthy made outrageous, hurtful, mean-spirited and factually incorrect allegations against those that neither deserved the attack nor had the pulpit and means to respond. Sound familiar? Hasn’t Coulter done the same to the spouses of those murdered on 9/11? I know internet blogs are rough and tumble, but we who abhor Coulter’s methods, if not the substance, of her attacks do a disservice to those who are attacked by lowering our rhetoric to Coulter’s level. This is how Special Counsel Joseph Welch dealt with McCarthy’s typical character assassination of a young lawyer who McCarthy claimed was a Communist because he had defended Communists as a member of the Lawyers Guild: “It is, I regret to say, equally true that I fear he shall always bear a scar needlessly inflicted by you. If it were in my power to forgive you for your reckless cruelty, I will do so. I like to think I am a gentleman, but your forgiveness will have to come from someone other than me.” “…Let us not assassinate this lad further, Senator. You have done enough. Have you no sense of decency sir, at long last? Have you left no sense of decency?” One could ask the same thing of Ann Coulter.
11:46 am
[...] Here’s a snip from Rick Moran, at Right Wing Nut House:  Coulter owes those women an apology. Failure to give it only reveals her to be a shallow, bitter, bitch of a woman whose hate filled mouthings will eventually lead to her destruction. [...]
12:14 pm
As a fellow republican, i would like to thank you rick for your statements. She brings shame to the party, and more importantly our country. As long as people that implement tactics such as Coulter’s acts as a voice for the party, the party itself will loose credibility among those who are affluent enough to recognize the importance of reasoned political discourse in America’s democracy. I think we should have a contest to name Coulter’s new yacht she could acquire through her book sales.
Here’s some ideas to get the ball rolling.
1. S.S. Widow Hater
2. S.S. Lucifer
3. S.S. Give hate a Chance
3.
12:27 pm
Please read the collected wisdom of Kristen Breitweiser, in her continuous media exposure since 9/11, and then consider this:
The “Jersey Girls” ceased being mere grieving widows a long time ago. They’ve endlessly bashed the Bush Administration from top to bottom while conveniently ignoring the incompetence of Bill Clinton and his team. These women are politicos now and should be fully open to harsh criticism from the opposing side. If you want to hang around the political world slinging mud, it’s only a matter of time before you’re going to get some thrown at you.
and this:
Grieving Widows? No these were the first Apostle’s of the Church of Liberalism. These Saints of the Church were of course above reproach. It is a great propaganda technique to shield a view for criticism or logic.
Coulter has the courage to endure wrath the liberal interolerants – a wrath that they wrongly accuse her of possessing. Their heated and emotional rhetoric shows that her thinking is truly above their ability to comprehend.
I for one am thankful that she exposed the four Aposltes along with countless other liberal icons.
There were thousands of grieving widows (and widowers) after 9/11 - Ann Coulter addressed only four who chose to publicize their grief in exchange for a political platform. Loss of a spouse does not make your political opinions any more valid or beyond reproach than mine, if you decide to publicize them!
12:47 pm
Quite aside from Coulter’s latest indiscretion, were I a right-winger (which I’m not, emphatically), I’d be really worried that anyone considered her a representative of my side. I skim-read one of her screeds in a bookstore, and what really leaped out at me was its slapdash, gotta-make-bank shoddiness. It reminded me of the kind of freshman term papers that I’d crank out the night before they were due, after I’d spent the day indulging in some high-quality psychopharmaceuticals. Who publishes her crap, and why can’t they hire an editor?
1:17 pm
Rick, your family sounds a lot like mine! Must make for some lively (and extremely interesting) Thanksgiving dinners. I would love to be a fly on the wall at one :-).
That said, I think you would make an excellent conservative pundit, and I would welcome hearing more voices like yours (and your brother’s) in the public discourse.
And you and your brother are both excellent writers. Well done, both of you!
1:19 pm
Anyone who has an issue with Ms. Coulter should just take the drive up to Canada and go gay-marry Osama right now. You’re probably just as upset today because your man Zarquaui bought the farm lst night, and you wanted gay polygamy with him, too.
1:19 pm
Ann Coulter is still around? Geez. I thought we were trying to move forward…
1:45 pm
Distance yourself as best you can, but you are the same thing as Ann Coulter. All american fascists have walked in lock step since before 2000 - now you want to tell us how you’re all different.
You are Ann Coulter and torture and lies and the undermining of the Constitution.
3:29 pm
Here’s how all this pointless steam builds up so reliably. Mr. Coulter - like Mr. Limbaugh and that ilk, but especially Mr. Coulter - doesn’t write a book or appear on television to express an opinion, or, at least, not very often. Instead, he talks about the one thing none of us can speak confidently about: the inner emotional lives and unspoken motives of other people.
Mr. Coulter tells us that those he opposes hate America, rejoice in atrocities, enjoy the deaths of their spouses, crave the media spotlight, and so on. He doesn’t talk about their words or actions, but presumes to tell us what private impulses motivate them throughout, and to discredit them entirely on that unknowable basis.
It’s no different from declaring how many feathers there are in an average angel’s wing. It’s an unknowable quantity, what someone else feels and what, at bottom, moves them to action. It’s difficult to be certain of these things about ourselves!
So, when talking heads predictably throw these speculations up to Mr. Coulter, it’s an open invitation to him to go on speculating and generally making things up. Such statements can’t be evidenced either way, let alone reasoned from. So Mr. Coulter gets a pass on 1) offering an opinion, 2) evidencing that opinion, or 3) reasoning from that evidence to his opinion.
If the talking heads who host these book publicity appearances would instead keep their questions on real matters of opinion, forcing Mr. Coulter to reason his way to an approach to national security, or health care, or tax reform, or even handicapping Presidential candidates, we could observe the relative depth of his reasoning powers. As it is, all we know is he’s clever enough to craft some baseless, incendiary language, and talking heads are feeble enough to leave him right there in his comfort zone.
In fact, I think that may explain the twitchy smirk he affects to restrain when his slanders are read back to him. He can’t believe he gets to come on TeeVee and make things up about other people like a five year old. I’d be smirking, too!
The present point the lightweight Lauer - or SOMEone - should raise with Coulter is that no one in the Middle or on the Left has EVER forbidden him from speaking up about anything. Sure, many people routinely point out how worthless and repellent his remarks are and how unworthy of attention. But that’s not even a gesture toward gagging him. His entire complaint about the widows came down to some such fantasy, and he should be called on it.
As for the moral authority of the widows, well, duh! They absolutely deserve to be heard. And, as President Bush has said several times, without consequences, about Mrs. Sheehan, some Americans disagree with her.
“Forbidden to respond?” “Doctrine of Infallibility?” Aren’t you reminded of a seventh grader with a new dictionary?
4:24 pm
Ann Coulter is a brutish lout, a conservative ogre who should be denied a public platform to spout…
This being America and everything, that probably isn’t feasible. Giving her a good public thumping is the most we can do.
4:34 pm
“But since I don’t believe in stifling debate…”
That is a brilliant rationalization. Try this: by accepting her ad, you are making money off the book. Why not be honest? Denying the ad stifles nothing but does hit your pocketbook.
You guys (conservatives) are so damn poor at owning your behavior. Hiding behind freedom of speech while ignoring the real reasons.
4:34 pm
“Doctrine of Infallibility”
Let us remind the followers of Ku Klux Koulter that this same doctrine was rolled out around 2003 concerning President Awol Alcoholic, err… Bush. Under the guise of “he’s a war president” we’ve been told repeatedly by the right that “during times of war, the president should be supported unquestionably”. Why are we expected to give that infallibility to the “war president” but not to the “war widows”?
4:59 pm
Why not be honest? Denying the ad stifles nothing but does hit your pocketbook.
I was waiting for some nitwit to make that very statement.
The only money I make from this site is from PJM ads for which I receive a grand total of $375.00 every 3 months. Considering that I spend 8-10 hours a day during the week and about 6 hours a day on the weekend at the computer tending this beast of a blog, that works out to a grand total of about $.30 per hour!
Hitting my pocketbook? Get real.
5:12 pm
And while we’re talking about it… are any of you conservatives aware of the last uber-leader to claim “God” in his political dominion (conveniently setting up the strawman that those who oppose are “godless”)… check out this link with his movement’s symbology nicely paired with christian icons. The belt buckle that says “god with us” is particularly nice!
http://www.nobeliefs.com/mementoes.htm
5:35 pm
Modern conservatives are ALL louts. At one time, there were responsible conservatives in the world. Not many, but there were some. But those days are long gone.
Coulter just makes public what the typical con believes. She makes an outrageous statement, and cons back off a little. But the discourse is moved to the right. Repeat ad nauseum, and we end up with monsters running the US government.
5:48 pm
Geez, Rick, I never knew you were a Nazi! How did you hide it from me all these years?
Jules, I am as frustrated as you appear to be with the Right’s thus-far successful attempt to co-opt the image of the Deity to their own causes, but I don’t think comparing our opponents to Brown Shirts will do much to advance a progressive agenda.
Now Jim Wallis is every liberal’s favorite evangelical, and for the integration of traditional Christian views with progressive ideas, reading some Wallis has a tendency to calm the nerves.
As for God - He’s been writing most of the articles in “The Atlantic” and “Harpers” for the last thirty years or so.
6:04 pm
It has finally happen. America has lost all self dignity. Conservitives and Liberals have finally open the doors of strife, hate and disrespect are now free to dimish the American soul. God help all of us. We are fools fighting in a burning house.
6:04 pm
Sorry JK - I’ve not yet forgiven my local Republican State Senator for saying that anyone who doesn’t support the Iraq war should be deported. I’m not exactly ready for civil debate until I get an apology… from at least ONE republican for their conservative leadership’s unhelpful, jingoistic remarks. Until then, Nazi’s they are.
6:12 pm
Jim:
You never checked under my pillow for an autographed copy of Mein Kampf?
Wallis is a thoughtful man - a “clean” thinker in that his sermons seem firmly grounded in both Christian dogma and some of the ideas espoused by Christian intellectuals from the 1960’s who borrowed liberally (there’s that word!) from the social Christian radicals of Europe of the 1930’s. He also echoes some themes of that fellow Milbank at UVA who calls himself a “post modernist” Christian.
Whether Jesus would have approved of capitalism or not, I personally see Wallis’s ideas regarding “social justice” as equally dangerous as the Christian right’s “social activism.” Anytime anyone starts invoking the name of God to affect changes in government policy, I get suspicious. Better to let Ceasar have his, and if you’re a mind to, give God some too.
And The Atlantic gave Zarqawi the full “treatment” today. Headline: “The Short, Violent Life of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi” - as if he was some death row inmate they were trying to spring.
Un. Real.
6:21 pm
But Jules - can’t we just name your local guy the un-American “fascist pig” (great 60’s term) that he is and have done at that point?
Now brother Rick has many flaws, not the least of which is that he really is a conservative and really likes George Bush - but a Nazi he is not.
I am reminded of a genuinely “liberal” comment that came from a conservative a couple of years back. Bill Moyers on PBS’ “Now” was interviewing one of his long time classic conservative friends from The Heritage Foundation in the wake of this selfsame “lout” Coulter’s publication of her book “Treason.” (great term, Rick)
Moyers frequently included guests from the opposite camp on “Now,” and unlike his right wing media counterparts, Moyers was unfailingly polite and pitched them pointed questions that allowed them to make their arguments at length and him to disagree when he felt appropriate. His segment with grover Norquist was a masterpiece of both interview technique and polite left/right dialogue.
His final question to the Heritage Foundation guy (sorry - I misremember the name) was “So - do YOU think I am a traitor?” Moyers’ guest chuckled as he replied, “No, Bill, you’re not. You’re wrong, but you’re no traitor.”
And thus should our discourse with our opposite numbers ever be.
6:24 pm
“…in the wake of this selfsame “lout†Coulter’s publication of her book “Treason.†(great term, Rick)”
One of Daddy’s favorites, of course.
6:36 pm
JK -
Agreed. But, I’ll assume you understand the basic laws of physics, which I believe can also apply to human social systems. “For every action, there’s an equal and opposite reaction.” My gut tells me to lash out in kind. Collectively, left-leaners are doing just the same, which of course creates an ever more harsh response from the right. We’re “Godless” now? Vicious circle, right?
The only problem is I’m too familiar with history. It’s been less than 100 years since we’ve seen this same political tactic weilded. Assault the masses with uber-patroitic rhetoric, then demonize gays and liberals. Thrown in “God is on our side!” and what have you got… ?
Do you conservatives see the parallel at all? Come back to the light, man!
http://www.nobeliefs.com/mementoes.htm
6:39 pm
lout is being a little kind… how about shrill conservative hack?
7:11 pm
Jules and Pete -
Both your points have deep appeal to the hackles that someone like Coulter raises in me, but I think taking the moral high ground is preferable as a TACTIC, even beyond its basis in principle.
Had Weimar Germany had the kind of comic genius that Charlie Chaplin was when he skewered Hitler in “The Great Dictator” or the kind of moral leadership in its Christian churches that, say, the US did at points in the Civil Rights era of the ’60’s, would - could -Hitler have prevailed?
Or if someone had lampooned him as a “paper-hanging sonofabitch” at the same time that some cleric or other had ascended a pulpit and decried him as a false prophet with values diametrically opposed to those of Christianity, could not Germans have been shamed away from him in the same way that Gandhi and King turned moral people away from the heinous nature of British imperialism and American racism?
Genuine liberalism, it always seemed to me, has espoused the ideal that people can become better and more moral and more just if those virtues are exemplified to them.
Getting down in the same sewer with Coullter only makes us reek of the same charming perfume.
8:44 pm
To suggest that someone is enjoying the death of their spouse is horrible. Does she honestly think that Jesus would approve of such a statement?
8:56 pm
regarding all this “hitler” and “nazi” talk — it’s not empty demagoguery.
hitler would routinely blame liberalism for all of germany’s problems. joe mccarthy did the same thing. today, it’s the coulters, hannitys, savages, and limbaughs, delays, santorums, norquists, and roves who use virtually the same rhetoric and tactics to stoke the fear and loathing of liberals in the minds of the public. sadly, it works on just about half of the voting population. fortunately, the other half sees right through it.
what frustrates the hell out of me is that the liberal counterparts to those scoundrels listed above are still waiting for a chance to work together with the republicans. they don’t get it that when some some republican congresscritter goes to the well and wags his or her finger at the democrats for partisan-motivated resistance, what the republicans mean by “bi-partisan” is “shut your mouth and get out of the way”.
this republican attitude is the direct result of their tradition of demagoguing anything liberal. it’s why everything is a war to them. the war on this, the war on that. here a war, there a war, everywhere a war.
9:02 pm
I’m finding myself caught on ‘broads.’ What self respecting female refers to other females as ‘broads.’ If I were conservative i’d distance myself from her too. It is sad to think that she probably beleives that she is being funny. Perhaps she should start wearing the big red nose and fluffy red wig that go with her whole act…
9:03 pm
Wow…commenting in the black! You need some changes somewhere.
Well, could not wade through the 100 plus comments…but am sure that somewhere in there, you were chastened a bit by the non-PC crowd. If not, let me be one of the first…you are just amplifying the response of the normal MSM PC crowd and not looking at the overall picture…but that seems to be normal in today’s “more liberal” blogs. Sorry to see you succumed to the same… I thought you were better… Oh well…
9:13 pm
My problem with Coulter, and all partisan commentators on either side of the fence, is the blatant hypocrisy in the way they frame their “arguments.” In this particular case, if the President was currently Al Gore or Bill Clinton, and the widows were using their “status” as victims to move the government into remedial action after a catastrophe like 9/11, Ann Coulter would volunteer to be their mouthpiece and champion their cause. Especially if the widows were openly and personally critical of a government led by either of those two men. And Coulter’s fans and followers would also be trumpeting the widows’ cause because they like her style. But she’d still only be doing it because it keeps her face on TV and in magazines. Commentators like Coulter constantly exploit these situations solely for personal gain. Some may believe that’s smart business, but it only serves to further polarize the rest of us, deterring us from discussing rationally the real issues facing us today. Coulter and other commentators’ rhetoric may speak to a person’s basest nature, but we actually have moved beyond that as a people. We shouldn’t let the Coulters of the world keep dragging us back to the depths where civil discourse began. Let the fringes rage in the street. The rest of us have real work to do.
9:19 pm
This is a problem caused by the MSM, you can’t comment on anything if your a conservative (at least not live). Either write a book (an be very non-PC) or try to get on Fox…No other choice.
9:22 pm
“Ann Coulter is your typical conservative, although just slightly less restrained than most.”
I disagree with the statement as it makes conservaties look like a derangged hate-mongering, war-mongering profit machine.
What is being a conservative really about? It’s a lot more than just anti-gay or anti-condoms or anti-condoms. These are negative adjectives that for better or for the worse refers to conservatives these days
Being a true conservative is about being spiritual, being moral, being a supporter of fiscal conservatism and small government. What happen to them and these positive values.
Why do real conservatives let people like Ann Coulter represent us with her negative approach to life and politics and double standards?
Is she even a real Christian?
http://www.rawstory.com/news/2006/Godless_author_Coulter_unknown_at_church_0608.html
9:29 pm
Well, being moral says it all for being conservative. I do think that you judge a bit harsh with your last statement though… Being non-PC is not necessarily be non-Christian. Rething your position… Just because she causes an uproar and makes people think a bit does not justify your thinking. Even Jesus was a bit non-PC at the right times.
9:34 pm
Ann is like the baby who sticks her hand into her diaper and discovers shit and proudly smears it all over herself and anything else within reach.
Ms. Coulter has no moral legs to stand on as she has never provided any rhetoric which could even be perceived as coming from a GOOD CHRISTIAN!
You wingnuts are such suckers.
9:50 pm
democraticjack:
Well, coming from an athiest, I will just cower…. You would not know morality if it hit you in the face (talking about your previous hmmm. comments). So…I guess I will ignore your wingnuts comment, thanks anyway…
9:55 pm
Is Ann Coulter married? Involved in a relationship? She’s so mean-spirited, maybe she’s just a sexually frustrated woman.
10:04 pm
stella starwoman:
Well, sounds just like a Democrat has invaded the spaces…. What, personal attacks (no substance)…I am agast!
10:28 pm
Personal attacks that have no substance is exactly what Ann Coulter is all about. Unfortunately it also describes current Republicans. Remember George Bush-Karl Rove’s insidious attacks on John McCain by insinuating that McCain’s adopted Bangladeshi daughter was his illegitimate black love child. Such smear attacks have become the trademarks of Republican politicians and GOP.
Coulter’s behaviour isn’t just non-PC but it is un-Christian because it is neither tolerant nor loving nor is it even based on moral example.
Her latest book talks a lot about her Christian faith, when she may not even go to church.
She doesn’t even know where to vote, for heaven’s sake, while she’s lecturing people on how to live their lives.
Why would I want to read a book written by such an ignoramus hypocrite?
10:51 pm
Mavent:
There is truth in everything that Ann says, that is why you take such offense at her statements. Being Republican or Democrat has little to do with the statements. That is what your problem is (truth)… Either the statements are absolutely wrong or there is truth in them…that is what needs to be discusses… Whoa be unto any Democrat that stops and discusses the actual topic…
No, I would not expect either you or any other Democrat to read her book unless you are an operative and looking for talking points.
I don’t expect you to read her book, but I do expect that you argue her points truthfully.
11:14 pm
I voted Republican and I’m not a democrat or a liberal. And I practise conservative values like abstinence, no drinking and no gambling for decades. I vote for fiscal conservatism and small government and I live a spiritual life.
That’s what a conservative used to mean, isn’t it?
There is LITTLE truth in everything that Ann says. That is why most people take such offense at her statements.
You are again dead wrong when you say that being Republican or Democrat has little to do with the statements. Her book is an all out attack on liberals and democrats who she claims
Is that truth? Scholars, journalists and even normal people have discovered that Ann Coulter does not do real research before she says anything and she cherry picks parts of what people say to make her case, even though that is not what she is saying.
For example, she claimed Canada sent troops to Vietnam when it didn;t. When she was questioned about this in national television, she had no reply beyond saying that she’ll come back to it after the show. She never did.
Her rants are not truths as it is divisive and is a message of hate and intolerance to all, which is not Christian nor conservative.
That is why she does not embody Christian values nor conservative ones. That is my problem with her. If you have no problems with that, then it is clear that you are the one who is not a conservative.
You just outed yourself. And I do expect you to argue truthfully, rather than engage in the name-calling, smearing tactics, which you claimed are democratic tactics.
: >
11:21 pm
The truth that you fail to mention is that Ann Coulter attacked the widows of 9-11 as millionaires who take joy that their husbands died and made insinuations such as no one knows if their husbands planned to divorce them.
Every sane person is having problems accepting her defense of these 2 segments from her book:
“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.”
“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.”
What truth is there? What Republican or Christian values do you see here? What have these widows done to her?
Last time I checked, being conservative does not mean being an intolerant and vindictive hate monger.
You claim there is truth in what Ann says.
Then prove it.
11:28 pm
The funny thing is that most of these widows vote Republican but Ann Coulter choses to mix them up in her writings attacking LIberals and Democrats as traitors and godless people.
And you still claim “Being Republican or Democrat has little to do with the statements.” No one here is a three-year old.
This is the statment by the widows:
“We did not choose to become widowed on September 11, 2001. The attack, which tore our families apart and destroyed our former lives, caused us to ask some serious questions regarding the systems that our country has in place to protect its citizens. Through our constant research, we came to learn how the protocols were supposed to have worked. Thus, we asked for an independent commission to investigate the loopholes which obviously existed and allowed us to be so utterly vulnerable to terrorists. Our only motivation ever was to make our Nation safer. Could we learn from this tragedy so that it would not be repeated?”
Is it too liberal for people like Ann to accept? Or far too conservative and rational?
11:33 pm
Yes, Rick;
You took on the conservative Ann and vented your wrath with a bit of compassion. Whew…though that you would never end your righteous tirade…
Well, if it makes you feel better to join the righteous left in condemning the so_righteous right, then congratulations…you succeeded.
The problem is like most overly righteous left (Not you here); you forgot the “content” of the statement while condemning the outrageous statement. One of these days, the right will understand the ploys of the left and stop this nonsense, but not in my lifetime, I’m sure.
Like others, you ignore the significance of the statement and look at the correct (i.e. correct or PC way to present) method to state your position. Oh well, what does anyone in the media expect anyway…
If only 1 in 5 question the antics of the MSM (and we know they are a bit biased) and those that hope to supplant them, this would not happen. I understand the moral underpinnings of such nonsense, but those of supposedly superior intellect ought to know better than to pander to such nonsense.
Yes, I do not have much faith in either the MSM or for that matter, conservative blogs…
11:38 pm
Mavent:
Wow… The widows that Ann talked about were only a few and believe me, they were not Republicans. If they were, they would not get any voice on the MSM… Who are you kidding anyway?
11:41 pm
Re: Oh Ann -
Conservative commentator Rick Moran says it well:
http://rightwingnuthouse...
11:53 pm
“you shouldnt pretend mainstream conservativism has rejected her, because they havent.” Well, let’s go to the rumor just in: Sean Hannity - married - is boinking Ann Coulter - true Christian girl. True? If so, this is what hypocrisy looks like. Mrs. Hannity will get to “stand by her man.”
11:58 pm
Muffy:
Mercy, had the liberal world gone mad? Another nice non-statement on here charges. will the liberals every give up on personel persecution and go with factual evidence or is that just a conservative myth…
12:02 am
Wow… See what you have started here Rick? You have unintentially invited liberal nut(s) into your house with your PC post. Hope you can deal with the consequences…
12:05 am
Get your Ann Coulter book for $4.99 each; buy them by the case! Give them to your friends! Place boxes by the church doors Sunday!
http://www.newsmax.com/adv/godless/?PROMO_CODE=1E5F-1
Now we know how it looks like it’s #1 at Amazon!!
12:12 am
Thanks for the info… I think I will… Regardless of your reasoning. Would give them to my friends, but they already have theres….oh well, I guess that’s why they call it a best seller.
12:13 am
DEagle:
You mean factual evidence such as Nigerian yellowcake or aluminum tubes? Who are you kidding? Being called a harpie by a woman who has lost nothing or no one is not personal? My God, what is wrong with you people?
Of course, you may have hit the nail on the proverbial head by accident. Most conservative philosophy is myth, especially the repetitive term, “liberal” media . That dog is as dead as Zarqawi. Can’t you see that Americans have figured you guys out.
12:18 am
Hey Duh! I plainly stated it was a rumor! As for “will the liberals every (sic)give up on personel (sic) persecution” , Republicans have been honing this skill, and honing this skill since at least Lee Atwater, Donald Segreti . . . I know, no one is supposed to return in kind. Will Ann have a deathbed confession similar to Atwater’s, that he knew he was pandering to the worst qualities in America? You people invented this stuff, so you can take some as well. How can you people sleep?
12:22 am
democraticjack:
Wow…Those have been beaten to death (and are wrong from your viewpoint) and you ought to know by now that they are losers…especially since you apparently read the internet blogs… Where have you been?
Yes, I do suppose that you live in the past/myth, but that is to be expected if you are to survive. Either read the latest news or don’t try to get into the game with old/obsolute Democartic talking points.
Obsolete is a libaral statement of your positions….hehe Try again?
12:26 am
Muffy:
Hey, no problem, rumors are as good a truth anytime…hehe…
1:37 am
Hi Deagle, try to be truthful please.
If you read Ann’s book, you would know that she did not say just a few widows. She herself uses no such qualoifications in her book, nor proof that any of them profited from their husband’s death in 9-11 tragedy. She only mentioned it as a defence on Today show.
You also miss the gist of her argument: ““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.”
All the widows, including those Republicand and Demoracts are constantly doing their duty by reminding the country that the lessons of 9-11 have not been taken to heart by the Bush administration and the nation is as unprepared as it was in 2001.
She lied blatantly about the motives of these widows. No sane person with a conscience will support her in here hate-filled lies.
At least I know no true Christian or conservative would.
1:42 am
By the way, I don’t kid when it comes to beliefs or when it comes to attacking widows who lost their husbands because of a tragedy. There’s more than enough nutcases pretending to be real Christians and conservatives : >
1:49 am
Coulter is an unrepentant paleo-conservative with a need to be in the limelight. And as an unrepentant “left wing libertarian with a social conscience” I will defend her right to say whatever mean spirted nasty foolish load of crap she wants to spew. Her outrageous nastiness is laughable and completely calulated … offended CONS shocked by her cruel spirit are being taken for a ride (its an act for god’s sake). Those of us on the left (you know, the ones with a sense of humor) have been clued in to her act forever and have for years enjoyed her standard issue rants/attacks as entertainement. You go girl.
1:55 am
Mavent:
I simply disagree.. I have seen those so called widows on TV and they were almost always spouting a liberal point of view (anti bush). Now to be honest, there was once that I remember that they (one group) did not try to blame Bush, but the majority that I’ve seen on TV were adamantly anti-bush and pro Democrat. Not I’ll admit that I have not read the book (yet) but I have no doubt that most of what she is saying is true (always has been in the past).
I understand what your are saying about some of the widows (have seen them on TV) regarding non-partison positions, but if you follow much of the coverage, you’ll see that it is always the liberal side that gets coverage. Now you may believe different, but if you notice, the group that did come out of the “widows” (ie. on TV) were liberal, not exactly a group of conservatives so I do have to wonder… There were a group that were conservative, but they recieved minimal coverage. The MSM tended to cover only the liberal group….so in that instance, Ann was right…
2:01 am
Mavent:
Oh, and by the way, what the heck is the Christian argument anyway? I thought we were discussing a valid point of contention that Ann stated - ie Widows taking advantage of thieir situation.
2:12 am
Deagle,
I have made it very clear that Ann Coulter did not single out a few widows in her malicious attacks on 9-11 widows. She did not say a few of them in her attacks against this group of poor women in her book. So your defense of her is definitely not truthful or honest.
Your points are too biased to be reasonable. Are these widows to be taken seriously only if they mouth Republican talking points?
Or does that mean they do not have a right to speak out for their political beliefs and religious convictions? Ann COulter certainly has no issues exerting her right to these things at everyone’s expense.
Does that mean that these liberal widows and their republican counterparts have no right to focus the White House attention on the weaknesses in national security that still plagues America, as is clearly shown by the bipartisan 9-11 commission?
I think they are doing mroe service to the nation rather than push a homophobe campaigns as a superficial electoral strategy.
Try to be honest, these widows did not blame Bush initially but grew disenchanted with him based on the findings of the bipartisan 9-11 commission which showed clearly that Bush and his administration ignored warnings that Osama was planning to attack America and that hew as trying to hyjack planes.
Their distaste grew when the commission pointed out that 4 years after 9-11 the administration still had not remedied the gaps in America’s national security even after the publishing of their findings.
Only a moron will still be pro-Bush when the situation clearly showed just how little the deaths of their husbands mean to Bush, other than as a cry to rally support for his administration.
Ann was WRONG. And the media covers these widows’ concern regardless of political affilation. And if you label them liberals because they are anti-Bush, then like Ann COulter you are dead wrong when it is obvious you have no proof for your stantements as well as Ann’s
I am a conservative and I do not equate support of bush as being conservative because he does not represent Christian values of peace, thrift, honesty, compassion, tolerance and humanity as well as conservative values of fiscal conservatism, small government and public accountability.
He is none of these things. He is merely an opportunists who is trying to play both sides of the fence. Just look at his immigration bill.
If you are anti-Bush, it only means you are anti-incompetence.
2:18 am
There is no validity to Ann’s statement about widow’s taking advantage of their situation.
Ann Coulter provides no proof in her book or during ther tal;k shows, especially for her comments that these widows are millionaires and took great pleasure at their husbands’ deaths.
Only a souless ignoramus would think that there is any validity to such statements.
The only one profiteering from the the plight of the 9-11 widows and the deaths of the husband is Ann Coulter in her wish to make millions from her book by making these widows the next whipping dogs for fanatics, psuedo-Christians, hatemongers.
I sure don’t see her and her supporters conservative. Being Conservative is a much higher moral standard.
2:20 am
Wow… I feel sorry for you… really.
I don’t know where to begin… Mercy, you do live in a strange world….and seem to be religeious as well which is more strange….
Well, for beginners…only the liberal responses were reported by the MSM… Well, now to be accurate, there were a few non-liberal reports (ie. papers) but even those were few a far between. To me, non-liberal means to tell the truth without bias…
I actaully feel a bit sorry for you if you actually believe all that you say. That means that your have fully bought into the MSM and really believe what you have been reading. In that case, I can not disuade you or even try for that matter. You are one of those hardcore believers that will not change your mind regardless of facts….so
Have a good night…wish you well.
2:22 am
“I am a conservative and I do not equate support of bush as being conservative because he does not represent Christian values of peace, thrift, honesty, compassion, tolerance and HUMILITY as well as conservative values of fiscal conservatism, small government and public accountability.”
2:29 am
Movemt:
Sorry, I don’t support Bush at this point but I don’t go off the deep end and support Democrats either… Yes, peace, thrift, honesty, compassion, tolerance and HUMILITY are nice attributes and I agree…just who on the Democrat side does this exemplify?
2:29 am
Deagle, stop trying to divert the issue to your MSM rant.
The issue here in Ann COulter wrote in her book in which she attacked the widows of 9-11. In her book, she did not differentiate which widows she was attacking.
The more your avoid addressing this issue, the weaker your defense of Ann Coulter.
You are the one I feel sorry with because you obviously live with the hate-filled bubble with the rest of the fanatics.
Again, such fanatics can never be considered true conservatives who practise real conservative values.
2:34 am
“just who on the Democrat side does this exemplify?”
I thought that you posted not longer ago that the matter is not about Republican and Democrats?
No matter, it is good that you acknowledge that nobody in the Republican White House, Senate and the House possess these true conservative values.
If you want to talk about Democrats, what about Paul Hackett who at least calls it as he sees it? Who served our nation in the line of fire in this Iraq war?
2:36 am
Oh that comment that liberal bloggers don’t take on liberal leaders is absolute rubbish. And you know it. Or would, if you immersed yourself in liberal blogs. I understand why you don’t. I don’t immerse myself in right wing blogs for similar reasons to yours.
Anyhoo. Read the Daily Howler if you want to read a liberal blogger who will take down democrats without compunction. He routinely attacks Dean, and has it in for Joe Wilson too. Plus every so called “liberal pundit” out there.
http://www.dailyhowler.com
Kevin Drum at http://www.washingtonmonthly.com also is a liberal blogger willing to take down culpable democrats. Hell, there are plenty.. Liberal bloggers are, for the most part, are idealistic, fervent non-party people. Just look at what the entire liberal blogosphere is trying to do to poor Joe Lieberman. They’re trying to run him out on a rail while the Democrats in power keep trying to help poor Holy Joe.
Kevin from
2:38 am
Interesting… Sorry, I hold no hate…just beliefs. You changed the subject, I came with you… ask a question…and you went back to the original question…hmmm, I think that says something.
Sorry, your defense is pathetic and requires no more of my time. I take back my “Wish you well”. You are a strange and unethical character….
2:45 am
Sorry you are the one who is constantly changing the topic to your MSN rant when I have no posted one word on this as an issue.
I think it clearly says that you are lying and that you have no proof defending what Ann Coulter wrote inher book against the 9-11 widows, a group which she attacks as a group:
“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.â€
“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.â€
That has been the thrust of this thread and my postings.
So stop trying to change the subject to MSN.
Try to be honest here. No one here is a 3-year old : >
And stop the name-calling with no basis or substance. According to you that is a democratic liberal behaviour.
Obviously you are not a conservative.
2:45 am
Sorry you are the one who is constantly changing the topic to your MSN rant when I have NOT posted one word on this as an issue.
2:52 am
Okay…justfor grins… If you are a conservative, I’m a liberal… Just saying that makes me queezy..
2:58 am
Mavent:
Ah, come on, surely you can disagree with that!
3:00 am
Cheap thrill.
Just consider this. If a conservative does try to live up to conservative values, what right has he to expect conservative leaders to do the same.
Munch on this and then consider the crap that passes for government these days…
3:04 am
To the liberals here, just a suggestion.
Buy just 1 Ann Coulter’s book then scan it and upload it to a website or pdf document. Then e-mail it to everyone who believes in the tragedy of 9-11 and ask them to boycott buying Ann’s book by reading the soft copy.
Hopefully that will persuade souless profiteers not to try to profit from human sufferings.
3:06 am
Hey, if your serious, I agree with you… What does that do to your enthusiam? Actualy, I am dissapointed with both parties and of course now with the Repubs. Too much spending, corruption (both parties), and am just about to give up on politics… so there…does that make you feel better…
3:08 am
“If a conservative does NOT try to live up to conservative values, what right has he to expect conservative leaders to do the same.”
Munch on this and then consider the crap that passes for government these days…
3:09 am
Sorry, Coulter is still right in this latest book and all of her other books. When you begin to realize that, then you will be making progress….
3:14 am
While you do precieve that politics are corrupt, you seem to believe that the Democrats are less so and that is your downfall. They started this whole problem (Chicago, Cal, Fla), well, you see the problem. If you give up your desire to belong to a party (especially Democratic) then you will begin to be free…
Vote only honesity, humility, etc…I belive you alreay stated these… and you will be free of the interference of the MSM…
3:18 am
Deagle, I’m hoping for more independents to run for government.
Frankly speaking, I don’t really give a damn these days about who is in Congress or the White House. No one in the Federal government really believe in the conservative or liberal platform anymore as they all try to play it both ways.
But I just hope that that appointed state officals are competent, honest with a fair degree of integrity.
As for the dolts in WH and Congress, most of them are in their 50s-70s. In 10 years’ time, they won’t be problems to sane Americans anymore.
I do hope more people like Paul Hackett will stand up and run. And I wish that Al Gore will run as an independent against Hilary Clinton. Just run on your beliefs and what you have done so far, without the burden of a liberal or conservative platform.
If one can’t stand for anything, at the very least, one should learn to stand for oneself.
3:25 am
Coulter is ONLY right if she can back up her comments attacking the 9-11 widows as a group who profited from 9-11 amd took pleasure from their husbands’ deaths but she never did.
Anyone who claim that she is right in saying all this is clearly not honest. There is no progress to be had in lying.
I have made it clear that I am against false conservatives or anyone who don’t practise what he preach and that conservatives are not running the government today as they do not practise true conservative values.
As for corruption, it’s a simple number games. Which party has more members indicted for felony says a lot.
Sorry MSM is not part of this discussion. In my view, MSM is as biased as FOX news. Their SPEW cancel each other out. You need a crazy leftist to balance a fanatic rightist. Either tolerate both or terminate both, thank you.
That’s all I am going to say on this as the thread and my posts is against Ann Coulter’s statements against the widows as shown in her book.
3:33 am
as long as she provides no proof for what she says against the widows, it is clear that she is not telling the truth.
No proof = No truth. In America the rule of law is innocent before proven guilty. Fair?
Ann Coulter also made the claim that these widows try to slience others with their tragedy. I have seen no proo of this.
But I do know that for something to support McCarthy when President Eisenhower has nothing good to say of this hatemonger shows something about Ann’s own credibility and sanity.
3:35 am
Well, I can only say that I do respect your right to vote for whoever you wish…
That said… I could not vote for anyone whose platform calls for more government, abortion on demand, gay marriage, etc…you know the route…so that automatically eleminates the Democarats.
I do hope for an independent that could win… but they must be for smaller Federal governement, Simplification of the federal tax (flat tax is good). Commen sense, ie no pork projects, ie how about honesety and integrety..what a switch.
Actually, you sound like you would like a liberal government (ie. Socialist) which scares me… I do want the future of this country to remain Capitolist since it will effect my son. If it becomes socialist as France and Germany has become, then the chances of success are greatly dimmmed.
So… at this point in time, that means Republican, although that may change and if things continue as they are, not much difference. That could become problematic if they do not stop this rush to socialism…(yes, revolution could be in order), so who knows.
3:44 am
Mavent:
Come on…I have tried to be reasonable to a great degree! con’t throw it away just because you hate Ann Coulter.
Ann can make all the claims she wants to just as you can! It’s called freedom of speech. If she can’t back it up, it will be known, so give it up an let her have her say. If she is wrong, it will be by consenses that it is so… and she will still have tyhe same opinion…so…why fight it?
Damn, I’m trying to be reasonable with you and you continue to fight it…is that your normal mode? If so, okay, I give up and am going to bed…..
3:58 am
Mavent:
Well, I had a glimse of sanity during our conversation, but again am wrong (Always the optimist). I guess that makes me a dimwit to some, maybe just stuborn to some…oh well…
Have a good liberal, socialiat, marxist, whatever, life….I give up, you are a lost soul.
4:33 am
But I don’t hate Ann Coulter. I merely hate what she wrote without proof.
I have made my points very clear on this point while you have provided nothing to back up your defense of Ann’s statements in her new book, which is hateful and mocks ther personal tragedy of those who suffered because of 9-11.
As for sanity, you are right, Ann Coulter as well as some of the far right need more doses of it.
4:36 am
My message to them is simple. Don’t just talk about values. Practise them.
Such as Ann Coulterv Don’t talk to me about being loyal to Bush as the commander in chief after trying to pull down Clinton becauseof the Monica Lewinsky scandal. Why champion impeachment for Clinton because he lied about a blow job when you spare Bush for lying about the reasons to go to war?
Such a hypocrite is Ann Coulter. She’s not a real conservative and she does not speak for us.
She only speaks for herself for her own gain.
8:27 am
Coulter has no “point” to make. If you check the blogs from the 9/11 widows they criticize Clinton AND the Bush administration for what happened. Coulter is out of line, hateful and wildly inaccurate this time…it’s that simple. I think most Republicans (who have already blasted her for this) and Democrats would agree on this.
8:28 am
The New Jersy Chicks chose to politicize their grief. Some of us (me, or instance) would say that we are past the expiration date of grief as a shield. If not, what is the date? Five years (coming up this fall), or ten years. Or is the exemption lifetime?
9:52 am
DEagle:
Fascinating. Good talking points never die or else you people would not still blame Clinton for everything Bush has screwed up. Did you know that some of those evil 9/11 widows actually voted for Bush in 2004? What bitches! I’ll bet that some of them even cry ever now and then wallowing in their victimhood! I think Ann should now turn her focus on thos damn handicapped people who get special treatment. I’ll bet they will used their handicaps to get attention, the evil crips!
What won’t you defend, DEagle? Does a heart beat in your body?
10:15 am
Mavent is my new hero. She is the voice of what America once was and hopefully one day will be again.
Hypocrisy is deadly, because at heart it is all about lying to oneself and to others. Mavent has very clearly delineated why we need to ALL put aside our rhetoric and and admit that all of us need to admit that ALL of us are in some way culpable of the sorry state of affairs which exists in this nation today. In a true democracy it is “The People” who are ultimately answerable. To blame ones fellow citizen is to engage in the childish game of playing the politics of blame and victimization - and from my perspective, both sides (parties) are equally culpable in this regard. We have become a nation of spoiled children.
One more thing. As an actively practicing Christian, I take enourmous offence of Coulter’s “definition” of Christianity. For example, I noticed in the first chapter of her book that she does not mention the name of Jesus once. Not one single time. Nor does she quote on single scriptural passage to justify her insane assertions as to what Christianity is.
10:51 am
“The New Jersy Chicks chose to politicize their grief. Some of us (me, or instance) would say that we are past the expiration date of grief as a shield. If not, what is the date? Five years (coming up this fall), or ten years. Or is the exemption lifetime?”
Hmmmm … Good point.
Now why don’t you tell me what the expiration date is on “Speaking against this prez, is unpatriotic, and a refusal to support the troops?”
Oooops sucks when the shoe you try to kick someone with misses and smacks you upside your own head doesn’t it?
Now you want to know the difference between the two?
Nobody stopped anybody from contradicting the victims of 911, but Republicans ACTIVELY tried to stop “anyone” from speaking out against the invasion, by any means necessary. And what an evil means that was… to actually claim someone didn’t support the troops or were unpatriotic because they were right about the invasion, and WMD.
In fact when she made the claim (on the Today Show) that the victims were preventing her [people] from responding, and that she wasn’t [people aren't] allowed to respond to them, she simultaneously invalidated that claim since in making the claim she “obviously” disproved it.
Now that point was so obvious she was called on it immediately.
Maybe that went right over your head but that’s the type of blatant bs that springs from her cancerous lips regularly.
Obvious bs, so obviously bs that in order to support her you would have to make an active effort to ignore it.
This is her In a paraphrased nutshell:
Coulter: They said yes, and they’re not letting me say no. I say no, no, no, damn’t it, but they’re not letting me say no. They’re preventing me from saying no, no, no, and the Democrats are letting them!
Reporter: UMMMM, Yeah but you just said no.
Coulter: Well yeah I did, but that’s the point, they won’t allow me to say NO, THEY’RE preventing me from saying NO, why are YOU Getting Testy with ME?
– Well Ms Coulter he may be getting testy with you, if he is at all, because you ignored his obvious point that you refuted yourself, probably because you’re so stupid you don’t realize you just invalidated your own premise. But never fear Ms Coulter there will be plenty of defense offered for you by the ignorant GOP base who happened to completely miss how you disproved your own premise.
The fact you did so on national TV is just priceless.
2:11 pm
I notice a pattern in these comments. “DEagle” seems to delight in accusing this or that commentor or target group of “personal attacks”, and then, about three or four comments later, he’s indulging in the most egregious (and unsubstantiated) ad hominems himself.
DEagle, how old are you? How much education do you have? Have you travelled much? Are you employed? I’m serious, I’d really like to know. Because you’re really way out of your depth — and this in a forum which ought to favor you!
8:33 pm
“To descend to the level of your opponents in order to criticize them is not an excuse.”
? Excuse, what excuse do *you* have for imagining that Annie Coldheart’s opponents are operating at her debased level? There are very few “leftists” who talk like that. Even Michael Moore may question motives and use sarcasm, but he doesn’t come off like that. And even though there are fringe types on the left who sound like Ann, they aren’t “official” like her, they aren’t lionized in liberal web sites the way Drudge and NewsMax and Human Events etc. do with Ann, they don’t have the fringies writing columns the way Ann does as Legal Correspondent for Human Events - which is made a rag just by virtue of having her on board, which it otherwise wouldn’t be.
PS - I don’t like illegal immigration, Kelo decision, gun control, and other things of that nature. I might have turned out a “conservative” but the name has been disgraced by the people who have taken up its mantle.
12:11 pm
Laughable. Coulter, Ingram, Rush- so filled with hate and lies, that it is unreal. Your Politics have become a sick joke. You all seem “oh so shocked” that the “base” has gotten away from you. Enjoy the hatred that has been sold as patriotism. Maybe next year, you will get your flag burning and gay marriage ammendments, and while you are at it, make the South Dakota “Sodomized Virgin” exception,the law of the land! Perhaps you will get another shot at Teri Schiavo? All while you spend more than ever, on every piece of fraud and pork on the books. Reagan would have built an army, by the way. One large enough to win the regional war we have gotten ourselves into. CONGRATULATIONS..your “base” has taken over.
12:37 pm
Defending the Indefensible
It’s been said that if Bush made himself Supreme-Leader-for-Life, the right would rise as one to pronounce it a good thing. In similar lockstep fashion, the paste-eaters now conclude that any reaction to Coulter’s attack on the 9/11 widows -
11:39 am
Ann said (I believe on the Lauer clip) that Liberals don’t understand analogy. It appears not just liberals, of course. But, here’s an analogy to HER statements: critcizing a famous actress wading into the political arena. You might call (this actress) a washed up ham, enjoying the fame of being in the (political) limelight and having no expertise based on her experience. A strident harpy… etc. Making ad hominem attacks even.
The attacks are not reasonable, and I don’t think Ann is that bereft of intelligence to be making them as ‘attacks’; nor is she seeking merely controversy. Ann herself is the example, beautifully rendered, showing just how out of bounds the same kinds of attacks are w.r.t. these widows.
She is stunningly, inexorably and amusingly, reasonable. She’s also brave, and funny. She’s not afraid to throw the left’s outrageousness right back at them. The reaction tells the tale.
4:41 pm
Coulter is among the lowest of the right wing lowlifes and I generally try to ignore her. However, I was reminded of her recently when I saw a picture in the paper of a woman in handcuffs in court for stabbing a relative to death who refused to pass over money for the accused woman’s drug habit. There was the accused, looking like a Coulter clone, same scrawny figure, stringy dyed blond hair, hollow eyes and sunken cheeks. Obviously a mental case brought on by a drug habit, but her appearance reminded me of the typical incoherent Coulter rants on TV that are very much like the ones you see on the COPS program when a meth user is being arrested. Then a light bulb went off.
Has Coulter been tested for drugs? Or is she a Limbaugh clone where illicit drug use is okay for him (or her) but not for anyone else? But then I thought, meth wouldn’t be totally responsible for such out-of-control rants and perhaps there is another reason. Then a new thought came to me, an infection by Treponema pallidum could be the responsible agent.
After all, it is well known that third stage syphilis leads to mental deterioration, sexual impotence and loss of balance. At this stage there is no cure and the only salvation might be elimination from the gene pool. Perhaps there is a dead eye Dick Cheney lurking around somewhere with a shotgun loaded with something a little stronger than birdshot and that he is closer than he was to his friend Harry and that he has better aim. I don’t want Coulter to be religious martyr like the suicide bombers of Iraq but rearranging her smarmy face would be a welcome improvement.
6:07 pm
“”She is stunningly, inexorably and amusingly, reasonable. She’s also brave, and funny. She’s not afraid to throw the left’s outrageousness right back at them. The reaction tells the tale.”"
Yeah, right.
What she is a hack who uses her position in the media to attack widows and orphans, instead of making an argument based on the merits of the 9/11 comission and the Administrations response to it. She herself made a point using her lost friend Olsen right after the attack. 9/11 was a personal tragedy for her, so she referenced it, she lost a friend. Now she is appalled that these women who lost their childrens fathers in the attack would have the gaul to have a opinion about it, and our security? PULEEEESE!
Zardoz has it right. She speaks for the republican base, that, most people agree on. Most pundits are defending her rhetoric. Enjoy your new found poster child.
6:22 pm
“The attacks are not reasonable, and I don’t think Ann is that bereft of intelligence to be making them as ‘attacks’; nor is she seeking merely controversy. Ann herself is the example, beautifully rendered, showing just how out of bounds the same kinds of attacks are w.r.t. these widows.”
LOL Anne as Mirror of the LEFT. haha.
Whether or not she believes what she says is irrelevant so long as she continues to defend the statements as though she does. What makes her popular among those conservatives who happen to have brain activity approaching that of the brain dead, isn’t that she’s trying to be controversial, it’s that she’s expressing what they believe. What they themselves in fact would be saying if they thought they could get away with it in public. You’ll know them because they’re typically the ones ranting against “PC”.
Her comments are an insightful look into the thoughts and thinking processes of her base, comprised of the conservative base.
In other words zardoz, just in case you missed it, she’s not a mirror of the Left, far from it, she’s the personification of a large part of the brain dead right, the absolute worst part of the right.
A living breathing, walking talking, exemplification of everything wrong with the retrograde conservative base that supports her.
That she’s smart enough to use their incredible ignorance against them, and what right wing politician isn’t these days, to generate profit for herself, doesn’t excuse either her behavior, or the willfully self imposed ignorance of her supporters.
2:36 pm
I thoroughly enjoy comments and criticisms that never address what exactly Coulter says. A proper rebuttal never goes out of style.
I’m halfway through the book and her criticisms of modern liberalism are layed out quite reasonably.
Of course, like Rush Limbaugh, she glorifies all Rebublican and conservative values, but many of their core values are good values.
Modern liberalism has no consistent values and espouses no well grounded judgments.
Remember also that Coulter utilizes satire in her writings, and showing another person’s values (or really, lack of them) is very frustrating and anger inducing for directionless people.
This is why I detest blog type comments, because 99% of the comments are no better than the blankness that was there before them.
I call these commenters my ’squabbling children’
Go read the reviews of Coulter’s Godless at Amazon.com. You’ll see what I mean, and you will find my ‘children’.
7:39 pm
“I thoroughly enjoy comments and criticisms that never address what exactly Coulter says. A proper rebuttal never goes out of style.”
Me as well, I note you didn’t address anything she actually said either btw.
I did however above, when she plaintively complained that the widows were “preventing” her from responding, when in fact she was just then responding.
Her type of ridiculousness is grotesquely obvious.
“Modern liberalism has no consistent values and espouses no well grounded judgments.”
First off liberalism’s values are actually more consistent than conservative ones. We can see that clearly by the individual we’re discussing here. Ann purports to be a moral values oriented conservative with an actual large following, yet she can spout some of the most immoral foul unchristian things in the most crassly hypocritical fashion.
Preemptive attacks? Hey no problem screw the constitution.
Spy on Americans. Eh screw em the constitution is just a piece of paper anyway.
Kidnap and transport suspects to torture camps. Hey that’s the American way. Woooot Woot. Constiwhositswhatsits?
Conservativism has become a sad pathetic mockery of it’s former self with Coulter, and the current Administration as sad sad pathetic prime examples of what’s gone wrong with it.
Where’s the fiscal responsibility? Where’s the holding government accountable?
The GOP has pathetically, and predictably become the party of religious fanatics, like Dobbson, and Robertson issuing religious fatwas on gays, minorities, and foreign leaders.
It’s become the party of racists, and retrogrades, who revel in their ignorance, and rail against the so called “elites” liberal.
The party most likely to try and shove their religious beliefs on society through legislation. Not more the staunch the supporters of “Separation of Church and State” their proud history would indicate.
Modern Conservativisim is a sad pathetic shadow of it’s former self, and Coulter, and her legion of supporters, wonderfully highlights just how out of wack conservatives have become.
11:22 am
That Lisa Beamer sure enjoyed her husband’s death, didn’t she?
6:39 pm
Oh, This will be Good!
Rick Moran of Rightwing Nuthouse— who recently called Ann Coulter a “con
6:37 am
enjoyed this post.
11:35 pm
Conservative values are good values? So I guess that universal sufferage and equal rights for blacks are not good ones as they are liberal ideas?
11:45 pm
Before anyone takes a higher ground on the matter of values, kindly make sure you are on higher ground.
Condemning torture or other human rights violations by other countries while allowing such things to happen gives the Bush administration utterly no credibility when the value of human rights and freedom is mentioned.
Are conservative values good values when they divide people, ostracise minorities and other religions or deny basic freedoms to women such as the right to choose abortion?
Or does such good values include character assasination as could be seen by Bush-Roves campaigns against Republican McCain or Democrat Kerry????
Before people launch into any debate, please be clear about what exactly does being Liberal means. Jimmy sums it best in the West Wing Presidential debate as to why people are proud of being a liberal:
http://onegoodmove.org/1gm/1gmarchive/2005/11/badge_of_honor.html#comments
10:43 am
Where is this liberal Media that these conservatives, Ann Coulter for one, are constantly complaining about, aside from Keith Oberman most if not all the rest of the talking heads are concervative Chris Matthews - Conservative, Wolf Blitzer - Concervative, Bill O’Reilly - Ultra Conservative, Calson Tucker, Sean Hannidy, Joe Scarbourough - All Concervative, mediamatters.org posted a study of Sunday talk show guests on ABC, CBS and NBC from 1997 - 2005
Among the study’s key findings: and I Quote
• The balance between Democrats/progressives and Republicans/conservatives was roughly equal during Clinton’s second term, with a slight edge toward Republicans/conservatives: 52 percent of the ideologically identifiable guests were from the right, and 48 percent were from the left. But in Bush’s first term, Republicans/ conservatives held a dramatic advantage, outnumbering Democrats/progressives by 58 percent to 42 percent. In 2005, the figures were an identical 58 percent to 42 percent.
• Counting only elected officials and administration representatives, Democrats had a small advantage during Clinton’s second term: 53 percent to 45 percent. In Bush’s first term, however, the Republican advantage was 61 percent to 39 percent — nearly three times as large.
• In both the Clinton and Bush administrations, conservative journalists were far more likely to appear on the Sunday shows than were progressive journalists. In Clinton’s second term, 61 percent of the ideologically identifiable journalists were conservative; in Bush’s first term, that figure rose to 69 percent.
• In 1997 and 1998, the shows conducted more solo interviews with Democrats/progressives than with Republicans/conservatives. But in every year since, there have been more solo interviews with Republicans/conservatives.
• The most frequent Sunday show guest during this nine-year period is Sen. John McCain (R-AZ), who has appeared 124 times. Sen. Joseph Biden (D-DE) has been the most frequent guest since 2003.
• In every year examined by the study — 1997 - 2005 — more panels tilted right (a greater number of Republicans/conservatives than Democrats/progressives) than tilted left. In some years, there were two, three, or even four times as many righttitled panels as left-tilted panels.
• Congressional opponents of the Iraq war were largely absent from the Sunday shows, particularly during the period just before the war began.
and that doesnt even include the rest of the week or talk radio that is almost completely dominated by conservatives, only progressive talk radio I get in my area is on the Internet, and I live in NY a Democratic Stong Ground, and all we get is these right wing nut jobs. Granted the media used to be a little more liberal, but we’re talking almost 10 years ago, but the conservatives continue to beat this puppy, thats what Ann Coulters is all about, beating on liberals using slander and name calling to do it, and then turn around and say thats what the left does, are you kidding me, the left barely even has a voice anymore, and you look at all the liberal bloggers and conservative bloggers, with exceptions, the conservative tend to be a little more slanderous, there are exceptions, but this is just my observation of things
11:43 am
[...] Captain’s Quarters is such a nice guy that its not odd he should be upset but I believe he is wrong. AJ Strata is having a tough time deciding whether he is a conservative or a moderate… Right Wing Nuthouse needs to breath into a paper bag. Anchoress is her usual calm self, wrong on this but calm. Michelle Malkin hits it out of the park pointing out that long ago the Opinion Journals Dorothy Rabinowitz had the Jersey Girls figured. Ace of Spades is only happy if he is doing the attacking of the left…he was pretty darn harsh on Sheehan. [...]
11:46 am
I am shocked (but not surprised) that some people are so ignorant as to pay attention to Ann Coulter’s babbling nonsense. She lost ALL credibility when she started the movement to make Joe McCarthy into some kind of a patriot. What is a conservative these days anyway? Our president has taken away our personal privacy rights, abandoned states rights issues, promised to re-sign the Brady bill if Congress renewed it, has grown the Federal government into the largest bloated entity in history, and has spent us deeper in debt than we have ever been before. Sounds like a classic liberal to me. We are now openly engaging civilian targets, not for past crimes but for thinking we may be stopping FUTURE crimes. How scary is that. That is like saying, “My neighbor is bad. I don’t really have any proof that he has done anything, but in the past he has associated with people I suspect have done bad things. I don’t have hard evidence against them either, but I JUST KNOW. Now I think I will kill my neighbor. He has never done anything bad to me and if I kill him he never will.”
And Ann Coulter thinks that is just fine. If you do also, I pity you.
2:07 pm
[...] David Carr has a good article in week’s NY Times about Ann Coulter. Tony Norman’s essay “If Ann Coulter’s a Christian, Then I’ll Be Damned” is also quite good. I don’t know anyone who actually likes her (the perils of an extremely limited social group: you think the whole world thinks like you), or thinks anything she says is more than spite, malice, and bile. But if you know someone who is a) christian and b) gives any credence to the ramblings of this mad-woman, you should have them read this essay. World-O-Crap has a great parody of Coulter here. Or might it be the truth… For a more conservative, but intelligent, response, check out Right Wing Nut House’s “Anne Coulter: Conservative Lout” I want to point out that I find the division of conservative/liberal to be increasingly meaningless while at the same time proponents of one side or the other have become increasingly vitriolic in their rhetoric. Conservatives do not own the monopoly on spewing stupidity, lies, and petty meanness.I think we need to be much more specific with our language in order to navigate, with any sense of usefulness, the political landscape of today. The most frightening people in this country are not “conservatives” in any real sense of the word. They are, like Coulter, zealots. There is a difference. Also, the so-called “base” of the Republican party is no longer “conservative” but, and let’s be honest here, “religious fanatics” who want to create a theocracy. What I don’t understand is how little attention is given to the apparent and growing resemblances between the religious fanatics of Islam and the religious fanatics of Christianity. When Pat Robertson calls for the assassination of another human being–and is not roundly denounced by Christians around the world, we have reached a point in time when Christ is no longer being taken seriously by many of his “so-called” followers. What are the moral or ethical differences between Islamic fundamentalists and Christian fundamentalists? Regardless of your religion, the moment you take action to deny full humanity to others based on their beliefs, you have lost all moral standing. Let’s be clear here as well: I do not accept moral relativism as an answer. If you are performing a clitorectomy on a 13 year old girl, you are wrong and I have no problem with opposing that cultural practice. If your religion says that others are less than human and should be killed or harmed for their beliefs, than your religion is, inherently, anti-human, anti-life, and just plain wrong. If you believe that non-believers are going to hell, or will be punished by your God, then fine, I have no problem with that. God can take care of his own. Render unto God what is God’s and render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s. Remember that we have our freedoms in large part because of the secular nature of our government, regardless of the inclusion of Christian rhetoric within our government. Theocracy is not what America stands for, and yet there are significant forces in this country who want to establish just such a theocracy. What is most frightening about Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s letter is the end section where he urges Bush to work with Iran because both worship the same god. For all Bush’s talk about freedom, his government of zealots and fanatics is enacting a campaign of secrecy, anti-constitutionalism, religious fundamentalism, blind arrogance and spiritual bankruptcy. Pundits like Ann Coulter only exacerbate the situation, feeding a hungry populace a diet of fear and hatred. Not a particularly fulfilling diet, but one that, like most junk food, momentarily stops the hunger. [...]
4:40 am
I think it’s clear that Ann COulter enjoys a following among the extreme right waings because she says things that they want to hear and find all sorts of outrageous reasons to justify it.
Coulter mangles Dover case
http://www.ydr.com/mike/ci_3951924RBH
Jun 18, 2006 — There is an irony buried deep under the vitriol, idiocy, slander, vileness, ignorance, stupidity and simply breathtaking inanity that passes for the contribution to the public discourse of an alleged carbon-based life-form that goes by the name of Ann Coulter.
Of course, you’ve heard about this vile life-support system for a mane of blonde hair. She’s been all over the media, spreading her poison, the vaguely human counterpart of a Gila monster, except with colder blood. It’s amusing that one of her complaints about what she calls the liberal media establishment is that it gives short-shrift to morons like herself who seek airtime to inflict a toxic stew of idiocies masquerading as ideas upon an unsuspecting public.
Her latest missive - I won’t name it because it doesn’t need the publicity - is yet another of her fact-free exercises in what comedian Stephen Colbert calls truthiness, which is essentially cattle excrement that tries to pass itself off as truth.
She’s received a lot of airtime to discuss her idiotic remarks about the women who were widowed in the Sept. 11 attacks. I’m guessing she’s mostly jealous of these women because they have demonstrated the ability to have a relationship with a man that didn’t end with them killing and eating him.
I won’t repeat her slanders - they are beyond indecency and lapse into the pornographic. You’ve probably heard them already, and there’s no need to repeat her idiocies about the widows “enjoying” their husbands’ deaths.
One part of her latest book that’s getting little notice is the part that deals with Dover and what is purported to be the “debate” over evolution.
She begins her screed by saying that liberals have contempt for science.
What?
She offers as proof that liberals support stem-cell research.
Yes, I know, I don’t get it either.
Lots of conservatives also support stem-cell research. Nancy Reagan, for one. Arnold Schwarzenegger, for another. Gov. Arnold has even supported increased funding for stem-cell research in California, after the federal government, kow-towing to the religious right, cut off money to explore this vital area of scientific research.
“Liberals,” Coulter writes, “just want to kill humans.”
Moving on, she then says liberals worship the theory of evolution.
Which is science.
Which she says liberals hate.
OK, it’s a mistake to try to figure this out. I’ll try, though.
She wrote, “Liberals’ creation myth is Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution, which is about one notch above Scientology in scientific rigor. It’s a make-believe story, based on a theory that is a tautology, with no proof in the scientist’s laboratory or the fossil record - and that’s after 150 years of very determined looking. We wouldn’t still be talking about it but for the fact that liberals think evolution disproves God.”
Where do you begin with that?
First off, lots of conservatives subscribe to the theory of evolution and oppose the teaching of creationism in the guise of intelligent design - or whatever they’re calling it now - in public schools.
And why drag Scientology into it? Darwin’s theory and Scientology are two completely different things. One is a rigorously tested and thoroughly accepted scientific explanation for how life evolved on this planet and the other is the reason Tom Cruise acts so weird.
“A make-believe story”? “No proof”?
I suggest that Ann do some reading.
Tons of laboratory work and the fossil record clearly support evolution. She has no idea what she’s talking about.
But that doesn’t stop her.
“Liberals think evolution disproves God”?
Now, that’s just stupid. For one thing, Ken Miller, an Ivy League biology professor and one of the leading evolutionary biologists in the country, is a devout Catholic and he has no problem balancing belief in evolution with his faith. Speaking of Catholics, Pope John Paul II, for God’s sake, spoke out in support of evolution, saying it is now beyond mere supposition and is fact. Catholic schools and universities teach evolution in biology classes. Last I heard, Catholics still believe in God.
She goes on to completely misrepresent what happened in Dover and concludes, “After Dover, no school district will dare breathe a word about ‘intelligent design,’ unless they want to risk being bankrupted by ACLU lawsuits. The Darwinists have saved the secular sanctity of their temples: the public schools. They didn’t win on science, persuasion, or the evidence. They won the way liberals always win: by finding a court to hand them everything they want on a silver platter.”
First off, Ann, this wasn’t a victory for liberals. It was a victory for everyone who believes in the separation of church and state, for everyone who believes in quality education, for everyone who believes that scientific research and human progress shouldn’t be thwarted by the prejudices and fears of a small group of people.
Secondly, the plaintiffs in this case - the parents who brought the case - weren’t a bunch of crazed liberals. Many of the 11 plaintiffs are Republicans and consider themselves conservative. They just didn’t like the idea that a small cabal on the school board chose to trample on their rights and violate the Constitution.
Thirdly, they did win on science, persuasion and the evidence - as so eloquently outlined in U.S. District Judge John E. Jones III’s decision in the case. They also won because the side of righteousness - as Ann would have you believe - lied repeatedly during the trial.
For all of Ann’s blather about activist judges, Jones, appointed to the federal bench by President Bush, was just the opposite. His ruling was based on the evidence presented during the trial. For him to have ruled differently would have required not just activism, but the kind of legal gymnastics that would have made a mockery of the judicial system.
The logical extension of Coulter’s bent reasoning seems to be that the scientific method is a liberal trick and that adherence to it by scientists is part of the liberal plot to … um … whatever.
She seems not to understand that researchers doing the kind of work that will cure disease and ease human suffering need to know how the evolutionary mechanism works, just as engineers building bridges need to know math.
So that brings us to the big irony of Coulter’s work.
Her vitriol and ignorance shows contempt for science and for the scientists working to cure diseases such as cancer, Alzheimer’s and whatever it is that is afflicting Ann Coulter. Mike Argento, whose column appears Mondays and Thursdays in Living and Sundays in Viewpoints, can be reached at 771-2046 or at mike@ydr.com.Read more Argento columns at ydr.com/mike or at http://www.yorkblog.com - Argento’s Front Stoop.
7:55 pm
About the broken clock
There is an old truism that says, Even a broken clock is right twice a day. It is my pleasure to report that the Anchoress has reached at least one of those times with a posting on the Jeff Goldstein controversy which can be read here.
Goldstein, prop…
7:55 pm
About the broken clock
There is an old truism that says, Even a broken clock is right twice a day. It is my pleasure to report that the Anchoress has reached at least one of those times with a posting on the Jeff Goldstein controversy which can be read here.
Goldstein, prop…
2:35 pm
[...] I think the tide is turning against her finally. She’ll always have a home on FOX, but more and more conservatives pundits and bloggers are turning on her. I’m glad to be helping in that cause. The more she appears promoting her new book, the faster she will fall. On Tucker Carlson’s show: [...]
12:04 pm
Anne Coulter is a Comedian. Whether she knows
it or not. It’s like those old Jerry Lewis
movies..This flavor of the month anorexic she- male is so bumbling and funny that no sane person could ever take her seriously.Whenever she’s on TV or writes an article with her zany vitriol I laugh so hard it’s exhausting. Nathan Black used to be my favorite comedian, but Anne nutbag Coulter has got him beat hands down.
3:17 pm
Ann [Nazi Barbie}Coulter calls Murtha a coward,all he did was serve his country in Vietnam.How about 5 time deferment king Dick Chaney,it’s easy to be brave now that he is surrounded by Secret Service agents.Cut and Run?Dick never even showed up.
6:07 pm
[...] Asked whether or not there were any major intelligence lapses in light of the fact that it took two years to find weapons that were right in our backyard, the president insisted that his intelligence had been good, but conceded that “Thanks to the excellent work by Ms. Coutler, we have known that Vermont housed a large number of hostile forces, but the truth is that we may not have investigated this possibility as aggressively as we could have. I want to stress however, that it it is impossible to investigate every possibility. There are known knowns and unknown knowns and known unknows or something like that. Anyway, you can’t know everything.” The president refused to elaborate, but analysts said that despite intensive training by evil, crazy bitch utter nutcase well-known commentator Ann Coulter, author of “How to Talk to a Liberal”, the administration and the intelligence services did not have enough analysts and translators capable of speaking liberal. Therefore intelligence coverage of Vermont has been lacking since roughly 2000. [...]
3:54 pm
Only in America would a hack like Coulter be given a public platform to voice her anger and hate towards a group of people simply because they represent lateral thought - something that the U.S.A. needs right now.
Why is she even allowed to publish books? To me she is like a spoiled, angry child - and I often wonder if she just does it to sell books. Either way, she nauseates me.
3:18 pm
i dreamnt i double fisted anne coulter and she just kept calling me a wimp…
2:59 am
Interessando, luogo abbastanza luminoso, penso +5
4:03 pm
Because the liberal, democratic majority is pushing legislation on social spending and running rough shod over traditional values like drunken sailors, Public Advocate has put the Kennedy Sobriety Checkpoint back in 24/7 operation. Public Advocate is seeking volunteers to help with their duties. To see the 4 minute video go to their homepage, http://www.publicadvocateusa.org.
10:59 am
The political blogosphere’s ashes smolder in their urn of stagnation
After seeing the attacks on Ann Coulter from The Anchoress, Captain Ed, Right Wing Nut House and other blogs, I have come to realize that the political blogosphere has finally become as trite and mundane once you get above the…
4:02 pm
I think she could have picked a harder subject to poke fun at. This was to easy. Post 214 had a good line ( he or she said) I have seen those widows on TV and they were always spouting a liberal point of view ( anti bush) Well seeing how most of the widows husbands were firefighters and they are typically people who care for others sometimes more than themselves ( you know liberals ) not selfish self centered people like Anne. I can see that they would be anti-bush. I also love how a generalization of millions is done on the actions of what 5 or 6.
9:08 pm
I’ve noticed again and again that the media baits us into hating and denouncing Coulter by taking most of what she says out of context.
While I don’t like what’s being called the new “F” word, she drew attention to what in a free society should be a troubling phenomenon: the politically incorrect being shipped off to redemptive rehab, aka re-education camps. Think Isaiah Washington, Michael Richards and Mel Gibson. Moreover this shows a trend of dealing with personal and professional conflicts through P.C. witch hunts. T. R. Knight I’m talking to you. These are issues to consider, especially as people become more and more easily offended and individuals are less and less protected in free thought and expression.
When I was just about to write coulter off, I stopped to actually read what she had said about the 9/11 widows, and I realized that there was alot of truth in what she said. I think the increasing viciousness towards her is a desperate attempt for an increasingly intolerant leftist mainstream to avoid dealing with that.
Something else I’ve noticed: Coulter did not initiate this nastiness. Her books were pretty civil even after Franken called her a skank in response to her mention of being friendly with him. I think she’d finally had enough with the double standards and distortions of our P.C. culture when she laid out her new rules in “How to talk to a Liberal if You must.” My favorite was don’t offer them an olive branch; they’ll beat you with it. And for the most part the ad hominem attacks on her flimsily pretending to be debate bear that out.
Moreover her nastiness isn’t gratuitous-she actually has a point to make, whereas Franken Bullies and name calls to silence debates he knows he can’t win.
9:53 pm
What, pray tell, is a “mainstream conservative”?
8:19 pm
Rick, your views on Coulter and the way this cultural war ought to be fought are precisely why you and other “holier than thou” conservatives will lose and are already losing. The Democrat party has morphed into a truly Leninist political organization with a contempt for law let alone basic moral principles. They will do anything to win and to stay in power. As soon as they are able to get a sufficient number of people in this country dependent on some income redistribution scheme. Then they will never have to worry about nuisances like elections. You will be lucky if they remember that you were a gentleman in your opposition to them (before it was outlawed) and may be spared the Gulag.
Seriously, in fighting a nasty trotskyite organization of thugs like the Democrat party, you only stand a chance if you have people like Coulter. God bless her… Lenin once said: “You can’t make revolution wearing white gloves”. I should know. I grew up there…