Expletive Deleted: Coulter Attacks John Edwards
Posted on March 3, 2007
| buzz-it! | Huff it!
I suppose I should be more enthusiastic about John Edwards now that Ann Coulter has called him “a faggot.” I feel a strange, sympathetic bond toward the candidate who is attacked with the same word I’ve sometimes been attacked with. It seems the haters in the world are actually trying to push that word to carry as large a burden of hate as “nigger.” [God, it pains me just to type out those two words, but I just don’t feel like being delicate about it right now.] The difference in status of the two words is that the reprehensible creature who spoke the former today would dare not speak the latter. She knew what she was doing, though. She knew that it would stir up her audience the same as if she had been leading a kkk meeting or talking to a group of neo-nazis. The video is here.
Andrew Sullivan wrote about her speech a few times today, lamenting how “Seeing college kids line up to worship her tore [him] up.” I think so. Like him, I have often written Coulter off as a tasteless performance artist, but I think she is more dangerous. It speaks volumes that the far right would host her at their CPAC convention. It was the same stage occupied by Mitt Romney and Rudy Giuliani. McCain had the good sense to take a pass. It is beyond ironic that in the same “performance” Sullivan quotes her as saying “There are more people voting on Christian moral values than on tax cuts.” The hate speech that accompanies talk of “Christian moral values” among the far right is the main reason many of us run from the label “Christian” these days.
Sullivan says Republicans need to distance themselves from her and I couldn’t agree more. Where I break ranks with him is when he says “she’s their Michael Moore.” There is no comparison. Michael Moore does not engage in hate speech. He might be seen as biased and inflammatory by those who don’t agree with him, but his main technique is to lay out facts and suggest they imply something, whether or not the implication is entirely fair (I’m thinking of speculating what’s going on in Bush’s mind while reading to elementary school students and hearing of the 9/11 plane crashes). Mostly, he lets his subjects hang themselves (the example here would be “Bowling for Columbine,” listening to gun enthusiasts with the appearance of complete credulity, allowing his audience to form their own conclusions). Moore, while looking for agreement with his point-of-view, invites his audience to think. Coulter does not require thinking, just all-too-enthusiastic agreement.
[Just added “I Speak for the Republican Party” badge on the Ann Coulter photo, courtesy of “Tild” who has a lovely blog post on the topic.] —JPM 3/4/07
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Andrew Sullivan wrote about her speech a few times today, lamenting how “Seeing college kids line up to worship her tore [him] up.” I think so. Like him, I have often written Coulter off as a tasteless performance artist, but I think she is more dangerous.
Exactly. Whether or not she is some kind of performance artist, she got genuine applause from the audience. And that is disturbing.
[…] This blog was one of the vast number that called offensive Ann Coulter’s attack on John Edwards and gays in a single breath. Again it’s not that she didn’t have the right to say what is offensive. That was never the point. The word itself is offensive, but context is everything here. If Ann had been hanging with some gay boyfriends and called one a faggot, and none took offense and any felt like they could call her a ho’ back with no offense, I’d say no harm, no foul. Now put her on a national stage speaking for her political party with full media coverage and toss out the f-bomb — she deserves the criticism she gets for not understanding the difference, or not caring. She also gets what she deserves if no serious candidate will ever again share a stage with her. […]