Ann Coulter must’ve wondered what hit her. She trotted out her usual shtick at CPAC, and the Right when ballistic over it. Sample:
Ann Coulter used to serve the movement well. She was telegenic, intelligent, and witty. She was also fearless: saying provocative things to inspire deeper thought and cutting through the haze of competing information has its uses. But Coulter’s fearlessness has become an addiction to shock value. She draws attention to herself, rather than placing the spotlight on conservative ideas.
In fact, Coulter’s been spewing the same spew for years. What she said at CPAC was actually rather mild by Coulter standards. But as I wrote here, her problem is not that she has changed, but that the movement that supported her has changed. They are having to work harder at persuading themselves that they are morally superior to the Left, and lately this effort has taken the form of pretending they are more genteel of speech than we are.
Thus, the Coulter we have all known all these years is off-message.
Y’all will love this — defending the Right against this Glenn Greenwald column, rightie blogger Patterico posts an unintentionally hilarious screed “proving” that lefties do too engage in hate speech.
There are two major problems with Patterico’s “proof.” The first is that many of the people he lists as “lefties,” um, aren’t. Nina Totenberg? Chris Rock? Craig Kilborne? I’d never heard of Julianne Malveaux, although I take it she writes a column somewhere.
But the other little flaw in Patterico’s post is that none of his links go to original sources, but to posts and articles by right-wing bloggers and columnists. So there is no way to check the context that the righties lifted the quote out of, or even if the quote is accurate.
This is unethical and dishonest, I say. Essentially Patterico is blowin’ smoke. And Glenn Greenwald wins again.
If you like Coulter, check this out on MoDo:
At The Daily Howler there is an interesting post entitled “When You Read Dowd, You’re Riding With Coulter.â€
http://www.dailyhowler.com
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Not CRAIGGERS!
Also, when you’re forced to call on Louis Farrakhan from the bullpen in what amounts to the 5th inning of your post (on the novel theory that he “was an outspoken critic of Bush”), then you’ve pretty much just torched your blog for the insurance money. Sorry about the mixed, uncivil metaphors.
“5th inning of your post…torched your blog for the insurance money.”
those are not simply mixed metaphors. those metaphors were chopped, diced, and thrown into the patented hamilton beach metaphor osterizer to make a delicious metaphor smoothie in under a minute!! not available at stores, but if you call today, you too can destroy grammar syntax the easy way!
Glenn Greenwald is an intellectual fraud?…Gee, I wish I had one tenth of Greenwald’s clarity in reasoning and ability in expression. My boy Patternico evidently isn’t a reader of Glenn’s work, because if he was, he’d know that there aren’t many bloggers out here who are as tightly wrapped as Glenn. It’s like a Chihuahua nipping at a Rotwieller. Sometimes it’s wiser to just put your head down and realize you’ve been shortchanged by nature.
The name is actually Patterico fwiw. I’m surprised he doesn’t go after Douglas Adams directly for hate speech against the Marketing Division of the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation.
Hey, is Chelsea Clinton still a dog? Rush told me she was when the kid was at gawky age 13.
Shock jock-ularity from Limbaugh to Coulter has been like watching the torch pass from Beavis to Butthead.
Let them denounce Rush, if they’re seriously thinking about turning over a new leaf. But this has been happening since the Gingrich Contracted Hit on America. Coulter’s just the latest flavor.
In a 1994 article from the Arizona Republic, Barry Goldwater said:
”The conservative movement is founded on the simple tenet that people have the right to live life as they please, as long as they don’t hurt anyone else in the process.”
In the same article, Goldwater warned that ”the radical right has nearly ruined our party.”
And they repudiated him, too.
sniflheim — Thanks for the correction.
I read that CNN is having Coulter on the Paul Zahn show. How low can the bar go? Media is digging trenches now.
ironranger, I didn’t know anybody watches Paula Zahn, I sure don’t.
Julianne Malveaux is the daughter of Susan Malveaux, who was one of the first black women to do national news. She used to be a regular on Washington Week in Review in the 70s and 80s. They are primarily from the Washington, D.C. metropolitan area. Julianne’s mother was in the civil rights and feminist movements; and, perhaps, she is considered a lefty solely because of her mother. Julianne worked for local stations out here first before going to a network (I don’t know which). I don’t remember her doing any thing exceptional, left or right or down the middle; so, I can’t imagine any one complaining about her being a lefty.
I agree that Patterico is unethical and dishonest if he doesn’t seek out the original quote for context and accuracy. Of course, this is a description of most of the righties who do all the whining. As I have said before there is a big difference in being vulgar and being downright mean and hateful, which most of the Republican right is.
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I was surprised to see a blurb preview on the Today show this morning that said they were going to look at the uproar caused by Ann Coulter’s remarks. So I waited for the whole story.
Well, it was framed totally wrong. They said her remarks were an example of “foot in mouth” rather than saying she deliberately with malice aforethought made that inflammatory statement about John Edwards. It was hardly an “oops” moment.
And then they dragged out the comment that Bill Maher made about Cheney, also taken out of context. While he said that if Cheney were out of power, fewer lives would be lost, they framed the statement as if he had said it was too bad Cheney wasn’t killed in the bombing. Sigh.
So even when you think the media might just be getting things straight, they still screw it up.
It was hardly an “oops†moment.
No doubt about that. The video of Coulter showed clearly that she was beaming with self satisfaction and quite impressed with herself..” I’m so cute and clever”. For Coulter it all counts for good because exposure and name recognition is the prize she seeks..a basic attention whore. If it works, ya work it? Any love is good love?
…it almost seems that the only difference in circumstances this time that are causing righties to twist themselves into tight little knots with all this carefully choreographed bit of shock…SHOCK, I say….at Coulter’s statements is that she did her little gig in a media-covered event. Relatively few people read her books, relatively few people read her editorial page column, relatively few people watch the cable talking head shows she continually pops up on, but lots of people watch the evening news; hence the need for ‘outrage’ by the newly genteel right. She will say the same or worse in her next cookie-cutter volume-discount book or in her rambling little column or on some Faux News show with nary a ripple outside of progressive blogtopia (y!sctp!…figured I better put that since I see ‘roo tracks ’round here). I have the cynical suspicion that she’s not so much off-message in the minds of the ‘outraged’ right than she is out of demographic…