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 Editorials | March 2007 
Shame on You, Ann Coulter II
 Scott Galindez - t r u t h o u t | Managing Editor
| | A popular commentator's gay slur at a key political conservative conference in Washington drew strong protests Sunday as Republicans rushed to distance themselves. Ann Coulter, pictured last year, an outspoken conservative pundit, suggested Friday that Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards was a "faggot" at the annual meeting in Washington of the influential Conservative Political Action Conference. (AFP/Evan Agostini) |
The most popular column I ever wrote for Truthout was a response to Ann Coulter's disgusting attacks against Max Cleland. We are now in another election cycle, and Ann Coulter again is making tasteless comments.
Speaking Friday at the annual Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in Washington, D.C., Coulter closed her remarks with: "I was going to have a few comments on the other Democratic presidential candidate, John Edwards, but it turns out you have to go into rehab if you use the word 'faggot,' so I - so kind of an impasse, can't really talk about Edwards."
What was she thinking? Ann, it's 2007, and you are how old? This reminds me of a grade school attack by a bully who knows he can't win an intellectual argument, so he calls the kid with brains a "fag."
Ann, you can't attack Edwards on the issues: he has a health care plan, a plan to attack poverty, and wants to get us out of Iraq. When John Edwards speaks, he shows a grasp of the issues that we have not seen from our president over the last six and a half years. Is that what scares you? An articulate candidate who is ready to tackle big issues? Usually bullies resort to name-calling when they're afraid. What are you afraid of, Ann?
This is not the first time Coulter has called political adversaries "fags." On the July 27, 2006, edition of MSNBC's "Hardball," host Chris Matthews asked right-wing pundit Coulter, "How do you know that Bill Clinton is gay?" The question was in reference to her comment the night before on CNBC's "The Big Idea With Donny Deutsch" that Clinton shows "some level of latent homosexuality." Coulter responded, "I don't know if he's gay. But Al Gore - total fag."
OK, I hear you, Ann Coulter supporters, the few of you who can defend such statements. You are saying it was satire, she was joking.... Was she joking when she said: "If Cleland had dropped a grenade on himself at Fort Dix rather than in Vietnam, he would never have been a US senator in the first place. Maybe he'd be the best pharmacist in Atlanta," Coulter said in her column, published on February 11, 2004.
"He didn't 'give his limbs for his country' or leave them 'on the battlefield,'" Coulter said. "There was no bravery involved in dropping a grenade on himself with no enemy troops in sight."
Cleland in fact picked up a grenade that was dropped by another soldier, thinking it was his own.
Was she joking when she said, "These broads are millionaires, lionized on TV and in articles about them, reveling in their status as celebrities and stalked by grief-arazzis. I've never seen people enjoying their husbands' deaths so much."
In the above statement, Coulter was referring to the Jersey Girls, a group of 9/11 widows who have been seeking answers and have been critical of the Bush administration's handling of 9/11.
She went on to ask why the "harpies" (she suggested they might have been divorced by their husbands had they lived) couldn't just "take the money and shut up about it." She wouldn't concede that they would rather have their husbands than a million dollars, and wondered, "Do I have to kill my mother so I can be a victim too?"
I can go on and on here ... she has the right to say whatever she wants, but at some point responsible media and political organizations should stop giving her the megaphone that ensures that the rest of us have to hear her hate. I'm sure that it's only a matter of time before I have to write. "Shame on You, Ann Coulter III."
Scott Galindez is the Managing Editor of Truthout. scott.galindez@truthout.org |
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