Ann Coulter and CPAC
Written by Sarah on March 5, 2007 – 9:19 am - Welcome, if you're new here, you may want to subscribe to our RSS feed or subscribe to our email newsletter. Thanks for visiting!
I hope this is the first, last, and only post I have to ever make about Ann Coulter for a long time.
I have received many comments and questions on Ann Coulter’s speech at CPAC. To clear up any questions or confusion: I did not attend the speech. I don’t think anyone from GOP3 took the time to wait in line to listen to her. I think one day I would try to see her speak just to say I did, but for now, I don’t think waiting in a long line at a conference to hear her is worth my time right now. Besides the fact I was not present at her speech, I didn’t even include an afterthought about what I had heard because I don’t find her particularly insightful or exciting.
In response to her comments/speech overall: I probably would have laughed if I had been there. She just wanted to stir some controversy, which of course is her trademark. If I were an offended, disgusted lefty (or even an offended, disgusted conservative), I would have just rolled my eyes and moved on. It is no surprise that she would say something to get people all riled up. A lot of you hate Ann Coulter. So why would you fuel the fire by getting your all panties in a twist? This is exactly what she wants: getting people really angry.
Ann Coulter was one speaker at a 3-day conference with dozens of conservative gurus who said infinitely more insightful, meaningful things to thousands of young conservative college students. I wouldn’t get too worked up about it, but thank you for your comments and questions.
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Posted in Beyond the Facade, US News and Liberal Debacles, We ask the Tough Questions. |
March 5th, 2007 at 9:31 am
Spot on Sarah. She obviously got what she wanted, just like last year’s raghead comment. The vast majority of conservatives do not agree with her or condone it (including myself) but just like Bill Maher says he wished the attempt on Cheney’s life was successful, Coulter does things for their shock value. Yes, it is wrong, tons of conservative have come out against it but because we all understand that type of shock punditry, there is no use fueling the fires.
March 5th, 2007 at 10:08 am
I am pleasantly surprised (although part of me wanted to expect it) at the condemnation Coulter’s hate speech has recieved from the right. Is GOP3 going to sign onto the letter circulated by local bloggers asking her not to come back to CPAC next year? It’s Boots and Sabre’s website, linked by Sykes.
http://www.bootsandsabers.com/index.php/weblog/permalink/an_open_letter_to_cpac_sponsors_and_organizers_regarding_ann_coulter/
(I doubt this link will work)
March 5th, 2007 at 10:17 am
Are you going to start a petition to get Bill Maher off the air for wishing Cheney had died during the recent attack on his life?
March 5th, 2007 at 11:13 am
I spoke with another GOP3 commenter last night and he raised an interesting point:
Ann Coulter may have given national conservatives a “Sister Souljah” moment. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sister_Souljah_moment
By repudiating an extremist, some conservatives may appear more moderate.
What is the net result of Ann Coulter’s speech? Liberals get to use the phrase “hate speech,” negative conservative stereotypes are perpetuated and the “f-word” may be indelibly attached to John Edwards and his campaign.
March 5th, 2007 at 12:22 pm
Maher: But I have zero doubt that if Dick Cheney was not in power, people wouldn’t be dying needlessly tomorrow. (applause)
Maher: I’m just saying if he did die, other people, more people would live. That’s a fact.
Fox News gives a “fair and balanced” (I actually mean this) headline “TV Host Bill Maher Suggests Dick Cheney’s Death Would Save Lives” which definitely falls short of “wishing Cheney had died.”
Despite it falling short of “wishing Cheney had died”, I still condemn it. In fact, I googled petitions to find one condemning his statements, but the only one I could find was one calling him a “jagoff” and a “f*g”, which I won’t sign.
However, in a completely parallel situation, if you show me a petition condemning Bill Maher and asking that his show be cancelled, I’ll sign it. I showed you a petition doing the same thing, will you sign it?
March 5th, 2007 at 1:44 pm
When words like that uttered by Coulter do not meet with a national smack down it lends acceptability for others to also use them. The scars and damage by words can be very real for people. There are standards for social interaction and good manners that are part of any healthy society. When words are used to injure others based on ethnic background or sexual identity there needs to be repercussions.
March 5th, 2007 at 1:45 pm
This is how political correctness advances… party A rushes to proclaim how offensive an idea is… party B rushes to disclaim any support for it… and soon we’re all competing to see how fast we can sign petitions banning it.
I wouldn’t sign either petition. Does that make me a pariah to both sides or a gadfly?
March 5th, 2007 at 2:56 pm
Daniel,
I’d say it makes you a typical, “they’re just words, stop trying to be so PC” person who defaults to that position because they don’t think things through. It definitely doesn’t make you an independent thinker who is either beyond caterogization by the right or the left or Socratic.
If I were worked up because someone said “congressmen” instead of “congressperson” I could understand your response, but to throw that in the same group as demeaningly calling someone a f*ggot” is wrong.
“party A rushes to proclaim how offensive an idea is…”
Saying F*ggot is not an idea. Generally speaking, it’s a word people use to show hatred towards/demean gay people.
N*gger, F*ggot, K*ke (and a handful of others) are words that go beyond political correctness and generally speaking, ought not to be said in a demeaning way.
March 5th, 2007 at 3:27 pm
“Saying F*ggot is not an idea. Generally speaking, it’s a word people use to show hatred towards/demean gay people.”
And you said I haven’t thought things through? “I hate gay people” is an idea, sir.
Every person throughout history who has ever sought to prohibit some sort of speech has claimed it was too dangerous/offensive to be permitted. There’s nothing new here. But to clarify, I never said these things OUGHT to be said, I merely said I wouldn’t be rushing to sign a petition to ban it in order to show the world how righteously offended I am.
March 5th, 2007 at 4:17 pm
Ann Coulter wasn’t consciously (I don’t think) using the word f*ggot as representative of an idea… she was using it to describe John Edwards in a demeaning way. What she said is not an idea, much like calling someone an idiot isn’t an idea. So, I mean “Saying F*ggot is not an idea, when said like Ann Coulter did.” However, the idea behind the word that most people hear is hate for gay people… It’s a fine distinction that I didn’t entirely make clear.
Keep in mind, neither petition is an attempt to ban that kind of speech. It’s banning Ann Coulter from representing Conservatives in a hateful way… Ann Coulter can talk about how much she may or may not hate gay people in any forum that will have her…
I believe in the market place of free ideas. That doesn’t mean that I won’t attempt to completely discredit and humiliate arguments that I think are fundamentally wrong (racism, homophobia).
March 5th, 2007 at 4:25 pm
*shrug* Do what you like. I’m not getting worked up over your response any more than I am about Coulter’s speech or the episode of Family Guy last night. (The musical number on “Prom Night Dumpster Babies” was priceless!)
You’re right that there’s a distinction you didn’t make clear… you talked about a petition to have a show cancelled, which smacked of censorship to me.
You’ll just have to trust me on this though… She was using the word to express an idea. You cannot win that one. “Idea” is just too broad a concept. Think about the First Amendment cases about pole dancing or pornography.
March 8th, 2007 at 12:42 am
Ann Coulter is an unfortunate example of “good ol’ girl” syndrome: in order to be taken seriously by the men who dominate our political culture, she finds it necessary to out-macho them. She’s basically the political equivalent of the grade-school tomboy who swears constantly and picks fights with boys on the playground in an attempt to transcend her gender in the eyes of her male peers. It’s laughable–and to some extent pitiable, too.
I tend to think of her as a real-life version of Serena Joy from the novel “The Handmaid’s Tale”. If what she fights for so strongly actually came to pass, she would resent her own success because she never intended for the rules she espoused to apply to herself. Once again, I pity her more than anything else.
Let her say what she wants–it’s her right, after all. Besides, she’s her own worst enemy. Every speech she makes strips her of more credibility in the eyes of those she struggles to impress.
March 8th, 2007 at 10:56 am
I have no problem with Coulter saying what she wants to say. I think we can all agree she’s insane.
My problem is that she is still invited to speak at GOP conventions and on GOP newschannels. You guys keep trying to legitimize what she is saying. It’s sad and wrong.
And she’s not isolated in the GOP - read the original post: “I probably would have laughed if I had been there.” Forgive me if I seem dour, but I don’t see anything funny about calling someone a faggot. Would you have laughed if she used the “n” word?
March 10th, 2007 at 10:23 pm
“Would you have laughed if she used the “n†word?”
Happens all the time in comedy…
But when will it be the last time one said calls the other side a name? I don’t think Coultor is right in doing so… but I won’t burn her at the stake for doing it either kinda like how liberals don’t take down their own for keeping cash in a freezer, calling our soldiers Nazis or claiming we tortured the innocent.
March 10th, 2007 at 11:01 pm
SPET3R:
I’m an equal-opportunity outrager when it comes to politicians “keeping cash in a freezer”, as you put it. I’m come down on libs and cons alike for that. Same with Nazi comparisons…I’ve “come down” on liberals who call Dubya a Nazi as well as conservatives who decry “feminazis”. (I’ve yet to hear anyone call the soldiers themselves Nazis…which is probably a good thing, because I have friends who are soldiers and I’ll be damned before I let anyone insult them for what they’ve been through.)
As for the claims that the U.S. is torturing people…sorry, the only outrage you’ll hear from me on that issue is against the big brass who are commisioning said torture.
March 11th, 2007 at 1:46 am
Here’s some hate speech that everybody needs to hear: I HATE crybabies.
I’m not the only person out there who hates crybabies, even though most of the others seem to be too intimidated to say anything about it.
Put it this way: Anybody who is old enough to talk and walk by themselves is old enough to learn to suck it in and stop playing the victim every time something happens that they can construe as reason to take offense.
The trivial things people get upset about these days - ! If those things were all I had to worry about, I’d be DELIGHTED!