Ann Coulter is an Asshole

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/13191231/
from JoeUser Forums
NEW YORK - Conservative pundit Ann Coulter was front page news Wednesday for what she's written about some 9/11 widows:

"These broads are millionaires, lionized on TV and in articles about them, reveling in their status as celebrities," writes Coulter.

She's also under fire for what she said Tuesday in an interview with the "Today" show's Matt Lauer.

"If you lose a husband, you no longer have the right to have a political point of view?" asked Lauer.

"No, but don't use the fact that you lost a husband as the basis for your being able to talk about it," Coulter responded.

Coulter was on the "Today" show to push her latest anti-liberal book, "Godless: The Church of Liberalism," already an Amazon.com best seller.

But the interview kept returning to Coulter's attacks on the 9/11 widows. She called them "harpies" and wondered in print whether their husbands had been planning to divorce them.

A statement from four of the widows says: "There was no joy in watching men that we loved burn alive. There was no happiness in telling our children that their fathers were never coming home again. We adored these men and miss them every day."

Coulter says she believes everything she says and writes, but has she gone too far?

"It's the ugliness of the charge that she's making and the ugliness of the words she's using that are drawing attention to her, but it's almost like she’s a figure in a circus and you say, 'Oh my God, can you believe that?'" says former White House adviser David Gergen.

Still, the tempest was a trigger for a red/blue debate on MSNBC TV with criticism for Coulter from both sides.

"I think it was shameful what she said, Chris, but I think these widows have attacked President Bush," Dom Giordano, a conservative talk show host with radio station WPHT, told "Hardball's" Chris Matthews.

"I think she’s a sad, pathetic, unhappy person," said liberal counter-voice Sam Greenfield, a talk show host with radio station WWRL.

All of it fallout from a television exchange likely to be remembered well beyond the impact of a few ill-tempered sentences in print.

© 2006 MSNBC Interactive

Even if she doesn't really mean those things and only said them to spark controversy and sell more books, are the people she insulted going to forgive her when she says, "I only did it because I'm a greedy bitch?"

Links to more of the story

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Reply #1 from JoeUser Forums Top
She goes too far, I'll give you that, but she has a valid point that posts like yours (purposely) overlook. The point about the 9/11 wives and Cindy Sheehan and such is that debating them is off limits. Unless you lost someone the way they did you can't sit and debate their political philosophy without being the villain.

I agree with her 100%. American quasi-Liberals do it all the time with the war, where they spout that if you aren't willing to go and die you can't support the war, and then in the same breath vilify such attitudes when they have to deal with them. You see the back-and-forth here when someone says that unless you are willing to do what soldiers do you can't differ with the job they are doing.

The anti-Conservatives want it both ways, as usual. They want to be able to parade their victims with a memorized series of talking points, and then when someone like Ann Coulter takes them to task they start waving the bloody shirt. I listened to an interview with her and the snippets that have caused the uproar, and people are really making it into something it isn't.

I don't like the statement she made about divorce stuff, but this is someone who has to deal with the most disgusting attacks on her whether she says things like that or not. She's not calling them 'little eichmanns', anyway, she's simply saying that hiding behind the victims of war or terrorism to shield your political opinion is cowardly.

Sheehan stated in one of her disgruntled letters to the press that there would never be a good discussion of the war in Iraq so long as there were dissenting opinions there clouding the subject. That's the attitude that Coulter, and many of us, are angry about. It isn't that we are wrong, but it isn't even tasteful to SAY what we think in the presence of these fragile flowers.

Well, if they are fragile, they don't need to be out there provoking a debate they don't want to take part in.
Reply #2 from JoeUser Forums Top
I think shee had a good point, as Baker said. Still, she stepped over the line. There is only so far you can go with what you have to say until you get to the point where you go from, "your opinion," to "a$$h--e."

~L
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Reply #3 from JoeUser Forums Top
she has a valid point that posts like yours (purposely) overlook.


I posted links to the entire story. The title is because she went too far. I think she could have made her point without being an asshole.


this is someone who has to deal with the most disgusting attacks on her whether she says things like that or not.


So she did it for revenge?
Reply #4 from JoeUser Forums Top
You are welcome to write about whatever you like but please remove the offending word from the title of this post. Thanks very much. [Stardock Admin.]
Reply #5 from JoeUser Forums Top

Reply By: BakerStreet

Stated very well.  Have a cookie.

Reply #6 from JoeUser Forums Top
Revenge, sure. Did you call her a cunt out of revenge? You could take a minute and hit the wacko-Dem boards and see how she is talked about, and then imagine being in her shoes, having to sit alongside these women on interview shows as they are treated like brave little patriots who expect their political assertions to be shielded by their pain.

I'd be mad too. I don't think she'll score any political points by hitting soft targets like this, but she didn't make them targets. When they drag the bloody shirt to every TV show, and make their pain their selling point, THEY are the ones that make their experiences a valid topic for discussion.
Reply #7 from JoeUser Forums Top
You could take a minute and hit the wacko-Dem boards and see how she is talked about, and then imagine being in her shoes, having to sit alongside these women on interview shows as they are treated like brave little patriots who expect their political assertions to be shielded by their pain.


She's not proving herself to be better than they are.
Reply #8 from JoeUser Forums Top
No, but obviously you consider her somehow worse, given I've never seen a blog of yours calling the Dems who walk roughshod over political bystanders. When all the little Dem bobbleheads say nasty things about the military, you don't see this kind of outrage from the Left. I don't remember a leftist feeding frenzy when Ward Churchill called these women's husbands "little eichmanns".

There's an edititorial SLAMMING Coulter right now on Fox News' website. I wonder, do you see that kind of self-reflection on the left? Hardly. Go back and look at a lot of the things that were said on memorial day. I think you'll find an imbalance of outrage in the media when pundits go for soft targets.
Reply #9 from JoeUser Forums Top
I've never seen a blog of yours calling the Dems who walk roughshod over political bystanders.


How many blogs of mine have you seen that are political? This one is not meant to be political. It's only about her attitude.
Reply #10 from JoeUser Forums Top
"I've never seen people enjoy their husbands' deaths so much,"


Not even Anna Nicole Smith?
Reply #11 from JoeUser Forums Top
Lucky for you that you ended up being motivated by an ultra-conservative, then. No doubt had been anyone of any other political bent you would have commented with the same fervor and eloquence. What a happy coincidence...
Reply #12 from JoeUser Forums Top
ok, I don't get it.

We cried and mourned with all the families of the attacks of Sep 11th. We sent them money and made sure and did what we could to soften the terrible tragedy they suffered through. After all, anything we suffered as a result of those attacks were infinitly worse for them. In every way our hearts went out to them...

But...

How does their suffering make them experts on anything? If they are writing books on dealing with tragic loss, yeah, I could see where their experiences gives them insight that most of the rest of us are lacking. However, how does their suffering make them authorities on how to deal with terrorism?

What if some of these widows were separated from their husbands? What if a few were cheating on them? What if they hadn't spoken to their dearly departed in a long time?

These women are not heroes in the same way the Firefighters, EMTs and Police were on that day. They are worthy of our respect for living through that kind of hell and surviving to tell about it... so let them tell us about it... but when they hit the talk show circuit, I don't hear much about how they overcame hardship.... All I hear is them telling me that I should listen to their political rants because THEY SUFFERED.

Harpies may not be a fitting word for them... but neither is "expert".
Reply #13 from JoeUser Forums Top
What if some of these widows were separated from their husbands? What if a few were cheating on them? What if they hadn't spoken to their dearly departed in a long time?


Where's the proof?

Is Coulter an expert on dealing with tragic loss?
Reply #14 from JoeUser Forums Top

How does their suffering make them experts on anything?

For the Victims (democrats) it makes them experts on suffering of course.  Pish Posh on the money!  The guy who just got whacked by an illegal immigrant?  Tough luck Sally!  He was not killed by the correct illegal immigrant!  It is all about race.  Get killed by the right race, and you are a victim!  Capital V.  Get whacked by the wrong one?  Hey!  That is life!

Reply #15 from JoeUser Forums Top
It's my theory that emotions are excellent for telling you that something has to be done, but that emotions suck for telling you what has to be done, and why.

So I'm totally unimpressed by arguments based on the idea that it's okay if your thinking is weak, so long as your feelings are strong.
Reply #16 from JoeUser Forums Top

So I'm totally unimpressed by arguments based on the idea that it's okay if your thinking is weak, so long as your feelings are strong.

And that is why you are conservative and not liberal.

Reply #17 from JoeUser Forums Top
"Is Coulter an expert on dealing with tragic loss?"



Hrm...


"I want to look in my daughter's eyes and know that she is safe...I am voting for John Kerry."

"on 9/11, my life was in a long, dark tunnel. Now I can see some light. John Kerry has the answers."

"Defense contractors need to recognize the fact that with $40 billion of a budget being spent on things that are not making us safer, we need a director of national intelligence to reallocate those funds to human intelligence on the ground."

"What do we say to our children at this point in time? My son is 14. In three years he could be drafted to go to the war if that is brought back -- you can go to war, but we will not protect you here at home. That's unconscionable."


Oddly enough, I'm not seeing any of their 'dealing with tragic loss' expertise there. I'm seeing people farming out their tragic loss in order to grant themselves status they don't deserve. Maybe I'm pretty egotistical, but I'd put myself up against them any day of the week in terms of knowledge and skill translating current events into political opinion.

Granted, I can't touch them in terms of discussing personal loss, and if they ever talk about that again, you won't hear me complaining.
Reply #18 from JoeUser Forums Top
Oddly enough, I'm not seeing any of their 'dealing with tragic loss' expertise there. I'm seeing people farming out their tragic loss in order to grant themselves status they don't deserve.


When GW decided to use 9/11 as part of his re-election campaign, he opened the door for this. The Republican party tried to capitalize on the deaths of these people--where was Ann Coulter then?
Reply #19 from JoeUser Forums Top
not sure I understand why Bush WOULDN'T use 9/11 in his re-election campaign. I mean...really....one of the biggest things to happen to this country....and ppl expect Bush to not mention it?
Reply #20 from JoeUser Forums Top
"The Republican party tried to capitalize on the deaths of these people--where was Ann Coulter then?"


That's a pretty facetious argument. The people running for political office were politicians. Republicans may have opened the door for scrutiny of their policies, but nothing they did elevated housewives to the status of intelligence analysts or political commentators. Losing a loved one doesn't, either.

Sure, no one is saying that they can't step up and challenge Bush's policies. The fact that they get these speaking engagements and roles in presidential elections, etc., is directly due to their loss. Bush didn't "open the door" for people to drag their grief around like a resume, they did that themselves. Without it, their opinions would be no more interesting that mine or yours.

And above all, once they wave the bloody shirt, they can't sit there and pretend that they are separate from the political forum. They are fair game for the same level of derision any other political bobblehead gets. Feel free to look at the venom over at DU and tell me if it is any more tasteful than what the widows got.

The point isn't that they are whoring out their grief. I think Coulter could tolerate that. The annoying part is that they are perpetually the fragile flowers of the debate, and you make yourself the villian if you question or antagonize them.
Reply #21 from JoeUser Forums Top
Stutefish
It's my theory that emotions are excellent for telling you that something has to be done, but that emotions suck for telling you what has to be done, and why.

So I'm totally unimpressed by arguments based on the idea that it's okay if your thinking is weak, so long as your feelings are strong.


Exactly, there is a place for emotion, but if someone's entire claim to fame is based on it, I don't see why we're considered "heartless" if we don't play their silly little game.
Reply #22 from JoeUser Forums Top
there is a place for emotion, but if someone's entire claim to fame is based on it, I don't see why we're considered "heartless" if we don't play their silly little game.


Sounds like people who claim to have had a religious, supernatural experience so they become evangelists and go around preaching and "healing" people vs. people who don't believe them.
Reply #23 from JoeUser Forums Top
Except they aren't even claiming to have had an experience that somehow enlightened them on politics and defense to the point their opinion means more than any other civilian. We aren't even asked to believe they know their asses from holes in the ground, we are just expected to sit quietly and give them their say because someone killed their husbands.

Like Ann Coulter, I have to ask... why? If I square off with a far lefty from DU, I would expect as bad or worse than what Coulter handed out here. Yet when a far right talking head like Coulter faces off against Sheehan or the 9/11 wives, it is unfair to question their ideas. To quote Cindy Sheehan:

"It would be so amazing if your show would put me, or another parent who lost their child on who disagrees with the war and this administration: to have just an entire show..without presenting the false side of the debate. That would take a lot of courage and integrity. I hope your program will exhibit these qualities. "


The attitude seems to be that since they have suffered, that they have earned an exclusive ear whenever they want to promote their political agenda. Let them claim to be "enlightened", it would make more sense, frankly.
Reply #24 from JoeUser Forums Top
Good lord. What is the matter with you guys? Victims of such tragedies may not be experts in policy, but they can become so, and moreover are galvinized by their experience. The Cindy Sheehans of the world, just like the mothers of MADD and other action orgaizations are often grassroots folks who, having been touched deeply by real events get off their asses and do something to correct the situation. And you people sit around at your computers and cry foul.
Reply #25 from JoeUser Forums Top
Good lord. What is the matter with you guys? Victims of such tragedies may not be experts in policy, but they can become so, and moreover are galvinized by their experience. The Cindy Sheehans of the world, just like the mothers of MADD and other action orgaizations are often grassroots folks who, having been touched deeply by real events get off their asses and do something to correct the situation. And you people sit around at your computers and cry foul.


The point is, the media and the left simply concede that they have become experts in policy, no questions asked. No one begrudges them their activism; that is a healthy thing which stimulates examination. I do begrudge people losing all objectivity in their presence and deferring to them as deserving arbiters of policy, particularly when they inject political partisanship into the debate. I don't think MADD is an apt comparison.