Banish this conservanut harpy from NBC? Nay, I cry, nay!
This a.m. I was greeted by an e-mail in my in box from the tres lefty org Media Matters asking me to join its campaign to keep wingnut pin-up girl Ann Coulter from appearing on the January 6, 2009 Today show. Seems she''ll be on the program plugging her latest crackpot Jeremiad against the horrors of liberalism, Guilty: Liberal Victims and Their Assault on America.
Media Matters prez Eric Burns wants me to call or write NBC and tell them to put the kibosh on Coulter. Why? Because Coulter, he tells recipients of this mass e-mail, has said some really, really mean things about politicians and others in public life.
"Ann Coulter has a long history of making controversial statements," writes Burns, who then goes on to list them."Coulter has likened President-elect Barack Obama to Adolf Hitler repeatedly, called Al Gore a `total fag,' and written that without affirmative action, African-American Rep. Maxine Waters (D-CA) couldn't get a job `that didn't involve wearing a paper hat.' She has also repeatedly discussed potential acts of violence against people she doesn't like or with whom she disagrees, including saying of Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens: `We need somebody to put rat poison in Justice Stevens' crème brulee.'"
I have to admit, dyed in the wool pinko that I am, I laughed at that last bit about Justice Stevens. Though, I suspect that if way-left novaM talk radio host Randi Rhodes had said the same thing about Anthonin Scalia, folks on Coulter's side of the fence would be calling for Rhodes' literal decapitation.
Does Coulter's shtick really require banning, here in the land of the First Amendment and all that jazz? And why her? Crikey, nearly every rightist loon on talk radio calls Obama a Communist, a Socialist, or a Marxist any chance they get. Sure, it's abominable claptrap from the irresponsible right. But does Burns want to be the head of the Left Wing Thought Police, blocking talkers from the airwaves or cable every time some Republitard like Coulter blurts out something that's beyond the pale?
Come to think of it, perhaps he does. For instance, Burns mentions that "during a recent appearance on Fox News' Hannity & Colmes...[Coulter] called Obama an 'atheist' and asked if `we could get all of his aliases before he's sworn in on the Quran.'"
Um, like, so what? Sure, there are some serious moonhowlin', tinfoil-hat-wearin' dumbasses who might take Coulter seriously, and believe every canard that drips from her lips. But you don't make Coulter some sort of Free Speech martyr by blocking her appearance on NBC. Better to enlist Jim Carville, Bill Maher, Ed Shultz, Randi Rhodes, Mike Molloy, Al Franken, or some other take-no-prisoners liberal to appear side by side with her on the tube, and rip this blowhard bimbette a new one.
It has to be someone who's willing to get down in the muck and throw mud bombs just like Coulter does. We're talking professional wrestling here, people, not the late Bill Buckley's Firing Line.
But even if you can't make a verbal cage match happen, Coulter's venomous tongue is no reason to bar her from NBC or any other network or show. Hell, I say stuff that pisses off the nativist knuckledraggers here in PHX all the time. The idgits even campaigned for my dismissal, which, ironically, was seen as a sign that I'm doing my job by my bosses. Coulter exists to rile people. The fact that Media Matters is gunning for her should delight her publisher no end.