Needless to say, we caught the news headline that’s making a lot of waves today about political firebrand Ann Coulter’s recent remarks. As Ronnie would say, there she goes again…

We were thinking good grief has Ann Coulter finally gone too far? Has she actually called someone an epithet which, if she did, should qualify her for political excommunication or, at the very least, big meanie status?

But then we saw the video of her actual remarks:

“I was going to have a few comments on the other Democratic presidential candidate, John Edwards. But it turns out that you’ve got to go into rehab if you use the word ‘faggot.’”

That changes the story slightly, doesn’t it?

Ann Coulter didn’t say “John Edwards is a faggot.” She merely joked about his pretty-boy metrosexual leanings, while playing upon the ridiculousness of this story.

Last October, gossips chattered about a scrap between two male stars on the set of the hip ABC medical show “Grey’s Anatomy.” Actor Isaiah Washington reportedly called a fellow cast-member a “faggot.” The rumors spurred cast-member T.R. Knight to openly declare he is gay.

But the controversy blew wide open after “Grey’s Anatomy” won at the Golden Globe Awards on Jan. 15 and Washington blurted out at a post-show press conference that he never called Knight a “faggot.” In Hollywood terms, he’d compounded the original rumored offense tenfold, and alarm bells sounded everywhere. Hollywood was horrified, and ABC was mortified, issuing a statement that, “We have a longstanding policy to create and maintain respectful workplaces for all our employees.”

Not just in Hollywood. Let the pile on continue.

Was Coulter funny? Not really. Was it a clever remark? Not especially, as it requires the audience to connect too many dots which usually leads to trouble. Do we encourage her to keep it up? No. Do we condemn her? No. Do we think she should apologize? Absolutely not.

In politics as in media, all the apologists are doing is making things worse by exagerrating the story, giving it more oxygen than it deserves. If anyone thinks conservatives are going to win points by chastising Coulter, think again. It doesn’t work that way. That would require fairness from the other side, and there is none. Alas, no matter what, this will become another piece of hype for our opponents to promote and use against us. Apologies not accepted.

Our advice to Ann: Pull a Gavin Newsom.

“It wasn’t me, it was the alcohol.” Yeah, that’s the ticket. And instead of being angry, everyone will gather around and feel sorry for her. Now, she becomes “the victim.”

If only Ann weren’t a conservative, it might work.

UPDATE:
Maybe she can join Mark Foley in rehab
(and it’s not the word that put him there)

1. [...] Original post by California Conservative and software by Elliott Back [...]

   Pingback by Ann Coulter Calls Sen. Edwards a “Fag” (But not really) at Conservative Times--Republican GOP news source. — March 4, 2007 @ 6:58 pm

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3. It Pains Me To Post This…

   For those who haven’t heard yet, she managed to cross the line between cleverly snarky pundit and being pointlessly mean and crass at CPAC, by implying that she considered John Edwards to be a “faggot”….

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4. [...] RELATED: Ann Coulter Calls Sen. Edwards a “Fag” (But not really) [...]

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   Pingback by California Conservative » In Defense of Ann Coulter — March 7, 2007 @ 11:58 pm

1. Ann Coulter thinks about dead people when she’s making love.

   Comment by Shimmy — March 4, 2007 @ 6:35 pm

2. Really? Do you know this for a fact? That might say more about your performance than hers.

   Comment by California Conservative — March 4, 2007 @ 7:21 pm

3. Comments like that bring up Psychological questions of why you delve into something like that? Shimmykat

   Comment by apocalypticorapo — March 4, 2007 @ 8:55 pm

4. Mullah Cimoc say this example how woman of ameriki become filthy and dirty and not having the baby and this woman she having so big adam’s apple.

   This process for making the ameriki man to be like homosexual and passive for woman command all usa man. calling it the training of pavlov dog.

   me not knowing why this happen but knowing this sign of collapse the great empire like roman time but now so fast in computer communication time. not the 500 years.

   stop1984now@yahoo.com

   Comment by Mullah Cimoc — March 4, 2007 @ 9:45 pm

5. I could say that the people in the administration are brain dead, murdering, mornons with the emotional capacity of rampant sociopaths.

   But I won’t.

   EMH

   Comment by Elaine M. Hugo — March 4, 2007 @ 10:17 pm

6. I think Gary is right. Ann Coulter shouldn’t apologize; in fact, she should be invited back to every major conservative event, asked to speak, and encouraged to make comments like this.

   Then, the we don’t have to consider the seriously wrong, bad-for-America-and-the-world, and outright evil that conservatives propagate. Instead, we can have incessant talk-radio-like chatter about Ann’s latest proclamation. It was brilliant when the Left introduced Ann to the Right, knowing that sooner or later, she’d be the equivalent of the slight-of-hand trick that attracts all the attention, while we get back to the serious business of running the country.

   Thanks Ann! Keep it up, don’t apologize, and whatever you do, don’t let on!

   Comment by Zachary — March 4, 2007 @ 11:21 pm

7. In what alternate universe is one able to interpret Coulter’s comment as being anything other than it was? Are you telling us that she made some deeply subtle remark, too difficult for anyone to appreciate except after hours of navel gazing and ‘connecting the dots’? I refer you to the concept known as Occam’s Razor…..

   Comment by BillyJoeJimBob — March 5, 2007 @ 8:30 am

8. Editor & Publisher relates the story this way:

   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.”

   For those of you that never took an English course after 6th grade, she said that if she “…can’t really talk about Edwards” because of not wanting to “…use the word ‘faggot’”. She didn’t say “call someone a ‘faggot’”she said “use the word”. Maybe you think that is what she meant, but with some effort I’m sure you could use that word in a sentence discussing Edward’s political positions rather than his sexual ones. Possibly she was planning to use a word much worse than ‘faggot’ and lamenting what the punishment might be. And based on ‘tolerance’ what’s wrong with ‘faggot’? It’s much milder than what she has been called, and I thought while the word might be rude, the condition was to be celebrated.

   It’s rude to be rude, but it’s worse to tolerate the PC nonsense that Orwell warned us about a half a century ago. If you allow your opponents to make the rules (and break them with no consequence)the best you can do is a fighting withdrawal (otherwise known as a retreat). Civilized discourse is for civilized debate, otherwise you must fight in the way that your opponents understand. The problem with many conservatives inside the beltway is that they begin to believe the boundaries that the media and leftists set are laws of nature, not artificial constructs.

   English is a language that can be very precise and everyone seems to be interpreting this rather than reading it as it was said. This is the same thing that is so irritating about the misuse of the language by the lame stream media, it’s targeted to play to people whose jumping to conclusions based on inconclusive evidence is their main source of exercise.

   Perhaps patent infringement on the use of technique, but which school of journalism actually holds the patent?

   Comment by RRRoark — March 5, 2007 @ 8:39 am

9. Ann Coulter tends to be sarcastic, which can be interpreted many ways. It’s clear that her intended punchline was “rehab” (and the story behind it, otherwise what sense would the reference make?), but “faggot” makes for better headlines and activist grievance.

   Comment by Fred — March 5, 2007 @ 8:43 am

10. p.s. Since Edwards is married and can only be accused of being a narcisstic heterosexual, there’s little reason to be upset. No one is going to call his sexual preference into question. After all, it’s not like she was talking about the Mark Foley or the Kos.

    Comment by Fred — March 5, 2007 @ 8:47 am

11. Oh yeah. There’s another one in “rehab”

    Comment by California Conservative — March 5, 2007 @ 8:51 am

12. As a gay person I must say that this situation really exposes the bigotry of conservative people. You people truly have a deep seated dislike and hatred towards gay people. How can you call yourselves defenders of morality when you have no respect for people different than yourselves?
    I speak for a lot of gays when I say, you people have no right to think you are superior to me because I am not heterosexual. The fact that you spew this bigotry, call us hateful names, and are unable to give us the most minimal of respect is truly disgusting and speaks more about the kind of people you guys are.

    Comment by dc — March 6, 2007 @ 3:57 pm

13. listened to a speech from a former congressman where he preached how bad the Republicans are in communicating there message to their base and to the public, and how the public does not know anything about what the republicans got done in the 109th congress. And while he was going on about the issues that the Republicans got done, he was also talking about the “earmarks”. He explained to the conservative crowd, that “earmarks are les than one tenth of a percent of the federal budget” witch is a stunning fact that makes me wonder why this is the concern of our time in the conservative community.

    As he finished his speech, I walked up to him and told him “Mr. Congressman, I might be wrong but I recall reading an article in the Wall St. Journal, about an official in CO criticizing an earmark that Sen. Allard (R-CO) inserted in a spending bill, saying that it takes away the money the State gets from the federal government.” So I asked the Hon. Congressman “Is it true that when a congressman or senator inserts an earmark in a spending bill, he does not raise spending? That he just takes away the liberty from one bureaucrat to decide how to spend the money and decides himself where the money should go?”

    The answer was yes.

    So if earmarks do not raise spending and it’s not more then one tenth of one percent of the budget, why is there so much noise about it?

    Because we do not communicate, and nobody amongst us is aware of the facts. We have to start communicating, and shouldn’t be afraid that someone will slam us, because if you fight back, you have a chance of winning, and if you don’t fight you don’t even have a chance of winning.

    Comment by the zoom — March 10, 2007 @ 7:20 pm

14. I kind of like how this entire discourse has given me a metric to determine my political slant. I neither dislike nor hate gay people, therefore I must not be a conservative.

    Comment by kemper — March 14, 2007 @ 10:11 am

15. I think both parties have a responsibility. He is responsible for not being so sensitive as to tie up courts with libel litigations and she needs to pay attention to how the things she says are received.

    Comment by Raymond — July 23, 2007 @ 5:02 pm