What it takes to reach pariah status

June 8, 2006

By now, you’ve probably seen the clip of [tag]Matt Lauer[/tag] interviewing [tag]Ann Coulter[/tag] about her new book, which includes a scathing attack on [tag]widows[/tag] who lost loved ones on [tag]9/11[/tag]. “These broads are millionaires, lionized on TV and in articles about them, reveling in their status as celebrities and stalked by grief-arazzies,” Coulter wrote. “I have never seen people enjoying their husbands’ death so much.” Lauer pushed Coulter on the comments, but she stood by what she wrote.

Coulter’s attack has generated quite a bit of attention, and last night, NBC Nightly News ended its program with a segment on the controversy. Brian Williams told viewers:

“Tonight we’re going to go off the air with a report on [tag]civility[/tag] in American life. The explosion in our media, our deafening national noise level, and our changing mores, have made this a much different era in America than the one our parents grew up in. And just when you think it seems like there are no limits on anything, someone comes a long and makes a comment that goes [tag]over the line[/tag], the line that is shared by just about everybody because some things, it turns out, are still sacred.”

I’m glad Williams was willing to say, on the air, that Coulter crossed some ambiguous standard of decency, but I’m not quite sure what took NBC so long. Coulter’s record of almost clownish hatred isn’t new — but that hasn’t stopped the Today show from having her on nearly every other month since last fall.

I’m delighted Williams admonished Coulter last night, but how long until she’s invited back onto the network to spew her callous nonsense?

In the broader context, I’ve always been curious what it takes for a conservative to reach genuine pariah status in the political world. Last fall, [tag]Bill O’Reilly[/tag] suggested that it’d be fine with him if [tag]al Queda[/tag] attacked a major American city. Negative consequences? None. In 2001, just 48 hours after 9/11, [tag]Jerry Falwell[/tag] said liberal Americans were to blame for the attacks and said the nation “deserved” the terrorism. Five years later, he’s hanging out with [tag]John McCain[/tag] as if he were a credible figure in [tag]Republican[/tag] politics, which he unfortunately is.

[tag]Coulter[/tag] is a best-selling pariah this week, but she’ll be back on the air soon enough. What would it take for a conservative to get permanently shunned by polite society? I have a hunch lashing out at 9/11 widows just isn’t enough these days.

“What would it take for a conservative to get permanently shunned?”

Advocating fiscal responsibility and competent government will do it every time.

  • To paraphrase Edwin Edwards: Getting caught having sex with a dead [underage] girl or a live [underage] boy.

    And then with the way these clowns work, only maybe–if they “repent” and become born again, it’s like it never happened.

  • As long as we have Free Republic,Clear Channel, Fox News, WSJ, New York Post, Washington Times, Regnery Books, Sinclair Broadcasting, and the 700 Club, you can preach the vitues of National Socialism to the Anti-Defamation League with a “Jesus Hates You, Juden!” T-shirt on, and you’ll still have a warm seat on The Sean Hannity Show.

  • What I don’t get is what qualifies Ann Coulter as an expert on anything and therefore worthy of airtime on a show like Today? Why does anyone invite her as a guest for any other reason than to spout vituperative? In this instance, instead of Democrat-bashing like she always does, she bashed a more sympathetic crowd.

    The only reason she’s put on the tube is because she’s supposed to say surly, nasty things about Hillary, Kerry, Gore and other Dems, which on most days qualifies as good sport for the network TV honchos. Brian Williams and NBC should have said that from now on the point of inviting guests onto their shows is not have right-wing partisan people on like Ann Coulter whose whole point is to keep seeing how far over the line she can cross and get away with it. Quit thinking she is entertainment.

  • petorado, your first paragraph just hit on WifeGeist’s biggest critique of contemporary news: rather than going to the effort of interviewing an actual source, talking heads interview other talking heads as if it were news, even though it is really just a bizarre circle of mutual masturbation. How many times does Russert interview Matthews or vice-versa, despite the fact that each is merely supposed to be reporting the news, not making it?

    as for the skinny blonde bitch and her ability to get airtime, as much as I like Mauer, she will always be welcome on his show in light of the really obvious scary crush he has on her.

  • What would it take for a conservative to get permanently shunned by polite society?

    How about actually knowing what the hell they are talking about for a change.

  • petardo. exactly. and it goes for any of them. none of them have any real credentials. and for the networks to keep bringing folks like her on their shows over and over again is simply gross misconduct. I understand the arguments of bringing folks on to put sunshine on such folks, to show what nutjobs they really are–I have made that argument in the past–but that is not what is usually done by the media. The media instead puts these folks on as if they are competent to talk about some topic, and a large part of the public then buys into their nonsense and the fact they are on these shows adds credibility to them. If instead the media put them on in the manner that they truly should be presented, like how the Daily Show presents them, that is sunshine that truly would cleanse.

  • simple: be gay. it’s why david brock is now on the other side of the aisle. and why ken mehlman will be soon enough.

  • “What would it take for a conservative to get permanently shunned by polite society?”
    Good question. If we’re talking about polite society, about half of all elected repubs should have been shunned already for all manner of shameful behavior. But If we’re talking about being shunned by other conservatives, rationality goes out the window. Maybe some sort of bestiality on the floor of the Senate and carried live on CSPAN — other than that, I don’t think there’s anything.

  • “What would it take for a conservative to get permanently shunned by polite society?”

    Take the government away from the conservatives. Make them a permanent minority. Strip the tax-exempt status from their carnivorous, big-bucks, Sunday-morning collection plates. Ram home a policy of fiscal responsibility that gives people a tiered tax-policy, based on income levels. Start firing inept bureaucrats on a wholesale level. Apply common sense to government (i.e., fiscally-responsible Medicare “D;” single-payer healthcare; make US pharmaceuticals compete with their international competitors; and put someone who can add and subtract in charge of OMB).

    Excuse me—I need to go beat my head on the keyboard or something….

  • “What would it take for a conservative to get permanently shunned?”

    I’m reaching here, but suppose you looked the camera right in the eye on the floor Senate and said:

    Go fuck yourself!

  • Losing. That’s it. That’s the only thing. And even pariahs can make comebacks.

    As long as you win, they don’t care what you say or do to win. And since Coulter isn’t even running for anything, she’s in no danger of *ever* becoming a pariah.

  • When Ted Rall made a similar statement about “terror widows” in his cartoon, the New York Times dropped it from its website. Will Coulter suffer any damage to her earnings, or is it just IOKIYAR as usual?

  • no human could have piloted Flights 175 and 77 in accordance with the Official Conspiracy Theory, (In that bank into the South Tower at 575 mph, the controls of a Boeing 767 would become almost impossible for a human pilot to handle because of built in Flight Control Computer program.)
    no way for Mohammed Atta or any Arab to trick the USAF to stand down for an hour while they flew around the Northeast, directly over USAF bases without a notice or interception
    no way for jet fuel to burn any hotter than 1110° F.-1740° F. and only when steel is at a temperature of 2000° F-2550° F can it be deformed by heavy force.
    steel angle connectors at the perimeter would not be heated any more than 1000° F. because the heat would be conducted away by the steel façade. This is the temperature of a cook stove on medium.
    no way for a carbon nose cone of a Boeing 757 to slam through a foot thick reinforced wall and not leave debris outside the exit point at the
    Al-Qaeda ” is a name coined by Richard Clarke in 1998 and his revelations about the Bush Administration’s dismissal of al-Qaeda prior to 9-11 are part of a carefully choreographed disinformation campaign to grind the al-Qaeda legend deeper into the mind of the American sheeple. Add a little “opposition” from the right and the left thinks they have a whistleblower. Soon “progressives” are buying Clarke’s book and lavishing praise for his “courageous plea for forgiveness” for failing the American people. It makes great theater and the unaware and hapless buy the con, hook, line and sinker. The false flag operation gains more credibility as the Official Conspiracy Theory.

    Pentagon,
    no way for cellphones to function at that altitude and speed, (So who made those calls?)
    no way for a building to fall at the rate of free fall and still encounter masses on the way down.
    a Zionist had won a $3.2 billion lease for WTC 1 and 2 in July and had insured it for $3.55 billion should it be attacked by terrorists. He claimed two terrorist attacks for $7.1 billion.
    Vice President Cheney was in charge of at least 6 training exercises on 9-11, three of which involved real planes simulating hijackings
    and so on

  • LeCoulter Borgia plays Moneyball politics. Everytime she steps way, way, way over the line – it’s money in the bank. Outrageous=$$$ in the American Conversation.

  • What would it take for a conservative to get permanently shunned by polite society?

    Let’s borrow a page from rightwingers and the conservative movement(s). Let’s not wait for polite society. They don’t! “Polite society” doesn’t tolerate left-of-center controversies because they’ve learned that they will suffer the wrath of conservative wingnuts. The wingnut “noise machine” would be all over this. If this was a liberal commentator making far less offensive comments, wingnuts would be all over this in days if not hours. They would have threatened NBC for hosting her as a guest; they would have besieged her publisher with mail and phone complaints and threatened repercussions for all of the publisher’s products; they would have made this a topic of outrage in the MSM as well as their media outlets; and they would have organized economic or marketing boycotts. If you doubt this, look at the Dixie Chicks.

    What do WE do? We make supposedly pithy little comments in our blogs and leave it there. I’m not sure what I can do alone, but I want to do something as part of a larger movement to help stop this McCarthyistic environment where progressives, liberals, leftwingers, and even the center -for goodness’ sake – constantly have to brace for attacks and accusations of indecency for simply expressing their opinions. Meanwhile, sociopaths and psychopaths like Coulter are allowed to be obscenely vile while earning fame, media attention, and enormous financial success.

    Seriously, where can I plug in?

  • I was just realizing that when a liberal says something semi-outrageous — well, actually it doesn’t even have to be outrageous — the repub congressmen are quick to demand apologies. Shouldn’t Democratic congresspeople be demanding an apology from the network that gave her a voice? I mean, how hard can it be to come forward and say that it is offensive for this woman to trash the 9/11 widows?

    They’re such wusses. No wonder we never get anywhere.

  • “What would it take for a conservative to get permanently shunned?”

    I find this to be a rather stupid question.

    Coulter represents the heart and soul of Republicans – only right out where all can see it. They love her for saying out loud what they really want to say themselves.

    Shunned? Not hardly. She is admired by the party of the black hearts!!

  • Would it not be easy to bomb the FCC complaints about Coulter Hatespeech and get them to slap those massive fines on NBC?

    Then Churchil Ward her like Phonatic says.

    The one thing I noticed about Ann is that she’s rather emotionally fragile when confronted. Get up in her grill and she starts to really lose it. No one is going to use logic to beat her so why not start pushing her buttons to dial up her batshit craziness from merely an offensive bitch to feece throwing clothes cowshit crazy.

  • It’s hard to get through Coulter’s vile hatred but behind that, what I think she was saying is that Dems used the 9/11 families to make a point — but the 9/11 families are untouchable by politie society, thus their points cannot be debated. I don’t think that’s true, but if one wanted to argue on those grounds, how about the right’s habit of shamelessly trotting out god and religion? Hell, it’s the theme of her book!

  • The reason Ann Coulter is on Today every time she has a burr up her butt is that her publisher Crown is owned by Random House. Random House was owned by RCA which was owned by GE until 1986. The reason journalists are afraid and why Ann Coulter cannot be shunned into a dark corner to cry is that these people are mass marketing and cross-selling multi-media products. She has a best seller (god does have a sense of humor). The Today show has viewers (see comment about god). Coulter is controversial and drives ratings which drives book sales which drive stock prices.

    It is not quite a directly stated collusion. Let’s not fool ourselves. These large media corporations do not care about content only sales and revenue.

  • “but the 9/11 families are untouchable by polite society, thus their points cannot be debated” – beep52

    What Bitch Coulter is saying is not that their points can’t be debated. Bitch Coulter doesn’t debate. She just practices ah homium attacks. She’s whining because she wants to attack the 9/11 families the way she attacks everybody. If Bitch Coulter had anything to DEBATE, there wouldn’t be a problem. But how do you debate the contention that we are not defending America effectively when we are not defending America effectively?

  • An old southern axiom expresses the futility of responding to Coulter, Hannity, and their like: “You can’t beat a skunk in a farting contest.”

  • AHEM!

    THEY ARE NOT “CONSERVATIVE”!!!

    Please PLEASE stop calling them that. I don’t give a fuck what they call themselves. They are radical fascists. Wingnuts. Radical right-wingers. *Anything* except “conservative”.

    There is nothing “conservative” about attacking recently-widowed women. Conservatives by definition respect tradition and a strict code of ethics and morality.

    Please, be serious. STOP calling these wackos “conservatives”. You dignify them unnecessarily.

  • Goatchowder, couldn’t agree more. It’s an insult to the admirable (if often misguided) traditions of American conservatism to apply the label to hate-addled psychopaths like Coulter, DeLay and Limbaugh; utterly reckless ideologues like Norquist, or would-be Christofascists like Dobson, Robertson and Falwell.

  • What would it take for a conservative to get permanently shunned by polite society?

    Bush seems to be doing a bang-up job of it. DeLay seems to be doing well, too. Libby and Rove are getting their comeuppance, and Judith Miller’s been fired.

    Oh, you must mean shunned by the media, not the people. In that case, hell, I don’t know. They’re sort of retarded nowadays. Any friend of mine who wished Al-Queda would blow up a building in San Francisco would be a friend no longer. Any friend who giggled at the thought of dropping some poison in a Supreme Court Justice’s breakfast would frankly creep me out.

    But that’s just me, because I’m a person. But they’re the media. And, well, they’re retarded.

  • Have any of you Twisted people actually listened to what Ann Coulter has actually said?? Or do you all just eat every sentance spoon-fed to you by the liberal media?If you would have acutally read her book you might have understood that she was opposing the widows who (should have supported what their family member devoted their life twords,their country and all of our freedom) but these people,in fact did the exact opposite, they betrayed every thing that our country stands for. In fact the only widows who opposed the war(which may I add, are very very few) were the one’s that received political attetion from the media,that is continually brainwashing our country into it’s demise. Its sad to see that every one here has been hit, strucken with this sickness, this disease of the mind, commonly reffered to as Liberalism

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