{"id":7635,"date":"2006-06-08T15:41:32","date_gmt":"2006-06-08T19:41:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/?p=7635"},"modified":"2006-06-08T15:41:32","modified_gmt":"2006-06-08T19:41:32","slug":"what-it-takes-to-reach-pariah-status","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/what-it-takes-to-reach-pariah-status\/","title":{"rendered":"What it takes to reach pariah status"},"content":{"rendered":"

By now, you’ve probably seen the clip of [tag]Matt Lauer[\/tag] interviewing [tag]Ann Coulter[\/tag]<\/a> 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<\/a> what she wrote.<\/p>\n

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

“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.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

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<\/a> — but that hasn’t stopped the Today show from having her on nearly every other month since last fall.<\/p>\n

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

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<\/a>. 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<\/a>” the terrorism. Five years later, he’s hanging out with [tag]John McCain[\/tag]<\/a> as if he were a credible figure in [tag]Republican[\/tag] politics, which he unfortunately is<\/a>.<\/p>\n

[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.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7635","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7635","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7635"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7635\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7635"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7635"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7635"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}