For a long time, I’ve felt that of the most visible right-wing bloggers, Rick Moran of the ill-named blog Right Wing Nut House speaks with the most sincere, even admirable voice. (Everything’s relative.) I almost always disagree with him, but there’s no mistaking the man’s integrity. Now, he has written a blistering attack on the toxic toothpick Ann Coulter that will surely ruffle some right-wing feathers.
First, the history. Coulter hit a sickening new low earlier this week when she proved just how bad she is (yes, again). From the interview with Matt Lauer that should (but probably won’t) seal Coulter’s fate:
LAUER: On the 9-11 widows, an in particular a group that had been critical of the administration:
COULTER: These self-obsessed women seem genuinely unaware that 9-11 was an attack on our nation and acted like as if the terrorist attack only happened to them. They believe the entire country was required to marinate in their exquisite personal agony. Apparently, denouncing bush was part of the closure process.
These broads are millionaires, lionized on TV and in articles about them, reveling in their status as celebrities and stalked by griefparrazies. I have never seen people enjoying their husband’s death so much.
(That’s just scratching the surface – you really need to see the video or read the transcript to believe it. The rabid chihuahua is ready to be put to sleep.)
Anyway, I have to applaud Moran for taking off the kid gloves, and for pointing out the obvious – that Coulter is the worst thing going for the right, someone who will say absolutely anything for attention and book sales, and someone who has thrown even the pretence of human decency to the winds. Please read and savor every one of Rick’s eloquent words.
She has descended into a black hole of necessity from which there is no escape; where she is forced to please her rabid base of red meat conservatives usually by going beyond the bounds of decency and proper public discourse in order to make a point that could have been made without resorting to the kind of hurtful, hateful, personal attacks that have become a hallmark of her war with liberals.
Make no mistake. Ann Coulter is a brutish lout, a conservative ogre who should be denied a public platform to spout what any conservative with an ounce of integrity and intellectual honesty should be able to see as unacceptable. To descend to the level of your opponents in order to criticize them is not an excuse. And for such a gifted wordsmith, Coulter does not have the excuse of ignorance….
There are ways to criticize the widows without saying something so wrong, so hurtful. And what do you think their children would think if they heard Coulter’s remarks? Are they to be in the line of Coulter’s wildly off target fire as well?
This rhetoric is not designed to advance debate or even make any kind of a salient point about the political activism of grief stricken parents like Cindy Sheehan and the anti-Bush September 11 widows. The remarks were designed to hurt other people’s feelings in a deeply personal and entirely inappropriate way. Can you imagine some liberal commentator making similar remarks about Debra Burlingame, sister of Charles F. “Chic� Burlingame, III, captain of American Airlines flight 77, which was crashed at the Pentagon and who is fighting to keep the 9/11 Memorial from being hijacked by the anti-American left? We would be all over that worthy and deservedly so.
The anti-Bush 9/11 widows are not immune from criticism for their political positions nor even for the tactics they use to advance those positions. But to say that they are “enjoying� their status as widows is so far beyond the pale that anyone who makes such a statement deserves the most severe censure possible. And the networks who use Coulter as some kind of “Spokesman� for the right should be told in no uncertain terms by as many of us as possible that she doesn’t speak for any conservatives that we want to be associated with.
Coulter owes those women an apology. Failure to give it only reveals her to be a shallow, bitter, bitch of a woman whose hate filled mouthings will eventually lead to her destruction.
Bravo, Mr. Moran. I still think you’re wrong about most things, but I have respect for you. Thank you for being honest to your readers and to yourself. It’s obvious that in your heart there is at least a streak of the liberal spirit that made America great, and that one day will make us great again.
Ann, I have no words for you, other than to say you should bow your head in shame, apologize, and then disappear forever. You are a disgrace to true conservative ideals.
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By Sam_S (shenzhenren)
You’re right, she absolutely should apologize. But I don’t know about the comments about her “red-meat base”. I don’t think Coulter actually HAS a base, being more of the point-of-the-spear type.
June 8, 2006 @ 12:58 am | Comment
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By Dr. C
Let’s face it, if Coulter was a fat brunette, or over- 50, no one would have listened to her in the first place.
June 8, 2006 @ 1:50 am | Comment
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By Tom - Daai Tou Laam
You might note Tbogg’s comments on this, since as the post’s title states, It’s all about the Benjamins.
June 8, 2006 @ 6:41 pm | Comment
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By Genius
Truth does not change. Truth is truth. If something was true 50 years ago, 40 years ago, 30 years ago, it is still true today.
And the truth is that only 30 years ago, there was very little confusion on this issue of Palestine. The original renaming of Israel was “Philistine” was by the Roman emperor Hadrian in 60 AD when he burned the temple and scattered the Jews. The British misinterpreted and called it Palestine.
You might remember the late Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir making the bold political statement: “There is no such thing as a Palestinian people.”
The statement has been a source of ridicule and derision by Arab propagandists ever since. They love to talk about Golda Meir’s “racism.” They love to suggest she was in historical denial. They love to say her statement is patently false ? an intentional lie, a strategic deception.
What they don’t like to talk about, however, are the very similar statements made by Yasser Arafat and his inner circle of political leadership years after Meir had told the truth ? that there is no distinct Palestinian cultural or national identity.
So, despite the fact that conventional wisdom has now proclaimed that there is such a thing as the Palestinian people, I’m going to raise those uncomfortable quotations made by Arafat and his henchmen when their public-relations guard was down.
Way back on March 31, 1977, the Dutch newspaper Trouw published an interview with Palestine Liberation Organization executive committee member Zahir Muhsein. Here’s what he said:
The Palestinian people does not exist. The creation of a Palestinian state is only a means for continuing our struggle against the state of Israel for our Arab unity. In reality today there is no difference between Jordanians, Palestinians, Syrians and Lebanese because these so-called Palestinians were migrant workers from Jordani, Egypt, Syria. and Lebanon. Only for political and tactical reasons do we speak today about the existence of a Palestinian people, since Arab national interests demand that we posit the existence of a distinct “Palestinian people” to oppose Zionism.
For tactical reasons, Jordan, which is a sovereign state with defined borders, cannot raise claims to Haifa and Jaffa, while as a Palestinian, I can undoubtedly demand Haifa, Jaffa, Beer-Sheva and Jerusalem. However, the moment we reclaim our right to all of Palestine, we will not wait even a minute to unite Palestine and Jordan.
That’s pretty clear, isn’t it? It’s even more specific than Golda Meir’s statement. It reaffirms what I have written on this subject. And it is hardly the only such statement of its kind. Arafat himself made a very definitive and unequivocal statement along these lines as late as 1993. It demonstrates conclusively that the Palestinian nationhood argument is the real strategic deception ? one geared to set up the destruction of Israel.
In fact, on the same day Arafat signed the Declaration of Principles on the White House lawn in 1993, he explained his actions on Jordan TV. Here’s what he said: “Since we cannot defeat Israel in war, we do this in stages. We take any and every territory that we can of Palestine, and establish a sovereignty there, and we use it as a springboard to take more. When the time comes, we can get the Arab nations to join us for the final blow against Israel.”
No matter how many people convince themselves that the aspirations for Palestinian statehood are genuine and the key to peace in the Middle East, they are still deceiving themselves.
I’ve said it before and I will say it again, in the history of the world, Palestine has never existed as a nation. The region known as Palestine was ruled alternately by Rome, by Islamic and Christian crusaders, by the Ottoman Empire and, briefly, by the British after World War I. The British agreed to restore at least part of the land to the Jewish people as their ancestral homeland. It was never ruled by Arabs as a separate nation.
Why now has it become such a critical priority?
The answer is because of a massive deception campaign and relentless terrorism over 40 years.
Now as far as for those who call themselves Palestinians – Any culture that starps munitions on their own women and children and sends them out on suicide missions to murder other innocent wiomen and children shoyuld be exterminated from the face of the earth!
June 11, 2006 @ 1:41 pm | Comment
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By Hobson
It’s not just that Coulter is obnoxious, she’s a liar, contrary to what Bill O’Reilly and Rush Limbaugh say. Michelle Malkin reprinted a Dorothy Rabinowitz peace that is 2 years old criticizing the Jersey girls.
Here’s what the New Republic Online had to say about their support of Kerry:
“But then, strangely, no one paid any attention to the Jersey Girls. After the press conference announcing their endorsement of Kerry, only CNN and cnbc had the women on for interviews; the next day, a mere dozen newspapers carried articles about their entry into the campaign.”
No one seemed particularly unable to ciritcize them including Coulter or Rush Limbaugh.
What is more incredible is the idea that they have no right to “inject themselves” into the public discourse. Try that line on Rosa Parks.
June 11, 2006 @ 7:08 pm | Comment