Coulter's perfection...

How can anyone get a handle on Ann Coulter? Does she actually believe what she says or writes? Whether or not Coulter's latest fart is anti-Semitic, I'm definitely leaving to Jews to decide. Turns out Coulter is herself Jewish (that's really news to me), which makes the whole incident even more bizarre. Here's the entire episode, watch and squirm:




Then, last night, I watched with fascination how the Giant Head managed to help Coulter plug her new book, without once mentioning the offending comment. Newshounds sum it up:

Tonight, however, Bill O'Reilly didn't even bother to repeat what Coulter had said claiming he read the transcript but didn't understand it. He also refused to mention Donny Deutsch or his show calling him a "just a twerp" adding that "six people watch his show."

Instead he opened the segment still raving about San Francisco and how the story has been "blacked out" . (The possibility that there is no story was not explored.) Then Coulter had a chance to do some acid one liners about the left and their "Christian Panic Syndrome" BOR added support with, " No matter what you say they will load it up against you"

That was pretty much the whole response Coulter and O'Reilly provided for viewers. Coulter's comments were not repeated and O'Reilly acted as if they were of no consequence.He was intent on hammering the idea that anyone finding Coulter's comments unacceptable was anti-Christian.

At the end of the segment he asked her if she hated Democrats? She said she held them in contempt but added, "I try to convert them." O'Reilly chuckled and responded, "Just like Jews."

Here's The national Post with a bit of analysis, for what it's worth...

Last week, during an appearance on the CNBC program The Big Idea, right-wing shock-pundit Ann Coulter described her ideal vision of American society. It was, she said, New York, as the city appeared in the midst of its 2004 Republican national convention: "People were happy. They're Christian. They're tolerant."

When host Donny Deutsch asked the obvious question -- "So it would be better if we were all Christian?" -- Coulter said yes. When Deutsch, who is Jewish, told her he thought this was anti-Semitic, she declared on behalf of Christians: "We just want Jews to be perfected."

I'll leave it to others to debate whether Coulter was being anti-Semitic or merely crude and flippant. That isn't really the point. The real scandal isn't what Ann Coulter said on CNBC. The real scandal is that she was on television at all, and that she has a syndicated newspaper column, and gives speeches all over the United States.

Ann Coulter is an embarrassment. And the people who should be most embarrassed are self-described conservatives. Whenever liberals want to make us look like bigots and mental cases, all they have to do is trot out one of Coulter's whoppers, and the job is done.

This is an 800-word column, so I don't have space to rehash every appalling thing Coulter has written or said. But the highlights include her description of Al Gore ("total fag"), John Edwards ("faggot"), Muslims ("ragheads," "camel jockeys," "jihad monkeys"), her suggestion that said monkeys should stick to "flying carpets" instead of travelling on commercial airlines, and her next-day reaction to 9/11: "We should invade their countries, kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity."

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This gentleman, who doesn't appear to be a raving US liberal, has had enough too:

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She also had this charming riff on four women who became activists after losing their husbands in the 9/11 attacks: "I've never seen people enjoying their husbands' deaths so much?How do we know their husbands weren't planning to divorce these harpies? Now that their shelf life is dwindling, they'd better hurry up and appear in Playboy."

Coulter's reaction when she's called to account for this sort of thing is usually to claim she was joking. If true, this would peg her sense of humour at that of your average eight-year-old, who tends to find words like "fag" really funny. Even the prepared response she sent out after her comment about Edwards generated outrage -- "C'mon, it was a joke. I would never insult gays by suggesting that they are like John Edwards. That would be mean" -- sounds like some-thing made up in a schoolyard.

Coulter's painful unfunniness distinguishes her from truly gifted political satirists such as P.J. O'Rourke and Mark Steyn, who can and do get away with saying outrageous things. Humour not only takes the defensive edge off their material, it signals to the reader that not every word is to be taken seriously. It also lends an aura of easy confidence to their writing. Coulter's screeds, on the other hand, ooze with so many unrelentingly hysterical accusations that one wonders whether she even believes what she's writing. My view is that she simply is addicted to attention. And in this politically correct age, spewing callous remarks about minorities is the easiest way of getting it.