On Sunday morning, ABC’s “This Week with George Stephanopoulos” gave right-wing shock pundit Ann Coulter a national platform to opine on national politics and promote herself and her books. “This Week” is generally a serious and reasonable look back on the week’s political events. Coulter, however, is neither serious nor reasonable – not even close.
Coulter, a self-described “mean-spirited, bigoted conservative,” goes out of her way to provoke and offend and even promote violence. Based on her own words, she’s a strident racist and bigot who openly despises much of humanity. Many of her defenders, however, claim that she’s really just an entertainer who says ridiculous things for comedic effect. But it doesn’t matter whether she’s really a fanatic or just plays one on TV. What matters are the vile things she says, often to huge audiences thanks to mainstream media outlets that mistake bigotry for edginess.
A few of her most outrageous comments are captured here:
Recently, talking about the Occupy Wall St. protests in November, Coulter suggested that violence against protesters could shut down the movement: “Remember the lesson from my book: It just took a few shootings at Kent State to shut that down for good.”
In the wake of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, Coulter attacked a group of widows that had joined together to lobby for a government investigation into the attacks, culminating with the 9/11 Commission:
These broads are millionaires, lionized on TV and in articles about them, reveling in their status as celebrities and stalked by grief-arazzies. I have never seen people enjoying their husbands’ death so much.
There is really nothing that Coulter won’t say. Coulter – among many many other things – has said that:
- Women shouldn’t be allowed to vote: “If we took away women’s right to vote, we’d never have to worry about another Democrat president. It’s kind of a pipe dream, it’s a personal fantasy of mine, but I don’t think it’s going to happen.”
- Killing an abortion doctor isn’t murder: “Well, apparently, this one random nut who shot Tiller — I don’t really like to think of it as a murder. It was terminating Tiller in the 203rd trimester.”
- John Edwards is a “faggot”: “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.”
- Whites don’t think about blacks because they’re inferior: “Here’s a little inside scoop about white people: We’re not thinking about you. Especially WASPs. We think everybody is inferior, and we are perfectly charming about it.”
- Muslims shouldn’t be allowed to fly on airlines: “I think airlines ought to start advertising: ‘We have the most civil rights lawsuits brought against us by Arabs.'” “[Muslims] could use flying carpets.”
- Jews need to be “perfected” by becoming Christian: “We just want Jews to be perfected, as they say. That is what Christianity is. We believe the Old Testament, but ours is more like Federal Express.”
I could go on, but the point is that Coulter has firmly established herself as a hate-filled provocateur and radical – not a conservative. We fully expect ABC and “This Week” to have conservative guests with whom we disagree, and vice versa, but that’s not the issue here. Coulter has been playing the same game for years, making millions off bigotry and hate. The mainstream media shouldn’t play along.
