They're ALL Ann Coulter

On the front page of Democratic Underground is a journal entry by BobcatJH that deserve a second look - even a third.

The kind of bile that slipped tourettes-like from the lips of Ann Coulter on the Today Show on Tuesday is far from an isolated incident. That kind of vicious rhetoric has been the stock-in-trade of reich-wing punditry for quite some time.

Think about what Coulter and her defenders are really saying. First, that if you're in some way attached to a tragedy like September 11 or the war in Iraq, it's fine that you speak your mind - if, and only if, we agree with what you say. Second, that if what you say dissents from our views, not only do you not have the right to say it, but it's unfair for you to say it because for us to personally attack you makes us look like assholes. Well, if it looks like an asshole, sounds like and asshole and smells like an asshole, it's probably an asshole. And assholes they are.

Yes, because only an asshole, a professional asshole mind you, would sink so low - so regularly.

What Coulter and her Republican friends seem unable to do is disagree with someone simply on the merits of their arguments. Instead, they feel it necessary to call these widows "broads", "witches" and "harpies" and say things like, "I have never seen people enjoying their husbands' death so much." Then, when pressed on the sheer audacity of such statements, they bemoan the fact that they can't make personal attacks on the victims of tragedy - while they're making personal attacks on the victims of tragedy.

Hypocrasy much?

But the points is Coulter is far from alone in her style of statements.
When Republican partisans aren't defending Coulter's remarks by agreeing with them and needlessly piling on, they're excusing them as the absolute eventuality of a brilliant marketer and author trying to sell books. Let's for one moment play a thought game and assume that Coulter wasn't selling a book at the moment. Given her proven track record of ridiculously vile statements, do they really expect us to believe that Coulter would otherwise not be saying these things if she weren't selling a book? I can tolerate quite a bit of bullshit, but that assertion shatters my bullshit detector.

Actually on this point, I disagree with Bobcat -- I absolutely do think Ann Coulter would be saying exactly the same things if she wasn't promoting a book. It might be while hanging upside down from the corner of her spider-hole over a boiling cauldron and chanting "John Kerry Must Die" -- or more realistically over hors d'oeuvres at some upscale eatery with a room full of nose-high blue bloods from the Decider-class, but shes saying this crap because it's what she - and frankly many other Republicans in their own self-congratulatory superiority to every other human on the planet- very desperately need to believe.

And then of course you have the instant leader phenomenon.

What's more, those defending Coulter do so primarily not by distancing themselves or the Republican Party from the things she says, but by seeking out "balance". Every time public outrage over Coulter being Coulter reaches a peak, the Bill O'Reillys of the world tell us that there are far worse examples to be found on the "far left". Then, he places Coulter's remarks against those by, say, Ward Churchill or, as ABC did, Harry Belafonte. Subsequent liberal guests are forced into a trap by which Churchill or others like him are artificially given the same status as Coulter. But that couldn't be further from the truth.

Tell me, in what alternate universe is Churchill given the same prominence within the Democratic Party as Coulter is within the Republican Party? Belafonte, too. But that's how it works. Someone like me says something outrageous and, all of a sudden, I speak for the entire party. And I know, because it happened to me. I criticized Joe Lieberman last year for sharing a hug and a kiss with the president following his State of the Union address. Hardly outrageous, but that's beside the point.

No sooner had I written about Lieberman than Michelle Malkin, herself no stranger to Coulter Territory, cited my critique as as evidence Democrats were "livid about the public display of bipartisan affection between the two men." One thing: Malkin only cited me. No one else. Never mind that countless others felt the same way I did. I was the voice of the entire Democratic Party. So where's my check, Democratic National Committee? But seriously, folks, this is what they do.

Republicicans grabbing one off-hand comment by one person and turning it into an Party Platform Plank? Nah, that's never happened. Not like the RNC claiming Democrats have an Impeachment Agenda - while even the "very far-left" Congressman John Conyers has denied that very thing, and three pro-impeachment Democrats went down in flames on Tuesday.

The difference is that Belefonte and Churchill or even temporarily infamous school teacher Jay Bennish aren't professional Liberal Democratic Operatives - they don't make their living working for the Democratic Party and saying outrageous shit in order to support party objectives. They aren't on the secret mail list from the DNC on the "Message of the Day". Sometimes I wish they were, I wish that their were some real live fire-breathing bomb-throwing LIBERALS in the Democratic Party - because Democrats are constantly fucking up their message of the day, week and month. People likeBelefonte, Churchill and Bennish only become Conservative "Bogey-men" when people like Sean Allen (who secretly taped Bennish) wind up on Fox News - grinning like a chesire cat that they finally found one of dem dag-gum "libruls" to string up and burn at the stake. If there's any relationship between Bennish and the core members of the Democratic Caucas - I've yet to see it.

Coulter on the other hand, first grew to her infamy as a member of the "elves" working behind the scenes with Paula Jones to keep her case alive when her first set of attorney's walked away from it because it was ridiculously frivolous. Something the judge also figured out, eventually. She's been a Republican/Conservative Operative for a very long time.

That's when Bobcat brings it home, by pointing out that Ann Coulter is far from a "radical" within the Republican Party -- she's pratically mainstream. The reason she remains popular in the party isn't because the "pushes the envelope" it's because she dares to say publically exactly what many Republicans are already thinking.

Distancing themselves from Coulter won't cut it, either. The Republican Party is Ann Coulter's party. It's the party of O'Reilly calling the victims of Hurricane Katrina "drug-addicted" and "thugs". It's the party of Glenn Beck calling them "scumbags" and talking about "choking the life out" of Michael Moore. It's the party of Bill Bennett talking about "you could abort every black baby in this country, and your crime rate would go down". It's the party of Pat Robertson calling for Hugo Chavez's assassination. Want some more? Fine.

It's the party of Michael Reagan saying Howard Dean should be "hung for treason". It's the party of Brit Hume saying his first thought upon learning about the London terror attacks was, "Hmmm, time to buy". It's the party of John Gibson wishing those attacks on France. It's the party of Neal Boortz calling Rep. Cynthia McKinney a "ghetto slut". Get the picture?

Republicans, if you want to challenge my party to a tit-for-tat battle of outrageous statements, go right ahead. To paraphrase your president, bring it on. Because I know the final outcome before we even begin. Why? Because there's a little bit of Ann Coulter in every Republican. Because every conservative that defends her or even looks the other way while she spews her garbage is forgiving her for poisoning the debate. For lowering the bar. For appealing to the lowest-common denominator. And for that, they're all Ann Coulter.

Amen Brother Bobcat, Amen. Bobcat is preaching exactly what I said just a week ago about Republicans being obsessed with "Hating the Enemy" - and I didn't mean Zarqawi.

Update: Here's an excellent analysis on Kos about how the right uses the Overton window, and needs people like Coulter to say the most crazy shit possible in order to make all the rest of their ideas more acceptable and palatable.

Update II: It looks like Bully O'Leilly has wasted absolutely no time at all leaping to Coulter's defense. What a surprise, eh?

While questioning her methods, O'Reilly accepted Coulter's underlying point in attacking the 9-11 widows: "Miss Coulter has a good point about these women being used by one spectrum of the political debate in this country. That is a valid point." In her new book, Godless: The Church of Liberalism (Crown Forum, June 2006), Coulter pointed to certain 9-11 widows' disapproval of the Bush administration's foreign policy and their support for Sen. John Kerry's (D-MA) presidential campaign to argue, as she did on the June 6 edition of NBC's Today, that "the left" exploits a "doctrine of infallibility" by promoting these widows to make "a political point while preventing anyone from responding." As a result, Coulter said, conservatives "always have to respond to someone who just had a family member die" and appear to be "questioning the authenticity of the grief."

As purported examples of "far-left pundits" who are treated better than Coulter by the mainstream media, O'Reilly asserted filmmaker Michael Moore, whose film, Fahrenheit 9/11 (Miramax Films, June 2004), was "pretty brutal" and "said a lot of things about President Bush and other conservatives," and Air America Radio, which O'Reilly claimed "does the most vile, despicable things on a daily basis." In his June 8 interview with Coulter on The Radio Factor, O'Reilly likened Coulter to liberal Air America host Al Franken, stating that Coulter risked becoming "the right-wing Al Franken" because both "smear" others in their books.

As Media Matters for America has documented, O'Reilly has also compared Coulter to Dixie Chicks lead singer Natalie Maines, stating that both women spout "rhetoric" that is "extreme." O'Reilly was apparently referring to Maines's remark during a March 2003 performance in London, where she told the audience, "Just so you know, we're ashamed the president of the United States is from Texas."

But O'Reilly provided no specific examples of Moore, Franken, Maines or any other progressive individual or organization making any remarks similar to those made by Coulter.

If the best he can bring up is Franken, Moore and Maines -- O'Reilly is definately r-e-a-c-h-i-n-g to claim they are anywhere close to Coulter's flat-out slime. Now one Air America Host that I could buy in that category would be Mike Malloy - whose actually frightened openly liberal friends of mine away from the station - but not Franken. Besides unlike Coulter, Franken's jokes are genuinely funny.

And he fact checks.

Vyan