Crush Liberalism

Coulter’s latest flap, but she fires back

By now, many of you have heard that just a couple of months or so after jokingly (though in p#sspoor taste) referring to the Breck Girl as “fa&&ot”, the mean ol’ beanpole Ann Coulter wished a painful death on the beloved Silky Pony. She said “If I’m going to say anything about John Edwards in the future, I’ll just wish he had been killed in a terrorist assassination plot.”

Wow. Hard to defend that, huh? Well, not really, once you look at the entire line that lead up to it. While speaking to Chris Cuomo on Good Morning America, the following exchange took place (courtesy of Newsbusters):

Coulter: “Though about the same time, Bill Maher said– And, by the way I did not call John Edwards the F-word. I said I couldn’t talk about him because you could go into rehab for using that word.”

Cuomo: “You said you were joking. You were joking.”

Coulter: “Oh, yeah. Yeah. I wouldn’t, I wouldn’t insult gays by comparing them to John Edwards. That would be mean. (Now THAT is funny! “Not funny haha, funny queer…mmm-hmmm!” – Ed.) But about the same time, you know, Bill Maher was not joking and saying he wished Dick Cheney had been killed in a terrorist attack. So, I’ve learned my lesson. If I’m going to say anything about John Edwards in the future, I’ll just wish he had been killed in a terrorist assassination plot.”

I mentioned at The Conservative Manifesto that Coulter should have finished her quote with “I mean, if Bill Maher can say something like that about Dick Cheney and catch no grief from you or your leftist ilk, Chris, then I’m afraid you’re going to have to immunize me from any grief, too.” Not that this would have resulted in any less dishonesty from the left, but it still would have done some good.

At any rate, Coulter has had enough and has struck back with both barrels blazing. Her retort is here (please read it…you must read it!), and a couple of excerpts follow:

The Edwards campaign is apparently still running low on donations, so this week they went back to their top fundraiser: me.
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Say, did any TV host ever surprise Al Franken, Bill Maher or Arianna Huffington with a call by the wife of someone they’ve made nasty remarks about? How about a call to John Edwards from the wife of a doctor he bankrupted with his junk-science lawsuits?
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The usual nut Web sites posted a zillion denunciations of my appearance on “Good Morning America” immediately after I appeared Monday morning. But it didn’t occur to any of them to simply lie about what I had said. No, it took them nearly 36 hours to concoct a version of that quote that included the Edwards part, but not the Maher part, or what English language speakers call: “the point.”

By tomorrow it will be: “Ann Coulter tried to kill John Edwards on ‘Good Morning America’!”
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Let me also quote from campaign consultant Bob Shrum’s book “No Excuses”:

“(Kerry) was even queasier about Edwards after they met. Edwards had told Kerry he was going to share a story with him that he’d never told anyone else — that after his son Wade had been killed, he climbed onto the slab at the funeral home, laid there and hugged his body, and promised that he’d do all he could to make life better for people, to live up to Wade’s ideals of service. Kerry was stunned, not moved, because, as he told me later, Edwards had recounted the same exact story to him, almost in the exact same words, a year or two before — and with the same preface, that he’d never shared the memory with anyone else. Kerry said he found it chilling, and he decided he couldn’t pick Edwards unless he met with him again.”

Apparently every time Edwards began a story about his dead son with “I’ve never told anyone this before,” everyone on the campaign could lip-sync the story with him.
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John Edwards injects his son’s fatal car accident into his campaign by demanding that everyone notice how he refuses to inject his son’s fatal car accident into his campaign.
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Manifestly, I was not making fun of their son’s death; I was making fun of John Edwards’ incredibly creepy habit of invoking his son’s tragic death to advance his political career — a practice so repellant, it even made John Kerry queasy.

I’m a little tired of losers trying to raise campaign cash or TV ratings off of my coattails, particularly when they use their afflictions or bereavement schedules to try to silence the opposition. From now on, I’m attacking only serious presidential candidates, like Dennis Kucinich.

Ouch. That’s gonna leave a mark.

June 29, 2007 - Posted by crushliberalism | Ann Coulter, John Edwards, media bias