Coulter's Crudeness

Boston Globe ^ | 6/19/06 | Cathy Young

[pissant]

SEVERAL years ago, left-wing cartoonist Ted Rall published a cartoon mocking the ``terror widows" -- the bereaved of the Sept. 11 attacks as well as Marianne Pearl, the widow of kidnapped and slain journalist Daniel Pearl -- as a bunch of greedy and shallow attention-seekers. The outrage was universal. A number of press outlets, including The New York Times website, pulled the cartoon. Subsequently, when the Times and The Washington Post stopped carrying Rall's work, conservatives called it a victory for decency.

Now, the right has its own Ted Rall in the infamous Ann Coulter. In her new book, ``Godless: The Church of Liberalism," Coulter takes a whack at the ``Jersey Girls," four Sept. 11 widows who have been highly critical of the Bush administration. She refers to them as ``self-obsessed women" who ``believe the entire country was required to marinate in their exquisite personal agony," and then concludes with this zinger: ``These broads are millionaires, lionized on TV and in articles about them, reveling in their status as celebrities and stalked by grief -arrazies. I have never seen people enjoying their husband's death so much."

A number of conservatives, including prominent Republican blogger and radio talk-show host Hugh Hewitt, have denounced Coulter's statement. Unfortunately, many others have rallied to her defense. Radio and Fox News talk-show host Sean Hannity has mildly suggested that she may have gone too far, but has avoided condemning her outright and has given her plenty of airtime on his show.

Bill O'Reilly, the host of the Fox News show ``The O'Reilly Factor," has been harshly critical of Coulter's comments. Yet several of his conservative guests vigorously defended her. Republican strategist Karen Hanretty opined,

[Leatherneck_MT]

The only thing worse than what Ann said about the Jersey cows, is defending what she said here on this forum.

Some alleged Conservatives stick up for leftist jackasses instead of someone who is on their side.

[pissant]

Read her book. It's very in depth and thoughtful. With the added bonus of bitch-slapping the left in hilarious fashion.

[OESY]

Say what you want about Ann Coulter, but remember she is the only one with enough moxie to blow the whistle on the Democrat practice of recruiting self-righteous victims as spokespersons for their failed causes to avoid debating the issue.

Coulter never ran from the fight when a bunch of liberals seized on a couple of sentences as a way to attack her and her latest well-documented book.

She kept her spine in the face of attacks, unlike so many conservatives--many in evidence on these threads. And you wonder why Republicans are spineless?

As for telephone sex addict, Bill O'Reilly, there are few in America less qualified to make moral judgments about others.

[blitzgig]

The phrase about "enjoying their husbands' deaths" is hyperbole meant to drive home Ann's essential point about liberals' attempts to shut down any debate. It is a legitimate literary device, and it presents the truth about the Jersey Girls using their personal tragedy to take the spotlight and control public discourse.

Ann uses this hyperbole to call the reader's attention to the truth. Judging from all the publicity, she succeeded in her goal.

[pissant]

I saw that in her bio. I also perused some of her previous work. Not overly impressed.

[kcvl]

Cathy Young (Ekaterina Jung) was born in the Soviet Union in 1963. She emigrated to the United States in 1980 with her family at the age of 17.

In 1988, Young graduated from Rutgers University, where she was a columnist for the student newspaper, The Daily Targum. While still a student, she began to write for The Detroit News and started working on her first book, Growing Up In Moscow: Memories of a Soviet Girlhood (published in 1989).

From 1993 to 2000, Young was a regular columnist for The Detroit News. In the 1990s, she also became active as a free-lance journalist, with her work appearing in a variety of publications including The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Philadelphia Inquirer, Newsday, The New Republic, The Wall Street Journal, The American Spectator, National Review, Salon.com, and Reason. Her second book, Ceasefire: Why Women and Men Must Join Forces to Achieve True Equality, was published in 1999.

Since 2000, Young has been a weekly editorial page columnist for the Boston Globe. In 2001, she began to write a monthly column for Reason magazine, where she is also a contributing editor.

Young is a research associate at The Cato Institute in Washington, DC, for which she co-wrote a 1996 policy analysis paper, "Feminist Jurisprudence: Equal Rights or Neo-Paternalism"?

In addition to appearing on a number of radio and television shows, Young has spoken widely on college campuses. In 2001 and 2002, she taught a 3-week gender issues course at Colorado College.

Young's writing cover a variety of topics in politics and culture, with a particular focus on gender issues and feminism. Her writings reflect an individualist feminist perspective (c.f. Wendy McElroy). Her writings strive toward a scrupulous evenhandedness, and criticizes both liberals and conservatives as she sees fit. She frequently agrees with men's rights activists but will call them to task for emulating the identity politics associated with some forms of feminism.

[Reactionary]

"If it were Michael Moore using those words about Bush-supporting widows, we would be outraged."

Oh. Of course. It just stands to reason, doesn't it? I mean, if one ignores the difference between supprting America and undermining it. Or, say, the difference between a fathead Marxist like Moore who has - and never will - sacrifice anything for a country he hates, and women who have given their sons in honor to defend a country they love.

[ArGee]

If it were Michael Moore using those words about Bush-supporting widows, we would be outraged.

I have not yet read Godless (emphasiss intended) and I have not seen any reaction to the statements about the four widows that actually has a quote. When Ann attacks someone she usually quotes them verbatim. I'd like to see a verbatim quote of the offensive section before deciding whether or not I should be outraged.

I can tell you I am not ever going to be outraged by a leftist rag's paraphrase of what she said.

Shalom.

[Restorer]

I hope you are right. Her criticism of these four specific women is generally valid. But I disagree with her choice of language.

[The Electrician]

If it were Michael Moore using those words about Bush-supporting widows, we would be outraged.

No. You are painting with too broad a brush. Your statement is based on the faulty assumption that the bulk of the people on FR support Bush unquestioningly, right or wrong. It would only take a glance at some of the anti-immigration-amnesty threads or the Harriet Miers threads or any number of other topics to dispel that notion. If there were Bush-supporting widows who went to the same extremes as the Jersey widows, basing their efforts on partisan lies, then you would see plenty of condemnation of them here.

[MrCruncher]

Editorial cartoonist Ted Rall recently made the news for penning yet another crass cartoon, this one denigrating Pat Tillman, the football star turned soldier recently killed in Afghanistan. Rall painted Tillman as a racist, bloodthirsty idiot who was just another cog in the "El Busho" war machine.

MSNBC.com decided to pull the cartoon because it "did not meet MSNBC.com standards of fairness and taste."

http://www.coxandforkum.com/archives/000332.html

[Lancey Howard]

The net effect has been to make them more untouchable than ever.

That may be true, but the scumbag "Jersey Girls" are old news anyway - - anything they have to add at this point will elicit merely a nod and a pat on the head.

What Ann has done is to put people on their toes whenever the Democrats trot out another "victim" as a human shield for their political cheapshots. People will now automatically factor in the possibility that the latest victim/advocate/spokesperson is just another prop. The net effect of Ann's rhetoric will be positive. She has taken a lot of slings and arrows for us on this.

[pissant]

If he is a good Catholic, he'll convert those pagans to Catholicism. ;o)

[kcvl]

Cathy Young is a freelance writer and vice-president of the Women's Freedom Network. Young is a market liberal (libertarian) who generally opposes government intervention in the market, which of course makes her unpopular with the generally big government-oriented feminist groups such as the National Organization for Women. In an article for The Nation, Susan Faludi identified Young as one of a number of "anti-feminist pundits" who supposedly dominate the media.

[pissant]

You nailed it.

[pissant]

LOL. Don't know about the rabid leftist part, but...

[MrCruncher]

Political cartoonist defends anti-Reagan Web tirade

By Steve Miller
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20040608-114726-8654r.htm

Political cartoonist Ted Rall's comment that the late President Ronald Reagan is "turning crispy brown right about now" provoked a reaction that crashed his Web site for at least 24 hours after the remark was posted on the Drudge Report.
"I think most people view the president as a fair target," Mr. Rall said yesterday in an interview. "Reagan was a public figure, and he was an idiot. And if he were around and lucid, he would probably say that it comes with the territory."

In a column published yesterday, Mr. Rall continued his assault on Mr. Reagan, calling the idea that the late president won the Cold War a "myth" and saying, "Reagan elevated unjustifiable military action to an art."
He also said that both Mr. Reagan and President Bush relied on "Christianist" — which he described as "the radical-right equivalent of Islamist" — "depictions of foes as 'evil.' "
Mr. Rall's cartoons are distributed by Universal Press Syndicate and appear in about 140 publications, including the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times and the San Jose (Calif.) Mercury-News. He also regularly posts his opinions at www.rall.com.
He attracted invective and even death threats earlier this year when he implied in a cartoon that former pro football player Pat Tillman was a fool for dropping a lucrative career and enlisting in the U.S. Army to fight in Afghanistan.
The cartoon said Mr. Tillman "falsely believed" that the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan were linked to the September 11 attacks and that Mr. Tillman, who was killed by "friendly fire" on April 22, was a "cog in a low-rent occupation army that shot more innocent civilians than terrorists to prop up puppet rulers and exploit gas and oil resources."
"With Tillman, people were offended not so much by what I said, but by the fact that he was a private military guy," Mr. Rall explained. "And to his credit, he didn't try to make hay out of what he was doing."
Mr. Rall defended the "crispy brown" comment and said it was made "to get people to understand that the right is attempting to canonize this guy, and it is ridiculous. If there is a hell, this guy is in it."
"Imagine what would happen when Clinton dies, and they gloss over the fact that he lied under oath," said Mr. Rall, 40, who is a Pulitzer Prize finalist and two-time winner of the Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Award. "I bet there will be conservative writers there to point that out and say something similar to what I said. And I think it is completely appropriate."
"This is journalism, and it is a job, and we are here to tell the truth," said Mr. Rall, who is also the author of "Wake Up, You're Liberal: How We Can Take America Back from the Right."
"I don't think the media should be in the business of pulling punches from the left or from the right," he said.
The piece from which the original Reagan comments were taken, he said, was an Internet posting, which he said served "for random things that pop into your head."
"Still, I'm not a knee-jerk left-wing guy," Mr. Rall said. "I am an advocate of the Second Amendment; I don't believe in abortion as birth control; and I was the first to call for Clinton's impeachment. I think that this country has shifted so far over to the right that anyone who is a garden-variety Democrat circa 1972 is painted as a Marxist-Leninist."

[brytlea]

More likely as long as you are talking about specific individuals who actually fit that description.
susie

[SamAdams_Lite]

Cathy Young is Globe's balance.

She balances the attack on conservatives from the left by attacking conservatives from the right.

[ZULU]

To be criticized by the Boston globe for being "too conservative" is an honor and a privilege.