Posted on 03/04/2007 8:28:45 AM PST by ajolympian2004
Enter Ann Coulter.
Her "faggot" joke was not just a distraction from all the good that was highlighted and represented at the conference. It was the equivalent of a rhetorical fragging--an intentionally-tossed verbal grenade that exploded in her own fellow ideological soldiers' tent.
There are countless conservatives who bring their children to CPAC. It's a family-friendly event. I brought mine last year and the year before. I met several parents with their kids there this year. We expect CPAC to be a place where conservative role models speak with clarity, passion, and integrity. There are enough spewers of mindless filth, vulgarity, and hatred on TV, at the movies, and in the public schools. We don't expect our children to be exposed to that garbage at the nation's preeminent conservative gathering.
I was in the back of the ballroom and did not see any children in the audience during Coulter's speech. But what if there had been?
Would you want your children hearing the word "faggot" spoken in such a casual and senseless manner? Would you like your first-grader or three-year-old running around the halls of CPAC singing "faggot, faggot, faggot?" Not me. Not anymore than I'd like my toddler singing "gook, gook, gook" or "sambo, sambo, sambo"--favored epithets hurled at conservative minorities by leftist haters groping around in their empty intellectual quivers. There were hundreds of young conservative college students in the ballroom. Would you be proud of your college-age daughter spewing such epithets in her campus debates with leftists?
With a single word, Coulter sullied the hard work of hundreds of CPAC participants and exhibitors and tarred the collective reputation of thousands of CPAC attendees. At a reception for college students held by the Young America's Foundation, I lambasted the substitution of stupid slurs for persuasion-- be it "faggot" from a conservative or "gook" from a liberal--and urged the young people there to conduct themselves at all times with dignity in their ideological battles on and off campus.
I made something else explicitly clear: Not all of us treat the communication of conservative ideals and ideas as 24/7 performance art. You can and should use humor to convey your message. You can enlighten and entertain--without becoming a tired old schtick. You can joke without becoming the joke.
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The rest of her coverage, great pics from the event and photo album link here -
http://michellemalkin.com/archives/006981.htm
faggot, A triangular stack of split and salted cod for drying.
Agree.
If you think that remark hurt Edwards, you are living in a bubble. The only attacks that have impact are ones with backup (like the Swifties). All Coulter did was galvanize people to donate money to Edwards. She did him a big favor.
I have to disagree with Malkin on this. We should teach children that sodomites are likely to have dried human dung on them and to stay away. Besides, political discourse shouldn't really be the province of children under twelve. Are we bringing the nanny-state to conservative action groups. Do we need child care just to have a meeting?
Ann Coulter is bigger than the conservative movement, anyway. She's rapidly becoming a major media figure that transcends politics.
I liken her more to Howard Stern -- Ann's business is shock, not politics.
JMHO.
> But it's a pretty accurtate description. All of the men running for the Democratic Presidential nomination are mincing, limp-wristed, little... well, you know the rest.
I guess we're following their lead... we have a gay-friendly, metrosexual cross-dresser (Rudy) at the top of the GOP heap.
Attending CPAC with children may not be the best way to expose them to conservatism. I agree with you, but it's often a boring event for even political-minded adults.
"Mr. Edwards is a married man with children"
So was the Bishop of New Hampshire... not that that has anything to do with Mr. Edwards... but I'm just sayin'..
I wonder what Ann was trying to prove -- that we can't say what we're really thinking or we might end up in Rehab like Isaiah Washington? Does she really think (or know) that Edwards is gay for the way he primps and preens and is prettier than his wife? Look at the married politicians who have been outed during the past few years. Does she believe that someone who is that self-absorbed would make a lousy prez? Why did she go beyond the Silky pony-Breck girl images to faggot? More to this than meets the eye? Ann doesn't do anything without calculating repercussions. I don't think she cares what anyone what thinks. Michelle knew she would be asked what she thought about it all, so she properly stated her unhappiness that Ann sucked all the air out of the room for others. I think that is a legit criticism. I think Ann would say - Not my problem.
John Edwards has been married for 30 years with 3 children, another died tragically. Ann Coulter's comment was not only a "hand grenade" at a politcal conference like this, but factually incorrect besides being just wrong to say.
No, they should say "men who have deviant sex with the same sex and spread aids"
How's that for "hate" eh?
Preface: I thought and still think that the funniest movie I've ever seen was Parker and Stone's Team America World Police, which is one of the most subversive films ever made. Some of the funniest scenes in it are the merciless parodies of self-important Hollywood celebrities who are, in this film, members of the so-called Film Actors Guild, whose name in several scenes is captioned below the celebs in abbreviated form: "Sean Penn, FAG." etc. And the audience in the theater roars with laughter, and I have to admit that laughed too.
I don't believe in giving mystical, incantatory powers to ANY word, whether this one or the n-word or any other. In a society that has largely rejected religious traditions, offensive terms have become a sort of holy-of-holies that we react to the same way that the Ayatollah reacted to The Satanic Verses. And I won't do it, I won't participate in the Two Minutes Hate.
That said, I think that that Team America thing was the sort of sensibility AC was trying for in that speech; she was trying to be all edgy and hip and South-Park-Republican.
The problem for her is that you can't be both an insider and an outsider at the same time. You can't speak at the same dais with serious political figures and talk like that. You can't talk like that and expect to hobnob with people who want to get elected.
It's particularly bad on the Right, because as Michelle says here, a lot of social conservatives who may be anti-gay-rights still don't like to hear people, especially women, use bad language.
Anyway, she's badly hurt her career with this. She is now Kryptonite for her preferred political constituency. To talk like that in that forum was inexcusably rude, and she's earned her current professional stuffstorm.
Good then, Let the liberals give their money to someone who doesn't have a chance in Hell of winning. You think that's a bad thing?
Michele: Gripe, gripe, gripe, Bitch. OK I could have cleaned it up: Bitch, bitch, bitch, Bitch. There. That better? Not very P.C. eh?
You are searching for nuance that doesn't really exist. She did call Edwards a faggot and in a none to subtle way. That she made another reference to people who use rehab as a way to weasel out of the consequences of their actions is ironic.
Sounds like the mantra of the abused wife... Really. Slave mentality. Victim talk.
It's OK to give liberals a taste of their own medicine. It's OK stand up to liberal bullies. Trust me.
They can dish it out, they can take it.
If you want to be "above it" all - fine. But don't expect the rest of us to quietly put up with endless liberal "jokes" about wishing Cheney had been offed by terrorists - or a bullseye on President Bush - or all the other typical liberal fare - and just "take it". We can "joke" back. Surely, that's not asking too much?
Actually, what Malkin has done here...has pretty much made Coulter's point for her....the point of the whole topic in which the word was used!!!
The only thing missing from Malkin's tirade is telling Ann she should go to rehab to atone.
I think it's funnier than hell myself.
Ah, but that's EXACTLY what is going on here, you included.
"high priestess of biatch, Anorexic Coulter. If we won't police ourselves, who will?"
If we policed ourselves DU trolls like you would be long gone.
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