Posted on 06/28/2007 1:23:15 PM PDT by Dan Evans
The Edwards campaign is apparently still running low on donations, so this week they went back to their top fundraiser: me.
I doubled the ratings of the lowest-rated cable news show on Tuesday by agreeing to go on for a full hour to promote my new paperback version of "Godless" – a mistake I won't make again. As I was walking to the set, minutes before airtime, it was casually mentioned to me that Elizabeth Edwards, wife of Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards, might call in.
For the first time in recorded history, the show's host did not interrupt a guest, but let Elizabeth Edwards ramble on and on, allowing her to browbeat me for being mean to her husband.
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?
I think I may have tuned out at some point, so I can only speak to the first 45 minutes of Elizabeth Edwards' harangue, but it mostly consisted of utterly dishonest renditions of things I had said on my "Good Morning America" interview this week and a column I wrote four years ago. (You can't rush Edwards' "rapid response team"!) She claimed I had launched unprovoked attacks on the Edwards' dead son and called for a terrorist attack on her husband.
These are bald-faced lies, and the mainstream media know they are lies. Yet they were repeated ad nauseam on Wednesday by the Associated Press, the AOL pop-up window, CNN, NBC and – stunningly – the host of the lowest-rated cable show himself, who personally told me he knew the truth.
So for those of you who haven't read any of my five best-selling books: Liberals are driven by Satan and lie constantly.
Here is my full sentence on "Good Morning America," which the media deceptively truncated, referring to a joke I told about Edwards six months ago that made liberals cry: "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."
The usual nut websites 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 simply to 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'!"
Judging by his fundraising efforts so far, I gather most of you don't know who John Edwards is – unless you're an overpriced hair dresser. He's the trial lawyer who pretended in court to channel the spirit of a handicapped fetus in front of illiterate jurors to scam tens of millions of dollars off of innocent doctors. According to The New York Times, Edwards told one jury: "She speaks to you through me. ... And I have to tell you right now – I didn't plan to talk about this – right now I feel her. I feel her presence. She's inside me, and she's talking to you."
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.
As a commentator, I bring facts like these to the attention of the American people in a lively way. Thus, for example, in a column about the Democratic candidates for president written in 2003, I pointed out that the Democrats refused to discuss the economy or the war, but had recently "discovered a surprise campaign issue: It turns out that several of them have had a death in the family."
Among several examples of Democrats talking about a death in the family on the campaign trail was this one:
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.
Edwards has talked about his son's death in a 1996 car accident on "Good Morning America," in dozens of profiles and in his new book. ("It was and is the most important fact of my life.") His 1998 Senate campaign ads featured film footage of Edwards at a learning lab he founded in honor of his son, titled "The Wade Edwards Learning Lab." He wears his son's Outward Bound pin on his suit lapel. He was going to wear it on his sleeve, until someone suggested that might be a little too "on the nose."
If you want points for not using your son's death politically, don't you have to take down all those "Ask me about my son's death in a horrific car accident" bumper stickers? Edwards is like a politician who keeps announcing that he will not use his opponent's criminal record for partisan political advantage.
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.
Once again Ann’s poison pen hits its mark with lethal results. Ann has a wonderful way of just shredding the left’s “holier-than-thou” BS and takes no prisoners in the process.
Anne...ya just gotta love her!!!
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.So? I remember a philly cheese steak making Kerry queasy too, and this guy is a decorated war veteran, a hero, a patriot, a soul possessed of manly virtue. Both Kerry and his young ward John Edwards seem like such delicate, delicate boys, rather like the berries-and-cream lad that the starburst people use to creep out an entire nation.
What the H? Clinton hid behind Hillary’s skirts.
“Liberals are driven by Satan and lie constantly” - Ann Coulter
I like my own tagline, but that’s a great one for anyone that wants to pick it up.
I love her.
Coulter was on Larry Kudlows CNBC show yesterday and he kept repeating the accusation that she wanted Edwards killed. She was not in studio but she was furious at him because he had not used her full quote. I have never seen her so angry. If she had been in studio with him, I think she would have kicked him in the testicles.
That was probably the last time she will appear on that clueless blowhards show. Not surprized since he is a self professed “conservative” working for NBC.
I don't blame her. It was setup to beat the bushes for cash. From Edwards campaign website:
Ann,
You rock. Thanks for refusing to let the “victims” lob grenades as they sob into their handkerchiefs.
Thank you for posting. I’ve been looking for Ann’s column since this morning.
I love Ann. She should have been born a man, or at least had a male twin. She makes the pansie-ass GOP lawmakers look bad by comparison.
If only I was 6’2”...
Ann Coulter is deliberately misquoted by the Liberal Press, and TV News all of the time .
Not to mention all of those nasty Leftwing Blogs!
The conundrum is that if she has to explain herself every time this happens, she will be bogged down permanently and that is what The Left wants!
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