A privileged white guy who makes sexist comments would like us to pardon a privileged white guy for doing the sameMary Elizabeth Williams
Wednesday, Mar 7, 2012
http://www.salon.com/2012/03/07/bill_maher_wants_you_to_forgive_rush
This week in rich, delicious irony: A privileged, middle-aged man known for making sexist, derogatory comments would like America to forgive a privileged, middle-aged man for making sexist, derogatory comments.
After admitting that he does “Hate to defend #RushLimbaugh,” Bill Maher went on to tweet Tuesday, about the radio host: “he apologized, liberals looking bad not accepting. Also hate intimidation by sponsor pullout.” Wait, who looks bad here? My sides, they’re splitting!
Maher, of course, is a professional provocateur, a guy who views himself as an equal opportunity fly in everyone’s ointment. But he’s also the man who recently gave a cool million dollars to Obama’s super PAC and once suggested “don’t ask, don’t tell” be overturned purely “because it will make Rush Limbaugh explode like a bag full of meat dropped from a helicopter.” As such, he no doubt felt uniquely qualified to appeal to the left’s sense of justice. And no doubt there are plenty of talking heads – the ones who erroneously keep insisting that liberals and feminists have no problem with Maher’s track record of offensive remarks – who’d go along with him.
But as a matter of fact, lots of us were revolted when Maher called Sarah Palin a “cunt” and a “dumb twat,” and were grossed out by his ill-timed assessment of Lara Logan’s “intrepid hotness” last year. We actually don’t find sexism adorable just because someone lets Marc Maron on his show.
Maher has, quite rightly, said that “When you are a public figure you’re out there and you’re fodder for comedians to make comments on you.” And when you’re a comic and a genuinely smart guy, you can probably do it without reducing a woman to her genitals. Women can take criticism and satire just fine. It’s the misogyny that gets old.
Moreover, here’s a reminder. Limbaugh’s remarks about Sandra Fluke were not about a “public figure” –- they were about a relatively unknown law student. They were made again and again, dozens of times, over a full three-day period in which he called her a whore and a slut and demanded she post videos of herself having sex. They were followed by a deeply unsatisfying statement that “my choice of words was not the best.” Since then, the marketplace has asserted itself, American style, with both consumers and advertisers deciding what form of conversation they choose to support with their time and money.
Rush Limbaugh may still have a road-to-Damascus moment and express some genuine contrition for his three-day hate binge. But until that time, what we don’t need is another smug, condescending, overpaid white dude telling us to accept a phony olive branch, suggesting that our disgust makes us “look bad.”
Mary Elizabeth Williams is a staff writer for Salon and the author of "Gimme Shelter: My Three Years Searching for the American Dream." Follow her on Twitter: @embeedub.
Showing posts with label Bill Maher. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Bill Maher. Show all posts
Wednesday, March 21, 2012
Friday, September 24, 2010
Christine O’Donnell In Oct. 1999: ‘I Dabbled Into Witchcraft’
http://thinkprogress.org/2010/09/18/christine-odonnell-witchcraft/
Christine O’Donnell In Oct. 1999: ‘I Dabbled Into Witchcraft’
Faiz Shakir
9-18-10
Before she stole the hearts of tea party activists, Delaware GOP Senate candidate Christine O’Donnell was best known for her regular and bizarre punditry on 22 different episodes of Politically Incorrect. The host of that show, Bill Maher, now has an HBO show called Real Time.
Last night, Real Time aired its first show of the current season. Maher began by mocking O’Donnell, calling her “an unemployed, anti-masturbation activist and a close friend of mine.” “I created her,” Maher told the audience, turning to the camera and stating, “You owe me Christine O’Donnell.” Maher said that he has great fondness for O’Donnell, adding, “She does not have a mean bone in her body, or any other bone in her body.”
Later in the show, Maher played a previously-unaired Oct. 29, 1999 clip of O’Donnell on Politically Incorrect, in which O’Donnell said she once “practiced witchcraft”:
O’DONNELL: I dabbled into witchcraft — I never joined a coven. But I did, I did. … I dabbled into witchcraft. I hung around people who were doing these things. I’m not making this stuff up. I know what they told me they do. [...]
One of my first dates with a witch was on a satanic altar, and I didn’t know it. I mean, there’s little blood there and stuff like that. … We went to a movie and then had a midnight picnic on a satanic altar.
Watch it:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nECxQUi_pr0
Maher joked that he’s going to show a fresh clip of O’Donnell every week on his show until O’Donnell agrees to appear again on his show. “I’m just saying, Christine, it’s like a hostage crisis,” he said, “every week you don’t show up, I’m going to throw another body out."
Christine O’Donnell In Oct. 1999: ‘I Dabbled Into Witchcraft’
Faiz Shakir
9-18-10
Before she stole the hearts of tea party activists, Delaware GOP Senate candidate Christine O’Donnell was best known for her regular and bizarre punditry on 22 different episodes of Politically Incorrect. The host of that show, Bill Maher, now has an HBO show called Real Time.
Last night, Real Time aired its first show of the current season. Maher began by mocking O’Donnell, calling her “an unemployed, anti-masturbation activist and a close friend of mine.” “I created her,” Maher told the audience, turning to the camera and stating, “You owe me Christine O’Donnell.” Maher said that he has great fondness for O’Donnell, adding, “She does not have a mean bone in her body, or any other bone in her body.”
Later in the show, Maher played a previously-unaired Oct. 29, 1999 clip of O’Donnell on Politically Incorrect, in which O’Donnell said she once “practiced witchcraft”:
O’DONNELL: I dabbled into witchcraft — I never joined a coven. But I did, I did. … I dabbled into witchcraft. I hung around people who were doing these things. I’m not making this stuff up. I know what they told me they do. [...]
One of my first dates with a witch was on a satanic altar, and I didn’t know it. I mean, there’s little blood there and stuff like that. … We went to a movie and then had a midnight picnic on a satanic altar.
Watch it:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nECxQUi_pr0
Maher joked that he’s going to show a fresh clip of O’Donnell every week on his show until O’Donnell agrees to appear again on his show. “I’m just saying, Christine, it’s like a hostage crisis,” he said, “every week you don’t show up, I’m going to throw another body out."
Thursday, February 21, 2008
CORPORATE FASCISM’S GREATEST ALLY
http://blog.lavacocktail.com/2008/02/12/liberal-democrat-corporate-fascisms-greatest-ally.aspx
LIBERAL DEMOCRAT: CORPORATE FASCISM’S GREATEST ALLY
Posted by Lava Cocktail
Tuesday, February 12, 2008
filed under Politics
Few political animals are more nauseating and deleterious to liberty than the good liberal who’ll vote for any democrat to avoid “giving” the election to a republican. To boot, this fear bunny has been brainwashed to irrationally demonize the very world “conspiracy”, a word which connotes the actual bedrock of political reality. The behavior, and lack of backbone branching from these limbs is allowing the perpetuation and consolidation of the corporate fascist state. By lining up in lock-step behind phony alternatives and mock-dissent, the liberal democrat is the greatest ally to this corporate fascism.
The liberal democrat has no courage, no integrity, no functioning intellect. If they even perceive the corporate fascist media blackout (a term I’m sure they find “radical”, if not offensive) of ALL non-corporately funded candidates, they immediately assess it as “just“ since those candidates “didn‘t have enough public support“ In 2008 such candidates included Dennis Kucinich, Ron Paul, and Mike Gravel. Not only were these the only 3 clearly anti-war candidates, but 2 were sitting Congressmen and one was the former United States Senator who filibustered to end the draft. A corporate media which can ignore candidates of this stature has surely devolved into mere stenographers to the powers that be.
Hillary Clinton is a monster and Barack Obama is at best a puppet and prostitute. Strong language sure, but in no way unjust or hyperbolic. Hillary Clinton’s monstrousness is in plain evidence in her disingenuous protestation that she voted for this murderous war because the Bush administration misled her. Funny, the 10 million of us who took to the streets in an attempt to head off this war knew better than this corporately funded shill of a New York Senator. Unfortunately, most of us are as dumb as she thinks we are.
Anybody who has done any serious level of work knows that 9/11 was an “inside job”, with key operatives in the Bush family circles, but undertaken with the active or tacit consent of the entire American ruling class bent on New World Order since Adam Weishaupt founded the Bavarian Illuminati in 1776.
Hillary, too, knows the truth of what took place on 9/11/2001 in her latest opportunistically adopted state. The thousands dead that day, and in the ensuing war, cry out vainly for justice to the deaf ears of New York’s Senator. As do the millions of Iraqis, half a million children among them, dead from sanctions enforced during a Clinton administration Hillary now claims as her own experience. Well, unelected, though she was, let’s give the devil her due. And surely that due includes the blood of innocents in Kosovo, Serbia, Bosnia, Somalia -- all places the dope trade is now thriving, as it “coincidentally” does in all places of American intervention since Sicily at World War II’s end -- but the realities of the global drug trade are almost certainly off the radar of the good liberal-who, like all her other beliefs, swallows hook, line and sinker the fictions purveyed by Hollywood of organized crime kingpins in pony tails carrying millions in briefcases.
The liberal democrat refuses to acknowledge the reality of power in the world at this time: that the bottom line of politics is money and murder. It’s not some sporting event, or horse race in which the amount of money is the headline raised, while pertinent issues are not -- unless the opposite is more convenient to our plutocratic oligarchy - in the 4th quarter Ron Paul raised more money than any other Republican, all from ordinary people driven only by true conviction, not greed -- this could easily have been the lead story for weeks -- but I didn’t see a single article -- and THAT is why fascism is a “soft” term for the reality in which we live.
Neo-Cons & born-again arch conservative knuckle-draggers are easier to forgive than you, liberal democrat - who figures they’ve done their civic duty by writing their name on something-or-other put forth by “MoveOn.org.” You pretend to care, but you always shut-up and never put-up-you are vilely lazy and living on intellectual welfare - you hold opinions that were doled out to you, not earned by the honest and respectable sweat of your own brow.
Rush Limbaugh’s knuckle-draggers are pathetic and sad, and they have bought into the demonization of the words “liberal” and “socialist”, which are interchangeable for these loutish morons, embarrassingly dumbed-down by their insistence on viewing reality through a single prism, distorted toward their own take on “FAH-PIG“ - Fear, Apathy, Horniness, Prejudice, Ignorance and Greed the prime motivator’s of most’s public behavior.
But YOU, liberal - you fancy yourself “educated”, “enlightened”, not as easy a prey for FAH-PIG. And yet you allow yourself to be herded into one of the 2 major pre-approved pens from which the public animal’s may bray at one another -- and vote for one of their pre-approved and already severely corrupted corporate whores.
Corporate whores like Barack Obama. Who has a Washington D.C.’s biggest Big Pharma lobbyist running his campaign, & has the chutzpah to crow about being for “change”. Who’s foreign policy advisor is the notorious Zbigniew Brezinski, servant to the Rockefeller’s and their New World Order, the architect who brought together and secretly armed and trained the “Islamic fundamentalists” in Afghanistan to fight the Russians in the late 70s-this included Osama bin Laden.
And of course Obama has naught to say on 9/11 Truth.
So many well-intentioned liberal democrats are climbing aboard that Obama train-which of course is one of the choices pre-ordained by the ruling class. Most of my own family is black, and by that I mean African-American, who unlike Obama, have a shared historical experience of American slavery, Jim Crow, as well as many positive African-American traditions. Obama’s father of course is from Kenya, and in the illogical racism of Americans, one drop of “black blood” makes you a “black person” , not the half-black, half-white person you really are (for what that’s worth). Race is unscientific at best, culture a series of individually made choices without significant genetic components.
The liberal democrat Kennedys are all on board. They want themselves and their loved ones to stay alive, unlike President Jack and his son, John Jr. - so they join in lock-step behind the pre-approved Barack.
So you silly liberal democrats get to feel good about yourself by voting for a black (man) or a (white) woman. Aren’t you all just so open-minded?
Well, no you’re not. Just mention “conspiracy” or “9/11 Truth”. You can watch the mind close up tighter than a bulls-ass at fly time.
So be like the putrid Bill Maher. Now THERE’S a liberal democrat for you. He and that rich slob Michael Moore, blind siding one of the few REAL candidates we’ve ever had the opportunity to vote for, falling on their knees before the cameras and an unsuspecting Ralph Nader, begging the great man NOT to run again in 2004, and “give” the election to Bush. Bill Maher, who arrogantly chased a person with REAL integrity, a 9/11 Truther from his audience, shouting for security. Well, you can’t expect a corporate whore like Bill Maher to even seriously consider what might threaten the flow of cash he gets for being an unconscionable suck-butt. Activist Jock Doubleday has issued Bill Maher a challenge to study 9/11 for 4 hours a day, 7 days a week, for I believe 6 months, and NOT come to the conclusion that it was an “inside job” by the Cheney gang. Jock’s offered something like $10,000 to boot.
I’d like to issue that same challenge to all liberal democrats, without the $10,000
On the Nader issue, liberal democrats, please forgive me for raising my voice above the wearisome din of your bleating and moo-ing: THERE ARE PERHAPS A FEW MILLION OF US WHO DID OR WOULD VOTE FOR RALPH NADER, AND WOULD NEVERNEVERNEVER VOTE FOR AN AL GORE, HILLARY CLINTON, JOHN KERRY, BARACK OBAMA, ETC. WE HAVE THE RIGHT TO VOTE FOR WHOEVER APPROXIMATES OUR VIEWS WITHOUT YOU CORPORATE-FASCIST-TOOL-FEAR BUNNIES HECKLING US. WE ARE WELL AWARE YOU LACK ALL INTELLECTUAL AND MORAL INTEGRITY, SO PLEASE SHUT THE FUCK UP ON THIS ISSUE!
And please, at least consider having a little integrity and substance. We really feel your insistence on voting for the lesser of 2 evils is precisely what corporate fascism is counting on to perpetuate itself, and endless war, and the drug trade, and poverty, and assassinations, murders, and the lies that stem the tide of 9/11 Truth. Really, how much innocent blood are you willing to drip with before you actually take a stand AGAINST evil, instead of slavishly choosing the so-called “lesser evil”.
The voting system itself is totally corrupted-from the pre-approved and corporate money driven choices to the computerized machines. This is the system devised by your “lesser evil”. Stand up and be somebody for a change.
Craig Lee Merrihue
LIBERAL DEMOCRAT: CORPORATE FASCISM’S GREATEST ALLY
Posted by Lava Cocktail
Tuesday, February 12, 2008
filed under Politics
Few political animals are more nauseating and deleterious to liberty than the good liberal who’ll vote for any democrat to avoid “giving” the election to a republican. To boot, this fear bunny has been brainwashed to irrationally demonize the very world “conspiracy”, a word which connotes the actual bedrock of political reality. The behavior, and lack of backbone branching from these limbs is allowing the perpetuation and consolidation of the corporate fascist state. By lining up in lock-step behind phony alternatives and mock-dissent, the liberal democrat is the greatest ally to this corporate fascism.
The liberal democrat has no courage, no integrity, no functioning intellect. If they even perceive the corporate fascist media blackout (a term I’m sure they find “radical”, if not offensive) of ALL non-corporately funded candidates, they immediately assess it as “just“ since those candidates “didn‘t have enough public support“ In 2008 such candidates included Dennis Kucinich, Ron Paul, and Mike Gravel. Not only were these the only 3 clearly anti-war candidates, but 2 were sitting Congressmen and one was the former United States Senator who filibustered to end the draft. A corporate media which can ignore candidates of this stature has surely devolved into mere stenographers to the powers that be.
Hillary Clinton is a monster and Barack Obama is at best a puppet and prostitute. Strong language sure, but in no way unjust or hyperbolic. Hillary Clinton’s monstrousness is in plain evidence in her disingenuous protestation that she voted for this murderous war because the Bush administration misled her. Funny, the 10 million of us who took to the streets in an attempt to head off this war knew better than this corporately funded shill of a New York Senator. Unfortunately, most of us are as dumb as she thinks we are.
Anybody who has done any serious level of work knows that 9/11 was an “inside job”, with key operatives in the Bush family circles, but undertaken with the active or tacit consent of the entire American ruling class bent on New World Order since Adam Weishaupt founded the Bavarian Illuminati in 1776.
Hillary, too, knows the truth of what took place on 9/11/2001 in her latest opportunistically adopted state. The thousands dead that day, and in the ensuing war, cry out vainly for justice to the deaf ears of New York’s Senator. As do the millions of Iraqis, half a million children among them, dead from sanctions enforced during a Clinton administration Hillary now claims as her own experience. Well, unelected, though she was, let’s give the devil her due. And surely that due includes the blood of innocents in Kosovo, Serbia, Bosnia, Somalia -- all places the dope trade is now thriving, as it “coincidentally” does in all places of American intervention since Sicily at World War II’s end -- but the realities of the global drug trade are almost certainly off the radar of the good liberal-who, like all her other beliefs, swallows hook, line and sinker the fictions purveyed by Hollywood of organized crime kingpins in pony tails carrying millions in briefcases.
The liberal democrat refuses to acknowledge the reality of power in the world at this time: that the bottom line of politics is money and murder. It’s not some sporting event, or horse race in which the amount of money is the headline raised, while pertinent issues are not -- unless the opposite is more convenient to our plutocratic oligarchy - in the 4th quarter Ron Paul raised more money than any other Republican, all from ordinary people driven only by true conviction, not greed -- this could easily have been the lead story for weeks -- but I didn’t see a single article -- and THAT is why fascism is a “soft” term for the reality in which we live.
Neo-Cons & born-again arch conservative knuckle-draggers are easier to forgive than you, liberal democrat - who figures they’ve done their civic duty by writing their name on something-or-other put forth by “MoveOn.org.” You pretend to care, but you always shut-up and never put-up-you are vilely lazy and living on intellectual welfare - you hold opinions that were doled out to you, not earned by the honest and respectable sweat of your own brow.
Rush Limbaugh’s knuckle-draggers are pathetic and sad, and they have bought into the demonization of the words “liberal” and “socialist”, which are interchangeable for these loutish morons, embarrassingly dumbed-down by their insistence on viewing reality through a single prism, distorted toward their own take on “FAH-PIG“ - Fear, Apathy, Horniness, Prejudice, Ignorance and Greed the prime motivator’s of most’s public behavior.
But YOU, liberal - you fancy yourself “educated”, “enlightened”, not as easy a prey for FAH-PIG. And yet you allow yourself to be herded into one of the 2 major pre-approved pens from which the public animal’s may bray at one another -- and vote for one of their pre-approved and already severely corrupted corporate whores.
Corporate whores like Barack Obama. Who has a Washington D.C.’s biggest Big Pharma lobbyist running his campaign, & has the chutzpah to crow about being for “change”. Who’s foreign policy advisor is the notorious Zbigniew Brezinski, servant to the Rockefeller’s and their New World Order, the architect who brought together and secretly armed and trained the “Islamic fundamentalists” in Afghanistan to fight the Russians in the late 70s-this included Osama bin Laden.
And of course Obama has naught to say on 9/11 Truth.
So many well-intentioned liberal democrats are climbing aboard that Obama train-which of course is one of the choices pre-ordained by the ruling class. Most of my own family is black, and by that I mean African-American, who unlike Obama, have a shared historical experience of American slavery, Jim Crow, as well as many positive African-American traditions. Obama’s father of course is from Kenya, and in the illogical racism of Americans, one drop of “black blood” makes you a “black person” , not the half-black, half-white person you really are (for what that’s worth). Race is unscientific at best, culture a series of individually made choices without significant genetic components.
The liberal democrat Kennedys are all on board. They want themselves and their loved ones to stay alive, unlike President Jack and his son, John Jr. - so they join in lock-step behind the pre-approved Barack.
So you silly liberal democrats get to feel good about yourself by voting for a black (man) or a (white) woman. Aren’t you all just so open-minded?
Well, no you’re not. Just mention “conspiracy” or “9/11 Truth”. You can watch the mind close up tighter than a bulls-ass at fly time.
So be like the putrid Bill Maher. Now THERE’S a liberal democrat for you. He and that rich slob Michael Moore, blind siding one of the few REAL candidates we’ve ever had the opportunity to vote for, falling on their knees before the cameras and an unsuspecting Ralph Nader, begging the great man NOT to run again in 2004, and “give” the election to Bush. Bill Maher, who arrogantly chased a person with REAL integrity, a 9/11 Truther from his audience, shouting for security. Well, you can’t expect a corporate whore like Bill Maher to even seriously consider what might threaten the flow of cash he gets for being an unconscionable suck-butt. Activist Jock Doubleday has issued Bill Maher a challenge to study 9/11 for 4 hours a day, 7 days a week, for I believe 6 months, and NOT come to the conclusion that it was an “inside job” by the Cheney gang. Jock’s offered something like $10,000 to boot.
I’d like to issue that same challenge to all liberal democrats, without the $10,000
On the Nader issue, liberal democrats, please forgive me for raising my voice above the wearisome din of your bleating and moo-ing: THERE ARE PERHAPS A FEW MILLION OF US WHO DID OR WOULD VOTE FOR RALPH NADER, AND WOULD NEVERNEVERNEVER VOTE FOR AN AL GORE, HILLARY CLINTON, JOHN KERRY, BARACK OBAMA, ETC. WE HAVE THE RIGHT TO VOTE FOR WHOEVER APPROXIMATES OUR VIEWS WITHOUT YOU CORPORATE-FASCIST-TOOL-FEAR BUNNIES HECKLING US. WE ARE WELL AWARE YOU LACK ALL INTELLECTUAL AND MORAL INTEGRITY, SO PLEASE SHUT THE FUCK UP ON THIS ISSUE!
And please, at least consider having a little integrity and substance. We really feel your insistence on voting for the lesser of 2 evils is precisely what corporate fascism is counting on to perpetuate itself, and endless war, and the drug trade, and poverty, and assassinations, murders, and the lies that stem the tide of 9/11 Truth. Really, how much innocent blood are you willing to drip with before you actually take a stand AGAINST evil, instead of slavishly choosing the so-called “lesser evil”.
The voting system itself is totally corrupted-from the pre-approved and corporate money driven choices to the computerized machines. This is the system devised by your “lesser evil”. Stand up and be somebody for a change.
Craig Lee Merrihue
Wednesday, July 4, 2007
Why pay the bigot?
http://mediamatters.org/items/200706300002?f=h_top
Media Matters; by Jamison Foser
Friday June 29, 2007
Summary:
Why pay the bigot when you can get the bile for free?
In 1996, MSNBC hired Ann Coulter as a contributor. The Washington Post later quoted an MSNBC official describing Coulter's performance: "What she said was so outrageous she was immediately put on probation, and the next one was even worse." Coulter has acknowledged: "They kept firing me, but then they'd rehire me." Coulter barely lasted a year before MSNBC fired her for good for on-air comments she made to Vietnam Veterans of America founder Bobby Muller.
In 2003, less than five months after it began broadcasting his show, MSNBC fired Michael Savage for telling a caller he should "get AIDS and die." An MSNBC spokesperson explained: "Savage made an extremely inappropriate comment and the decision to cancel the program was not difficult." Just a few months earlier, then-NBC chairman Bob Wright had declared: "We strongly defend his new show as a legitimate attempt to expand the marketplace of ideas."
Earlier this year, MSNBC fired Don Imus after he made racist and sexist comments about the Rutgers University women's basketball team.
It may be tempting to conclude that, despite the ridiculous decisions to hire the likes of Coulter and Savage in the first place, the firings indicate that MSNBC understands that their violent and hateful rhetoric adds nothing of value to the public discourse.
But maybe MSNBC has simply decided that it doesn't make much sense to pay the bigot when you can get the bile for free.
On Tuesday, for example, MSNBC's Hardball featured Ann Coulter as the sole guest for the entire hour. MSNBC continues to provide a platform for Coulter's hate; the network's just stopped paying her.
During Coulter's last appearance on Hardball, in July 2006, host Chris Matthews told her, "You write beautifully," and, "You have a brilliant brain." He described her as "the picture of heaven." Then Coulter called former Vice President Al Gore a "total fag," and Matthews ended the interview by saying of Coulter, "We'd love to have her back."
Earlier this year, Coulter called Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards a "faggot" during a speech to the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC). During an appearance on CNN Headline News' Glenn Beck this week, Coulter defended that comment, claiming, "I wasn't saying it on TV. I was saying it at a right-wing political convention with 7,000 college Republicans. I didn't put it on TV." Like much of what Coulter says, this wasn't true, and wouldn't be particularly meaningful even if it was. Coulter's speech was broadcast on C-SPAN, which extensively covers CPAC speeches. (Host Glenn Beck didn't point out Coulter's lie; nor did he point out that she used the same epithet to describe Gore "on TV.")
During her Monday appearance on ABC's Good Morning America, Coulter responded to a question about her CPAC description of Edwards as a "faggot" by saying, "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 gonna say anything about John Edwards in the future, I'll just wish he had been killed in a terrorist assassination plot."
Those comments prompted the Edwards campaign to denounce Coulter, and Elizabeth Edwards called into Hardball the next day to confront Coulter.
Coulter and her defenders have criticized the Edwards campaign for omitting the Maher portion of her comments about wishing Edwards was killed by terrorists, claiming that her comments were taken out of context. But the context she claims is missing is itself false.
Coulter misrepresented Maher's comments about Cheney. In fact, Maher didn't say he wished Cheney had been killed; he said "if Dick Cheney was not in power, people wouldn't be dying needlessly tomorrow. ... I'm just saying that if he did die -- other people -- more people would live. That's a fact."
During the March 5 broadcast of his show, MSNBC host and former Republican Congressman Joe Scarborough (FL) debunked his fellow conservatives' attacks on Maher: "Conservatives accuse Bill Maher of calling for Dick Cheney's assassination, but he didn't, and I should know. I was there." But Scarborough didn't correct Coulter when she appeared on Morning Joe, even though he and Coulter did discuss her reference to Maher.
During that same appearance on Morning Joe, Coulter falsely accused Elizabeth Edwards of lying about Coulter's November 19, 2003, column:
SCARBOROUGH: Now, I will tell you the part of that Elizabeth Edwards interview that jarred the most people -- jarred me, jarred just about everybody I spoke with -- was the part where she brought up the fact -- she said that you had written some column where you had made light of John Edwards' dead son. What's the story behind that?
COULTER: Needless to say, that is not true. And coming from people who have done what we have just seen them do in the earlier segment, I don't think they deserve a lot of credibility on this. You can look it up. It's all over the Web. It's a fabulous column, titled "The Party of Ideas," written in 2003. I had to go back and get the full gist of the column. It was about all of the Democratic primary opponents.
In the column in question, Coulter wrote of John Edwards: "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?"
Again, Scarborough did not challenge Coulter or confront her with what she had actually written; he simply accepted her assertion that Elizabeth Edwards had lied about the column.
On Thursday, MSNBC Live host Chris Jansing asked Elizabeth Edwards, "There are people who support your opinion, I'm sure you know, who say, 'Why even dignify it with a response? Why give Ann Coulter more publicity?' "
That same day, Jansing's network gave Ann Coulter publicity by hosting her on Morning Joe. Two days earlier, Jansing's network had given Ann Coulter publicity by hosting her -- alone, for a full hour -- on Hardball.
This week alone, Coulter appeared on ABC's Good Morning America, MSNBC's Hardball, MSNBC's Morning Joe, CNN Headline News' Glenn Beck, and Fox News' Hannity & Colmes. (On Fox, she took a swipe at Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama: "I do think anyone named B. Hussein Obama should avoid using 'hijack' and 'religion' in the same sentence.")
The notion that the targets of Ann Coulter's hateful speech should ignore her and she'll go away is absurd. Coulter was booked on Good Morning America and Hardball long before Elizabeth Edwards confronted her. Time magazine put Coulter on its cover long before Elizabeth Edwards confronted her. NBC's Today hosted her -- repeatedly -- long before Elizabeth Edwards confronted her.
It isn't Elizabeth Edwards who gives Ann Coulter publicity. It is the nation's leading news organizations. They may claim to find her distasteful, but they keep promoting her.
And they not only provide a forum for her hate speech and let her lie and dissemble without consequence, they repeat her false attacks on progressives as though they are true.
On Today, for example, David Gregory pretended that Ann Coulter has a point:
GREGORY: You said rather pointedly that you think Ann Coulter is guilty of hate speech against your husband and others as well. If you strip away some of the inflammatory rhetoric against your husband and other Democrats, the point she's trying to make about your husband, Senator Edwards, running for the White House is in effect that he's disingenuous, especially on the signature issue of poverty, whether it's a $400 haircut or taking big money to speak in front of a poverty group. If you, again, strip away the inflammatory rhetoric, is that a real point of vulnerability that you have to deal with in this campaign?
This is complete and total bunk.
There's simply no reason to pretend that Ann Coulter calling John Edwards a "faggot" and musing about him being killed by terrorists is about anything other than Ann Coulter being a contemptible human being and a national disgrace. There's no deep point there; she's just a sad and pathetic little person.
But that isn't all: Gregory made the nonsensical suggestion that John Edwards is "disingenuous" about poverty because he paid a lot of money for a haircut. It doesn't matter how often pundits keep saying that, it's still dumb. Gregory's statement that Edwards took "big money to speak in front of a poverty group" repeated Coulter's own false claim that he "charge[d] a poverty group $50,000 for a speech." This falsehood is apparently a reference to a paid speech Edwards made at the University of California-Davis, not "in front of a poverty group." So, obviously, he didn't "charge a poverty group" (in fact, his speaking fee was offset by ticket sales.)
Ann Coulter is not only a remarkably unpleasant person, she's a serial liar. And yet NBC's David Gregory -- among other journalists -- pretends that she has a meaningful point and makes false assertions about progressives based on her lies.
That's why it would be folly for progressives to ignore Coulter in hopes that she goes away: because the media don't ignore her. They promote her. They parrot her false claims. It's also why progressives should not only denounce Coulter, but MSNBC and ABC and CNN and Time and every other news organization that gives her a platform and doesn't challenge her lies and repeats them as though they are true.
During the Wednesday edition of Scarborough Country, MSNBC viewers got a hit of another reason why it would be folly to let Ann Coulter's hate and lies go unchallenged. An MSNBC contributor said of Coulter: "I don't think she's peddling hate. And if she -- and MSNBC certainly doesn't ... because if they did, they would never put her on the air for an hour, would we, Dan?"
The MSNBC contributor? Pat Buchanan.
The same Pat Buchanan who called Martin Luther King Jr. "one of the most divisive men in contemporary history."
The same Pat Buchanan who called Adolf Hitler "an individual of great courage" and wrote a column questioning whether World War II was "worth it" and wondered, "[W]hy destroy Hitler?"
There was Pat Buchanan, paid contributor to MSNBC, repeatedly vouching for Ann Coulter:
JOAN WALSH (Salon.com editor in chief): Ann Coulter had a whole hour to herself on Hardball, and she was going to sell her books and peddle her hate on Hardball pretty much unchallenged.
[...]
BUCHANAN: Joan, let me tell you where you're wrong here.
WALSH: Yes, Pat, sure.
BUCHANAN: I don't think she's peddling hate. And if she -- and MSNBC certainly doesn't --
WALSH: "Faggot"? "Faggot"?
BUCHANAN: -- because if they did, they would never put her on the air for an hour, would we, Dan?
WALSH: Well, she wasn't on for quite a while after she called --
DAN ABRAMS (MSNBC general manager): Oh, come on, Pat. Come on.
BUCHANAN: Well, come on! I mean --
WALSH: -- after she called Al Gore a "total fag."
ABRAMS: Pat is misusing his MSNBC analyst moniker there.
WALSH: Thank you, Dan.
ABRAMS: Go ahead, Pat.
BUCHANAN: Look, she is very, very -- look, she's a very good debater, and she's very good on TV and good on her feet, and she's a conservative, and she's an excellent writer. [New York Times columnist] Maureen Dowd's an excellent friend on the other side.
WALSH: No. No, Pat. You're -- Pat, you know what? You're a good debater.
[crosstalk]
BUCHANAN: She's good --
WALSH: You're a good debater.
ABRAMS: [Congressional Quarterly columnist] Craig Crawford -- wait. Wait.
WALSH: She peddles hate.
ABRAMS: Let's at least admit something, Craig Crawford.
BUCHANAN: Oh, cut it out.
WALSH: No, seriously.
[...]
ABRAMS: But that glosses over -- hang on. Hang on a second. That glosses over -- Pat. Pat, what you're doing is you're cherry-picking the pure politics stuff out of what she says and ignoring the sort of unnecessary hateful words that she uses, as well.
BUCHANAN: What hateful word did she use?
ABRAMS: You know, she described him as a gay person, but using a different term.
BUCHANAN: A what? Oh, you mean, that thing?
Pat Buchanan hasn't suffered from his own history of inflammatory comments: He has repeatedly been hired to host television shows on CNN and MSNBC; he currently works as a contributor to MSNBC, where he defends Coulter from charges that she peddles hate.
If people look the other way when Ann Coulter lies and smears and insults, it will only be a matter of time before Coulter will have her own cable television perch from which she can defend the next generation of right-wing hate merchants.
Monday, July 2, 2007
Time for an Ann Coulter Ban
http://www.film.com/tv/story/timeforananncoulterban/13982602/15287733
Time for an Ann Coulter Ban
Ethan Morris, Jun 28, 2007
Okay, enough is enough. Will someone please get Ann Coulter off my TV set?
Seriously. The FCC needs to implement an Ann Ban as soon as humanly possible.
Aside from the fact that many believe her to be a raving lunatic, now she's all but threatened the life of a presidential candidate.
In an interview on ABC's Good Morning America, Coulter said she wished Democratic candidate John Edwards "had been killed in a terrorist assassination plot."
The ultra-super-duper-uber-over-the-top conservative columnist and frequent talk show guest says she was merely making a point, after notoriously liberal talk show host Bill Maher made a similar comment about Vice President Dick Cheney.
In fact, what Maher said was that if Dick Cheney had been killed in a real (but failed) attempted assassination in Afghanistan, fewer people would be dying in Iraq right now. "If he did die," Maher said at the time, "other people, more people would live." But he didn't actually "wish" Cheney dead.
Technically, Coulter didn't either. Here's her exact quote: "If I'm going to say anything about John Edwards, I'll just wish he had been killed in a terrorist assassination plot." By couching her words with conditionals like "if" and "I'll" and by using the past tense, Coulter will no doubt avoid any trouble from the law. (Presidential candidates get protection from the Secret Service and threatening their lives is a serious no no.)
But she couldn't stave off a response from Edwards' wife, who called Coulter when she later appeared on MSNBC's Hardball. Elizabeth Edwards asked Coulter to stop attacking her husband with such hate language. Coulter smirkingly refused, and it quickly degenerated into a shouting match.
Now listen: I'm not some liberal who hates Ann Coulter for her politics. I hate Ann Coulter because I, and a lot of others, think she's a venomous nut case.
This is the woman who wishes Timothy McVeigh had blown up the New York Times building.
This is the woman who wants to invade other countries, kill their leaders, and convert the entire world to Christianity. (Does that include Israel, Ann?)
This is the woman who quotes God as saying man should "rape" the earth so we don't end up "living like the Indians."
Now she's implying a death wish against a presidential candidate.
I'm sorry, but this goes way beyond political debate. It's nothing more than venal pandering for profit. Coulter's outrageous statements are obviously designed for the sole purpose of selling her books and getting people to read her columns. (And getting sucker-bloggers like me to waste time writing my opinion about her!)
And her hateful spewing crosses the line. As a writer and journalist, I'm as big a supporter of free speech there is. But Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes helped us draw an important line when he pointed out that free speech doesn't mean you can yell "fire" in a crowded theater.
You can bet Don Imus must be wondering why he doesn't have a job right now.
Seriously, it's time for Ann to go. Shame on network executives and talk show hosts who agree to have Ann as a guest ever again. Shame on viewers for watching her, or for reading her columns. Shame on me if I ever write another word about her.
C'mon FCC. You can spare us all if you'll just implement an Ann Ban, punishable by a fine of one beeeeeelion dollars.
Time for an Ann Coulter Ban
Ethan Morris, Jun 28, 2007
Okay, enough is enough. Will someone please get Ann Coulter off my TV set?
Seriously. The FCC needs to implement an Ann Ban as soon as humanly possible.
Aside from the fact that many believe her to be a raving lunatic, now she's all but threatened the life of a presidential candidate.
In an interview on ABC's Good Morning America, Coulter said she wished Democratic candidate John Edwards "had been killed in a terrorist assassination plot."
The ultra-super-duper-uber-over-the-top conservative columnist and frequent talk show guest says she was merely making a point, after notoriously liberal talk show host Bill Maher made a similar comment about Vice President Dick Cheney.
In fact, what Maher said was that if Dick Cheney had been killed in a real (but failed) attempted assassination in Afghanistan, fewer people would be dying in Iraq right now. "If he did die," Maher said at the time, "other people, more people would live." But he didn't actually "wish" Cheney dead.
Technically, Coulter didn't either. Here's her exact quote: "If I'm going to say anything about John Edwards, I'll just wish he had been killed in a terrorist assassination plot." By couching her words with conditionals like "if" and "I'll" and by using the past tense, Coulter will no doubt avoid any trouble from the law. (Presidential candidates get protection from the Secret Service and threatening their lives is a serious no no.)
But she couldn't stave off a response from Edwards' wife, who called Coulter when she later appeared on MSNBC's Hardball. Elizabeth Edwards asked Coulter to stop attacking her husband with such hate language. Coulter smirkingly refused, and it quickly degenerated into a shouting match.
Now listen: I'm not some liberal who hates Ann Coulter for her politics. I hate Ann Coulter because I, and a lot of others, think she's a venomous nut case.
This is the woman who wishes Timothy McVeigh had blown up the New York Times building.
This is the woman who wants to invade other countries, kill their leaders, and convert the entire world to Christianity. (Does that include Israel, Ann?)
This is the woman who quotes God as saying man should "rape" the earth so we don't end up "living like the Indians."
Now she's implying a death wish against a presidential candidate.
I'm sorry, but this goes way beyond political debate. It's nothing more than venal pandering for profit. Coulter's outrageous statements are obviously designed for the sole purpose of selling her books and getting people to read her columns. (And getting sucker-bloggers like me to waste time writing my opinion about her!)
And her hateful spewing crosses the line. As a writer and journalist, I'm as big a supporter of free speech there is. But Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes helped us draw an important line when he pointed out that free speech doesn't mean you can yell "fire" in a crowded theater.
You can bet Don Imus must be wondering why he doesn't have a job right now.
Seriously, it's time for Ann to go. Shame on network executives and talk show hosts who agree to have Ann as a guest ever again. Shame on viewers for watching her, or for reading her columns. Shame on me if I ever write another word about her.
C'mon FCC. You can spare us all if you'll just implement an Ann Ban, punishable by a fine of one beeeeeelion dollars.
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