Follow along with the video below to see how to install our site as a web app on your home screen.
Note: This feature currently requires accessing the site using the built-in Safari browser.
Thank you for making our point even clearer.
Delicious Irony. Its OK for you, a flaming liberal, to berate someone with a insulting abnormal sexual innuendo but not OK for a conservative.
You apparently wouldn't know a liberal if one landed on you. Before you get too carried away with yourself, remind yourself who it was that threw the first insult between us in this thread. The irony here is that you find it ironic that someone returns an insult for an insult...really ironic considering it is a concept condoned by the Bible.
BTW, you didn't answer the question about whether Edwards had ever insulted Coulter.
Free Speech, Political Identity, and the Post-Coulter Debate (UPDATED and UPDATED AGAIN. And AGAIN!)
I received an email this morning that I think is worth sharing inasmuch as it—when coupled with my reply—crystallizes certain of my positions on speech and identity politics. Under the subject line “Ann Coulter,” “esmyth” writes:
Ah, the irony!
When I was a little girl and anti-war liberals and hippies were tearing up the country with their explitive-laced vitriol, conservatives were the ones who stood for decent, respectful speech.
Now I’m a big, grown-up lady and it is the liberals who call for decent, respectful speech. Why? Because it is the *conservative* media, the *conservative* readership and the *conservative* politicos that have made Ann Coulter the movement’s mouthpiece (and a millionaire, let’s not forget!)
Ann Coulter may not speak for you personally, but she doesn’t care. And as long as she continues to rake it in, it’s not unfair to assume she speaks for *somebody.* A lot of somebodies. Who are they, then, if not the collective “you”? It’s not like CPAC didn’t know what she was like when they put her at the top of the bill last week.
And you know what? The shoe is on the other foot now. Now it is liberal America that can, with the ‘08 election just around the corner, say (quietly at first, and just to each other) “they must be insane - why are they just handing us the country like this?”
Well, I won’t worry too long about that. I’ll just laugh all the way to the voting booth!
I fear you not.
My reply:
Uh, I’m glad you don’t fear me, really I am.
But I didn’t attend CPAC—and many of those who did have already condemned Coulter’s joke. Others (like me) noted that we would, had we been asked, admit that we didn’t think the remarks particularly funny (having now seen the video-clip, I don’t believe it was intended as homophobic; Coulter claims, as I ventured in my original post, that she was using the word colloquially, and she specifically, in the same speech, lays claim to a pro-gay position, so I’m now inclined to defend her on principle)—but saying so when asked personally is quite a bit different than having a political opponent demand you distance yourself from something you didn’t say. Because to do so is to admit tacitly that your “side” is represented by anyone willing to claim its mantle—and as I don’t think there is a homogeneity to “conservative” speech (or to “conservatives” as a group, today so broadly defined as to be politically meaningless), I refuse to accept the tacit premise, which, as I argued in my original post, dignifies certain ideas about identity politics that progressives wish to see insinuate themselves structurally into the various modes of discourse.
Once that happens, the battle for individualism is, in my opinion, all but lost.
I do, however, find it telling that you view the policing of speech as a kind of game between competing political sides—and that it’s your side’s “turn” to make the rules. Far be it for me to offer advice to someone who believes herself to be so personally vindicated by the outcome of certain elections, but perhaps you need to step outside of your political identity for a few moments and look at things from the perspective of whether or not speech should, in fact, be policed based on how “respectful” it is—particularly when, as you all but concede in your petty tirade here, those in power get to decide what is, in fact, “respectful.”
For my part, I have never called for any such thing (does that mean I’m not really “conservative”?)—and when I was a little boy, and “hippies were tearing up the country with their explitive-laced vitriol,” I was on their side—if not politically, at least Constitutionally. It is only when the hippies grew up and, having mainstreamed their power, began instituting “free speech zones” and “hate speech” codes and insisting on a “tolerance” that has robbed useful discourse of its necessary saltiness and variance, that they lost me.
You, on the other hand, presume to decide what is respectful based on a combination of politics and schadenfreude—and what’s worse, you don’t even seem to believe that you’re doing so for any other reason than that you now can.
So I DO fear people like you…
One thing never really talked about is this assumption on the part of many “progressives” that those of us who are now identified as “conservative” would, in generations past, have been identified in that same way...
!!!!
Ann Coulter is HILARIOUS! I'm reading her latest book and can't stop laughing
More like an annoying giant boil on the ass of liberals.Ann is a splash of cold water in the face of liberals
More like an annoying giant boil on the ass of liberals.
More like an annoying giant boil on the ass of liberals.
More like an annoying giant boil on the ass of liberals.
You apparently wouldn't know a liberal if one landed on you. Before you get too carried away with yourself, remind yourself who it was that threw the first insult between us in this thread. The irony here is that you find it ironic that someone returns an insult for an insult...really ironic considering it is a concept condoned by the Bible.
BTW, you didn't answer the question about whether Edwards had ever insulted Coulter.
More like a smart girl who realized she could become rich by acting like a dumbass right wing apologist who believe Bush is right about everything.
Is she really that smart though...?
She graduated Order of the Coif from Michigan Law School...you have to be smart to do that.
However, her intelligence led her to believe she could become wealthy by spewing far right, wayyyy out there comments with absolutely no substance. She was right about that, however, she makes the people who listen to her more dumb.
Do you bother to read any of her columns? She is easily my favorite political writer. Like Rush, she is an expert at sarcasm and illustration of the absurd by being absurd. That is exactly what she was doing with the faggot remark and most people still don't get it. Get more informed with what is actually going on around this country....Isaiah Washington going to rehab for calling a coworker a fag!!????That is just fuckin ridiculous! This country is becoming a land of faggots, where do you guys think we are....Canada???
I read her columns all the time...initially she wasn't too bad, but in the last 5 years or so she has become everything that is wrong with politics. Unfortunately, nothing she says anymore can be called "smart" or "intelligent"
I read her columns all the time...initially she wasn't too bad, but in the last 5 years or so she has become everything that is wrong with politics. Unfortunately, nothing she says anymore can be called "smart" or "intelligent"
More like an annoying giant boil on the ass of liberals.
