Has Ann Coulter Hit Her Tipping Point?

NEW YORK (AP) - Ann Coulter has been a reliable name for years among people who plan television news shows - an attractive, articulate blonde conservative who's made a living lobbing verbal bombs.

Following her use of a gay slur about Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards this month during remarks to the Conservative Political Action Conference, some on TV are wondering whether her shelf life is expiring.

Many were angered by her use of the "f-word". Coulter later said she considered it a "schoolyard taunt." She said it was a joke about "Grey's Anatomy" actor Isaiah Washington saying he would seek counseling after using the word to refer to a fellow actor.

At least four daily newspapers have dropped Coulter as a columnist, citing her comment about Edwards.

Head-turning remarks are hardly anything new for the author of "Godless: The Church of Liberalism" and "How to Talk to a Liberal (If You Must)." In "Godless" last year, she wrote of World Trade Center widows: "I've never seen people enjoying their husbands' deaths so much."

"It's a world of 'are you talking about me? are you talking about me?'" said Steve Friedman, executive producer of "The Early Show" on CBS. "And eventually you have to get more and more outrageous to be talked about. One day you cross the line and become persona non grata. I think she's getting close. I think Bill Maher is getting close."

Friedman has no plans to book Coulter on his show, but said he had no plans even before her Edwards comment.

Some people on NBC's "Today" show didn't want to see Coulter before she was booked to talk about "Godless" last summer, said Jim Bell, the show's executive producer.

He overruled them. Having only certain points of view would make for a bland program, he said. Since Coulter is a best-selling author, clearly there's an audience that responds to her. Coulter also appeared on a "Today" segment this Feb. 8, debating a University of Pennsylvania professor.

Bell said last week that Coulter's legitimate points of view are beginning to get lost in the noise of being outlandish.

"She sometimes goes out of her way to push some buttons and tends to generate more heat than light," he said. "We love a lively debate, but we would tend to get people who would generate more light."

Said Tom Rosenstiel, director of the Project for Excellence in Journalism: "You do wonder whether she's destined for 'Dancing With the Stars' at some point."

Several conservatives criticized Coulter for her Edwards remarks. Fellow columnist Michelle Malkin lamented that Coulter had tarred the work of people at the Washington conference. She called Coulter's humor "tired old shtick." Tim Graham, director of media analysis at the Media Research Center, said some conservatives envy the attention she gets and dislike how she distracts from legitimate arguments.

"If you got the sense that she was saying things you thought she believed, it would help," he said.

Still, Graham said it would be "outrageous" if Coulter is blacklisted by networks but Maher isn't. The HBO comic angered some by recent remarks suggesting more people would live if an assassination attempt against Vice President Dick Cheney had been successful.

The liberal organization Media Matters for America, which has long campaigned against Coulter, hopes this is a "defining moment" that causes TV networks to turn their backs on her, said spokesman Karl Frisch.

MSNBC once fired Coulter as a regular contributor after a remark she made to a Vietnam veteran. But Coulter has appeared there as a guest on shows and the network has no policy against her.

The remarks "won't stop conservatives from buying her books and her ability to sell books is what drives her bookings on TV," said MSNBC's "Hardball" host Chris Matthews.

CNN had scheduled Coulter to appear with Paula Zahn last Monday. The network said Coulter canceled her appearance.

"We have and will continue to interview provocative guests and ask them tough questions," CNN spokeswoman Christa Robinson said. "We don't have overall bans about anyone. We will book them when we think it is appropriate to do so, on a case by case basis."

The changing nature of cable news may limit Coulter's ability to speak to those who don't already agree with her. Cable talk shows used to be built upon fiery debate, while now there are more shows that take a point of view and depict world events through that prism. Think Lou Dobbs, Keith Olbermann and Glenn Beck.

A spokeswoman for Coulter did not return a call for comment. Coulter, however, did appear on Fox News Channel's "Hannity & Colmes" three days after the Edwards remark and belittled the idea that it would do lasting damage to her. It's a cycle, she said: she says something, the same people become hysterical, and that's the end of it.

"It happens about every six months," Coulter said, "and you're always there to put me on TV, Sean."

I agree with your numbered paragraphs and the rest up to but not including the paragraph starting: Here is the problem....

I would observe that Ann's suggestion that Edwards is a faggot is not true in the sense of Edwards being a practicing homosexual or switch hitter (at least to the best of my or any commonly suspected knowledge) but then again, Lindsay Graham, straight or not, is not known to be a woman either. I honestly believe that you are at least as inaccurate in depicting Graham as she is in depicting Edwards. If you want to take the high ground on such inaccuracies, it is not unfair to call you to account over the Graham photo alteration or to expect revision.

I would also observe that I am very glad that the GOP has changed since I started voting (for Nixon in 1968).

First bullet point. Ann is making fun of married father Edwards on a secondary meaning of "faggot" (weak-kneed, limp, etc) just as you are with Graham but she is not using graphics. She was speaking at CPAC and some are concerned that it reflects negatively on conservatives as a whole. I think that the ritual behavior of the left calling conservatives nazis, fascists, murderers, etc., is quite objectionable. OTOH, this is America where society's enemies have rights. Some say that society's friends have rights too. The point is well taken that this is not truly a Freedom of Speech issue but rather than a discretionary speech issue in which the speaker (Ann in this case) while having the right to speak ought to exercise the discretion to refrain from disturbing speech.

Very garish aborted baby pictures are offensive to many people. I have represented people who have distributed them to people at random or held them up for public display particularly so that junior high and high school students will see the pictures. Does this coarsen our society? Of course it does. Are many parents outraged? Of course they are. Are some of the outraged parents the same ones who will take 14-year-old Suzy down to the abortion mill by the twisted ear to kill their grandchildren for their own prideful purposes and call it "freedom of choice" for resistant Suzy???? You bet. Another example of justified poor taste. One murder by abortion thwarted suffices as an excuse.

Ann's short jab was a lot more effective than the long form you suggest. Think of the Roman gladius or short sword deftly wielded that conquered a world of soldiers and tribesmen with long swords clumsily wielded.

David Keene is the head of the American Conservative Union nowadays. I am personally acquainted with him and do not respect him for various reasons. If he calls the shots on CPAC, I am more offended by that than by anything that Ann said. YAF is not the very effective group that it was when Keene was National YAF Chairman. Republican groups increasingly are seduced by money obsessives. Tax cuts are nice but not at the top of my list.

In 1972, I was part of a group of YAFers who were relentlessly tailing McGovern with bullhorns wherever in New England he went. We baited McGovern, Frank Mankiewicz who was as close to campaign manager as anyone with him and anyone with a known name daring to accompany them. We were mean. We were nasty. We were personal. McGoo carried only Taxachusetts. With Reagan, we even took Taxachusetts from Cahtuh and from Mondale, although I was busy being a lawyer by then. We owed McGovern, et al., no more and we owed America no less.

We probably agree on the goal. We certainly disagree on the tactics. There is room for both sorts of tactics. If you insist on scholarly analysis, footnotes, formal method, gentlemanly courtesy, there is and always has been room for that. If Ann and others want to operate in the fashion of the YAF/CR/YR organizations of decades past that was the incubator and nursery of the conservative movement back when we actually had one, there is ALWAYS room for that.

You have actual and plausible deniability to say that Ann's style or tactics are not yours. Bill Buckley said some awfully rough things at YAF conferences: "Betty Ford, having achieved her high office in American life by a concatenation of events felonious and romantic...."

In the last several decades, we have lost that cherished sense of the usefulness of being brats. Our being brats drives the left wild which should be among our goals. Also try to find leftists willing to actually engage on substance and intellect since McGovern's nomination beyond the level of "Bush lied, kids died." Good luck.

Summation: We agree on most goals and disagree on tactics. As those ancestors of mine who were Scots sang: "You take the high road and I'll take the low road....." and let us each remember where we bury the bodies of the bad guys.

Let's see: Ann should have said:

"Now on HJR 2190, Edwards voted to waste taxpayers' money.

Edwards voted for SB 201790 when he might have been running for re-election in North Carolina and now wants to be a national Democrat.

Not only that but Edwards likes welfare spending.

Golly, his ideas on social issues are REALLY icky.

No one I know likes his hairstyle no matter how many hours he puts into it each day.

Democrats and liberals are just not nice!

Sometimes Edwards is actually immoderate in his speech.

Be sure to vote for whoever sounds most moderate so that we can live in a moderate country ever after. Amen."

There ya go. A winning strategy to be sure.