Posted on 09/06/2002 7:14:37 PM PDT by Kay Ludlow
Editor's File | Decision to 'fire' Coulter gets worldwide attention
runger
I stumbled into a skirmish line of our national culture war on a lazy Labor Day morning.
It happened during my first cup of coffee about 9 a.m. That's when I signed onto my e-mail account and opened the first of the 364 e-mails that awaited me.
The subject line read: "A letter to Ann Coulter." The message, written by a Judith Brewer, said only, "Mr. Unger, I think I love you."
The second came from Joe Filko, one of this newspaper's community columnists and a staunch, thoughtful conservative.
"You are exactly right, and good for you. Coulter's most recent column was a disgrace, and your 'firing' of her was right on target," he wrote.
The third came from someone named Lou Sander, of Pittsburgh, who had seen my column posted on a right-wing Web site I'd never heard of, but about which others would warn me later. He wrote, "I thought it was sick, and so, probably do many others."
More than 4,000 e-mails, phone calls and letters to the editor arrived in the succeeding days since my Sunday column explained to readers of the Centre Daily Times why we had decided to drop ultraconservative Ann Coulter from our weekly lineup of columnists. We fired her because I believe she has become an apostle of hate and has become hurtful to my country and my community.
What I didn't know is that the column would be posted on Web sites for the right and the left, ultimately finding its way onto several major sites, including www.salon. com and www.editorandpublisher.com.
With each new posting came a torrent of e-mails, some only two or three words long, but most running several paragraphs. They came from Centre County and from across all of Pennsylvania, as well as every state in the union, plus Canada, Great Britain, Germany, Australia, Hungary, the Netherlands, Denmark and others. By Tuesday, I had received more than 1,000 e-mails and an invitation to be a guest on a talk show in Salt Lake City. By noon Wednesday, I had more than 2,500 and by Thursday afternoon more than 4,000.
For a while, I answered them, but there were too many to keep up. Finally, it even crashed my e-mail. I apologize, both to those who agreed with me that the country has had enough of Ann Coulter and to those who had decided, in the words of one gentleman, that I was nothing more than a "liberal coward."
And what did the people say?
A few called me names, some of them not fit for print, or even the Howard Stern show. Others simply labeled me a "liberal" -- and made it sound like a dirty word or racial slur.
But the great majority said that they are fed up with Ann Coulter and sick and tired of what they hear from the barking right and the braying left. They are horrified when they hear their fellow citizens demonized for what they believe.
Listen to a few of them:
* "As a lifelong Republican, I wholeheartedly applaud your decision to drop Ann Coulter's column from the Centre Daily Times. There is no longer any room in America for simple, knee-jerk hatred. Our national strength has always derived from our patchwork identity, our 'melting pot' culture. ... It sickens me to see Coulter's extremist palaver masqueraded as populism. Her's (sic) is nothing but a mockery of conservative thought."
* "A copy of your column firing Ann Coulter was forwarded to me today. At first, I started to delete it without reading it, since I am not interested in Ann Coulter. I opened it, skimmed it, then reread it carefully. I admire and respect you for taking the action that you've taken, and for explaining why it is so very in keeping with what makes America great. Ann Coulter, along with many others, has been very successful by spewing hatred ... and supporting the many forces who virulently hate America."
* "Someone once said that all it took for evil to triumph was for good men to do nothing. You have struck a blow for reason."
* "Thank you for not continuing the Ann Coulter thread-of-hate. I am a 20-year fireman and a 10-year captain in Richmond, Calif., an urban high-crime area. Hate and hate-pandering is wrong. Thank you for drawing a line."
Those comments were typical, representing well over 90 percent of the total that came in, and I have saved them because they reminded me of what is right about my country. My people are a tolerant people, and many of them are just as sick of the vilification they hear from the left as from the right. Most of their anger is directed at television and radio "talk" shows and what passes for debate there. They are as fed up with Paul Begala and James Carville as they are with Ann Coulter, G. Gordon Liddy and Rush Limbaugh -- in short, fed up with all who make their livings by destroying their enemies, carelessly undermining faith in the nation's institutions, and inciting what often feels like tribal warfare.
Marcia Furayter Roberts is a 1973 Penn State graduate and a veteran of the Army Nurse Corps and the Persian Gulf War. Here's what she wrote:
"My father (Joseph P. Furayter) and I are both lifelong Democrats. We are also both veterans of the armed services. We are extremely tired of being demonized by the right. Hatred and intolerance are the root causes of what happened last September. The world, not only America, would be a much better place if we could all learn to respect the basic humanity of those with different viewpoints."
May it be so.
Bob Unger is executive editor of the CDT. He can be reached by e-mail at runger@centredaily.com or by phone at 231-4640.
No, it was a murderous death cult.
Right. "racial slur" He's convinced if you don't agree with him you must be a racist somehow.
Here's the dead giveaway: his token Republican says "...as a life long Republican...". and then proceeds to write as if he is a seminar caller on Rush's show.
God, are liberals stupid or what?
Dumb as dirt. I say now what I said before: he decided to kick Ann off his cheap little paper precisely because he disagrees with her. The rest of his justifications are so much self-righteous window dressing.
Be Seeing You,
Chris
I think he's using her for publicity.
operationsdesk@knightridder.com with CentreDaily.com as the subject line.
No question.
People throughout the free world know who Ann is.
Meanwhile, the "Fans of Unger" would be hard-pressed to fill a booth at Denny's.
Duh.
that's because it is, Unger. You liberal.
love to know if any (or all) insiders were selling March '00
Smart money gave it about six months, realized it was a dud, did something in connection with Y2K to jack the stock up 80%, then bailed.
"Liberal" HAS become a dirty word. Thanks to the efforts of the current crop of democrats and the DNC, it is now an epithet. Bill and Hillary dragged the party down to their level...the gutter. That's Bubba's true legacy.
What about Liechtenstein? Did anybody write from Liechtenstein?
I'm sending this paragraph to Rush. I'll be curious to hear his reaction to Unger's descripton of him. I wondered if Unger ever listened, or if his opinions on these talk shows he cited were based on what he was told or read about them.
After reading this in Friday's CDT, any doubts or guilt I might have had about cancelling our home subscription to the Centre Daily Times several years ago were immediately dispelled.
One more related item: Back around 1994 or so, an Op Ed appeared in the CDT by Lawrence W. Young titled "Toxic Radio". Young is the Director of the Penn State University Paul Robeson (The late Communist Party USA member) Cultural Center.
In his CDT piece, Young lamented the 5 hours daily of hate radio in the Centre region by G.Gordon Liddy from 10 AM to Noon, and then Rush from 12 to 3 PM. In his Op Ed, Young called G. Gordon Liddy a convicted perjurer, which was a blatant lie.
That night I clipped the Op Ed from the CDT and faxed it to Liddy and suggested that on his show the next morning he call Lawrence Young and demand an apology.
That's exactly what G. Gordon Liddy did, and in the process he made a fool out of the ignorant Lawrence Young. On nationwide radio Liddy asked the Penn State director why he made up the story that he was a convicted perjurer. Young replied that a friend told him that's what is was. Those of us who were around during the Watergate years remember that Liddy was sentenced to a 20 year term in federal prison for refusing to testify to anything in the Watergate investigations.
It turned out that the intellectually challenged Young couldn't even define the meaning of perjury. He didn't know what it meant.
Liddy served nearly 5 years in 9 separate federal prisons before having his sentence commuted to time served by none other than President Jimmy Carter.
"It must be painful to hate Ann so much and find yourself her unwitting publicist, thus proving her point."
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