Why Ann Coulter?

On Salon, Glenn Greenwald provides a fascinating analysis of a question I asked recently: why is Ann Coulter being invited to speak at events at which republican presidential candidates are attending, and why are republican presidential candidates willing to be seen at an event where Ann Coulter is speaking?

His answer seems to be that Ann Coulter verbally emasculates liberal politicians (even when they are honorable US veterans), which helps the Republican party to project an image of masculinity on its candidates (even when they are draft dodgers), and that this helps get voters to vote for the candidate that they feel (without any actual evidence) will make them "safe".

I hope that you, kind reader, are above such obvious hatemongering.

Ann "Long Hands" Coulter fails to make nice

Ann Coulter defends calling John Edwards a "faggot":

"'Faggot isn't offensive to gays; it has nothing to do with gays," Coulter said on "Hannity and Colmes" Monday night. "It's a schoolyard taunt meaning 'wuss,' and unless you're telling me that John Edwards is gay, it was not applied to a gay person."

Of course, it's not true about it not being offensive to gay people. (It's "gay people", not "gays", by the way. "Gay" is an adjective, not a noun.) Of course, Coulter is also being disingenuous in that she clearly knows it's a pejorative term used against gay people, as evidenced by her previous usage of it: (From wikipedia)

On July 27, 2006 American Republican pundit Ann Coulter said that the former Vice President of the United States (Al Gore) was a "total fag", and that former President of the United States (Bill Clinton) was a "latent homosexual", while being inteviewed by MSNBC's Chris Matthews.

According to Slate:

A spokesman for Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., called the comments "wildly inappropriate." Rudy Giuliani harmonized, saying the comments "were completely inappropriate." Mitt Romney's spokesman slammed Coulter's quip as "an offensive remark."

So, even if we accept her pretense that she didn't at the time know what an incredibly, fantastically offensive word it is for her to have used, she has no excuse not to know now, and the fact that she hasn't apologized leads me to believe that she is a hatemongering bigot.

I suggest you should ask yourself why she was invited to speak at an event attended by Republican presidential candiates - and why they chose to attend an event at which she was invited to speak - given that she has a history of making these sorts of remarks.