This from Ms. Coulter. A stunningly awful and racist comment.
There is absolutely legitimate room for scorn and derision for radical Islamists who threaten our existence with terrorist tactics and violence. What they wear on their heads is irrelevant. The phrase “ragheads” is ugly and devoid of meaning. Literally, it encompasses peaceful people who choose to cover their heads for traditional or religious reasons. No reasonable person could take issue with that; no reasonable person would use a derogatory term that lumps such people in with murderous bastards.
My ire is saved for those who use terror and violence as tools. Also, for those who spew ignorant hatred. Today, that’s Ms. Coulter.
I think most of them are suppressing it on the principle of DNFTT. Frankly, the more attention she gets, the more outrageous she seems to try to be.
However, I admire the principle of ideological self-policing or administering ass-kickings on one’s own side of the aisle, so I’m not going to criticize any conservative for calling Ms. Coulter on that remark.
(And I’ve never understood why the term “raghead” isn’t also seen as offensive to many observant Jews, who also habitually wear cloth headcoverings.)
Coulter is a performance artist, often a comedic one. All she wants is to be outrageous enough for people to talk about her, and she probably gets a serious kick out of people who go so far as to believe her. That being said, given the chance, I’d hook up with her in a nanosecond.
Mebbe. But this conservative hasn’t said anything about it, for the simple reason, he pays no attention to Coulter’s blatherings. I suspect many others ignore her, too. She’s nearly offensive as Pat Robertson - and has been for some time now.
Seriously, nothing would surprise me coming from that woman’s mouth. I have yet to hear her speak or see her write anything that wasn’t derisive and insulting. The best thing we can do is laugh at her.
Me too.
She’s a twit. I’ve not gone out of my way to read her in a few years. The only time I hear about her is when she gets pitted.
She’s over the top and too far gone to deserve any intelligent rebuttal.
After she said this, I read some blog that actually said something like “I can’t believe she still gets media attention, saying things like that”. Duh, her saying shit like that is pretty much the ONLY reason she gets media attention.
Goddamn, my grandfather wore a turban, and he was not Muslim - he simply wore it because of his status in society. My grandfather, by all accounts, was a great and wonderful man, and I’m sorry to not have known him.
Many do–but according to the link, “Her talk was the most enthusiastically received of the Conservative Political Action Conference. It was better attended than talks from Vice-President Dick Cheney, Newt Gingrich, the former House speaker who sees himself as the intellectual leader of the movement, or Lt Colonel Oliver North, a regular on the conservative speaking circuit.” That oughtta be giving conservatives–and the rest of us–some serious heartburn.
There is, of course, the irony of how tough she talks about “ragheads” talking tough. Would that she would face the consequences of her own tough talk. That, alas, is up to the conservative movement.
Conservative here. I stopped reading Coulter quite a while ago, because her attempts to entertain ceased to entertain me. She appears to have turned into a pure attention whore and panderer. But outrage? I think I’m missing that gene or something.
I’m another self-confessed conservative who hasn’t knowingly or willingly read anything she’s written or said except for what I see here in the Pit.
She may have been sharp, and insightful at one point. She’s years past that now, and seems to be only marginally less offensive than Phred.
I think it’s vital that we, all of us, in the US make it clear that we do take Freedom of Religion seriously. And make that clear on a global scale. It’s not something that will be an easy sell - but this kind of nonsense is going to undo the good work that many of us have been working on for years. Simply because one sensational quote is going to be more memorable than any number of saner comments before or after. Look at the nonsense coming from Iran, for example.
We can’t force her to shut up. We can avoid feeding the troll. And those of us who support political parties (I am innocent of this, at least.) can make it clear she’s not a welcome speaker.
Because, again, she’s wildly popular in conservative circles, and she is (to the best of my knowledge) the most poisonous popular commentator out there. There is nobody else who is remotely popular in political punditry who makes such fucked up declarations even in jokes. And she’s talking to a youthful audience, an audience to whom idealism and extremism may well appeal, and she’s normalizing racism among them.
That’s why bother. Y’all conservatives, to the extent that you’re active in the movement, need to clean house, need to make it very clear that racists like Ann are despicable to conservatives and unwelcome. If you ignore her, her influence will continue to grow.
Actually, if posturing extremists like Coulter are really leading in popularity among conservatives—especially, as the article says, among young conservatives—then this is ultimately pretty good news for us non-conservatives. Major backlash ahead.
Many conservatives like to lecture liberals about giving too much visibility to “fringe elements” like Michael Moore and MoveOn, both of whom are remarkably rational and moderate compared to somebody like Coulter. But if Coulter really is viewed as a leading conservative, then conservatives are in a much more precarious position than liberals.
It took a lot of talking points and assiduous PR to make “liberal” into a dirty word in the public consciousness. But all it will take to make “conservative” a dirty word is a few years of conservative opinion leadership by the likes of Ann Coulter. I hope that doesn’t happen, simply because I’d rather have a reasonably intellectually respectable ideological adversary than a bunch of aggressive whackjobs frothing about “ragheads”. But if it does happen, well, it’ll have its up-side too.