Sorry, but this is complete bullshit. Sharpton didn’t encourage anybody to riot or to murder anybody.
There is plenty of room, as I noted before, to criticize Sharpton for his irresponsible and indefensible anti-Semitic comments. But trying to pin on his comments the responsibility for violence deliberately committed by other people just makes you look silly.
We could just as well say that Coulter’s frothing 9/14/2001 rhetoric about “invade their countries, kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity” was responsible for the post-9/11 hate-backlash murders of Arab, Muslim, and/or “Middle Eastern-looking” US residents.
Well, I was talking about Ann in general. However, I think it’s time to take a step back and restate my point afresh, so I’ll get to that in a moment.
As opposed to the times when you and I communicate clearly, eh?
On the topic of the Halperin memo, I agree with LHOD. As for my overall point, it’s not that:
-Ann Coulter is more evil than any human being ever
or
-No liberal has ever said anything stupid or wrong or hateful
or
-When liberals say stupid wrong and hateful things, other liberals always immediately react with the proper amount of repudiation
or
-Liberals in public life on average are better or smarter or nicer or more honest than conservatives in public life on average
I’m trying to make one very specific point, which is:
No liberal pundit who is as popular as Ann Coulter is nearly as vile as Ann Coulter. And no liberal pundit who is as vile as Ann Coulter is nearly as popular as Ann Coulter. In fact, there is no liberal equivalent to her. There might be other liberals who are as bad or worse in other ways. But there is no liberal “equivalent” to her. No one “balances the scales”.
If I may take this a step farther: there is no pundit in America as popular as Ann and nearly as vile as Ann. Sean Hannity, Rush Limbaugh, Bill O’Reilly are not nearly as vile as Ann. She is in a class by herself. It’s not a liberal-versus-conservative thing: it’s an Ann-versus-the-civilized-world thing. NOBODY should be supporting her level of vitriol. If you belong to a group supporting that level of vitriol, then whether the group is PETA, the Nation of Islam, CPAC, or the goddam Boy Scouts, you’ve got a responsibility to clean house. Cleaning house does not consist of looking for equally vile people in other groups.
Ann Coulter is a loathsome, vile, reprehensible chunk of filth. She has blasted everyone else in the world as traitors, commies, rag heads, and who knows what else. She has called for their deaths. She is without equal in sliminess. Anyone who would defend her is a piece of shit in my book. Anyone who would subsidize her hate by buying her books is an “enabler” of the worst kind. There is no “equivalency” between her and Moore, Dean, or anyone else. Well, maybe Charlie Manson or Josef Geobbels.
Of course, all you are doing by making a statement like that is making all of us look like kneejerk nutbags with no sense of proportion. Why would thinking conservatives who might be waffling on this issue need to take us seriously if we’re doing ridiculous things like comparing Ann Coulter to Goebbels?
As Greenwald notes, people like Instapundit have spent countless times lecturing Democrats about how they must condemn the obscure rantings of people who no one would have even heard of if the right hadn’t been scanning around for someone’s views to blare. But when it comes to denouncing the views of someone who spoke at a conference he also spoke at, someone who was cheered and is more popular than almost any other conservative speaker… it had to be dragged out of him.
Horse shit. Coulter and her type can spew all the hateful crap they want, their fans drink it up and holler for more, but the thinking (the true) conservatives, moderates and liberals have to play nice -----> Bullshit. Sometimes the way to counter her brand of shit, is exactly to paint it in the worst possible light, and compare her to famous scumbags of the past. Besides, the Goebbles comparison fits. His job was to tell lies to “the people”, and stir up hatred for all “bad Germans”. I think it’s a fair parallel.
Except that even if you are trying to make some kind of accurate parallel, ie, they used similar techniques in some ways or what have you, that’s not what people are going to hear. People are going to hear that you’re comparing someone who was one of the top men responsible for murdering 6 million people and turning racial bigotry into a national obsession, to Ann Coulter. And in that sense, much as I hate Ann (and I do, as I’ve posted MANY times on this board and in this thread) there is no comparison at all.
It’s a shame, actually, that this problem exists. For instance, early in Hitler’s career, during his rise to power, he was a thuggish politically manipulative bully long before he was a mass murdering dictator. And there are times when it might be useful to compare people to that aspect of his career, or specifically to other non-ultimately-evil parts of his life, but you can’t, because when you compare someone to Hitler, it seems like you’re claiming that they would start the holocaust.
I note, by the way, that now that we have the point of this part of this thread distilled down nicely to an accurate and precise view of Ann Coulter, Shodan has conveniently vanished back into his lair.
Three pages and no mention of her recent little joke that Justice Stevens should be poisoned (at the same time stating crack cocaine was a problem that had pretty much run its course)?
Maybe it would be better to make the comparison indirectly, obliquely, so historically literate people recognize the reference and know what elements of Goebbels’s career warrant the connection to Coulter’s, without naming him specifically and thus tying up the debate with a pointless tangent about which ethnic group Coulter wants to industrially eradicate.
Or, just call her what she is: a hateful demagogue. Allusions are nice and all, but if you want to get a point across then just get the point across without being excessively clever about it.
It’s worth pointing out, though, that if Osama bin Laden issues a statement saying that hydrogen and oxygen atoms combine in a 2:1 ratio to form water molecules… I am going to defend his point.
Coulter’s credibility is low; this does not translate to a kneejerk gainsay of her every utterance. Nor does it permit overly pernicious inferences about her every action.
…okay, why is this worth pointing out? Do I have a secret history of denying established facts from high school chemistry simply because they were uttered by Osama bin Laden, one that I’m not aware of?
No, no. It just seemed a good place to say that she’s a hateful demagogue that is nonetheless not wrong in each and every sentence she utters or step she takes. No commentary on your history was intended.
