Coulter Smacked by the Pendulum (Updated)

I was going to talk about Ann Coulter but I hear you have to go into rehab if you use the phrase “brain-dead fascist bimbo”.

Jesus. I can’t believe I have to waste time and energy talking about this but there’s something that needs to be said and nobody’s saying it.

Believe me, I’m pleased as punch that a furor has erupted over Coulter’s jab at John Edwards during her speech at the annual CPAC meeting. Nobody deserves it more. (Michael Savage, maybe, but that’s how low you have to go to get underneath Anorexic Annie.) But, really, what’s the big deal? Calling a Democrat a “faggot” is mild for her, and it was clearly a joke – or what passes for one at a right-wing gathering (it’s not like Republicans have senses of humor a normal human being can relate to). She wasn’t seriously suggesting Edwards is gay, she was just dissing him with her usual lack of class.

Now before you get all outraged righteous on my ass, don’t miss the point. I’m not defending her. I’m saying that in the pantheon of Coulterisms, this one wouldn’t rate so much as a footnote were it not for the response. I mean, this is a woman who wrote a best-selling eliminationist screed calling all Democrats “traitors” and advocating that True Americans go out and shoot themselves one or two. And unlike her CPAC quip, she wasn’t kidding when she wrote that. Yet that book raised not a single eyebrow in the media. Not only did no one but Democrats denounce it but she went on a lot of television shows and repeated her charges, using much of the very same language that’s in the book (she has a, uh, limited imagination), and was treated like a) nothing she said was a big deal, and b) everything she said was sane, rational, and correct when it was none of the three.