Yes, we know it's a schtick. Ann Coulter gets paid millions of dollars to say outrageous things. She has to keep coming up with new ones or she'll be out of work. And it would be best if we all could just ignore her.
But as I learned long ago, ignoring these people away doesn't work -- especially when, like Coulter, she can team up with her pal Drudge to maumau NBC into putting her back on-air even after they'd come to their senses and realized they were being had. Well, she did it again. More importantly, she can go on all these national talk shows -- as she did today, appearing not just on NBC but also CNN with Lou Dobbs and on Fox with Bill O'Reilly.
And it was on the Dobbs show that she once again advocated the "benefits of local fascism" (as she once put it) by urging Republicans to start physically assaulting their political tormentors:
Coulter: One beautiful example of this -- and illustrating the theme of the book -- in the last chapter, um, at the Republican National Convention, Sarah Palin gets up to give her -- the most important political speech in a decade, where she's being introduced to the nation, two Obama fundraisers stand up and start screaming at her and storming the stage.
Now, Point One: How many newspapers reported that story? That's right, two local newspapers. No place else. Do you think it would have made news if a major McCain fundraiser had stood up during Obama's speech at the convention and had started screaming and storming the stage?
[Ed. Note: You can see the video of the incident in question here. As you can see, the protesters did not "storm the stage."]
Moreover, I mean, the stunning thing about this story is, if you can get the video, and you only see it online, you see all these Republican men standing there, right next to these screaming banshees, doing nothing! Doing nothing! Sheez, you have this 99-pound woman in heels, onstage trying to deliver the most important speech of her life, and strong Republican men standing there -- how about a punch in the yap to these screaming banshees?
This isn't the first time Coulter has advocated such action, of course. At various times in the past, she's wished aloud for skinhead thugs to do her bidding and called upon Republican students at one of her talks to "Take 'em out" when protesters appeared.
So yes, I'm sorry, but it's important to pay attention when right-wing ideologues with huge audiences begin advocating violence.
The only other thing they're really worth paying attention for is to laugh at them. And Coulter gave us that today on the O'Reilly show.
I know Coulter thinks she's funny. And today on Fox she really was, though I don't think it was intentional.
It was in fact a Colossal Battle of The Spectacularly Oversized Egos. Among other things, she argued with O'Reilly over who sells the most books:
O'Reilly: Bernie Goldberg has some advice ...
[Coulter snorts derisively]
O'Reilly: ... for you. Should I, should I not go there?
Coulter: Um, my general policy is to take advice from people who sell more books than I do, not fewer books than I do.
O'Reilly: Oh. You take advice from me then.
Coulter: No! No! I said more books.
O'Reilly: Yeah, I sell more books than you do.
Coulter: No you don't.
O'Reilly: Yes I do.
Coulter: No you don't.
O'Reilly: But we don't want to get in an argument about that.
Pure comedy gold, I tell ya.
Coulter is becoming a joke. Which is what she always was, anyway.
