By the way - a little bit more about that CPAC meeting...
As I was writing the CPAC post, the day's events were just wrapping up. By now, you may have heard that yesterday's closer was Ann Coulter, and at the end of her remarks she slipped in a doozy aimed at John Edwards:
“I was going to have a few comments on the other Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards, but it turns out you have to go into rehab if you use the word ‘faggot,’ so I — so kind of an impasse, can’t really talk about Edwards.”
A lot of people (a lot of people) get upset about Coulter, even now. And though many will not believe it, conservatives get upset, too. I've given up on getting upset I think mostly Ann's performances are mostly an act, the act ceased to be funny a few years ago, and now she's just sputtering along with that kind of notoriety that you can get by being outrageous, but not the fame that comes with actually being good at something. Coulter's a shoddy writer who plays loose with facts and, like many of us ink-stained wretches, could stand to have an editor guiding and shaping her work (no seriously. I love doing this blog thing, but the world needs editors).
If CPAC had any sense, they'd realize that this stuff doesn't help. On a day when some real news was made by both Romney and Giuliani, Coulter has managed to hijack the proceedings and make herself the story. And as I meant to say yesterday, conservatives are not going to snap out of their doldrums until someone - a Giuliani, a Romney, or maybe a McCain - says to them that some things are just too far and unacceptable. As long as the conservative movement lets in every fringe-y whack job or mouthy name-caller without any real consequences for going too far, they will lose that David Brooks-ian "sensible center" that doesn't care for extremes. But hey why worry about that when you can just shout out playground epithets? "Faggot?" Indeed.
Well said. I think you've hit it pretty much dead on. I used to respect her unflappable style, but she's become buffoonish.
Posted by: Charley Foster | March 03, 2007 at 01:34 PM