All Blog Posts from Public Eye

She’s been rushed off of “The Big Picture with Donnie Deutsch.”

She’s been criticized for consistent cheap shots that draw media attention.

She’s been denounced by the people she speaks for.

So what was Ann Coulter doing on C-SPAN last night?

If the cable networks are where we turn for some bombast and bloviation, C-SPAN is the calm and rational (if not occasionally soporific) voice of reason in the political conversation.

The content of C-SPAN might not always be thrilling, but it’s nearly always important. They’re the grown-ups in public affairs broadcasting. So why were they giving the queen of the political food fight a forum?

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Well, say this for Ann Coulter: She knows how to keep herself in the news. Speaking at the gathering of right-wing true believers known as the Conservative Political Action Conference, Coulter threw out this rhetorical bomb: ""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.'"

The statement was, of course, good news for the press corps, even one that has grown a bit weary of Coulter's antics. An unrepentant and polarizing national figure making an outrageous and offensive comment about a presidential candidate and earning cheers from conservatives for doing so? Stories don't come much more nicely wrapped than that. (OK, sometimes.) Coulter herself is probably also pleased with the dustup – comments and coverage like this just sell more books. (She wrote this on her Web site: "I'm so ashamed, I can't stop laughing!" More charming Coulterisms here.)

Edwards is a winner as well, since his base can't stand Coulter, something the Edwards campaign quickly tried to exploit by appealing for "Coulter Cash" in the wake of the comments. The only losers are the Republican candidates who appeared at CPAC. They need to appeal to their base, but they don't necessarily want their association with folks like Coulter widely publicized. Rudy Giuliani and John McCain, the two Republican frontrunners, quickly repudiated Coulter's comments.

There are those who argue that Coulter should be ignored. I'm not sure that's the right approach. Journalists seem to have tired of Coulter, at least a little bit – in the first 24 hours, as Howard Kurtz points out, her comments were met with a "collective shrug." They did eventually jump on the story, however, and rightly so. Coulter is an important figure in the far-right movement, a bestselling author who inspires reverence in one portion of the population even as she inspires disdain in another. If she were a lone nutjob – Fred Phelps of the Westboro Baptist Church springs to mind – the press corps would have no justification beyond sensationalism for paying attention to her. But she has a not-insubstantial following, as her CPAC invite illustrates, and reporters thus have an obligation to hold their noses and report what she has to say.

I didn’t want to talk about it again, really I didn’t. I don’t want to give her any more publicity, don’t want to help her sell one more book. That’s Ann Coulter’s whole purpose, you see, to say things that will get her attention, have people talk about her, sell more copies and charge more speaking fees. I didn’t want to, but I just had to go through this one more time because I’m afraid there really are those who still aren’t in on the joke.

Check out this post if you need a refresher on the whole Coulter flap this week, but here’s a brief synopsis of what she said in her new book: That a group of 9/11 widows who have been critical of the Bush administration are “self obsessed women” who “believe the entire country was required to marinate in their exquisite personal agony.” These widows, in Coulter’s view, “are millionaires, lionized on TV and in articles about them, reveling in their status as celebrities and stalked by grief-arazzis.” And Coulter says she has “never seen people enjoying their husbands’ deaths so much.” There’s more, including her assertion that you never know if their husbands were ready to divorce them.

I know we live in a culture that requires a certain amount of “shock value” to gain attention. How else do you explain Paris Hilton? But is there no line left at all? Apparently not. While Coulter’s remarks drew rebukes, there were supporters as well – of her sentiments if not her choice of verbiage. Longtime GOP strategist Mary Matalin told radio host Don Imus this morning that she agreed with Coulter’s “larger point” that Democrats and liberals like to present “messengers that it's politically incorrect to argue with.” Republican strategist Jack Burkman appeared on MSNBC’s “Scarborough Report” where he supported Coulter’s comments as the “truth.”

Let's review some recent history:

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If you thought trying to understand all the intricacies of global warming, Middle East diplomacy or the human genome project were mind-bending exercises, try this thesis on for size: Attacking women whose husbands died in the 9/11 terrorist attacks can be popular – and profitable.


If I didn’t know better, I would have thought NBC’s Matt Lauer was in on the scheme to boost book sales when he interviewed conservative author/commentator/irritant Ann Coulter on yesterday’s “Today” show. But in reality, the results of his aggressive attempt at getting Coulter to try and defend the seemingly indefensible showed just how far removed we are from what used to be considered civility. After all, who would naturally think of widow-bashing as a “promotional” tactic?

Lauer was talking to Coulter about her latest book, released just yesterday, and asked her about this passage about 9/11 widows who have been critical of the Bush administration:

These broads are millionaires, lionized on TV and in articles about them, reveling in their status as celebrities and stalked by grief-arazzis. I’ve never seen people enjoying their husbands’ deaths so much.

You can read about and watch the entire interview here, but it’s fair to say Coulter did not back away from that statement or other similar comments made in her book. It’s also fair to say that the attention and controversy generated by the “Today” exchange has turned into a high-profile issue that is resulting in priceless advertising for Coulter’s book – which was the whole point of the interview from her perspective.

As a result, Coulter has been beneficiary of just the kind of PR blitz she was looking for. The New York Daily News devoted two pages to covering her remarks and the paper’s front-page screamer proclaimed her “Coulter The Cruel.” Her “controversial” remarks were carried in reports via the AP (including on CBSNews.com), appeared in newspapers, became a topic of discussion on Cable TV news shows and got chewed over in the blogosphere.

While her claim that these widows are “enjoying their husbands’ deaths” is certainly shocking standing alone, it’s the kind of hyperbolic rhetoric Coulter has made an career out of. With books about liberals titled “Slander,” “Treason,” “How To Talk To A Liberal (If You Must)” and the latest, “Godless,” the bomb-thrower has become a best-selling author, conservative icon and liberal whipping girl. In short, Coulter has become an industry unto herself.

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