You've Chosen

Category

Published

Synopsis

The Comic Stylings of Ann Coulter

By Al Owens
Ann Coulter is a child molester. That’s a joke. My humor is always aimed at people who don’t share my political views. George W. Bush is a wife beater. That’s another joke. Couldn’t you tell?

That seems to be the kind of “humor” that’s passing for serious political discussion these days. Just ask Ann Coulter. She highlighted her appearance before the 34th Annual Conservative Action Conference the other day, by implying presidential aspirant John Edwards is a homosexual. She used the word “faggot”, to be exact.

It was a comment that was met with nervous applause, and has since obscured the purpose of the conference. Coulter saw the need to get headlines and divert attention away from the
Republican presidential candidates who were featured there (Mitt Romney and Rudy Giuliani), by making a “joke” that’s put her in the national spotlight once again.

It’s not the first time she’s told these kinds of jokes. She once called Bill Clinton a “latent homosexual”. When questioned about that “joke”, she claimed that Al Gore is also a “total fag”. Coulter should take this stuff to the Improv. Serious conservatives just may be growing tired of defending her.

George Will, a serious minded and well-respected conservative apparently didn’t see the humor in Coulter’s comments. “The less said about her, the better”, he replied when the host mentioned her on George Stephanopoulos This Week on Sunday.

In fact, all day on Sunday conservative apologists were arrayed to try to soften Coulter’s impact on the conference comments. Coulter, sensing she might even get her own show on Comedy Central if she could keep her act fresh in the public’s mind, told the New York Times, “I would never insult gays by suggesting that they are like John Edwards," she said. "That would be mean."
Stop it Ann, you're humor is killing me. Reviews of her latest joke have been even more decidedly negative than the ones she got last year, when she addressed the same conference by calling Muslims “ragheads”.

This time, with presidential candidates trying to gear up their campaigns, nobody on the right seems to be laughing.

“Ann Coulter not only once again went out of her way to use a nasty epithet, she pushed her offensiveness up a notch,” Amy Ridenour, president of the National Center for Public Policy Research, said on Sunday.

And instead of those candidates she supports fine tuning their messages about Iraq, health care, social security and education – they’re busily running as fast as they can away from Coulter’s “humor”.

Mitt Romney? “It was an offensive remark”. Rudy Giuliani? “The comments were completely inappropriate…” John McCain? The comments were, “wildly inappropriate”.
There goes her guest shot on Saturday Night Live. But hey, I hear Ringling Brothers is hiring.

None of this is truly funny. It’s even more serious than you may imagine. I mentioned that the audience of thousands of mainly young conservatives applauded Coulter’s snipe. They apparently didn’t think they were that “offensive”, or as “wildly appropriate”, as those presidential candidates felt they’d been.

They were expressing their support for Coulter’s comic stylings. Americans who just happen to be gay will be driven even further away from the Republican Party than they are now, thanks to Coulter’s desire to make them the source of her “humor” – and the applause that followed it.

There will most likely be a need to mend the fences broken by Coulter’s insensitive remarks and the instant support for them they got. And it will be hard work trying to convince those people that Republicans aren’t really bigots in the area of sexual preference. (At least not when the cameras are rolling)

Those Republicans who’re hoping to retain the White House in 2008 are probably hoping that Ann Coulter will seek a new profession before she “jokes” the presidency away.

I’m thinking they’re secretly wishing Ronald McDonald retires and she’ll apply for the job by then.

NOTE: That was a joke. I would never insult Ronald McDonald by suggesting he’s like Ann Coulter. That would be mean.