Letters to the Editor
Elephantman
Published Letters: 1087 Editor's Choice: 15
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Joan Walsh -- witless, wilfully ignorant partisan...
[Read the article: Ann Coulter gets what she deserves]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]...repeating the dumbed-down party line. I thought that above all, Salon was supposed ot be intelligent, witty, informed and erudite?
Then why did Joan Walsh so witlessly recount the Ann Coulter story? Ann Coulter didn't simply call John Edwards a "faggot," although one might think so, if they only read Joan Walsh. Ann Coulter was riffing, humorously, and with a good bit of political savvy, on a then-currnet bit of political correctness and obloquy from tv land over the Isiah Washington kerfuffle, in which he had used the fag-word.
Of course, the Edwards camapign wasted no time in using that story for its own fundraising.
Then, in recounting the more recent Coulter story, in which Coulter was engaged in some spirited and edgy commentary, she again riffed on another popular media news item that had started with Bill Maher's observation that Dick Cheney's death as a result of a terrorist attack might have saved thousands of lives. (I can't recall; did Salon do a stone-faced denunciation of Bill Maher?) Coulter exchanged, in name, Cheney for Edwards in that hypothetical. Apparently for Joan Walsh, it meant that Ann Coulter, a noted fellow traveler with Islamic terrorists (?) wanted them to kill John Edwards.
But Joan Walsh never got that part, apparently.
And then we have Elizabeth Edwards herself, pulling a line from an old Ann Coulter column in which Coulter quite wittily and correctly called Edwards to task with a fictitious bumper sticker about "Ask me about my dead son.." which became even more prophetic with the revelation from none other than John Kerry, saying that Edwards had creeped him out when Edwards was auditioning for the Veep spot and told Kerry a story about crying at his dead son's coffin "that he'd never told anyone before." The problem -- a pretty creepy problem -- was that Edwards had already said the same thing to Kerry years ealier. Even to the point about repeating the apparently rehearsed bit about how it was something he'd "never told anyone before."
Oh, and the Elizabeth Edwards' Hardball appearance has now turned into even more fundraising appeals to the MoveOn crowd. Isn't that special?
So Joan -- get out more! Get a life! Read something other than The Nation and the New York Times! Go to a comedy club or something! And if, in the future, you need me to explain some of the more politically savvy joking, you know how to reach me.
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That's just dandy, unc70
[Read the article: Edwards vs. Coulter, Clinton vs. Edwards]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Just remember; it was the Salonistas, and the bottom feeders at Firedoglake who began attacking folks on where they went to law school.
So spare me the criticisms about Monica Goodling because she went to a lower tier school unless you'll give Ann Coulter credit for going to a top-tier school.
You all are really a laughable lot when somebody calls you on your b.s.
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I don't know, Texas PI lawyer...
[Read the article: Ann Coulter gets what she deserves]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Personally, I don't think Coulter has singled out Edwards at all. The phrases that have caught press attention were not so much aimed at Edwards as they were using Edwards as the vehicle for more general humor. (Again, the utterly witless Salon cognoscenti are content thinking that all Coulter did was shout "Faggot!" at Edwards. If you want to be that wilfully dumb, be my guest.)
But for me, I do indeed despise Edwards and Obama more than Hillary Clinton. Hillary Clinton has done,and said, a lot that I agree with. Bob Rubin as a Treasury Secretary. Supporting the Defense of Marriage Act. Voting to give President Bush the authority to wage war on terror. Saying that it "takes a village" to properly raise kids. "Ending welfare as we know it." Making abortion "Safe, legal -- and RARE."
What I cannot ever abide is a Plaintiff's Lawyer being the leader of the free world. I will do anything to prevent that.(I'm not too worried about Barack Muhammad Obama. I think he is running for Vice President anyway.) Now maybe Ann Coulter agrees with me on that, I don't know. It is not that I find Edwards all that great of a candidate. I think Hillary is the more feared opponent. I just personally find the notion of a dedicated personal injury lawyer, a "birth-trauma" lawyer, as President of the United States, to be beyond acceptability.
I also think it is funny that Elizabeth Edwards is out on the street, yelling at Ann Coulter. No matter whether you support an Edwards candidacy or not, that's just loony. You think Dick Cheney is going to call in to argue with Frank Rich on a talk show? Sheeeeesh.
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Excuse me, Joan Walsh
[Read the article: The lies go on and on]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I understand that you are, uh, a person of some influence at Salon.
So why don't you do what the net is better at than any other print media -- show entire clips of the Coulter comments in question. I've seen them. They are the most ordinary, only slightly edgy, informed bits of satiric political dialogue.
The "terrorist" story is particularly egregious when you watch Ann Coulter's comments in context. She was, very explicitly, taking her comments out of the first person context and was saying, "What I should say is..."
You correctly point out that Ann was in error to say that Bill Maher "wished" that Vice President Cheney had been killed by terrorists. You are right that that is an inappropriate shorthand. Just as you are wrong in using shorthand to say Ann Coulter "called John Edwards a faggot." She didn't, and if you had the integrity to put it all in context, even the wild-eyed Coulterhaters of Salon just might get it.
Anyway, thanks for flogging this story some more. I'm liking it.
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Hey bobbyjoe -- Where exactly were you when Isiah Washington said "faggot"?
[Read the article: The lies go on and on]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Because that was the point Ann Coulter was making. You'd have to be exceptionally witless -- deliberately ignorant of the context of her comments -- to think that the story was as simple as Coulter "calling John Edwards a faggot."
And Salon's Joan Walsh needs to be called to account on her own mischaracterizations.