etee's Blog

Yesterday, in Crybaby Chronicles: Part I, I mused over what happens when journalists go bad, and behave like spoiled brats in a schoolyard spat. If you recall, I gave the victory to the "liberal media" side, represented by our very own Houston Chronicle. Today, I am going to examine one of the latest spats within the political blogosphere, one that is threatening to put me (and others) to sleep once again, out of sheer boredom.

The case: Blue Bayou vs Ann Coulter (and "conservatives" in general.)

The story: while making a speech at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), it seems that Ms. Coulter made a statement that liberals found offensive. Nothing new to see here, you say? Well, that is true, but exactly what she said (and how it has been reported), as well as the reactions on all sides, is what merits my observations and a bit of pithy comment, courtesy of my rapier wit.

What we do know is that Ms. Coulter used the words "faggot" and "Edwards" (as in "John Edwards") in the same sentence. However, we have several variants of the quote. According to the LA Times,

Coulter said she had intended to comment on the former senator from North Carolina, "but it turns out you have to go into rehab if you use the word 'faggot,' so I … can't really talk about Edwards."

However, Julie Mason has a different version in NewsWatch: White House, when she quotes Jennifer Rubin thusly:

...At CPAC on Thursday, in endorsing Republican presidential aspirant Mitt Romney, who needs more bad press like a hole in the head, she piped up with this one: "I was going to say something about John Edwards, but it turns out you have to go into rehab if you use the word 'faggot.'"

OK, folks, here is where words (or, more importantly, their order) mean things. In the first quote, part of the sentence, which could change the context of the remarks, is missing. In the second quote, however, the remark is complete, but strikingly different.

So, which one is correct?

Does it really matter?

I think I will advance my own theory here, to answer John and the many, many, many like-minded liberals who are shocked and outraged by Ann Coulter's remark (and why should that surprise anybody?) I think that maybe her use of the word "faggot" was not in the context of calling Sen. Edwards one, but was in fact a reference to Tim Hardaway's recent comments regarding gay people, and his subsequent apologies (some of which indicated he would be attending some form of rehab.) We also had the recent case of Ted Haggard (mentioned in yesterday's post) where he went into 'rehab' to get cured of his attraction to overly made-up gay prostitutes, emerging three weeks later to pronounce himself 'cured'.

In other words, she was trying to tell a joke, which ended up falling flat on its face.

Of course, it is entirely possible that Ann Coulter was simply calling Sen. Edwards a flaming homosexual, using a term many find offensive. She does things like that. And, she was in front of an audience which was probably in need of some rabble-rousing, given that they are definitely not feeling the love these days. However, I'm not sure that her words rose to the level of, let's see, Bill Maher's comments suggesting that Dick Cheney's death would save lives. Certainly, her comments should not be a basis to insist that anybody

...should be asked to hold their thoughts until they can explain Coulter's presence in anything resembling serious - or even just adult - conservative circles.

In this particular case, I am not going to give an award to anybody, as I think that

The Crybaby goes to... Everybody!

Well, almost everybody. There are some who have managed to remain out of this fracas (and you know who you are.) After all, this is just another instance of

Besides, if the truth be told, I am getting pretty sick and tired of the whole thing. As I noted above, our political 'debate' is sounding more like a schoolyard spat, and the participants across the spectrum seem to have the intellectual prowess (and emotional stability) of your average first grader.

So, let's just everybody knock it off, 'K? If you can't play nicely together, go into your own part of the playground and play amongst yourselves. If you don't, you'll grow up to be like those nasties who drive on the freeway with a cell phone Super-glued to their ears, making hand signals at everybody they almost run into. And, you don't want that, now, do you?

I will close this out with a quote from (mostly) level-headed political blogger Polimom:

So — what are the chances of the more rational bloggers, columnists, and pundits taking this issue to its logical next step and ousting the multitudes of red and blue Coulter-clones?

Not a bad idea, that. I might help raise the civility level of our political discourse by several orders of magnitude, in addition to raising the signal-to-noise ratio tremendously. Otherwise, the political blogosphere is likely to find itself a digital wasteland (if it hasn't become one already.)

One last thing Polimom noted:

For those who spent the weekend in a Sensory Deprivation Chamber...

I didn't know that those things still existed, but they were certainly useful for shutting out the noise for awhile.