Ann Coulter..

[Lynn-D]

how can they not pay taxes?? lots of tax write-offs? for “business” expenses?

or what??

i thought taxes were as inevitable as death…

and tooth decay… and…

me living without sex for the rest of my life… and… etc…

This men were not simply taking legitimate write-offs as deductions. They were not paying their taxes and claiming ignorance as a defense. So ignorant men were being nominated to handle our money and our health programs. Wow, the standard bar has really reached a low level…maybe even touching the floor where a snake could not pass under it.

To name a few:
Tom Daschle withdrew his nomination for health and human services secretary after fielding mounting criticism over his failure to pay more than $130,000 in taxes as well as getting kick-backs.
Charles Rangle who actually chairs The House Ways and Means Committee in the House of Representatives ‘forgot’ to pay over $29,000 in taxes on rental property he owns in the Caribbean. The ethics panel also is conducting separate inquiries into Rangel’s rental of several New York apartments at below-market rates and his fundraising entreaties on congressional stationery to corporations and foundations on behalf of an academic center that bears his name.
Timothy Geithner nominated as Treasury secretary did not pay his back taxes which were considerable and unpaid for years until payment made before his upcoming appearance in front of congress to approve his nomination.
And let us not forget Connecticut Senator Chris Dodd who has finally, sort of, kind of, ended 193 days of stonewalling about his sweetheart loans from former Countrywide CEO Angelo Mozilo that saved him over $75,000 on a low interest loan offered only to VIP’s in government.
And a guy like Bernie Maddof is in prison for a Ponzi scheme when in fact the biggest ethic violators are guys like this who are promoted to take care of our nations health and treasury.

How about some of the anger being directed toward Coulter who exposes these bums be directed instead upon the liars and tax cheats and those who nominate them for advancement to high government positions of power. Does two faced lib mentality come to mind?

Lynn-D

 

[Sailor_Kenshin]

I have not heard on CNN anything remotely approaching Coulter’s rhetoric, no. Edwin

Oh, no? Including the reporter-ette who was FIRED for insulting families at a Tea Party gathering?

The ‘mass’ media isn’t even giving the pretense of objectivity any more. Their messiah is in the White House; they now have free reign.

 

[Contarini]

Oh, no? Including the reporter-ette who was FIRED for insulting families at a Tea Party gathering?

Well no, I didn’t hear that particular report. And since the reporter was fired, you don’t have much of a case, do you?

I continually find it baffling why right-wing folks think that instances of biased reporters being *fired *by “left-wing” media prove that the “left-wing” media is more biased than a network like Fox, which rewards and celebrates bias. Can you see why this doesn’t seem very logical to me?

The ‘mass’ media isn’t even giving the pretense of objectivity any more. Their messiah is in the White House; they now have free reign.

Not that I’ve seen. But admittedly I mostly watch CNN, and sometimes listen to NPR. CNN at least is not giving the President a free pass by any means.

And, of course, Fox is also part of the mass media. I presume that you don’t include them in your claim? Why would you feel free to generalize about the “mass media” when one of the largest and most successful media outlets is an obvious exception? It’s not as if we have so many different “mass media” outlets. Fox is a pretty big share of the whole.

Edwin

 

[Contarini]

Distracted,

Ms. Coulter is often criticized for her column of September 12th, 2001, in which she said we should carpet-bomb (or something like that) their (meaning Islamic) countries, kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity. A call for a new Crusade, as it were. Well, she deserves some of the rub, but it must be remembered that her best friend and fellow lawyer and wife of the former US Solicitor General was killed when her plane crashed into the Pentagon. That is why I said that her editors should have asked for a change before they put out her column, but I suspect they were thinking “controversial=ratings=profits”. Her emotions were marketed, and she still gets grilled over it constantly.

She was mad as hell, and she wasn’t gonna take it any longer. I think most Americans felt a lot of that around the 11th and 12th of September, 2001.

Has she ever repented for her abominable remarks? Has she explained that she was speaking irrationally out of her grief and anger, and that in a cooler moment she recognizes that what she said was indefensible? If she has said anything like this, without in any way defending the original remarks, then I will never use those remarks against her again. Until you can show me that she has done this, those remarks remain “fair game.”

Edwin

 

[Contarini]

I have read two of her books, and I tend to like many of her ideas. Her presentation on TV lacks at times.

Based on your testimony, I will henceforth refrain from making the assumption that her books are as shallow, irrational, and vicious as her remarks on TV. Nothing I had seen about them had so far led me to believe that they were any different.

Edwin

 

[Contarini]

trash?? that implies what she says is totally without merit… HOw can a Christian say such things?

I am really baffled by your standards for what a Christian can or can’t say. Ms. Coulter advocates mass murder and to you this is OK because it’s somehow to be taken as humorous. But if I say that what she says is “trash” that’s un-Christian. Can you see why this sounds to me very much like “everything goes as long as you agree with me, but if you dare to disagree with me you aren’t really a Christian”?

I should not have said that her books are trash when I mostly know her from TV.

i “know” she wouldn’t… she was, as she says herself… almost living under a bridge at one time because she couldn’t get published… which reminds me, maybe you should direct your indignant anger at the publisher… No one else would publish her… it seems… because she was NOT liberal… kinda scary when you think about that… those liberals don’t seem to respect free speech…

Free speech does not mean that you have to pay money to publish things with which you disagree. And there has never been a time when there were not conservative books in print, so if she really said that she wasn’t published because she was “not liberal,” then that’s a good example of her twisting the truth. Clearly what people objected to was not just that she was “not liberal,” or the books of people like William Buckley wouldn’t have been published. That doesn’t mean that this wasn’t a factor. For instance, certain publishers might have published an equally vitriolic liberal. I don’t deny that for a minute. I think it’s probably true that until the past decade or two a vicious propagandist would get a lot more of a public hearing if he or she was liberal. Conservatives had to be on their “best behavior,” while liberals didn’t, because most of the elites agreed with their ideas and were more likely to cut them slack. But that has clearly changed, and folks like Coulter need to stop pretending that it hasn’t. Furthermore, since I think most of us can see that this behavior by liberals was unfair, it’s clearly immoral for conservatives to imitate it now, however tempting this might be.

Since I do believe in free speech (which I suppose makes me not a liberal after all in your book), I am not angry at the publisher at all (nor am I angry at the publishers who didn’t publish Ms. Coulter’s books).

how so? at best we cannot prove every thing she says, whether it is true… one way or the other… You should give an example of something she has not been truthful about

You’ve handed me two (related points) in your recent posts. First her claim that the way to get rich is to be a liberal, which is clearly false (one can of course get rich peddling liberal ideas, but clearly one can also get rich peddling conservatives ones). And second the claim that she wasn’t published for a while because she was not a liberal (unless by a liberal she means anyone not as shrill as she).

By the way, lots of people have trouble getting books published. Even people whose books eventually turn out to be wildly successful.

i don’t think so at all… I think some people just take her entirely too seroiusly…

do you think it is a sin not to have a sense of humor???

i kinda do… or more to the point i htink lack of a sense of humor points to something else not being exactly “kosher” …

What clearly points to something being “not exactly kosher” is a ‘sense of humor’ that is used purely for propagandistic purposes and which is only used against one’s enemies. I love humor. I actually have a fairly well-developed sense of humor, but it doesn’t come across online for some reason. But I abhor the idea that humor somehow justifies things that would be reprehensible otherwise. That’s only true if it’s clearly directed against oneself or one’s own group, because in that case it’s obvious that you actually “don’t really mean it.” For instance, if I were to make jokes about how Episcopalians are like Unitarians, that might be OK (I say “might” because it could also be seen as my making fun of Episcopalians with whom I disagree). But when Catholics say this, it’s not defensible as humor, because lots of Catholics and other conservative Christians really do think this to be true. If I were to joke about how all Christians should be killed, maybe that would be OK. But if I were to joke about how all Muslims should be killed, that woudn’t be OK. Surely you can see this? Defending Coulter’s remarks as “humor” is like defending the Da Vinci Code as being fiction. It’s a dishonest dodge, and it’s hard for me to believe that you can’t see this (though in the interests of charity I’m trying).

and now that i love Jesus more (etc etc)… i have one… so uh… wht gives??

If your “sense of humor” only takes the form of caustic remarks about your ideological enemies, then you need to reconsider its source.

Here’s the test: if someone said the same things Coulter says, but said them about Catholics, would you defend them on the grounds that they are humorous? Are you OK with blasphemous humor directed toward Catholicism? If you aren’t, aren’t you being a hypocrite in your defense of Coulter?

Edwin

 

[Contarini]

if she is SERIOUS about forcibly converting people to Christianity, then i agree…

Well, you and Coulter’s other defenders need to get your story straight among you. Because the argument others have put forward here is that her remarks were made in blind rage and grief. Quite different from the claim that they are deliberate hyperbole.

I find the “rage and grief” defense more convincing than yours, though as I said elsewhere I still don’t accept it in the absence of a later retraction by her.

Hyperbole is only legitimate if it’s
a) clearly identifiable as such (i.e., “Ann Coulter has written millions of books” is legitimate; “Ann Coulter is the richest person in America” is not) and

b. making a legitimate point

Since you admit that you often aren’t sure if she’s serious or not, her use of “hyperbole” clearly fails the first test. In other words, it’s quite likely that someone might take her seriously and advocate a campaign of mass murder against Muslims. So at the very least her language was wickedly irresponsible. You simply don’t joke about things like this (unless the joke is clearly directed against yourself, and even then it’s probably a bad idea).

And if you think that her remarks were making a legitimate point, then what was the point? What is the point of saying that we should use violence to convert people if she doesn’t think this? You use words like “hyperbole” and “humor” to get Coulter off the hook. This, to use your own term, is not kosher. Hyperbole is a rhetorical tool. It’s not license to say anything just for the sake of being outrageous.

so i give her the benefit of the doubt… something a few others around here might want to consider…

I give her every benefit I can. I assume that she is sincere; that she genuinely believes that liberals are evil; and . . . . well, I can’t find any other point on which I can give her the benefit of the doubt, and those two are really the same. I don’t know if assuming her remarks about violence against Muslims to be humorous is really giving her the benefit of the doubt. I think that a genuine belief that Islam is so evil that we should employ such violent methods against it is probably less wicked than the kind of callousness and cynicism that could joke about mass violence in order to make some as yet unspecified rhetorical point (which still clearly involved a deep hostility to Islam). At any rate, either way those remarks don’t reflect well on her.

Edwin

 

[Sonny1954]

*you sound like a liberal.

no wonder you don’t like her… or me…

Is that Christian?? *

A Liberal yes, and so proud of our tradition: Teddy Roosevelt, FDR, Harry Truman, JFK. Women’s suffrage, Social Security, Desegregating the military, Medicare, the Civil Rights Acts of 1964 & '65 – ALL issues that even most conservatives would preserve today, but which they fought vociferously at the time of their passage. That beats have Harding, Coolidge, Hoover, and Bushes I * II as legacies.

You’re right, I don’t like Ann Coulter. How can I dislike you?..I don’t even know you.

 

[Convert66]

Contarini,

I don’t think that she would repudiate herself at this point. It is far more lucrative to throw controversial, rhetorical bombs. Of course, this is a long tradition, it’s just relatively new to the 24/7 cycle brought about through technology. In this instance, the medium is a constant litany of cheerleaders and opponents commenting on “breaking news.” It has all the sophistication of a football game, and polemical hooliganism is part and parcel of each day’s matches.

It is the same barbarization that we see in other areas of popular culture, it has just lately come out in the “news” business. Our news coverage is reflective of how deeply divided we are as a nation, and I do not put the blame for this upon the Ann Coulter’s of the world. The politicization of every aspect of life has brought this upon us, imo, and the “news” has become just one more politicized and highly-charged (but it was always so, people tend to forget) aspect of our politicized society.

If Ann Coulter were the only one doing this we could merely laugh at her antics. That she is one amongst an entire chattering class of “nattering nay-bobs of negativity” that make very healthy and wealthy careers out of “play-by-play” analysis and “keeping score” is a glaring clue that may tell us where our popular culture went wrong. It is just rarely examined in the Orwellian glow of “entertaining” bickering and one-upsmanship. As McLuhan said, “the medium IS the message.” What passes on the left and on the right for “news” and “commentary” makes me wonder if Orwell wasn’t a bit naive.

All my best . . .

 

[whatevergirl]

*“nattering nay nobs of negativity” oh my gosh, that is funny. Convert…I needed a laugh today, thank you!

And I agree. I like Ann Coulter, but I really don’t watch the news much…maybe 30 minutes WEEKLY…maybe. My dh used to be fanatical about it, but he has even cut down. It’s just constant bantering, negativity, and a constant contest of wits, it seems…who can say the same thing the other people said…BUT BETTER. I would like to know what happened to real factual news. Not just opinionated ‘journalists’ going at it between commercials. *

 

[distracted]

Oh, no? Including the reporter-ette who was FIRED for insulting families at a Tea Party gathering?

The ‘mass’ media isn’t even giving the pretense of objectivity any more. Their messiah is in the White House; they now have free reign.

which is why i despise TV news and newspapers (most) and won’t bother with them… I’d rather be ignorant…!! (and i don’t like ignorance)

but i don’t feel i’m ignorant because i read books writtn by conservatives… books are FAR more in-depth anyhow…

 

[distracted]

How about some of the anger being directed toward Coulter who exposes these bums be directed instead upon the liars and tax cheats and those who nominate them for advancement to high government positions of power. Does two faced lib mentality come to mind?

Lynn-D

for sure… I can’t u/stand why posters here get so irate at her, even when they claim to be conservatives themselves…

that doesn’t set well with me…

Again. Why aren’t thye angry at other, much worse things going on in the world… Nobody seems to get overly angry about abortion anymore…

blase’ issue??? since its been legal so long??

we should NEVER get lukewarm over that issue…

that’s one thing i like about coulter… she is NOT lukewarm…

 

[distracted]

Has she ever repented for her abominable remarks? Has she explained that she was speaking irrationally out of her grief and anger, and that in a cooler moment she recognizes that what she said was indefensible? If she has said anything like this, without in any way defending the original remarks, then I will never use those remarks against her again. Until you can show me that she has done this, those remarks remain “fair game.”

Edwin

are you afraid to admit you’re a liberal??

 

[distracted]

I am really baffled by your standards for what a Christian can or can’t say. Ms. Coulter advocates mass murder and to you this is OK because it’s somehow to be taken as humorous. But if I say that what she says is “trash” that’s un-Christian. Can you see why this sounds to me very much like “everything goes as long as you agree with me, but if you dare to disagree with me you aren’t really a Christian”?

I should not have said that her books are trash when I mostly know her from TV.

Free speech does not mean that you have to pay money to publish things with which you disagree. And there has never been a time when there were not conservative books in print, so if she really said that she wasn’t published because she was “not liberal,” then that’s a good example of her twisting the truth. Clearly what people objected to was not just that she was “not liberal,” or the books of people like William Buckley wouldn’t have been published. That doesn’t mean that this wasn’t a factor. For instance, certain publishers might have published an equally vitriolic liberal. I don’t deny that for a minute. I think it’s probably true that until the past decade or two a vicious propagandist would get a lot more of a public hearing if he or she was liberal. Conservatives had to be on their “best behavior,” while liberals didn’t, because most of the elites agreed with their ideas and were more likely to cut them slack. But that has clearly changed, and folks like Coulter need to stop pretending that it hasn’t. Furthermore, since I think most of us can see that this behavior by liberals was unfair, it’s clearly immoral for conservatives to imitate it now, however tempting this might be.

Since I do believe in free speech (which I suppose makes me not a liberal after all in your book), I am not angry at the publisher at all (nor am I angry at the publishers who didn’t publish Ms. Coulter’s books).

You’ve handed me two (related points) in your recent posts. First her claim that the way to get rich is to be a liberal, which is clearly false (one can of course get rich peddling liberal ideas, but clearly one can also get rich peddling conservatives ones). And second the claim that she wasn’t published for a while because she was not a liberal (unless by a liberal she means anyone not as shrill as she).

By the way, lots of people have trouble getting books published. Even people whose books eventually turn out to be wildly successful.

What clearly points to something being “not exactly kosher” is a ‘sense of humor’ that is used purely for propagandistic purposes and which is only used against one’s enemies. I love humor. I actually have a fairly well-developed sense of humor, but it doesn’t come across online for some reason. But I abhor the idea that humor somehow justifies things that would be reprehensible otherwise. That’s only true if it’s clearly directed against oneself or one’s own group, because in that case it’s obvious that you actually “don’t really mean it.” For instance, if I were to make jokes about how Episcopalians are like Unitarians, that might be OK (I say “might” because it could also be seen as my making fun of Episcopalians with whom I disagree). But when Catholics say this, it’s not defensible as humor, because lots of Catholics and other conservative Christians really do think this to be true. If I were to joke about how all Christians should be killed, maybe that would be OK. But if I were to joke about how all Muslims should be killed, that woudn’t be OK. Surely you can see this? Defending Coulter’s remarks as “humor” is like defending the Da Vinci Code as being fiction. It’s a dishonest dodge, and it’s hard for me to believe that you can’t see this (though in the interests of charity I’m trying).

If your “sense of humor” only takes the form of caustic remarks about your ideological enemies, then you need to reconsider its source.

Here’s the test: if someone said the same things Coulter says, but said them about Catholics, would you defend them on the grounds that they are humorous? Are you OK with blasphemous humor directed toward Catholicism? If you aren’t, aren’t you being a hypocrite in your defense of Coulter?

Edwin

i just skimmed thorugh this post because, frankly, i don’t like dealing with liberals… I’m maxed out on liberals from reading Coulter’s books… almost feel like retching sometimes…

just being honest…

they need God…

the Bible is either God’s word or it is not…

I know that it is… and God doesn’t appreciate all the sin condoned by the Left… by a long shot…

 

[distracted]

*you sound like a liberal.

no wonder you don’t like her… or me…

Is that Christian?? *

A Liberal yes, and so proud of our tradition: Teddy Roosevelt, FDR, Harry Truman, JFK. Women’s suffrage, Social Security, Desegregating the military, Medicare, the Civil Rights Acts of 1964 & '65 – ALL issues that even most conservatives would preserve today, but which they fought vociferously at the time of their passage. That beats have Harding, Coolidge, Hoover, and Bushes I * II as legacies.

You’re right, I don’t like Ann Coulter. How can I dislike you?..I don’t even know you.

good question…

if you believe in abortion, i won’t respond to your posts any more… i don’t deal with those who believe its OK to kill a defenseless helpless child in its mother’s womb… there because of HEr and the man she slept with… totally innocent…

if it weren’t for the issue of abortion i wouldn’t be so … “not lukewarm” about liberals…

 

[celticsfan1983]

I think the thing that is dividing us is that, yes, we agree with Ann Coulter on abortion. It’s a terrible thing to do. Probably the most awful thing ever created.

But there’s a right way and a wrong way on standing up against it. Coulter’s hatred only inspires bickering and more hatred. There’s better ways to defend the unborn instead of blowing smoke. Her ways only create an even bigger wedge, a wedge that needs to be removed before any real change can be made.

I hope you can see our point, that Coulter is only doing the rest of us who share her beliefs a huge disservice.

But please don’t hide behind the whole, ‘It’s just humor,’ excuse. If someone attacked you and your family, but hid behind the “humor” label, it wouldn’t excuse anything. Even in humor, it’s possible for things to still be reprehensible, and a bad representation of a Christian. And if she truly wants to be Christlike, she wouldn’t make statements that intentionally antagonize people, EVEN IF the other side is doing it. Two wrongs don’t make a right.

And distracted, am I liberal? I despise abortions, no matter the reasoning. I stand firmly against the death penalty, I think the Iraq War was a bad decision, I stand against homosexual marriage, i wouldn’t raise a stink if marijuana was legalized, and I can’t stand Rush Limbaugh, Alan Colmes, Glenn Beck, Sean Hannity, Keith Olbermann, Bill O’Reilly, and Ann. Your call.

 

[celticsfan1983]

are you afraid to admit you’re a liberal??

I find that you throw out this line whenever someone makes a solid point against Ann. Are you afraid to admit that you and Ms. Coulter might be…wrong?

 

[THECRUISELADIES]

Ann Coutler makes a living spouting off insane comments and getting the very right wing and the folks that do not like to research the facts to believe her. If she said the sky was falling, there would be those that would run for the bunkers. She is not a fan of reality or researching facts before she hits the pulpit. She is a shock jock(female) and has made a fortune throwing out accusations that are unfounded. Her anger and her insecurities are very evident if you watch her for any length of time. She needs to take a break and do some soul searching.

 

[celticsfan1983]

Facts have no heart, THECRUISELADIES.

The great Stephen T. Colbert made that known years ago

 

[Lynn-D]

you sound like a liberal.

*no wonder you don’t like her… or me… *

*Is that Christian?? *

A Liberal yes, and so proud of our tradition: Teddy Roosevelt, FDR, Harry Truman, JFK. Women’s suffrage, Social Security, Desegregating the military, Medicare, the Civil Rights Acts of 1964 & '65 – ALL issues that even most conservatives would preserve today, but which they fought vociferously at the time of their passage. That beats have Harding, Coolidge, Hoover, and Bushes I * II as legacies.

You’re right, I don’t like Ann Coulter. How can I dislike you?..I don’t even know you.

Oh, did you puposely leave out the great presidents such as Lincoln and Reagan who happened to be Republicans?