Any comments?
hollywoodreporter.com/news/ann-coulter-calls-fury-jewish-824476
Mine: No alleged “context” justifies this awful statement.
The stated purpose of this debate (and explicitly stated intent of the moderator) was to focus on areas of disagreement between candidates that would allow voters to differentiate between them. Most of the candidates acted like a herd of cats for much of the time they were given, and it’s fair to point out which people kept coming back to issues that no one (on stage) disagrees with, and which issues those happened to be. In general, it was a fair assessment of the way the candidates behaved- while there were plenty of valuable moments in the vast amount of time that they had, the moderator had his work cut out for him as the collective group was in constant need of course-correction. That shouldn’t have come as much of a surprise, though.
The only part I can see that’s marginally offensive is the use of the f-bomb in fairly close proximity to the word “Jews.” The larger point is valid, though- the topic of Israel and of Jewish people is not a wedge issue that they were supposed to focus on, Jewish people vote as a Democratic block and that’s not likely to change this election cycle, and it is a small portion of the electorate- although Ann Coulter may have missed a key point, that being the Republican base cares very much about the Israel aspect of foreign policy, the Republican base cares very much about pro-life issues, and the candidates wanted to assure their base that they care about the same core issues as their base. What they did made a certain amount of political sense, even if it wasn’t supposed to be the focus of this debate.
Her anti-immigrant comment was also a bit offensive, although that was a bit more vague and it actually was a major focal point in the debate. Immigrants will make America different- different how, and is it demonstrably negative change? It’s pretty vague and not necessarily something that she’s capable of defending in great detail. But of course there are some candidates who are anti-immigration to one extent or another, and there are some people who support those candidates for that reason. Vague borderline-xenophobia is not a good thing but it’s not the worst thing ever, and (as far as I can tell) her most awful statement could have become non-offensive analysis that anyone could agree with if she’d excluded the f-bomb. Identifying certain issues as non-wedge issues, saying they aren’t supposed to be main topics of this debate, and clarifying personal support and affinity for those things is not offensive at all. Dropping an f-bomb in close proximity to “Jews” does make all of that seem a bit inconsistent, but if not for that I would imagine that the most liberal CNN employees involved with putting on this debate would have found a rare point of total agreement with Ann Coulter- it was like herding cats, and they weren’t focusing on the agreed-upon types of issues. But it’s Ann Coulter, so of course she dropped the f-bomb and of course she sharply criticized the people that she is always sharply criticizing.
I felt like most of my discomfort came from things that were more implicit, and even that wasn’t too bad. I don’t have an ingrained habit of agreeing with Ann Coulter about everything (kind of the opposite, usually, if I’m being honest), but this time I do think that there’s something to the context of what she was tweeting/saying. “You’re ignoring the context” does tend to be overused by reflexively defensive people (and Ann Coulter is an excellent candidate for that assessment), but I’d say there actually is something to it in this instance.
