It is equally touching and meaningless that at last count 43 conservative bloggers have signed an open letter protesting the keynote speech (in consequence if not formally) by Ann Coulter at CPAC. Their entirely reasonable complaint was that CPAC, possibly the most important annual gathering of conservatives and their higher office hopefuls, legitimizes Coulter and presents her as the public face of conservatism despite her being a spiteful harridan who defines the bedrock floor of intellectual credibility. Some of us used a basic rule to predict that the petition and every other form of protest would do little to blunt Coulter’s presence either in the national media or at major conservative gatherings.
The rule of course is that no rightwinger can possibly disqualify him/hersef from polite society through hateful speech alone. Coulter could call people ‘faggot’ twice a day for the rest of her life and she’d still show up on FOX, MSNBC, CNN and at gatherings like CPAC. It’s the Inalienable Right.
As expected, the ACU told its conservative critics to piss off. Let’s be honest, I were the ACU I would wonder why not one of these people complained before she appeared. As far as I can tell she delivered precisely as promised.
So far seven local newspapers have dropped Ann Coulter’s column. That isn’t nothing, but the CPAC story has run its course so I doubt that too many more will follow their lead. Some advertisers have dumped her webpage, but those are not too difficult to replace. If the gaps become noticeable she can lower her rates and the market will do its thing. Coulter’s syndication with with Universal Press Syndicate seems perfectly safe.
The day after her faggot comment Ann Coulter appeared unapologetically in the womblike shelter of FOX News. If you expect a blacklist to hold at any other networks, don’t hold your breath.
“Some people on NBC’s ‘Today’ show didn’t want to see Coulter before she was booked to talk about ‘Godless‘ last summer, said Jim Bell, the show’s executive producer,” the AP reveals.
However, the AP reports, Bell “overruled them. Having only certain points of view would make for a bland program, he said. Since Coulter is a best-selling author, clearly there’s an audience that responds to her.”
While the AP finds that many news organizations may be growing weary of Coulter, there doesn’t seem to be much evidence that Coulter will be “blacklisted.”
And there’s the crux. The logic of these networks is indisputably rational, even if the result is repulsive. Think about it from their perspective. More than a few random yokels pay upwards of $25 for each of Ann Coulter’s hardback books. Almost every one of her recent screeds has jumped to #1 on the New York Times bestseller list. How many conservative writers can claim that? Measure a conservative’s influence by his or her sheer popularity within the movement, measure popularity by the rate at which their books sell and Ann Coulter is indisputably one of the most influential and mainstream conservatives in existence. Her numbers suggest that she speaks for more conservatives than nearly any other pundit. Networks cannot ignore that reality.
So I would say that Glenn Greenwald gets it mostly right when he says that the movement will never dump Coulter because her emasculating insult comic act is precisely in line with its overarching message. The screeching McCarthyites who accuse Democrats of treason, wrap every imaginable policy in the mantle of terrorism and feminize their opponents with peurile humor are the movement. Our brave petition signers (at least the credible ones) sit on the outside looking in.