Ann Coulter, God's Gift to the Democrats

NYT weighs in:

Ms. Coulter, asked for a reaction to the Republican criticism, said in an e-mail message: “C’mon, it was a joke. I would never insult gays by suggesting that they are like John Edwards. That would be mean.”

Keep talking, Ann. It's music to the ears of everyone who wants to see the wingnuts lose it all.

Ann Althouse spends an entire post proving that she's not Ann Coulter.

It's been interesting reading the comments on some of these posts. Coulter has her defenders (which in itself is enough to condemn "conservatives" to eternal perdition, in my opinion), including those who allow that her delivery gets in the way of her "message" (I've read a column or two, and I have to say, there's a message?). And of course, Michael Moore and Kos get hauled into the argument, as well as the "it's a free country" crowd (to whom my response was "yes it is, which means I'm free to treat her like a foul-mouthed, hateful creep").

And then of course, there are those who think it's OK because they don't approve of the "hommaseksual lifestyle." By all gods beneficent, I find it hard to believe that anyone who gets information anyplace besides Agape Press still can say that with a straight face.

The bottom line, and this is it for Coulter (whom we should all ignore, and as soon as you can persude NYT, WaPo, Fox, CNN, and the other major outlets, I'll be happy to go along):

She did it deliberately, as an insult to Edwards. Her defense was equally insulting, not only to Edwards but to gays -- she obviously thinks it's just fine to use us as a joke, and a cheap one at that. And she got applause for it from a group of "conservatives."

Maybe this story shouldn't die. I'd recommend to HRC and any other arm of the Democratic Party that they show the video clip regularly for the next two years. "This is the Republican Party."

Update:

Digby has interesting analysis (as usual) of the ramifications of Coulter-worship on the right.

Update II:

And David Neiwert has an equally interesting post on Coulter as the bellwether of "conservative" mantras.

Udate III:

(I obviously should have done some more reading before I posted.)

Pam Spaulding notes something that I only alluded to:

Why say this:

Coulter's resorting to the classic right-wing strategy of riling up hate to smear a progressive champion.

...when you can't even spend one paragraph explaining what hate is being riled up? Certainly if she had belted out "nigger," we would have seen releases go out mentioning "racism" and black people.

I can't even begin to address the fact that the Edwards campaign used this as an e-fundraising tactic right out of the box. It cheapens the message beyond all reason. This required a separate response not tied to an ATM request.

If you're a homo, the message from Dems is that we're still invisible (see Dean's statement), the crazy granny in the attic, and only the granny's nearly feeble caretaker is allowed to say anything -- and even HRC never mentions gays or lesbians at all in its release (outside of its irrelevant boilerplate at the end). Even our advocacy organization couldn't find a paragraph to place Coulter's comments into context of the larger issue of homophobia.

It's like I said with Romney: platitudes don't get full points.