It is hard to imagine a more stark contrast, the venom spewing, hateful, female reincarnation of Julius Streicher with Liberals sitting in for Jews versus the kind and beatific Elizabeth Edwards. Elizabeth is one of those people that you use as a litmus test for others. If someone doesn’t like her, or is mean to her, you wonder what the hell is wrong with them. With Coulter, we don’t have to wonder what is wrong with her. We know, she loves to hate Liberals and their spouses and anyone connected with them.
Against Elizabeth Edwards, Ann Coulter had nothing with which to answer. You cannot use typical Coulter nastiness to answer someone who politely asks you not to make fun of their dead son and not to call for the death of their husband or call their husband ugly slurs. Actually, that isn’t completely correct. Coulter tried to use her typical tactics, but they backfired on her. She tried to assert that Mrs. Edwards was trying to censor her. It says a lot more about Coulter that she felt that someone asking her to cut out slurs and attacks on people’s dead sons are tantamount to censorship. Anyone who writes political OpEds knows that there is plenty of material about which to write. Even when you attack people, you don’t have to use epithets, you can attack their positions.
The problem for Ann is, she doesn’t know how to do that, or if she ever did, she has forgotten how at least since 2001. I don’t agree with Jonah Goldberg often, but his analysis of Ann’s writing when she was fired from National Review in October of 2001 was spot on when he said:
In the wake of her invade-and-Christianize-them column, Coulter wrote a long, rambling rant of a response to her critics that was barely coherent… this was Ann at her worst — emoting rather than thinking, and badly needing editing and some self-censorship, or what is commonly referred to as ‘judgment.’
… Ann — a self-described "constitutional lawyer" — volunteered on Politically Incorrect that our "censoring" of her column was tantamount to "repealing the First Amendment." Apparently, in Ann's mind, she constitutes the thin blonde line between freedom and tyranny, and so any editorial decision she dislikes must be a travesty.
… The only difference between what we've run and what Ann considers so bravely iconoclastic on her part, is that we've run articles that accord persuasion higher value than shock value. It's true: Ann is fearless, in person and in her writing. But fearlessness isn't an excuse for crappy writing or crappier behavior.
… the deeper you get, the less sense Ann makes.
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This is the Coulter that has existed at least since then and probably before. Her columns are rambling rants in which she says the nastiest things that she can think of about those she dislikes in a series of non-sequiturs she tries to pretend flow into one another.
So, after all of this, did Coulter learn anything from her come-uppance at the hands of Elizabeth Edwards? Of course not, she used her next column to viciously strike back. She started with the title, “THAT WAS NO LADY — THAT WAS MY HUSBAND” and continued on one of her long, rambling, incoherent rants. Somehow, she got in the same article references to John Edward’s hairdresser, pronouncements that Liberals are driven by Satan and yes, I’m not making this up, another reference to the Edward’s dead son, followed by an explanation that she thinks it is OK to mention it because she is just saying she doesn’t like the way Edwards mentions his dead son.
Ann, suddenly playing the delicate shrinking violet bit, whines about being told only a few minutes before the show that Elizabeth Edwards would call. Poor, unfairly treated her. You will forgive us, Ann if we don’t feel sorry for you. Maybe it was when you called Democrats “A vast sleeper cell” and said, “Fortunately for liberals, the Iraqis executed Saddam Hussein the exact same week that former President Ford died, so it didn't seem strange that Nancy Pelosi's flag was at half-staff. Also, Saddam's death made it less of a snub when Harry Reid skipped Ford's funeral.”, maybe it was any of a thousand nasty and disgusting comments like these, but we don’t feel sorry for you. The slap down you received at the hands of Elizabeth Edwards was something you have had coming for a long time. Too bad you did not learn a darned thing from it.