Mon. March 5, 2007
By Scott Foval
Good ol' Ann Coulter never disappoints. She always has some hate to spread no matter what season, month, or even day is pending. This fact became especially true over the weekend, as Coulter lent her brassy screech to the CPAC conference in Washington, DC, this week. For those of you who don't know what CPAC event is, it is the single largest annual Conservative political gathering in Washington, DC. Everyone who's running for President on the Republican side, except John McCain, appeared before the CPAC audience, and they even held a straw poll.
I don't think anyone was surprised, though, when Ann Coulter took the podium and used a gay slur to refer to Democratic Presidential candidate John Edwards. That's right, on the very weekend that Barack Obama, Hilary Clinton, and Former President Bill Clinton, Congressman John Lewis, and a slew of other officials traveled to Selma, AL, to celebrate the 47th anniversary of the marches for civil rights; good old Ann stepped up to the plate and used a hate word on national television.
This isn't the first time she's used the word...far from it. Its also not the first time she has stepped over the line of common decency and called another public figure a name. Coulter seems to get off on calling people out in the most hateful ways possible, and in fact our own Justin Boltz has a serving of her latest clip and most disgusting comments on his blog here on ChicagoPride.com.
That's not why I've chosen to write about her antics though. What I'm really shocked about is the applause and laughter from the audience that followed her jab at Edwards. I never really thought that CPAC was a bunch of hate mongers, but even my own jaded brain has been twisted further by the revelation that people cheered Coulter's use of the slur. It revealed to me that the people in the room actually approved of her hate mongering ways, even finding her comments delightful. Such jaded approval of using the gay equivalent of the "n-word" pushes my understanding of what "Conservative" means to a whole new place.
Indeed, no one in the room even booed her after she dropped the "other f-bomb" on the audience. They snickered, giggled, and even cheered a little. That's quite the opposite of what conservative leaders have claimed they want in the Republican party—a place for all non-liberals to gather. Rather, the apparent approval by the audience lends a much darker description to the gathering. Perhaps, "a gathering of intolerant haters masquerading as political activists," is more appropriate. Or, "a gathering of the least moderate, least tolerant, leading promoters of hatred and bigotry the general political spectrum has to offer."
Copyright © 2007 Scott B. Foval
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