Ann Coulter: the Green-Blooded Saga of her Influence Continues

What a pickle for a media critic like Harrogate, who most wishes that everyone ignored Ann Coulter, and yet on this blog is now commenting on her. But the truth is, Coulter is someone conservatives listen to and her language, in time, tends to find a way to seep into the rhetorics of more austere, respected conservative writers and pundits. Because of this she has to be taken seriously.

Look, for example, at what she said about Barack Obama on Friday. From Media Matters, some snippets:

On February 8, less than 12 hours after her appearance on NBC's Today show, right-wing pundit Ann Coulter delivered a speech to the Young America's Foundation in which she referred to Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Barack Obama (IL) as "B. Hussein Obama" and asserted, "His strongest selling point is that he is one of the least dangerous people I know named Hussein." As the blog Think Progress noted, Coulter went on to say: "Other than that, Barack's really been kind of coasting on his record, since his first big accomplishment of being born half-black.

During the February 8 speech, Coulter also said that Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-NY) "wanted 'I Am Woman' " as her campaign song, "but that was already taken by [former Sen.] John Edwards [D-NC]." As Media Matters for America noted, in a March 2, 2007, speech to the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), Coulter said she could not "really talk about" Edwards because "you have to go into rehab if you use the word 'faggot.'" The CPAC audience applauded her comment.

Media Matters notes that several newspapers dropped her column as a result of this speech. Good. Coulter's been doing this kind of thing for years. And with respect to Obama specifically, she's had this "B. Hussein Obama" thing going for over a year. These emphases on his name, these moves attempting to tether the man to radical Islam. And Harrogate sees it catching on with columnists and bloggers at Townhall.com (to whom she contributes), and in cesspools like Little Green Footballs, where it is routinely predicted that Barack Obama--a story of American decency and hard-earned success by any measure--is secretly planning to impose Sharia Law on the United States.

Ann Coulter is a blight of human skin, period. And Harrogate wonders if it is at all possible to be a decent human being and a fan of hers at the same time. Harrogate wishes like hell that Obama would swing back at her, even though he suspects that such a move would be considered Un-Presidential by his campaign. And perhaps this is the correct interpretation: the idea of Obama having to deal with someone like Ann Coulter is, after all, deeply unfortunate.

Harrogate would remind Obama, though, that John Kerry probably didn't help himself by refusing to lower himself to addressing the Swift Liars.