The desperate attention-mongering antics of Ann Coulter, who long ago transitioned from pundit to mediocre standup comic, seem to have finally proved too embarrassing for her erstwhile base: In her 2006 speech at CPAC, she slagged Muslims as “ragheads”—which she defended as a perfectly reasonable joke since, after all, “they” had blown up the World Trade Center. For an encore this year, she called John Edwards a “faggot.” Now James Joyner and a gaggle of other conservative bloggers have started a petition urging CPAC’s organizers to cut her loose.
ADDENDUM: Jason Zengerle notes the weird claim by Eric Alterman that “faggot” is “a word one hears in private conversation quite frequently.” It is? Who the fuck is Alterman hanging out with? Last time I heard that word used with any frequency, I was 17—and generally wasn’t that friendly with the folks I’d hear using it. But his more general point is probably right: Coulter’s schtick is just political Jackass at this point, and while I suppose it’s nice to see conservatives rallying against casual homophobia, there’s something to be said for moving on quickly enough to avoid rewarding her feces-flinging with the attention it’s so transparently calculated to attract.
ONE MORE: Wow, Coulter seems to not even get what’s offensive about her use of the word. Her defense is that it was a “schoolyard taunt” meant to impugn Edwards’ masculinity, not to literally suggest he’s gay. You know, like when you tell a stingy person to “stop being such a Jew,” but you’re not really accusing them of being Jewish. Totally inoffensive.
6 responses so far ↓
1 c // Mar 5, 2007 at 3:40 pm
Color me unimpressed with the conservatives’ half-hearted attempts to impersonate decent human being and ostracize that evil clown whose lamentable career depends solely on her flaxen tresses.
By my rough estimate, more than half or the criticisms that conservatives are leveling are merely on the tactical ground that bigotry is bad for electoral purposes.
I’d rather see something that said: Ann, you demented piece of shit, conservatives respect the sanctity of home and hearth and therefore: (1) we don’t mock people for who they choose to sleep with and (2) we don’t level accusations that married men with children are homosexual in the absence of the evidence.
Of course, this is a fantastic, hypothetical version of conservatism that actually followed the belief of home-as-castle.
2 tiz // Mar 5, 2007 at 8:42 pm
“Jason Zengerle notes the weird claim by Eric Alterman that “faggot” is “a word one hears in private conversation quite frequently.” It is?”
Yeah, it is.
As a pejorative like the word “nigger”, not so much. It’s more like a catch-all word to describe someone (usually a heterosexual) who may say or do something effeminate, but really, it can be used for anything. Someone annoying? Faggot. Someone stupid? Dumb faggot. Someone confused? What a lost faggot.
In my experience men and women of my age group (early to late 20s) use it. Be it the military, athletic teams, business professionals, grad students, or even non-profit employees, I hear it with a fair amount of regularity.
Locally, a morning radio show on WJFK 106.7 called “The Junkies” has on-air personalities that use it all the time.
I think DC journalistically/politically-minded 20-somethings are a bit out of the loop. And I don’t think you fall into this category, but they’re also a humorless somewhat dorky bunch. I’m not suggesting using the word is funny or what makes someone funny, but that IN MY EXPERIENCE (which I’m sure will be shit on for presenting my opinion) the word seems to crop up more – as used in the weird context I describe above – in circles that I personally have found to have a little more personality and fun about themselves. After all, stand up comedians IN THE CLUBS use it all the time as well.
I realize this is all pretty subjective and completely open to trashing. I also realize to those who take the word seriously that using it seems as awful as calling someone a “nigger.” But in the minds of people who don’t share that opinion (and they are numerous), most of whom are otherwise quite reasonable, they believe the term doesn’t carry the same weight as the n-word and they further attempt to defuse it by applying it to everyone but gays. Strange, really, and doesn’t make it right, but that’s been my observation.
3 Anonymous // Mar 6, 2007 at 1:04 am
I could try to describe how strange — upsetting, Alice-in-Wonderland even — it was when the privileged young het with whom I was interning with at Microsoft first used the word “bitches” in place of the more traditional “women” (or even “girls” or “chicks”). As in: “Let’s go find us some bitches!”
It was 1993. We (me and a beefy Ann-Arbor student) looked on dumbfounded as this NJ Tori Amos fan dropped the B-word repeatedly. And I asked myself: How did I get here? I’d experienced his heartfelt renditions of Tori’s greatest hits. He cried! Real tears! Tori’s songs were special to him, and he made us listen as he performed them on the keyboard he dragged out to Redmond. But here was a man who never asked WWTD? Because I’m pretty sure I’ve never heard Tori talk about “Bitches”.
Any-who: I can imagine a world where recognizably human people use the word “faggot” in a thoughtless, careless, childish, weird, but not-entirely-evil way. But Ann Coulter is not one of those people. The sooner you fuckers (by which I mean American war-mongers (by which I mean all of you (except Arthur Silber))) stop paying her to be a monster, the happier I’ll be.
I gots to stop drinking and typing,
PLUR
4 Julian Sanchez // Mar 6, 2007 at 1:29 pm
I don’t think it’s just a D.C. thing; I never really heard it in New York either, except from gay men.
5 RWB // Mar 6, 2007 at 4:20 pm
It was weird to read what ALterman said, but I have a similar experience–rarely with the word faggot but with fag. Some friends will describe anyone who shows too much attention or concern for something not deserving it as a “fag.” It grates, but it is fairly innocent. Still, they would never say that someone works like a “nigger.”
The thing about Coulter was her obvious double coding. She knew her CPAC audience would dig her willingness to use a pejorative insult, and knew the press would condemn her. She calculated that the condemnation by the MSM would simply make her fans love her all the more. It may have been a miscalculation, but that remains to be seen. As long as pundits keep asking her on TV, her books keep selling, and not too many paper drop her column, she’s happy.
6 Silvafragas // Mar 7, 2007 at 12:08 am
Mr. Sanches, you faggot intellectual you. If you’ve spent any time with the working class, you’d realize it’s as or more common than any other swear word. And you’d realize the incredible proportion of people that are seriously homophobic. By which I mean actually scared of homosexuals.