Elizabeth Edwards responds to Ann Coulter

By Michael J.W. Stickings

Update: For more on Elizabeth Edwards's phone-in challenge to Ann Coulter and her "language of hate," see my more recent post, "The unabashed bigotry of Sean Hannity and Ann Coulter".

For more on John Edwards (and I was once a featured blogger at his One America Committee), see here.

For more on the lunacy of Fox News, on which I have done many posts, see here.

For more on various assholes extraordinaire, such as John Gibson and Rush Limbaugh, see here.

For more on various dangerous idiots, such as Newt Gingrich, Dennis Miller, and John Yoo, see here.

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As you may have heard, conservative darling Ann Coulter called John Edwards a "faggot" at the Conservative Political Action Conference yesterday. (We posted on it here and here.)

Well, Elizabeth Edwards has responded at the Edwards '08 blog: "Although her words did not hurt us, they may have hurt some in the gay community. We are all sick and tired of anyone supporting or applauding or introducing hate words into the national dialogue, tired of people thinking that words that cause others pain are fair game. And we are sick and tired of people like Miss Coulter thinking that her use of loaded words about the homosexual community in this country is remotely humorous or appropriate."

The problem is, many conservatives find such language both humorous and appropriate. The three leading GOP candidates -- McCain, Giuliani, and Romney -- have spoken out against Coulter's slur, but to think that Coulter and her views reside on the fringe of the conservative movement is to misunderstand the state of that movement. Conservatism today isn't just about low taxes, small government, and a big military, it's about specific cultural and moral values espoused by the evangelical right but embraced more broadly throughout the conservative movement as well as by the Republican Party it sustains. And one of the key conservative values concerns sexual orientation: straight is right, anything else is wrong. This manifests itself not just as opposition to gay rights but as opposition to homosexuality generally.

Did I say opposition? I mean hatred.

Of course, not all conservatives hate gays. But there is no excuse for what Coulter said. (And it's simply not enough to claim it was all a joke.) And there is no excuse for the fact that many conservatives obviously like Coulter a great deal and consider her to be one of their own, one of their leading media celebrities.

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I disagree with conservative Rick Moran's suggestion that no blogger "write another blog post about Ann Coulter no matter how outrageous, cruel, or bigoted her language" -- as long as she's a popular conservative public figure, we need to call her, and her supporters, out. However, I agree with his five other suggestions, including this one: "Immediately write the Presidents of Fox News, MSNBC, and CNN demanding that they refuse to schedule Coulter on any show for any reason on their networks."

By the way, Moran makes the case that Coulter does not speak for conservatives. I disagree with him on this -- she obviously speaks for many conservatives, hence her popularity -- but I appreciate the sentiment.