Oh, Ann!

Everybody and their mother has by now noticed that Ann Coulter called John Edwards a faggot.

Perhaps more interestingly, since that comment, she's said two things:

(1) "C'mon, it was a joke. I would never insult gays by suggesting that they are like John Edwards. That would be mean."

I watched the video of the original clip, and Ann Coulter really is a standup comedian who hitches a particularly rabid form of conservatism to humor. And good humor. I had the same "Oh my goodness! No she didn't!" reaction to her John Edwards comment as I do to practically everything that comes out of Sarah Silverman's mouth. To the extent that Coulter is more or less like Silverman, Coulter doesn't really upset me that much. I think that what's shocking here is not that she said it at all. Rather, we're scandalized precisley because it's that it's not shocking--or, at least, mildly titilating.

(2) "I do want to point out one thing that has been driving me crazy with the media -- how they keep describing Mitt Romney's position as being pro-gays, and that's going to upset the right wingers," she said. "Well, you know, screw you! I'm not anti-gay. We're against gay marriage. I don't want gays to be discriminated against."

She added, "I don't know why all gays aren't Republican. I think we have the pro-gay positions, which is anti-crime and for tax cuts. Gays make a lot of money and they're victims of crime. No, they are! They should be with us."

Here gays = white, upper class, urban gays. You know, like myself. (Except for the whole taxes part.) What it does is decouple gay sex, sex practices, and sex institutions from gay identity. This isn't at all uncommon; just a particularly virtuosic example.

I'd also like to point out that while I doubt CNN would ever play the video of a pundit using the n-word, they did feel entitled to replay the video of her calling John Edwards a faggot.

::sigh::