What Ann Coulters comments show about John Edwards

Ann Coulter made some caustic and offensive comments about John Edwards. See the story here. I have said and written many times that even though I enjoy the writings of Ann Coulter her words are not usually words I would have chosen. The fact that Ann is sometimes caustic, always bold and on the edge is nothing new. I personally believe that often her words get in the way of the fact that she is smart, witty and insightful. My opinion and I am happy to offer it.

What I find fascinating is the reaction. John Edwards seems to see this as a fund raising opportunity. For a man who has just come off from his own scandal involving intolerant speech, the reaction is curious. You may remember there was much criticism of his choice to hire a couple of anti-Christian bigots to be his official bloggers. He since has let them go. John Edwards seems to see any current event as something to exploited. As VP candidate he made the bold statement that when John Kerry is elected President people like Christopher Reeve will walk again. As a trial lawyer he exploited to full extent grieving parents loss to push the case for natural births in troubled pregnancies being correlated to Cerebral Palsy. Scientific research has since proved no correlation at all. As the number of cesarean births has increased the incidence of Cerebral Palsy has stayed consistent. None of this had any affect on his fortune he earned by creating that link.

I also think the media reaction is predictable and sad. Every time a public figure makes a questionable statement, in this case truly offensive, our mainstream media goes into feeding frenzy mode. Plug in the name and the stories are the same. Try Mel Gibson, Ann Coulter, Joe Biden, all the same result. Canned stories of the subjects: How will this affect his/her career? How will this affect their political party? Not much interesting but it fills the 24 hour news cycle for a couple of days. Truly none of this will change any one's mind about Ann Coulter. Those who like her will continue to, with statements such as mine that they don't agree with her words. Those who hate her with a white hot hate will continue. She has come to grips with their hatred. Nothing here will change.

One thing that I think this incident does is draws political discourse in the general direction of abysmal. Too many people already do that. There are no shortage of people on the left that daily call George Bush and Dick Cheney Nazi's, refer to all Republicans as fascists and so on. Just today there is a story of Bill Maher making a case that Cheney's death would have saved lives. What comments like this do is push the uninterested even more to the uninterested. This is not helpful. When elections are held, we are better when we have a large numbers of interested, informed people. We simply don't have that now.