To the surprise of no one, right-wing bomb-thrower Ann Coulter has once again said something controversial. At last week's meeting of the Conservative Political Action Conference, she referred to Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards as a ""faggot,"" a remark met first with gasps and nervous laughter but then with enthusiastic applause.
This is not particularly noteworthy because Coulter has been saying wildly offensive things for years. Ordinarily, it isn't worth paying attention to her mentally unhinged rambling and the fact that young right wingers think it's so clever. What is noteworthy, however, is that about 10 minutes after the slur, a UW-Madison student from the College Republicans invited Coulter to speak on campus.
That concerns me. It concerns me that any student, liberal or conservative, with a UW-Madison education could want his or her political views represented by someone as vitriolic as Coulter. It concerns me that the national Republican Party still invites her to events and treats her as though she were a serious political analyst. It concerns me that the College Republicans actually believe she has worthwhile things to say about politics.
The list of Coulter's bizarre and crude comments over the years is lengthy, but her greatest hits include calling the 2004 Democratic National Convention the ""Spawn of Satan convention,"" disparaging the wives of Sept. 11, 2001 victims as ""self-obsessed harpies,"" and expressing regret that Timothy McVeigh hadn't blown up the New York Times building. At last year's CPAC convention, she referred to Arabs as ""ragheads."" In spite of that, she was invited back this year.
The list of news organizations that grew weary of Coulter's bile is also long. USA Today, The Arizona Daily Star and even the right-wing magazine National Review all dropped her columns. The Daily Star wrote that ""Readers find her shrill, bombastic, and mean-spirited. And those are the words used by readers who identified themselves as conservatives.""
National Review Editor Jonah Goldberg wrote, ""The only difference between what we've run and what Ann considers so bravely iconoclastic is that we've run articles that accord persuasion higher value than shock value."" He went on to add, ""I have no desire to get deeper into this because, like a Fellini movie, the deeper you get, the less sense Ann makes.""
And this is the person the CRs want to invite to campus as a distinguished lecturer? Someone who talks about ""ragheads"" and ""faggots?""
Coulter is either a raving lunatic or a shameless self-publicist, take your pick, but she is not the problem here. There will always be some percentage of lunatics and self-publicists in the population. The problem, rather, is with the people who feed her craving for media attention.
If she chooses to demean political discourse in this country with her ""shock jock"" approach to politics, fine. But groups like CPAC and the UW-Madison College Republicans should not help her do it. They should not give legitimacy to her lunacy by inviting her to events with presidential candidates. They should not ask her to speak on campuses as though she has ever done anything that would qualify her as part of a ""Distinguished Lecture Series.""
The College Republicans are right about one thing: There is indeed a dearth of conservative speakers on campus. That doesn't mean they don't exist or that the only option is someone like Coulter.
For students who would like to get some intelligent conservative viewpoints, I recommend GOP pollster Frank Luntz (who came to campus last fall), Paul Gigot of The Wall Street Journal, George F. Will of The Washington Post, David Brooks of The New York Times, Joe Scarborough of MSNBC, or UW-Madison's own history professor and one-time congressional candidate John Sharpless.
Students deserve to hear a serious conservative voice on campus, and there is simply no need to stoop to the least-common denominator personified by Coulter. Republicans in Madison should be embarrassed to be in the same party with such a person and should be mortified that their leaders are offering up another venue for her hateful schtick.
Ann Coulter doesn't degrade politics in this country. The people who enable her do.
