Dealing with Ann Coulter

As some of you may have noticed, Tweety had his favorite guest, Ann Coulter, on Hardball the other night. Only this time, Elizabeth Edwards called in to confront Coulter and her hateful comments regarding the Edwards' deceased son and Coulter's expression of support for Edwards' assassination.

This is of course all in addition to Coulter's "Edwards is a faggot" slur at a conservative hatefest (when was that--just a few months ago??) which resulted in Coulter's "column" being dropped from some newspapers and coming in for some, very limited, criticism by her conservative peers, who were mostly offended that Coulter may be dragging the conservative movement down into the slime with her. Not to mention that the "Edwards is a faggot" slur was supposed to be evidence that, at last, Coulter had really, really gone too far this time, really, and that this would surely result, really, in her not getting the usual slew of bookings in the future by respectful media outlets who had finally tired of her antics and had seen the light. Well.

But there is one angle it seems to me that has been curiously underplayed by liberals in the Ann Coulter culture wars; namely that Coulter passes herself off as a Christian, yet continues to say, and bases her entire faux fame on, deliriously hateful comments towards all sorts of people, and is by all visible evidence, completely devoid of any principle--in other words, while she passes herself off as a "Christian" her antics, words and behavior are anything but.

So, instead of asking Coulter to please stop her public displays of vulgarity and hate (although in Elizabeth Edwards' case, it was probably the right approach to start off with), why not take her at her word that she cares a great deal about the Christian faith and confront her with the words of the One she professes to follow, and the vast discrepancy between the admonitions of her faith and how she treats others, particularly those she disagrees with? Are her words and actions really Christian? She claims to want to advance the interests and values of Christianity, but what about Ann Coulter--and her legion of supporters--is Christian?

That would be my approach. And since I'm unlikely to be invited on any shows opposite Coulter, it is what I would recommend to Democratic bloggers, pundits and politicians who might have the opportunity to do so.