Ann Coulter Palooza

Yeah, as many of you know, Ann landed on the cover the latest issue of Time Magazine. Kind of bizarre considering her last book consisted of recycled articles from her weekly column. And she really gets as much flack from her party as support. Anyway here's two good articles on Time's baffling choice. The first is from Media Matters for America.

Cloud [the author of the Time Article] downplays Coulter's history of outrageous comments, unquestioningly quoting Coulter friend Miguel Estrada downplaying her vicious attacks as "a little bit of a polemicist" (Coulter herself sees no need for the qualifier; she told the Sunday Times of London that "I am a polemicist. I am perfectly frank about that") and writing that "Coulter can occasionally be coarse."

"Occasionally" coarse? A "little bit" of a polemicist? This about a "commentator" who claimed that the Democratic Party "supports killing, lying, adultery, thievery, envy"; who said of the idea that the American military were targeting journalists, "Would that it were so!"; who said President Clinton "was a very good rapist"; who insisted that "[l]iberals love America like O.J. loved Nicole"; who said that "I think a baseball bat is the most effective way these days" to talk to liberals; who said it was lucky for former senator Max Cleland's political career that he lost an arm and two legs in Vietnam; who has said her "only regret with Timothy McVeigh is he did not go to the New York Times Building"; and who wrote that the only real question about Bill Clinton was "whether to impeach or assassinate."

Good to have all of those quotes in one place, just in case you think that Ann Coulter is harmless.

And the second is from Salon Magazine, which goes more into why Time would choose to run this cover story now.

Polemicist pundits like Coulter purposefully drive political discourse into the ground, making a cushy, albeit factually challenged career out of labeling Democrats America-hating traitors. Time magazine stands on the sidelines and cheers, confident it has, for at least another week, placated conservative critics who demand proof that media outlets don't lean left. (And even that didn't work.)

Coming, as Wonkette.com noted, "seven years late," Time's Coulter push feels overly contrived. Her latest book is a five-month-old clip job of recycled columns. She has no full-time, high-profile media platform. Instead, she crisscrosses the country collecting $30,000 speaking-fee checks and shows up on late-night cable talk shows that are watched by the thousands.

Anyway, I guess we are going to a heavy Ann Coulter period, so those of you who love to hate here, get ready.