Crooks & Liars has the original
video of Coulter calling Edwards a "faggot."
MissLaura at Daily Kos has compiled the official reactions of GOP candidates for president(so far):
McCain: "Wildly inappropriate"
Guiliani: "completely inappropriate"
Romney: "offensive"
pioneer111 at Daily Kos has the reactions of John and Mrs. Edwards.
Glenn Greenwald had an incisive, early analysis contrasting the venomous real world rhetoric of a major public figure with the tempest in a teapot invective of anonymous blog commenters on the left.
Last year at the same event, she warned Arab "ragheads" about violence that would be done to them and called for Supreme Court justices to be murdered -- and received standing ovations. Everyone knows what a rancid hate-monger she is, yet (or rather: "therefore") she continues to be invited to the highest-level "conservative" events, be drooled on with admiration by presidential candidates like Mitt Romney, and have little right-wing warriors wait in line around the corner to get her signature on their copies of the books she wrote. But that's all fine. There are much more important topics to discuss -- like the anonymous commenters at Huffington Post and the bad words said by the bloggers hired for low-level positions by the Edwards campaign. Those are matters of the gravest importance meriting the most solemn condemnation and righteous outrage from all decent people.
Digby has a typically astute analysis that includes this fond reminiscence of Coulterisms of yore:
I recall how my stomach turned when when I read what Coulter had to say at CPAC last year: On Democrats: "Someday they will find a way to abort all future Boy Scouts." College professors: "sissified, pussified." Harvard: "the Soviet Union." John Kerry: the other "dominant woman in Democratic politics." Her post-9/11 motto: "Rag head talks tough, rag head faces consequences." For good measure, she threw in a joke about having Muslims burn down the Supreme Court -- with the liberal justices inside. Then came questions. A young woman asked Coulter to describe the most difficult ethical decision she ever made. "There was one time I had a shot at Bill Clinton," Coulter said.
Ann Coulter claims to be a Christian, of the Religious right sort. But Pastordan at Street Prophets questions whether she is really the "good Christian" she claims to be.
Coulter likes to think of herself as a "good Christian". Based on her inability to give a coherent account of her faith and her consistent engagement in eliminationist rhetoric, though, I think it's time to state the obvious: she is not, if she ever was... We are all children of God, all heirs to the promise of Christ. Anyone who would place a entire group of persons beyond that all-inclusive promise of redemption is not a Christian. Anyone who would endorse hate of such a group is not a Christian. Anyone who would play on hate and violence with a smirk for the sake of cheap laughs and fleeting political points is not a Christian - and should look for her common decency in the rear-view mirror. For the sacrifice of Christ on the cross was once and for all, and the confession of Christians is that He is Lord of All and generous to all who call on him . Last I checked, there was no exception written into that statement for "faggots".
Ann Coulter is not funny. Ann Coulter is not a Christian. Ann Coulter is hanging on to her quickly-withering humanity by her fingertips. It is long past time for politicians, the media, Christian leaders, - anyone with even a scrap of self-respect - to reject her easily-given hatred and her glib verbal violence and finally lock her out of public discourse. She has no place in it, and it's far past time for our leaders to say so.
Lydia Cornell writes:
Just a few hours ago, my friend Dan Borchers -- a conservative Christian who is writing a book about Ann Coulter's "extermination speak" -- was bodily wrestled out of CPAC (Conservative Political Action Conference) by four of Ann Coulter's bodyguards.
Pastordan continues in a further posting:
Once again, Coulter is not a Christian. She (or her goons) don't even like real Christians So why should be allowed to represent us in the mainstream media? For that matter, why should Christians allow her to undermine any notion of civility, let alone Christian love, in the media? We say all the time that we're concerned about the message the media is sending our children.... If an effort to push hate out of the mainstream is correctly organized, and targeted at specific repeat offenders, it could be very successful. There's no reason to put up with this crap.
I have reported that the conservative Presbyterian Church of which she claims to be a member, does not claim her.
Where is the religious right, when a high-profile bigotted, foul-mouth who claims to be one of them -- lies about her church membership?
Bill Berkowitz recently reported that she manages to appear as an expert in a documentary film "Darwin's Deadly Legacy," produced by televangelist D. James Kennedy (a leader in the rightist Presbyterian sect in which Coulter falsely claims membership).
Darwin's deadly legacy? The Holocaust! According to Coulter, Hitler took Darwinism and applied it: "He thought the Aryans were the fittest and he was just hurrying natural selection along."
Google News search (Ann Coulter, faggot) has hundreds of news stories.
Media Matters for America is keeping on top of the media distortions of the flap.