April fool
Right-wing demamgogue Ann Coulter is coming to the University of Pittsburgh on April 1st.
(I wanted that to be a punch line, but it really is happening. At David Lawrence Hall.)
Coulter, a conservative loudmouth, recently got herself into hot water — with prominent Republicans — after using a gay epithet to deride a Democratic presidential candidate. Three leading Republican presidential contenders took her to task: Rudy Giuliani said there was “no place for name-calling in political debate,” Mitt Romney called it an “offense remark,” and John McCain found it “wildly inappropriate.” No apologies from her, though — Ms. Coulter remains unchastened.
Congratulations to Pitt’s College Republicans on booking this hideous creature — on such an appropriate day.
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One good thing about Coulter’s name-calling and the subsequent chiding from prominent anti-gay politicians is that such insults are now most definitely not acceptable in polite society. One can track the cultural legitimacy of any civil rights movement by the damning of such epithets - once the vile words used to describe a group are shunted into the “inappropriate” and “bigoted” bins of the American lexicon, society starts to take that group seriously.
Maybe it’s a bit of wishful thinking to hope that this means a larger acceptance of gay people in American households.
Anyway, Coulter’s bread and butter is the outrage of rational people. I’m also sincerely hoping that some lefty group at Pitt doesn’t decide to make a statement by crashing her presentation - that doesn’t help anybody, and just gives her more publicity. Besides, she does an excellent job trashing herself with her own words.