posted June 27, 2007 06:11 PM              

Is there such a thing as the freedom of stupidity? Well, yes, I guess that the freedom of speech allows people the freedom to be stupid.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Ws_bXU6Rjk

posted June 27, 2007 07:50 PM            

------------------
Welcome back from the Sandbox Bear...I love you...Forever and a Day....
www.IMWITHFRED.com

posted June 27, 2007 09:09 PM            

I'm still looking for the full clip on YouTube, but she was talking about something she was being ripped for saying (probably the "fag" comment), and was making a reference to what Bill Maher said about Cheney, and it was basically, "oh I guess I should have said that instead, then it would have been ok...?"

Edit: The best I can do for now is the quote from the interview as I don't have all night to search for the clip, but I saw the interview earlier today which is what made this thread catch my eye.

This is what she said:

quote:

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"About the - oh yeah. I wouldn't, I wouldn't insult gays by comparing them to John Edwards. Now, that would be mean. But about the same time, you know, Bill Maher was not joking and saying he wished Dick Cheney had been killed in a terrorist attack. So I've learned my lesson. If I'm gonna say anything about John Edwards in the future, I'll just wish he had been killed in a terrorist assassination plot."

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posted June 28, 2007 02:31 AM              

It's stupid for both of them to say anyway. Regardless of the context.

BR

I think that what you stated is very true.

" People want to see people doing and saying crazy things, sanity is boring."

posted June 28, 2007 01:22 PM            

It's OK for a leftist like Maher to wish the Vice President dead but when Coulter makes what is clearly a joke...then the knives come out.

Coulter really does have her finger on leftist hotbuttons. They can't refute her points or ideas and must resort to the politics of personal destruction.

posted June 28, 2007 02:33 PM            

Thursday, June 28, 2007 1:12 p.m. EDT
Furious Ann Coulter Strikes Back

An obviously angry Ann Coulter this morning ripped into critics who deliberately distorted her comments about former senator and presidential hopeful John Edwards.

After a relentless 24-hour firestorm during which much of the mainstream media used selective quotes to mangle the meaning of several of Ann’s comments about Edwards, Coulter set the record straight while talking with Joe Scarborough host of MSNBC’s "Morning Joe” program.

Coulter told Scarborough: "I’ve never seen people avoid ideas so much in such an obvious way and try to alert Americans not to read anything, not to listen to something someone said — not because of what someone is saying, but to try to portray her as a Nazi. This happens every time I put a book out and I’m getting a little bored with it . . .”

She further explained that she never wished John Edwards would die. She simply said on "Good Morning America" on June 25 that Bill Maher had wished the death of Vice President Cheney by terrorist attack and got away with it, so perhaps if she wanted to avoid criticism in the future while mentioning Edwards, she should say the same thing.

"Oh yeah, I wouldn’t insult gays by comparing them to John Edwards,” Coulter said on "Good Morning America." "That would be mean. But about the same time — you know — Bill Maher was not joking and saying he wished Dick Cheney had been killed in a terrorist attack. So I’ve learned my lesson. If I’m going to say anything about John Edwards in the future, I’ll just wish he had been killed in a terrorist assassination plot.”

The controversy over Coulter's comments heated up when she appeared on Chris Matthews’ "Hardball” show the next day, and was blindsided by a phone call to from Edward’s wife Elizabeth. Apparently, the call was pre-arranged by Matthews without Coulter’s knowledge.

Edwards’ wife told Matthews that she was very offended by Coulter’s interview on "Good Morning America" because Coulter said Edwards’ husband John should be killed by a terrorist attack.

Scarborough asked Coulter on his program, "Why would you say such an awful, awful thing about John Edwards?”

Coulter replied, "That is how it is being reported by the Associated Press, apparently all over NBC, except on your show . . . because liberals lie. I’ve written lots of books about it and this happens to be a good example of it.”

Explaining that the terrorist attack comment was in reference to a comment by Bill Maher about wishing Dick Cheney had been killed by terrorists Coulter said, "I described the entire Bill Maher scenario in one sentence. The 'Good Morning America' audience, which is pretty large and pretty broad, [got] the joke, and no one figured out a way to truncate that sentence until 36 hours later.

"It’s not like the liberal blogs weren’t, as they always do, watching my appearance and instantly posting, from the moment I walked off 'Good Morning America,' all of their indignation, which apparently centered on my comparing George Bush to FDR because he is great on foreign policy, lousy on domestic policy.

"Nobody even thought of how to lie about what I said for 36 hours, so don’t tell me I was giving them ammunition.”

About her comment regarding John Edwards and the word "faggot,” Coulter told Joe, "If you want to go back to CPAC, I was speaking to a group of 7,000 college Republicans and, no, I will not be rearranging my words so the stupidest person in the liberal blogosphere understands what I’m saying.”

Following that "Good Morning America" appearance the Washington Post’s "Reliable Source” gossip column by Roxanne Roberts and Amy Argetsinger, omitted the full context of Coulter’s complaint that Bill Maher can get away with saying Dick Cheney should be killed by terrorists.

Wrote the Post, "The conservative shock-pundit, who sniped on ‘Good Morning America’ Monday that she hoped the Democratic candidate would be ‘killed in a terrorist assassination plot,’ was a guest on MSNBC's ‘Hardball’ Tuesday night, prompting a live call-in by Elizabeth, who demanded that Coulter ‘stop the personal attacks.’" According to NewsBusters.

After noting that "If you are going to hate Ann Coulter, hate her for the right reasons,” Scarborough ran the "Good Morning America" clip that started the firestorm. "Some of these wire reports and some of these news shows are deliberately taking this quote out of context,” he said.

Replied Coulter "Yeah, I don’t even know why, or how I have the capacity to be surprised anymore. You can take someone’s words and chop them up and put them together to say ‘Heil Hitler.’ [This is] the media — the mass mainstream media. This isn’t just a few nuts. This isn’t just John Edwards campaign. This is AP, The Hill and TV . . . I can count the exceptions more quickly than I can count the ones telling the truth.”

Scarborough pointed out that, "You are talking about the Bill Maher incident . . . The part of the Elizabeth Edwards interview that jarred the most people, and jarred me . . . Was the part where she brought up that you had written some column where you had made light of John Edwards’ dead son. What’s the story behind that?”

Coulter explained "Needless to say, that is not true, and coming from people who have done what we have just seen them do in the earlier segment, I don’t think they deserve a lot of credibility on this. You can look it up, it’s all over the Web. It’s a fabulous column entitled ‘The Party of Ideas’ written in 2003. I had to go back to get the full gist of the column. It was about all of the Democratic primary opponents.

"And, by the way, listing a quote out of context from a short five minute TV interview is a little quicker to correct than an entire column written four years ago. There is a point to a column . . . Let’s see, I’m the only person in America that has to go back and constantly explain an entire column when it is lied about like this and describe why I chose this adverb, rather than that adverb, and was this a joke, was that a joke . . .

"I am getting a little fed up with being described as the aggressor in these matters . . . it was about the Democratic presidential nominees back then — Gephart, Dean, this guy, the trial lawyer [Edwards] — and how they were not talking about the war, they were not talking about the economy . . .

"They were talking about either they were running for president because they had a dead relative — Vote for me! — or had suddenly discovered a Jewish heritage. In the various dead relative category, that included of course one who wasn’t running but was the one who started it all, Al Gore in two speeches at the Democratic National Convention.

"Once it was his sister, once it was the near fatal accident of his son, so that it got to the point that all of his family members had to start fearing more runs for higher office. You had Dean’s brother, you had Gephart’s sister or the close death of a child, and then I went through the trial lawyer, a fact that is now memorialized in Bob Shrum’s book who describes John Edwards . . . John Kerry felt queasy about him and almost didn’t put Edwards on the ticket because Edwards kept telling him this tear-jerking story about [how he dedicated his public life to his son]."

Coulter said, "I’m a little sick of being browbeaten by a bunch of harridans about why I chose this word or about why I told that joke . . . and then people turn around and say "you’re so mean, you’re so mean.”

Political analyst Craig Crawford thinks that the Edwards’ attacks on Coulter are part of the Democrats’ efforts to fight back against conservative domination of the talk radio airwaves. He writes on CQPolitics.com that there is a concerted effort by the left to fight back "on several fronts — from challenging their foes on air to endorsing the revival of the Fairness Doctrine, the abandoned federal regulation that once obligated broadcasters to balance the political opinion they air. Behind the scenes, prominent Democratic lawmakers are exploring the idea of more regulation.”

posted June 28, 2007 03:00 PM              

however, when the 'right' want to complain, they always take quotes out of context.....or better yet, as in this case...they simply tell you what someone 'meant' to say, without actually quoting the person or the context.....

posted June 28, 2007 04:16 PM              

quote:

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It's OK for a leftist like Maher to wish the Vice President dead but when Coulter makes what is clearly a joke...then the knives come out.

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It's not ok for Bill Maher to make jokes about wishing the Vice President getting killed, and it's not ok for Ann Coulter to hope that John Edwards gets killed either.

It's vile, and disgusting no matter WHO says it. This is exactly what's wrong with the political scene. People making "jokes" about things that aren't funny in any way, shape or form. Why is this considered "funny"? Can someone please explain this to me?

I'm tired of this gutter filth passing for political discourse in thie country. This is why people don't want to participate in the process. Who wants to listen to a bunch of jerks froth at each other. When this is exactly the opposite of what our country needs at this point in time. We need to be working together to solve our problems, instead of getting further apart.

Because this country is on a definate downward slide.

There is not longer a democratic process in this country, just politics are left.
It's not about debate, it's about fighting.
It's not about discourse, it's about who can shout the loudest.

BAH!
Peace.
GG

posted June 28, 2007 07:20 PM            

That's what many liberals AND conservatives do. And while there are good people among both of them, it's usually the scum that floats to the top, especially the ones that know how to get the anal simians to beating their chests and screeching.

It's why I usually avoid these threads as any kind of communication can't really be achieved as its drowned out by all the simian screeching coming from people who lose all reason in their politricking.

Here's a poem I did a few years ago:

Dirty Pool

There exists an ideological, fundamentalist paranoid facade
Hating either "Bushaphobes" or "The Anti-Clinton Brigade"
Always warning us that the other side is lying, cheating, and stealing
There's just no end to the evil, stupidity, and double dealing.

Exposing the corruption and lies in books and programs galore
But when the favor is returned, it's a wacko conspiracy to be sure
Like Freddy v. Jason, neither side seems able to die
Their words are a web, and your mind is the fly

The motto of both can be summed up as "The sky is falling!"
So if you don't hate children, then answer when The Party comes calling
But how can they feel our pain
When our losses become their gain?
It just doesn't mater which side we choose
The merry-go-round doesn't stop, and we all lose.

And a side will rant how corruption and evil is rampant until their faction ascends
Why are the former abuses, now made worse, suddenly fine once their reign begins?
And why does a ranting person get worked up over mere figureheads of the "other" Party, like Bush and Gore?
But when it's time to "demand accountability" of their own Party, the morals and ethics go out the door?
While politicians, particularly of the 2 parties, are hypocrites pretending to live under a steeple
I have come to sadly see that such sycophants (*) are appropiate representatives of "the People."

--Jane Cochran (aka "dervish"), 10-31-2003

posted June 28, 2007 08:39 PM              

quote:

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It's not ok for Bill Maher to make jokes about wishing the Vice President getting killed, and it's not ok for Ann Coulter to hope that John Edwards gets killed either...Goatgirl

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That's right, GG and I stated that it was stupid of both of them to say in my post. So actually Jwhop has gone blind again and is now making an accusation that was disputed even before he said it.

I like this and I agree with Elizabeth Edwards. The only way to deal with a bully is to confront them. To ignore them only enables them to continue to be a bully. To express disapproval eventually makes bullying become socially unacceptable. One of the biggest problems in the world and the reason that things have become the way they are today is that too many people are ignoring things. To ignore injustice of any kind is only silently condoning it and is enabling it to continue on.

John Edward's Wife Defends Her Call to Ann Coulter

By Des Moines Register.
Elizabeth Edwards said Wednesday that she hopes other Americans will do what she was trying to do when she confronted conservative pundit Ann Coulter on national television this week.

Edwards, wife of Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards, said in an interview that it’s time to put the brakes on the hateful speech spewed by people like Coulter. “It may take a while, but if we don’t start, it’ll take forever,” she said.

The confrontation came Tuesday while Coulter was appearing on MSNBC’s “Hardball.” Elizabeth Edwards called the show and asked Coulter to refrain from using insulting language. Coulter laughed and accused Edwards of telling her to stop speaking.

Among other things, Coulter has referred to John Edwards as a “faggot” and recently said she wished he had died in a terrorist attack. In her call to the show, Elizabeth Edwards said Coulter once wrote that John Edwards probably had a bumper sticker on his car saying, “Ask me about my dead son.” That was a reference to the Edwardses’ teenage son, Wade, who was killed in a traffic accident.

Coulter smiled and wondered aloud why a candidate’s wife was making such a call.

Edwards responded: “I’m the mother of that boy who died.”

In a phone interview from her North Carolina home Wednesday, Edwards said people like Coulter trade in hurtful insults instead of honest debate. “At some point, somebody has to stand up and say, ‘That’s enough,’ ” she said.

Edwards said she did not consult her husband before making the call, though she said campaign aides tracked down the phone number for her. She was sitting in an airport between campaign visits when she saw Coulter on television and called the show.

Edwards said she knows that many people would advise her to ignore the insults instead of dignifying them with a response. But she said that is not the way to change things. She said she has been inspired by a cultural shift in the South. When she moved there decades ago, she said, it was acceptable for people to use racist language. But then people who disliked such language started making their objections known, and eventually it became unacceptable. She said she hopes the same will happen with the things Coulter and others say.

Coulter’s publicist did not immediately respond to a request for a comment.

Peverill Squire, a University of Iowa political science professor, said it’s unusual for a candidate’s spouse to make such a public challenge to a critic. But he said she risked little in making the call. “Certainly, among Democrats, going after Ann Coulter is not going to raise any concerns,” he said.

Elizabeth Mehren, a Boston University journalism professor who has followed the Edwardses, said Elizabeth Edwards’ effort is admirable. Mehren said, however, that the Edwards campaign jumped to use the confrontation as a fundraising tool, which she said could be seen as “tacky.”

“Aren’t they just lowering themselves to Ann Coulter’s level by doing this?” Mehren said. “Isn’t the best way to handle bullies to ignore them?”

posted June 30, 2007 01:48 PM            

"Then again who is to say that what she states that Bill Maher said was not taken out of context by her too? I will have to look that up to see if he did say that and if it was taken out of context as well. I think that everyone in the media and in politics quote things out of context."

What Ann Coulter actually said and the reason..in her own words why she said what she said. Clearly, it was a joke and a comment about the state of bias existing in the leftist news media. Maher can get away with wishing the Vice President dead...and the press doesn't even think it's worth pointing out to their audiences...but do think it's important to take what Coulter says...out of context and spread it around just like it's a serious commentary on her solution to the Edwards "problem".

"Good Morning America" on June 25 that Bill Maher had wished the death of Vice President Cheney by terrorist attack and got away with it, so perhaps if she wanted to avoid criticism in the future while mentioning Edwards, she should say the same thing.

posted June 30, 2007 02:40 PM            

Here's the video for Maher's show where he "wished the death of Vice President Cheney by terrorist attack":
http://msunderestimated.com/RealTimePt2.wmv

posted June 30, 2007 04:39 PM            

quote:

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Elizabeth Edwards called the show and asked Coulter to refrain from using insulting language. Coulter laughed and accused Edwards of telling her to stop speaking.

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PS: I would like to understand how Coulter's supporters could find this "joke" about a tragic accident funny:

quote:

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Elizabeth Edwards said Coulter once wrote that John Edwards probably had a bumper sticker on his car saying, “Ask me about my dead son.” That was a reference to the Edwardses’ teenage son, Wade, who was killed in a traffic accident.

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posted July 02, 2007 02:08 PM            

Get over it, Coulter is here to stay...in the face of leftists and their media darlings, rubbing their noses in their lies, treason and general outrages.

posted July 02, 2007 04:37 PM            

Still, the supposition was that were Cheney dead, something positive would result. That hypothetical sentiment is not in any way related to the way the Right has tried to spin it saying that Maher was wishing death by terrorist attack on Cheney. That's a blatant inaccuracy from what I saw in the video.
___________________________________________________________________________________

Maher: That’s a funny joke. But, seriously, if this isn’t China, shouldn’t you be able to say that? Why did Arianna Huffington, my girlfriend, I love her, but why did she take that off right away?

After some discussion about why Huffington should or shouldn’t have taken these comments down, the following occurred:

Ridley: It’s one thing to say you hate di*k Cheney, which applies to his politics. It’s another thing to say, “I’m sorry he didn’t die in an explosion." And I think, you know…

Maher: But you should be able to say it. And by the way...

Frank: Excuse me, Bill, but can I ask you a question? Do you decide what the topics are for this show?

Maher: Yeah, I decide the topics, they don’t go there.

Frank: But you exercise control over the show the way that she does over her blog.

Maher: But I have zero doubt that if di*k Cheney was not in power, people wouldn’t be dying needlessly tomorrow. (applause)

Scarborough: If someone on this panel said that they wished that di*k Cheney had been blown up, and you didn’t say…

Frank: I think he did.

Scarborough: Okay. Did you say…

Maher: No, no. I quoted that.

Frank: You don’t believe that?

posted July 03, 2007 04:49 PM            

That explains a lot.

I guess we won't hear you making any more 'ignorance is bliss' comments to anyone now that 'close enough' is the new standard for making accurate statements.

Incidentally, Coulter's comments share no correlation with Maher's. If, instead of making a jab at Maher, she'd simply defended her own free speech rights, then there would be a basis for comparison between the two, but the way it is now there's no comparison whatsoever.

Maher was saying that people should be able to post their thoughts on Cheney and the attack he endured, while Coulter was insulting Edwards and family for the sake of getting the applause of Conservatives stupid enough to listen to her.