I noticed the other day that our friends over at NoVA Townhall were blogging the Conservative PAC conference, and chuckled in passing at Joe Budzinski’s fawning headline for Ann Coulter’s speech, “An angel alights.”
As it turns out, the Coulter speech was the biggest draw of the conference, and the line that got the biggest response from where Joe was sitting was this one:
I was going to have a few comments on the other Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards, but it turns out you have to go into rehab if you use the word ‘faggot,’ so I – so kind of an impasse, can’t really talk about Edwards.
That’s right, Ann Coulter called John Edwards a “faggot.” This is what the attendees of this conference found so funny and appealing, and this is what our local promoter of “traditional American values” thinks of as an “angel,” saying “I think you will enjoy this. Turn the volume up.” To their credit, it seems that from some other vantage points the audience was not as receptive.
Does Joe, and for that matter, the rest of this crew, really think that this is an acceptable term in political discourse?
A commenter over there was as shocked as I was, and pointed readers to this response to Coulter’s “little nugget of vileness” on the well known conservative blog Captain’s Quarters:
At some point, Republicans will need to get over their issues with homosexuality. Regardless of whether one believes it to be a choice or a hardwired response, it has little impact on anyone but the gay or lesbian person. We can argue that homosexuality doesn’t require legal protection, but not when we have our front-line activists referring to them as “faggots” or worse. That indicates a disturbing level of animosity rather than a true desire to allow people the same rights and protections regardless of their lifestyles.
Joe became inexplicably defensive in response to this comment, calling it a “moronic screed” and “a pack of lies,” as if he thinks no one else has heard Coulter’s speech. It’s all over the internet. Even the national TownHall.com, with which NoVA TownHall is affiliated, has this:
Idiotic. Disgusting. Stupid. Moronic.
I guess you could say that Ann loves to shock us, but at this point, who’s shocked? She obviously can’t behave well enough to attend a respectable political gathering. It’s not a lack of intelligence. It’s an indifference to self-control and a preening sort of narcissism that compels her to need the spotlight, even if it’s unflattering.
(For those of you who don’t know what I’m talking about, here’s audio of her calling John Edwards a “faggot” at CPAC today.)
An angel alights. Uh huh.
Heh, ok gentlemen, glad you still occasionally visit.
I will post some more about Ann and her various inflammatory comments of recent years. Your reference to our commenter “Zimzo’s” message is a bit off base: This person has a habit of posting untruths, some of which were perpetuated in what he wrote yesterday, and none of these were related to the fact of what Ann said. I hope that at least David would give me credit for knowing that the material in the audio I posted might actually be known to someone else on the globe, and therefore I likely would not consider a reference to Ann’s “faggot” remark a lie.
Of course she said it. I was there and I posted the unedited audio.
You also do yourselves no credit by positing me as a “local promoter of traditional American values” or of our blog as being “affiliated” with TownHall.com. I’ve written about a lot of topics, but traditional values is, I guarantee, not one of them. Much less “promoting” such values. And we have no affiliation whatsoever with TownHall.com. Some years ago, under different ownership, TownHall encouraged many of its local Meetup groups to form their own networks for meetings – thus our name.
TownHall has since been bought by another company and started it’s own blog network which we are not a part of.
Finally, we have invited very liberal commenters to become authors on our site. So while I personally get to post whatever I want about Ann or anyone else, so do the others.
I will explain why the comment in question is moronic, and also why I am apparently the only person in the world who is not ready to drop Ann Coulter like a bad habit. For your information – I spoke with many conservative bloggers at CPAC and, to a person, they denounced what Ann said. Every single one of them. Which means it is me against everyone else. I like them odds.
So if you are going to extrapolate anything about conservatives and use of that bad word, you really can’t extrapolate any further than me, moi, who is the most gay-friendly conservative writer of those at our site (and at many, many other conservative blogs, I would guess).
I just happen to have an extremely low opinion of the requirements of politically correct speech. I think the people on the left have tended to have free reign to say whatever they want about people on the right, to use all kinds of epithets, and I say “so what”; and I also say “so what” when they get dinged once in a while.
In today’s parlance, I am differently abled in the sacred cow department.
Hey Joe,
The bit about NoVA TownHall’s affiliation and promotion of “values” is taken directly from the Mission page on the NoVA TownHall site. If it’s no longer accurate, thanks for clearing that up.
In general, though I didn’t choose to put it this way “promotion of anti-gay ideology” does seem to accurately reflect one of the things your blog does, what with all the enthusiastic cheerleading for the so-called “marriage amendment” and the “Family Foundation,” the use of some random anonymous comment to portray the GLBT community in a negative light, promotion of the fraudulent group PFOX, and defense of slanderous garbage linking being gay with pedophilia.
The last three items were authored by you personally. I can’t say that I can recall ever seeing anything on your blog that is remotely gay-friendly, so I would appreciate it if you could point me to it. Perhaps things have changed.
David, the mission statement is for NovaTownHall, not me. It was devised by a committee a couple years ago. The blog is not a corporate communications vehicle and what I write there represents my opinion solely.
I would take exception to your categorization of all three of those latter items I posted about. Regarding the admittedly sweeping statements I made with regard to the “anonymous comment” “linking being gay with pedophilia” (I believe these two items refer to a single post by me) – I stand by what I said and I think you are mischaracterizing it. I did not link being gay with pedophilia and did not paint any “community” in a negative light. That’s what you read into it. As to PFOX being a “fraudulent group”, sorry, I am not tracking with you on that at all. I reposted a PFOX press release or two, and though I am not a member I don’t see anything illegitimate about that group at all. Please feel free to educate me. And if you look a little further you will see very little written by me about the marriage amendment except for some discussion in the comments. I was in favor of the amendment, just as I am in favor of lower taxes and reduced government spending, but I choose to spend my time advocating on the causes I find most critical. I personally believe there are some major downsides to government recognition of same sex marriages, but I also think there are greater threats to the republic than same sex marriage and I just can’t get that worked up about it.
As to whether there is anything “gay friendly” on our blog: I dunno. I’m sure there is plenty in the comments, and I’d be surprised if Stay Puft has not written anything in that direction. There is only so much time in a day and I do not have a dog in that fight.
Ann Coluter is an utter crackhead when it comes to having attention paid.
On more eloquent note, she knows when people are not paying so much attention to her, so she bangs on pots and pans to jar our collective conscious into wearily acknowledging her mere existence.
She knew what she was doing when she insulted John Edwards, she damn well did! Which makes her little bon bon of hate even more nauseating: it was a calculated shot to grab our attention, not caring if it was positive or negative.
Unfortunately, I’m afraid she’ll be quite vocal in the ’08 elections…at best, another talking head, at worst, an influence on the voters choice.
I admire you David for calling Joe on his bull. I have really tired to avoid wading into Joes Swamp for the last few months. It’s beyond the pale for Joe to say that I “have a habit of posting untruths,” a lie that was echoed by Jack in the comments on his post. I would really like to know what they are referring to.
You might be interested to know why I seem to get under Joe’s skin so easily. You see, Joe has no idea who I am but I know him very well as we went to high school together. The name “Zimzo,” in fact, is an inside joke that only he would get. When I knew him, I not only admired him but even idolized him to a certain extent. He was brilliant, open-minded, intellectually curious, good-hearted, witty, a great writer and quite radical in his individualism (in fact, I think he was voted Most Individual by his class). He wasn’t bad on the eyes either. He played Atticus Finch in the school’s production of “To Kill a Mockingbird” (with a broken leg no less) and it wasn’t difficult to believe that he really believed the words of that play and that someday he might become a man like Atticus Finch.
Imagine my horror when many years later, I googled his name and the first search result was for a Rush Limbaugh message board in which he was defending Limbaugh’s ideas. Last year I googled his name again and came upon his blog. I was so horrified by what he was writing that I decided to create “Zimzo” and call him on what he was saying. I think we had some pretty good discussions but things deteriorated after a few incidents of really virulent and surprising homophobia (invoking the hoary “the children are in danger” meme), which you know all about, and the last straw was when Jack, who is so extreme and hateful he’s really not arguing with, used the racist term “raghead” and Joe refused to condemn it because Ann Coulter had used it so it must be OK. Unfortunately, if you’ve noticed, Joe is not usually in his right mind when the subject is Ann Coulter, for reasons I’ll let you speculate about..
It’s funny how people are a lot like they were in high school and a lot different, too. All of the characteristics that Joe had in high school are still there for the most part–he’s still brilliant and witty and a good writer, he occasionally has moments of being open-minded and compassionate–but there is something quite different, too. Too often his best aspects are warped by bitterness and hatred and intellectual laziness. It’s really quite sad but not surprising. Some of it has to do with age. I feel it in myself sometimes and I have to be vigilant about fighting it off.
The story I told in my comment to Joe’s post about my friend who died is true and I think Joe’s and Jack’s and Jacob’s response to it showed a cruelty and hatefulness that was quiyte revealing and confirms to me why it is no longer good for me to engage them the way I did. I do not want to become bitter and hateful and cruel and angry. As I said in my comment, life is too short.
Nice try, Zimzo. I invite anyone to go read my response to the story about the person who died and find the “hatefulness” in it. This in a nutshell is the modus operandi of my man Zimzo – who I don’t think is a bad person, incidentally. Just someone who apparently was very mixed up in high school (I was a complete goober then and only “easy on the eyes” of someone who had consumed prodigious quantities of malt duck or many steaming bowls of certain herbacious substances) and is now prematurely entering the cranky old man phase of his life. A phase I have entered myself, admittedly, but I believe with more grace and acceptance.
Thanks for that, Zimzo. It explains a lot (although not why someone of Joe’s obvious intelligence and talent is drawn to such shallow ideas and questionable colleagues; Delgaudio, for instance. That remains a mystery.)
You clearly struck a nerve over there, what with the ad hominems, seething hostility and sarcasm. Reading through the comments is like wading through sewage; they don’t seem to see anything wrong with it; and these are people for the most part who put themselves forward as moral Christians. Thanks also for the link to authorized CPAC bloggers who have the good sense to condemn Coulter’s remarks.
The only company Joe has in this regard seems to be the ludicrous James Young, who says that conservatives should use ugly invective against certain categories of people, because that is what makes them conservatives. When Delgaudio weighs in on this, if he hasn’t already, the trifecta will be complete, and Joe will no doubt post something protesting that his agreement with the two of them doesn’t make him anti-gay.
Btw, the second post you took apart was by Jacob, not Joe. Joe’s would have been better written and funnier.
Joe, if not “hateful,” I found your response to Zimzo’s story, offered as an illustration of why these issues matter, incredibly rude, dismissive and insensitive. It suggested to me that you regard these people as without value and their suffering as irrelevent. Isn’t that what you were intending to convey?
Joe, re: PFOX.
Insofar as they want to share their viewpoint in the marketplace of ideas, I have no problem with them. Adults have agency and free will, and if they wish to try to change their sexual orientation they have every right to do so, and to talk about it. If a group of students wanted to form an extra-curricular club to advance the ideas of PFOX, they would have my support.
But that’s not what they are trying to do, and the defense of them that you mounted was of their efforts to force schools to endorse their ideas, ideas which have been soundly rejected by medical science. An academic curriculum is not the same as a public forum. Ideas that are not supported by evidence can’t be treated the same as ideas that are, and failure to do so does not constitute viewpoint discrimination. PFOX’s misuse of this term is what I was referring to as fraudulent, although certainly some of their other claims are, too.