Anatomy of a slur.
Astoundingly enough, Ann Coulter appears to have been a mite too subtle with the English on her invective.
Here’s what the noted bigot and plagiarist said, this weekend over at the CPAC:
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…
The ellipsis, of course, placeholding for the enormous roar of approval from the punters. —And a number of people here at the sinistral end of the Islets of Bloggerhans have said any of a number of insightful things about the remark and its fallout, among them the irreplaceable David Neiwert:
Coulter’s mockery in this case is aimed, of course, at the “political correctness” that conservatives love to inflate as a sign of liberal hypocrisy and stupidity, and perhaps overweening authoritarianism. In Coulter’s world, calling someone a “faggot” requires rehabilitation or “reeducation.” Pity the poor schlubs, she’s telling us, who just want to call a faggot a faggot.
In the real world, of course, calling someone a faggot isn’t cause for forced rehab—though it is the kind of ugly, hateful remark that may indicate a deeper problem (such as, say, substance abuse) that does require rehab. Coulter herself may want to look into this. She can ask her pal Rush for pointers, though I don’t think he’ll be much help.
David obviously doesn’t have a boss enamored of Grey’s Anatomy, or he’d know what it was Coulter had in mind:
Grey’s Anatomy star Isaiah Washington has entered a residential treatment facility in an effort to quell the controversy surrounding his anti-gay remarks—and save his job, Life & Style has learned exclusively.
According to an insider, Isaiah, who issued an apology for his statements on Jan. 18, agreed to undergo a psychological assessment after talks with ABC executives.
[...]
“ABC has told him he must enter a program to examine why he would say such hateful words,” the insider says.
So while there’s something so-last-month declassé about Coulter’s remarks, it’s not (just) a fevre-dream of reëducation camps pulled from her festering imagination. —Now, the various nuances of apologetics and instarehab culture in a creative community running on a speed-of-light spin cycle are beyond the scope of my current level of interest, but the context is something you’ll have to keep in mind when you’re mindful of this latest low-water mark in conservative rhetoric. (A back-of-the-envelope Google comparison would seem to indicate maybe one in ten are making the link.)
Of course, it doesn’t take an appreciation of nuance or even more than the average helping of insight to figure out what’s coming next: a chorus of straight conservatives wailing how they all call each other faggot, so why can’t we, I mean what’s the deal, it’s just a word, capped by Jonah Goldberg pretending to be bewildered by how pissed off people get when he cops an old Andrew Sullivan routine: “The faggots have got to go. I love gay people but I hate faggots. I am tired of faggots. Tired, tired, tired.” —Can’t you take a fucking joke?
Is there a more hateful and evil looking specimen in America than Ann Coulter?
She would make the hide of a rattler shrill.
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