Ann Coulter is a troll

The latest thing is that Ann Coulter called Obama a retard on Twitter. She must know that the R-word has been the third rail and even though people from my generation used the term as a general insult, it’s been regarded as offensive for awhile now. So Coulter is trolling again; using some obnoxious slur to get a rise out of people. I know you’re not supposed to feed the online troll since the best way to get these people to go away is to ignore them …

… but this blog does not have a national platform that would feed into Coulter’s ego so indulge me for a few paragraphs because I’m going to be nasty. The best possible response to these types of people is the extraordinarily graceful letter from the man with Down syndrome but I don't have it in me today to replicate that.

This isn’t the first time Coulter has acted like an asshole in public. She once called John Edwards a faggot. Edwards is a lot of things (“morally bankrupt” would be a better term) but I wouldn’t use the F-word. The fact that she did just betrays an immaturity. Teenagers use the word sometimes not to refer to sexuality but because it’s the first naughty word that pops into their heads and they know it will get them attention. It’s like calling someone an asshole when he cuts you off in traffic. There’s no great thought behind this. We do this because it’s just a nasty term. 

So Coulter using the R-word or the F-word has no thought behind it. It’s just the rambling of some imbecile who recently learned a curse word and knows it will get her attention. She’s usually doing this because she’s making the talk show rounds to promote some book (probably called Liberals Are Faggots or some other erudite title) but this kind of knee-jerk name-calling is beneath someone who wants to call herself an intellectual or pundit.

Coulter is what would happen if you gave a national platform to the darkest, most ignorant anonymous commenters of some general interest website.

It’s like nobody’s paid her any attention for a few hours so she farts and hopes people notice. Then she laughs and tells everyone to lighten up. That’s what she did with Edwards. When people criticized her for saying the F-word, she countered by saying it’s a schoolyard taunt and people should lighten up. But should someone who wants to be taken seriously as an author be using schoolyard taunts? If you’re going to insult someone, at least say something clever with some substance behind it. Don’t just grab the first slur that pops into your head. Act like an author and not a troll.

Turnabout is fair play. I wonder what Coulter would do if someone called her something nasty on live television. I wonder if she can take what she dishes out.