I hate Ann CoulterFollow

A friend of mine and I used to have a saying for this: "If I saw her drowning, I'd toss her a rope but I wouldn't offer her a towel."

There's Leftist ninnyhammers who I feel the same about. Michael Moore and Air America's Randi Rhodes spring immediately to mind.

Sure. But he's not parading a group of pro-republican gays in front of the media, nor is he parading a bunch of pro-"build a fence" immigrants. More to the point, he's definately not parading a bunch of wounded veterans around and having *them* travel the country speaking about the wonders of GWB's foreign policy.

Get it? There's a huge difference between referring to a condition and talk about the pros and cons of that condition and possible actions that could be taken for/against that condition. It is an entirely different thing to grab a small sample of victims, and pay them to travel around the country spreading your agenda.



She was making a point. In exactly the same way George Carlin was making a point with his "7 words you can't say on TV" skit. It would not have had the same effect if he didn't actually say the words he's not supposed to, right? A "public figure" in the US is open season for political and personal attacks. It's something you normally accept when you enter the public arena. There have been numerous supreme court cases affirming this as well (hell, watch "the people versus Larry Flint" sometime, partly cause it's a pretty funny/decent flick, but also because you'll see *one* example of the kind of ruling I'm talking about).

But we tend as a people to not want to stop on the victim, so we tend to give victims a lot more latitude in the public eye then other people. That's all fine and good, until political groups start actively mining those victims in order to get them to push their agenda and use the public's hesitance to attack them to their own political advantage.

That's what Coulter was trying to get to. And yeah, she has to make nasty comments about these people, or it doesn't have the impact. She'd have been hypocritical if she'd tried to argue that it's somehow wrong for us to use kid gloves when talking about these people while she herself refrained from making any nasty comments about them.

Think about it. She's making a point. She's being very consistent about how she goes about making that point. You are certainly free to express outrage at how she's doing this, but to those of us who are actually sick and tired of the bogus use of victims for political gain, your reactions only reaffirm what we already understood to be true.



Again. In this case, she couldn't. Because her "point" is to get people like you to react to her comments exactly as you are reacting. If she had not included the mean comments in her book, you and others like you would not be massively reacting the way you are, and we'd not have seen the stunningly graphicly obvious example of the double standard at play.

I just think you aren't getting it. Your reaction *is* why she wrote what she wrote. Because your reaction is part of her argument. Hence why I've said multiple times that those most opposed to her statements are the ones providing the most proof that her argument is valid. You just haven't figured it out yet.

Edited, Jun 9th 2006 at 5:49pm EST by gbaji

Yeah, we really need someone who thinks like that. She is insane.

Iraq was "defenseless"? I think there's a lot of Kuwaiti's who'd disagree with that assertion...



I never once defended the atrocious treatment of prisoners. I only said that they aren't "torture" as defined by the UN. One was a series of abuses of prisoners which I've never condoned or defended, and the other two a set of interrogation practices which (despite huge rhetoric to the contrary) have not produced a single verifiable account which actually violates any international laws. My disagreement on these issues has always been about legal definition and therefor legal responsiblity. Nothing more.



And yet every time you feel you have to qualify your objection based on the fact that these people are victims, you only prove the point she was trying to make.

Ask yourself this question: If she'd said those same mean things about Gore or Clinton, would you be reacting to her statements the way you are right now? And if not, then does this not prove her point that we object to attacks on those we consider victims? And if that is true, then is it not also valid to argue that it's bogus for the Left to deliberately find these victims and use them as spokespeople for their agenda?




Iteresting double standard though. Tune into the Air America radio station some time. Count the number of times per day that the Bush administration is referred to as the "Bush crime family" (and that's just one of many personal attacks they use constantly).

Is that not equally hateful? Why are you so up in arms about one woman writing mean things about some people in a book, but not so upset about similar comments (and much much worse!) uttered every single day for a broad radio audience? I'm serious here. Be honest. If their status as victims should not afford them any protections, then why are you so upset? And if it should, then what does that say about political groups that seek out such victims and use them to say the things they don't want to have to defend?




I'll wait and see what the legal inquiry discovers before passing judgement, and I'd hope you'd do the same. Unfortunately, from your description of the event, it's clear you're unwilling to do so.


And that's *really* sad.

Edited, Jun 9th 2006 at 8:56pm EST by gbaji

Ooo G wrote that?

That's messed up. Okay, I'm wrong.

I can't stand Hilary CLinton but I gotta agree with her on this Ann Coulter is a B17c#

I'm a little confused. I've gone over the criminal code for sex crimes for Illinois, the United States federal code and for California but none of them ever say "date rape". I chose those of course, as they are our respective states and nation. Will you please find me this legal cite of date rape?

Or is this a usage of the phrase "legally true" I was unfamiliar with? Because all of the linked statutes merely call any non-consentual sexual intercourse "rape" and none mention a need for "forensic evidence to show forcible rape".

So confused...

Edited, Jun 12th 2006 at 8:23pm EST by Jophiel

That's a point of semantics at best. My argument is that the sole distinction made between "rape" and "date rape" is that date rape involves a situation in which it's virtually impossible to determine situationally that a rape occured and the decision to charge is vested entirely on the womans assertion that the sex was non-consentual.

If a man breaks into a woman's home and engages in sexual acts with her, there's a strong situational argument that it was rape. If the same man is invited into her home after a night on the town, baring obvious signs of violence, there's nothing other then her assertion to tell us that the sex was non-consentual. Thus, it's an "after the fact" determination since nothing prior to the sexual act can show a third party that a rape occured.

It's not that we legally codify definitions for date rape. But the use of "non-consentual sex" in our legal system has been broadened to include those situtions commonly referred to as date rape (It's not like I made up the term here). The change isn't so much what's written into the laws, but what DAs are choosing to argue is non-consentual (and therefore meet the legal standard for rape), and judges are willing to allow as sufficient cause for trial. The fact that date rape isn't legally defined does not change the fact that it was the term being argued in this case, everyone understood the particulars of the case in hand (at least in the original thread), and it most definately was a case that meets the criteria I defined in the first paragraph of this post.


Heck. "Legally", all rape includes any sitution in which a woman has sex with someone and then says she didn't want to (that's what "non-consentual" means, right?). Certainly, all rape charges proceed from that begining point. If anything, the most innacurate part of my statement was that I didn't properly state that this was the exclusive definition (ie: date rape is when the *only* evidence presented is that sex occured and she claims she didn't want to). Obviously, there's a whole range of sexual assaults that fall outside that definition. But "date rape" as it is commonly known and applied, is exclusively that set of sexual assaults in which the only evidence that the sex was non-consentual is the victim's own testimony. So yeah. My bolded statement is still pretty darn accurate even if it can appear not to be when taken out of context.

No, that's a point of the law since you said that your definition of date rape was the legally accurate one.

Unless you can find chapter and verse from the legal code saying otherwise, all of my links say that rape is simply non-consentual sex regardless of whether the lack of consent was from force, threat of force or incapacitation. It's good to see you backpedalling though

I'm not interested in going over the same ground a second time. I'll leave it to anyone who cares to read your entire arguments in context and decide for themselves where you stood on the issue.

For the record, the first time he tried this same line I asked him for any medical or legal cites supporting that this is how "date rape" is commonly known and applied. Any. A single one. I was eventually toldClassic

Arg...I'm not usually so frustrated by a posed argument, but:



...is just another sad case of seeing a conservative with rose-colored glasses. Your rhetoric is just to keep you from acknowledging the simple truth, which is that her crass remarks were inappropriate. No arguing "It's okay to do morally reprehensible things if you're getting attention for it". Honestly.

Extend that train of thought a little farther, and you might as well argue that we should all be obnoxious pricks to each other all the time, because polite, well-thought and logical points aren't as important as stirring up a shout-fest.