I have to respectfully disagree with my blogging colleagues on the latest Ann Coulter controversy. Coulter was making a joke relating to the recent incident between Isaiah Washington and Patrick Dempsey in which he called Dempsey a faggot on the set during a heated argument. Washington then was more or less forced to check into rehab over the outrage that ensued once the media got wind of it. It is a classic case of political correctness gone amuck. Coulter was not eluding that John Edwards was gay, but rather making fun of his flagrant sissy-like behavior.

I think conservatives are overreacting to this on a major scale. Ann Coulter has a reputation for being a “shock-jock”, so to say. This is and has been her style for a long time now. Was it a sophomoric joke? Sure, but so what? She even admitted that herself last night on Hannity & Colmes. The media, of course, with their vial disdain for the right is capitalizing on that one sentence and making her out to be some sort of hateful bigot. If you listened to her entire speech you would know that she was not making derogatory comments about gays.

The reactions I am seeing here from a great number of conservatives is the result of years of political correctness embedded into our heads by the left.  Either we have free speech in this country, or we don’t.   Furthermore, I am very disturbed by Mr. Keene’s response to the letter sent to him by the CPAC bloggers:

“let me make it clear that ACU and CPAC do not condone or endorse the use of hate speech“

Hate speech? Since when do conservatives acknowledge the existence of hate speech? To accuse someone of “hate speech” you have to know what they are thinking at the time they make the comment and hence condemn them guilty based on their thoughts, just like the idea of a “hate crime.” Enter the “Thought Police.”

The Left in this country despises the Right and excommunicating Ann Coulter from the conservative movement is not going to make them hate us any less. It only plays into their politically correct world they’ve formed for us and will encourage them to come after us even more. I see this as no different than the left claiming we would have peace if we appeased the Muslim extremists in the Middle East and pulled out of Iraq and handed them Israel. Appeasement doesn’t work weather its terrorists or Government Tit sucking liberals.

So to be blunt, get over it already and stop running around screaming like a bunch of 12 year old girls.  She said what she said.  Life will go on.

The Evangelical Outpost has more on Ann Coulter’s comments at CPAC and the Coulterization of Conservatism.

There was once a time when such remarks would have had Mr. Buckley scrambling for the smelling salts to revive Mrs. Schafly. But now hearing such comments made in a conservative forum elicits little more than an embarrassed shrug and a whatareryagonnado shake of the head that says, “That’s just Ann.” Then they line up around the block for autographed copies of her book.

Our political culture has truly become debased when even conservatives now accept what James Q. Wilson has described as the elevation of self-expression over self-control. (Perhaps it is to be expected, though, of a movement that has replaced the wisdom of Russell Kirk with the soundbites of Rush Limbaugh.) We have heartily embraced the leftist ideal that we have an inherent right to be as stupid and as banal as we want. As the legal scholar Stephen Carter says, “When offensiveness becomes a constitutional right, it is a right without any tradition behind it, and consequently we have no norms to govern its use.

If we continue to support people like Coulter in our conservative movement, then we are no better than the left we we are working so hard against. I agree with Alexander that we must sever all ties with her.

Let The Blogging Begin! So far spotted a booth for Romney, Brownback, and Gilmore. The Brownback folks seem to be all over the place though they have one of the most texy heavy direct mail pieces I’ve ever seen.