Actually, she tried a two-step, saying "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."
Coulter was speaking at the annual Conservative Political Action Conference. In dinner talk it is perhaps allowable to fling any faggot rather than let the fire go out. --Playwright J.M. Barrie
OK, it was the other kind of firewood. The American ideal ... of sexuality appears to be rooted in the American ideal of masculinity. This idea has created cowboys and Indians, good guys and bad guys, punks and studs, tough guys and softies, butch and faggot, black and white. It is an ideal so paralytically infantile that it is virtually forbidden—as an unpatriotic act—that the American boy evolve into the complexity of manhood. --James Baldwin
But really, Howard Dean over-reacted by saying "The American people want a serious, thoughtful debate of the issues". From Anne Coulter? Not unless we're talking about different people.
Being a newspaper trade journal, Editor & Publisher couldn't help but end with:
The New York Times' Adam Nagourney failed to mention the crack about Edwards, in observing tonight: "The conference drew thousands of attendees, many of whom waited in a long line out the door for a late-afternoon appearance by Ann Coulter, the conservative author and commentator."
The Washington Post covered the conference but did not mention Coulter at all in its news report. Neither did the Associated Press, which also attended. UPI did mention the "faggot" quote in its report.
The Post's Dana Milbank, in a column for the Saturday paper, observed: "Ann Coulter used an anti-gay slur to describe John Edwards (the line drew applause) and asked: 'Did Al Gore actually swallow Michael Moore?' When a questioner asked Coulter why she praises marriage but broke off so many engagements, she responded by calling the questioner ugly.
