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Originally Posted by alansmithee
You could replace "Coulter" with "Moore" or "Franken" and your post would be just as accurate. And as for the whole "satire" thing, it has always seemed that's just a label liberals use to avoid checking their facts. Alot of these "satirists" really want to be taken seriously in a political context, but if anyone calls them on accuracy like to claim it's just comedy. But it ignores the point that they are proseletysing (sp?) just as much as the next guy.
I remember when Jon Stewart was on Crossfire. It was a great show, and I remember during one exchange when Stewart was ripping into the host, he said something to the effect that his show doesn't need to be as tough or factual because it's a comedy. But his show is pushing an agenda, simply being a comedy shouldn't get you a free pass.
Honestly, it seems the only problem alot of the people in this thread have with Coulter is that she's on the other side, they seem blind to the faults of their own talking heads.
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Satire has been around a long time. Liberals, to my knowledge, have no monopoly on being satirists, and the label doesn't have anything to do with being factual or not. Stewart's beef wasn't that people be factual or not, or that they even not be partisan (that they not have an agenda). He was saying that people who purport to be political commentators ought not drive the discourse into the ground. That is, they ought to be speak to one another like adults instead of shouting insults at each other.
Coulter injects her purposefully inflammatory language into the public political discourse, which encourages others to speak to one another with such inflammatory rhetoric. This process of basing decisions and arguments on hurling insults at one another drives rational thought out of our poltical discussions. Now comedians have always skirted the edge of socially acceptable language and imagry. But society has also always seemed to understand the limit of crossing into the taboo--it happens in comedic situations, not real life decision making.
We may joke in the bar, or even around the water cooler, or in a comedy "place," but we don't carry what a comedian or our funny friend says about "niggers, spics, fags, and biatches" into Congress or to our boss at his or her desk. It doesn't make any sense to me to even compare what comedians do to the limits of what I expect from my political commentators.
I don't know why you stated that last paragraph. A lot of comments on here against Coulter are from conservatives. Also, at least one liberal, me, pointed out that she was a personal friend of Mahrer's.