Mar 5, 2007 
Ann Coulter must’ve wondered what hit her. She trotted out her usual shtick at CPAC, and the Right when ballistic over it. Sample:
Ann Coulter used to serve the movement well. She was telegenic, intelligent, and witty. She was also fearless: saying provocative things to inspire deeper thought and cutting through the haze of competing information has its uses. But Coulter’s fearlessness has become an addiction to shock value. She draws attention to herself, rather than placing the spotlight on conservative ideas.
In fact, Coulter’s been spewing the same spew for years. What she said at CPAC was actually rather mild by Coulter standards. But as I wrote here, her problem is not that she has changed, but that the movement that supported her has changed. They are having to work harder at persuading themselves that they are morally superior to the Left, and lately this effort has taken the form of pretending they are more genteel of speech than we are.
Thus, the Coulter we have all known all these years is off-message.
Y’all will love this — defending the Right against this Glenn Greenwald column, rightie blogger Patterico posts an unintentionally hilarious screed “proving” that lefties do too engage in hate speech.
There are two major problems with Patterico’s “proof.” The first is that many of the people he lists as “lefties,” um, aren’t. Nina Totenberg? Chris Rock? Craig Kilborne? I’d never heard of Julianne Malveaux, although I take it she writes a column somewhere.
But the other little flaw in Patterico’s post is that none of his links go to original sources, but to posts and articles by right-wing bloggers and columnists. So there is no way to check the context that the righties lifted the quote out of, or even if the quote is accurate.
This is unethical and dishonest, I say. Essentially Patterico is blowin’ smoke. And Glenn Greenwald wins again.
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