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Coulter's Slur Puts Spotlight on Edwards

By Robert Scheer
Created Mar 7 2007 - 8:50am

- from Truthdig (posted with permission) [1]

Thank you, Ann Coulter, for boosting the principled but media-neglected
presidential candidacy of John Edwards.

Like many others, upon hearing that she had used an address at a major
conservative convention to call Edwards a "faggot," I quickly clicked to his
home page to see his campaign's reaction--and was happily diverted to more
substantive stuff, such as his firm support of universal healthcare and an
end to the war in Iraq. No wonder Coulter hates him: Edwards is a Democrat
who believes in the progressive heritage of his party and is not afraid to
tell the world.

"I want to say something about my party," Edwards said in a speech at UC
Berkeley on Sunday. "I'm so tired of incremental, careful caution. Where is
our soul?" He was referring to, among other issues, the party's failure to
deal boldly with "the bleeding sore that is Iraq."

Unlike rival Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, he has
forthrightly apologized for his Senate vote to authorize the war and called
for ending it, starting with "immediately" cutting troop levels by half and
then withdrawing all troops within the next 12 to 18 months. In a pointed
rebuke to the Democratic leadership of Congress, Edwards states on his
website, "We don't need non-binding resolutions; we need to end this war,
and Congress has the power to do it. They should use it now."

On domestic issues, Edwards has hewed to the progressive line he maintained
in the 2004 campaign, warning about the growing income inequality in the
"two Americas." As opposed to the Clintons, who still insist that they
solved the poverty problem with Bill's putting an end to the federal welfare
program, Edwards points out correctly, "Every day, 37 million Americans wake
in poverty." Stating that "our response to that reality says everything
about the character of America," Edwards has called for a national program
to eliminate poverty instead of leaving the poor to the tender mercy of the
states as called for in the Clinton welfare reform.

It is also refreshing for a politician to invoke the image of Jesus, as
Edwards did Monday, not as a divisive symbol of intolerance but rather as
the inspiration for social justice and peace. "I think that Jesus would be
disappointed in our ignoring the plight of those around us who are suffering
and our focus on our own selfish short-term needs," he said. "I think he
would be appalled, actually."

As he did in the 2004 campaign as the Democrats' vice presidential
candidate, Edwards has once again made relief for the struggling middle
class a signature issue, strongly attacked tax breaks for the rich and the
mindless globalization that is widening the class divide. He is equally
strong on environmental issues, following 2004 Democratic presidential
candidate Al Gore's leadership on global warming, and he has had the courage
to bluntly oppose the Clinton-era "don't ask, don't tell" hypocrisy on gays
in the military.

"Gay men and women have continually served our country with honor and
bravery, and we should honor their commitment and never turn away anyone who
is willing to serve their country because of sexual orientation," he said.
These words were of particular resonance, coming on the heels of the
announcement by the first U.S. Marine seriously wounded in Iraq that he is
gay. Or, in Coulter's parlance, "a faggot."

"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," said the professional provocateur. Her defenders on
the right have argued, absurdly, that this was not a calculated slime ball
thrown at Edwards but a brave stand against "political correctness." Hey, if
you can believe the war in Iraq was a reasonable response to the 9/11
terrorist attacks, you can swallow anything.

One might be tempted to write this stuff off as the ravings of an attention
addict with a morality deficit disorder if she hadn't delivered them to an
approving audience at the Conservative Political Action Conference, a
central event in the Republican calendar, immediately after presidential
candidate Mitt Romney addressed the group. Last year, at the same event,
Coulter dismissed Iranian Muslims as "rag heads" but was invited back, which
can only be read as an endorsement of her consistently vicious rhetoric.

This year, Vice President Dick Cheney addressed the conference as "this
gathering of so many friends from across America." Presumably his "friends"
are giving his pregnant, lesbian, Republican daughter a pass on her sexual
orientation and might, at last, be moved to stand against blatant homophobic
bleating from the likes of Coulter.
_______

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"A little patience and we shall see the reign of witches pass over, their
spells dissolve, and the people recovering their true sight, restore their
government to its true principles. It is true that in the meantime we are
suffering deeply in spirit,
and incurring the horrors of a war and long oppressions of enormous public
debt. But if the game runs sometimes against us at home we must have
patience till luck turns, and then we shall have an opportunity of winning
back the principles we have lost, for this is a game where principles are at
stake."
-Thomas Jefferson