Ann Coulter scheduled to have "soapbox" on Larry King Live

http://mediamatters.org/items/200905010043

CNN host Larry King has announced that on May 1, Ann Coulter will once again appear on his show. In the past, CNN host Howard Kurtz has questioned why television news networks continue to host Coulter in light of her lengthy history of inflammatory commentary. Under the headline "Controversy Queen Ann Coulter," King's website currently states: "She's lashed out at the left and even shocked the right so who's the queen of controversy taking on now? Ann Coulter takes your calls and e-mails."

Following Coulter's 2007 comment on CNBC that "we" Christians "just want Jews to be perfected, as they say," Kurtz said on Reliable Sources: "Ann Coulter shoots off her mouth again -- this time about Jews. Is it time for the media to stop giving her a soapbox?" 

After playing video of CNBC host Donny Deutsch criticizing Coulter's "just want Jews to be perfected" comments during the segment in which she made them, Kurtz asked, "[G]ood for Donny Deutsch for taking Coulter to task, but why did he put her on in the first place? What did he think he was getting? A polite discussion of the issues?" Later during the segment, Kurtz asked: "Ann Coulter also talked about John Edwards, made a joke about him being gay, using a slang term beginning with 'f,' then she said she was just kidding. Is there a line that you can cross in our society where you don't get invited back on TV or can you insult Jews and gays and widows and still get booked if you deliver ratings?" At the end of the segment, Kurtz noted that Coulter "can say whatever she wants, but there's no constitutional right to appear on a television show."

During the same Reliable Sources segment, CNN special correspondent Frank Sesno stated: "I think we have a responsibility to challenge her when she says these things, to force her into a corner, and at some point to say, 'You know what? This is not credible anymore. You don't deserve this real estate because all you're trying to do is outrage.' "

Some examples of Coulter's inflammatory commentary include:

• In her most recent book, Guilty, Coulter calls children whose parents divorce "future strippers" in a chapter titled "Victim of a Crime? Thank a Single Mother." Promoting the book on the January 5 edition of Fox News' Hannity & Colmes, Coulter referred to her statement that children whose parents divorce are "future strippers" as "something that needs to be said," later saying of that contention: "Yes, and they will be, and that is a fact." Also during her Hannity & Colmes interview, immediately after saying, "I don't insult single mothers," Coulter referred to single motherhood as "a recipe to create criminals, strippers, rapists, murderers," echoing her statement in Guilty that "[s]ingle motherhood is like a farm team for future criminals and social outcasts." After co-host Alan Colmes challenged Coulter by saying of single mothers, "So you're insulting them," Coulter replied, "No, I am insulting single motherhood, which is avidly promoted by the left."

• On the April 30, 2008, edition of CNN Headline News' Glenn Beck, Coulter asked of then-Sen. Barack Obama: "Is Obama a Manchurian candidate to normal Americans who love their country? ... Or is he being the Manchurian candidate to the traitor wing of the Democratic Party?"

• In an April 2, 2008, syndicated column titled, "Obama's Dimestore 'Mein Kampf,' " Coulter wrote of Obama's 1995 memoir, Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance: "Has anybody read this book? Inasmuch as the book reveals Obama to be a flabbergasting lunatic, I gather the answer is no. Obama is about to be our next president: You might want to take a peek. If only people had read 'Mein Kampf' ..."

• In a March 2, 2007, speech to the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), Coulter said she "can't really talk about" Edwards because "you have to go into rehab if you use the word 'faggot.' " The CPAC audience applauded her comment. Several newspapers dropped Coulter's column following her remarks at CPAC.

• On the July 26, 2006, edition of CNBC's The Big Idea, Coulter said former President Bill Clinton exhibits "some level of latent homosexuality." When asked by Deutsch if she was indeed calling Clinton a "latent homosexual," Coulter replied, "Yeah," and mentioned, apparently in support of her claim, "passages" she had "memorized" from the so-called Starr Report -- former independent counsel Kenneth Starr's report to the House of Representatives, resulting from his investigation into the Monica Lewinsky controversy.

On MSNBC's Hardball the next day, referencing Coulter's "latent homosexuality" comment, host Chris Matthews asked Coulter, "How do you know that Bill Clinton is gay?" Coulter responded, "I don't know if he's gay. But [former Vice President] Al Gore -- total fag." She went on to defend her theory about Clinton's sexuality by stating that "everyone has always known, widely promiscuous heterosexual men have, as I say, a whiff of the bathhouse about them." Coulter claimed she was "just kidding" about Gore, but said of her theory about Clinton, "It's not only not a joke, it's not even surprising."

• In her book Godless: The Church of Liberalism (Crown Forum), Coulter makes numerous inflammatory statements, including her claim that liberalism is the "opposition party to God" and that "I've never seen people enjoying their husbands' deaths" as much as the 9-11 widows. On the June 6, 2006, broadcast of NBC's Today, host Matt Lauer provided a forum for some of the more controversial statements in the book, which was released that day. Lauer read several of the statements aloud and asked her to explain them.

Pressed by Lauer to defend her statement that the widows were "enjoying their husbands' deaths," Coulter responded: "Yes, they're all over the news." She criticized the widows for "speak[ing] out using the fact that they're widows" and "using their grief" and "the fact that you lost a husband" to make "a political point while preventing anyone from responding." She further argued that "the Left" exploits a "doctrine of infallibility," and that "[i]f they have a point to make about the 9-11 Commission, about how to fight the war on terrorism," they "put[] up Cindy Sheehan ... put[] out these widows." As a result, Coulter said, conservatives "always have to respond to someone who just had a family member die" and appear to be "questioning the authenticity of the grief."

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Contact: Ann Coulter	tom@anncoulter.org