Not All Slurs Are Created Equal

So let me see if I've got this straight:

Ann Coulter goes to CPAC and calls Opie Edwards a "faggot" and that's a big enough deal to prompt "three leading Republican presidential candidates" (I'm presuming Mitt Romney, Rudy Giuliani, and John McCain) to condemn her and her comment in such a way as to ensure prominent coverage of their condemnation in the official publication of the ruling Democrat Party, but Bill Maher not only uses his HBO program Real Time to defend last week's Huffington Post commenters lamenting the failure of the Taliban attack that attempted to assassinate Vice President Dick Cheney, but adds the following:

But I have zero doubt that if Dick Cheney was not in power, people wouldn’t be dying needlessly tomorrow....I’m just saying if he did die, other people, more people would live. That’s a fact."

....and nary a Democrat officeholder anywhere is beelining it to the nearest camera and/or microphone to denounce this deathwish for Big Time. Nor is any Enemy Media outlet calling on them to do so, or otherwise attributing ownership of the comment to the entire center-left.

What's even more dismaying is that the center-right condemnation of Coulter's "faggot" remark has rippled throughout most, or by now almost all, of the starboard side of the blogosphere. That's their prerogative, I suppose, but I can't fathom why any of my comrades-in-arms bothered to stick their oar in that particular wading pool. Just as Maher is factually wrong about "more people living" if Dick Cheney was shipped off to Sto-Vo-Kor (Bush would still be President, after all; and even if war policy did change, it is more jihadis that would live, while a lot more Americans would die), so there is no evidence of which I'm aware that the former North Carolina senator patrols the Hershey Highway. Maybe "faggot" was Coulter's version of Rush Limbaugh's designation of Edwards as "the Brek Girl," a reference to his "perfumed princedness" (i.e. the relentlessly coifed hair care, all-around vanity, and in-bred elitism). If she'd called him a "sissy," might that have lessened the sting of the remark without diminishing its fundamental accuracy?

Nah, probably not, coming from the blonde bomber. Besides, euphemizing isn't Coulter's style. But neither is what she said of any great significance to the Democrat Party or to the man who (1) himself has hired a notorious left-wing bomb-thrower as his campaign liaison to the blogosphere and (2) has about as much chance of making it to the White House other than as a tourist as I do of becoming the father of Britney Speares' next kid (give that contrast some thought, it's more multifaceted than you think).

It should, in other words, have elicited nothing but crickets from our side of the aisle. That it has caused our side of the aisle to collapse into paroxysms of mass groveling is just redundant evidence of the loser psychosis that took us down last November and will keep us down until we can ever manage to regain enough self-righteousness to hold up our heads with a modicum of self-respect and leave our crippling, debilitating craveness behind.

Oh, and Governor, Mayor, Senator - do yourselves a vast favor and tear into Bill Maher instead. After all, more people may live for your efforts....

UPDATE: My answer to Dean Barnett's answer to grassroots objections to his objection to Ann Coulter:

Dean, my objection (if you want to call it that) to your objection to Ann Coulter's "faggot" reference to John "Opie" Edwards doesn't really fit into any of the categories you have deliniated.

1) Obviously Coulter called Edwards a "faggot". I take her to mean that he's a sissified pretty-boy rather than an actual practicing homosexual, of which there is no evidence (And considering that these days, coming out of the closet is considered to be a noble act of courage on the level of political gold, if Edwards were gay, I don't know what he'd be waiting for). It really isn't much different than Rush Limbaugh's nickname for Edwards as "the Breck Girl." Something I can't help noticing that you have never publicly condemned. Why is that, I wonder? Wouldn't consistency demand it?

2) What the left does IS "sooooo much worse." I don't think that requires you or Hugh to "salute" Ann Coulter. What it ought to motivate you to do is to not obsess over Coulter's slur compared to the avalanche of bile that continues to issue forth from the fever swamps just because it's a novelty coming from our side of the aisle. I think that very bilious ubiquity is part of why they get cut a pass even from our side, in much the same way that we're so prone to eating our own: it's always easier to fire on a target that is far less likely to fight back (or, in Coulter's case, is all by herself).

3) The "free speech" argument is a red herring. You weren't saying Coulter didn't have the right to call Opie Edwards a "faggot"; you were holding her accountable for saying it in a very public setting. That's part of free speech, and I have no problem with that.

I just don't see any reason to say anything about Coulter's comment at all. She said it, they're her words, and she's the one that'll take the heat for them. Why not let that heat come from the other side? Why do you (or Romney, or Giuilini, or McCain) feel the compulsion to do their condemning for them? Especially when (1) they'll do it anyway, (2) yours will never be good enough for them and (3) they'll still attribute ownership of her remark to all of us anyway.

You can make the "we're better than that/we should stick to the high road" case all you want, and it won't necessarily be wrong or unjustified. And no, in her place I would not have said what Ann Coulter did. But that will win the center-right no political or PR brownie points, because the "game" we're in has no rules. That we keep expecting it to is why we're losing, and will continue to lose until we start...well, fighting back.

Pugnacity is what the grassroots want to see, Dean. If the only pugnacity our side can muster is also accompanied by a poor choice of words, so be it. Right now, it's the only game in town.