Hypocrisy On The Left Part 2
From cnsnews.com:
Of Hate-Speech and Hypocrisy
By Patrick Goodenough
CNSNews.com Commentary
March 09, 2007(Contains language that may be offensive to some readers.)(CNSNews.com) – The left-wing Daily Kos blog has been driving a campaign to have companies pull ads from Ann Coulter’s website after the conservative author used a slur in a recent speech, but leftist websites — including Daily Kos — have themselves used the offending word in the past.
Daily Kos postings have included the word “faggot” at least three times in recent years, as have other liberal blogs — without apology, and without generating a furor.
During a characteristically caustic speech at the annual Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) last Friday, Coulter said, “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,’ so I … can’t really talk about Edwards.”
The outcry was not long in coming, with the Human Rights Campaign, which advocates for homosexual rights, issuing a statement calling her use of the term “vile and disgusting” and the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD) saying it was “vile and unacceptable.”
It was soon reported that at least three companies had pulled advertising from Coulter’s site, following postings on Daily Kos in which target companies were identified and their contact information provided.
“Ann Coulter’s latest bigoted and hateful diatribe has justifiably evoked rage and disgust throughout the progressive community,” a Daily Kos blogger going by the name of “VolvoDrivingLiberal” wrote two days after the speech.
“One of the best ways to communicate one’s distaste for Coulter’s repeated incidents of hate speech is to respectfully but firmly let her advertisers know you are deeply troubled by their indirect support of bigotry through their advertising on Coulter’s website,” the blogger wrote. “A list of Coulter’s advertisers with contact information is detailed below.”
(Posting again on Daily Kos on Thursday, “VolvoDrivingLiberal” boasted that “the progressive community achieved significant success this week in persuading corporate and organizational advertisers to pull ads on anncoulter.com.” The blogger urged readers to turn their attention to one last major target advertising on Coulter’s site, Amazon.com.)
Taking flak from liberals, and from many fellow conservatives, Coulter argued that she had been aiming at political correctness, not slurring homosexuals. (Last January, Grey’s Anatomy actor Isaiah Washington used the derogatory word at the Golden Globe awards. Amid an ensuing fuss, he released a statement saying he was seeking counseling.)
“It’s a schoolyard taunt,” an unapologetic Coulter told broadcaster Sean Hannity on Tuesday. “It means … wussy.”
However the term may be interpreted, Coulter is not alone in using it.
Daily Kos itself has not shied away from the word. Nor has it removed postings that use it. Examples include:
- a headline reading: “Democrats and the faggot problem.”
- a headline asking: “Who invited the little faggot?”
- a headline reading: “When is a faggot just a bundle of sticks?” (That posting goes on to ask, “What’s up with the little sly gay jokes? Hmm? As I read the comments in discussions on DKos, there are times when I almost have to check and see if I accidentally stumbled into a Wingnut [right-wing] blog.”)
Other left-wing websites have also seen usage of what’s being called the new f-word:
- Pam Spaulding of the blog Pam’s House Blend wrote a headline including the phrase “caving to the faggot juggernaut” — in reference to a comment by Fred Phelps, the controversial leader of a small religious group that uses the epithet frequently in its campaigning.
- Indymedia, a left-wing activist site, carried an Oct. 2006 rant under the headline, “Bush is a closet faggot.”
- A posting on the Firedoglake blog that pokes fun at Christian leaders found to have been involved in homosexual relationships: “I have been spending my time since the election attempting to hone my knowledge of the Radical Gay Agenda in hopes of infiltrating the Christianist chuch [sic] and bringing it down from within. But it looks like the sad, sick, repressed faggots that run the place are saving me the trouble.”
- Blogger Melissa McEwan, on her site Shakespeare’s Sister, used the line — in reference to Leonardo da Vinci — “I’m not so sure it’s such a good idea for students to be studying that faggot anyway.”
- Another contributor to the Shakespeare’s Sister site, “Paul the Spud,” wrote in a Dec. 2006 posting, “We can’t make it work, so why should you be allowed to, faggot? Quit getting so uppity!” (He was putting words into the mouth of an advocate against same-sex marriage.)
Ironically, McEwan of Shakespeare’s Sister is one of two bloggers who worked briefly for the Edwards 2008 campaign but resigned last month amid criticism of provocative postings about Christianity on their sites.
The other erstwhile Edwards blogger, Amanda Marcotte, carried a posting ( warning: vile content ) by another blogger — Spaulding, again — on her Pandagon site, using the word “faggoty” in reference to Jesus.
Bloggers aren’t the only liberals to use the slur.
In 2003, Howard Dean’s campaign manager was reported to have written a letter to the presidential campaign of fellow Democrat and rival Dick Gephardt, complaining that a member of the Gephardt team had called a Dean staffer a “faggot.”
Homosexual-rights groups employ a double standard too, it appears.
In its response to Coulter’s remarks last Friday, GLAAD not only slammed the author but accused CPAC itself of promoting “discriminatory policies,” and GLAAD president Neil Giuliano called on media organizations — NBC News in particular — to stop offering Coulter a platform.
Three years ago, however, GLAAD took a rather different approach when rapper 50 Cent told Playboy magazine, “I ain’t into faggots … We refer to gay people as faggots, as homos. It could be disrespectful, but that’s the facts.”
In that instance, GLAAD responded with a polite — almost respectful — press release expressing “concern” about the comments, and inviting 50 Cent to attend GLAAD’s annual media awards.
And no, there was no suggestion that anyone stop giving the platinum-selling New York “gangsta” a platform.
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