It simply baffles me how mainstream media organizations continue to parade Ann Coulter onto podiums, panels and talk shows to feed from the trough of her offensive slew of pseudo-journalism and demented right-wing white supremacist ideology.
Back on January 5th I blogged about the successful grass-roots efforts of thousands of outraged Americans of all races who flooded NBC with calls of protest over a scheduled appearance on the Today Show to promote her latest book; which MediaMatteers.org described as filled with blatant inaccuracies and falsehoods.
Don't get me wrong, in this nation the First Amendment grants us the right to free speech.
But just as the Supreme Court has ruled that doesn't mean you can shout fire in a crowded theater, I consider it a mockery of the Constitution to permit this anti-Semitic, homophobe-racist liar to have a pulpit on the airwaves to pollute the nation's collective consciousness with hate.
Let's take a specifc example.
To hear right-wing extremist/media pundit/author Ann Coulter describe the Council of Conservative Citizens in her latest book, one might asume that the CCC is merely a group of patriotic Americans with an atypical conservative ideology.
According to a recent article posted on the Southern Poverty Law Center's Hatewatch e-newsletter, Coulter describes the CCC as a group advocating “a strong national defense, the right to keep and bear arms, the traditional family, and an ‘America First’ trade policy.” Further, anyone who levels criticism against the CCC including the New York Times, she dismisses as liberals “who have no principles.”
But as is usually the case with Coulter, the actual truth is very different from what she says or writes. The CCC is a modernized version and the successor of what was once known in this country as the 'White Citizens' Council'.
What is the WCC?
It would be a disservice to call it a white supremacist hate group, because it's far more extensive and couches itself behind a cloak of legitimacy.
During the 30's, 40's and 50's when members of the NAACP, lawyers, human rights groups, journalists and other advocates of legal rights undertook massive grass roots campaigns across the southern United States to confront segregation and work to ensure that blacks in the south were able to exercise the right to vote, White Citizens' Councils chapters sprang up in communities across the south to defend segregationist policies and actively discourage and prevent blacks from voting - a right granted under the Constitution.
The "Councils" were typically made up of leading business and civic leaders of a given town or community and included judges, sheriffs, bank owners, real estate agents, store owners, farmers, lawyers and many newspapers publishers and editors.
In a recent article on the Anti Defamation League Website, the ADL not only tags the CCC as an extremist organization, but describes their cause as:
"Advances its ideology by inflaming fears and resentments, among Southern whites particularly, with regard to black-on-white crime, non-white immigration, attacks on the public display of the Confederate flag, and other issues related to "traditional" Southern culture."
Dime-store intellectuals like Coulter aren'the only ones who have spoken in front of and supported the CCC. Reublican Senator Trent Lott and Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour, both influential figures in the GOP, (take a wild guess as to how THESE guys feel about African-American Michael Steele being selected as the Republican Natonal Committee chair) have spoken at CCC events.
Read about the CCC for yourself.
If Ann Coulter defends them, what is she doing on Fox News or appearing at college campuses?
Ask yourself why mainstream media gives her a pulpit from which to spew racist, anti-Semitic lies? Why would a person like this be anywhere NEAR the Today Show?
People like Ann Coulter represent far more of a danger to the US than any terrorists; terrorists are subject to arrest and capture - we don't put them on talk shows and radio to talk about their philosophy.
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