What Did They Expect?

For this week’s Democratic National Convention, the media descended on Boston. TV networks, newspapers, wire services, bloggers – you name it, they were there. Many hired people to provide political color commentary to the speeches and events there. Some hired wisely. Some did not. USA Today, the national newspaper whose often comically shallow coverage earned it the nickname “McPaper,” hired none other than Ann Coulter.

Yes, that Ann Coulter. The woman who proclaims that Democrats hate America, that liberals hate America, and that anyone who doesn’t agree with her is plotting to hand America over to the Communists/Muslims/gays/Rotarians/etc.

When she filed her first column from the convention, her editors saw this:

My pretty-girl allies stick out like a sore thumb amongst the corn-fed, no make-up, natural fiber, no-bra needing, sandal-wearing, hirsute, somewhat fragrant hippie chick pie wagons they call “women” at the Democratic National Convention.

(The full column and others like it are online at Coulter’s site.)

The paper balked, rejected the column, and fired her. Coulter pitched a fit and ran straight to Matt Drudge of the infamous Drudge Report website. Drudge, who can never resist an opportunity to bash anyone who disagrees with him about anything, promptly posted it. From Drudge, the story was splashed across the right-wing media, which blared about how once again, the Liberal Media had silenced a bastion of Americanism. To their credit, USA Today refused to back down, saying that the column had “basic weaknesses in clarity and readability that we found unacceptable."

While I applaud the paper’s decision to stand by their principles and not publish what was little more than a session of primal scream therapy, I have to wonder what they expected when they tapped Coulter in the first place. After all, it’s not like she’s not well known for stuff like this.

Apparently unable to make rational and logical arguments to prove her point, she depends on epithets, personal attacks, sneers, and name-calling. She makes Rush Limbaugh and even Michael Savage look calm and respectful. After the 9/11 attacks, National Review fired her for writing in their magazine that the United States should “invade [Muslim] countries, kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity.”

Were they actually hoping she would magically turn into Ann Landers and comment on the convention with wit and verve? No, it seems more likely that USA Today fully expected fireworks, but it also seems that they were not quite prepared for the fireworks blowing up in their faces.

Ann Coulter has every right to write her column, just like I have every right to write mine. The fact that her columns are filled with invective and anger is irrelevant, she still has the right. And USA Today has every right to reject her columns for publication in their newspaper if they determine them to be counter to the publication’s standards. Coulter, it seems, has yet to realize this.