Mad Annie, respectable Republican lady

Mad Annie Coulter had the following to say at an online site, Right Wing News. The interviewer asked her to give a one-sentence line about a list of six people as he said their names. The names appear in bold, Mad Annie's responses in regular type:

John Hawkins: How about dashing off a quick sentence or even just a word or two about the following individuals...

Cindy Sheehan: The Dennis Rodman of the peace movement.
Joe Wilson: World's most intensely private exhibitionist. ...
John Murtha: The reason soldiers invented "fragging."
George Bush: My Commander-In-Chief.

Peter Daou explains for those not up on their Vietnam War lore that "fragging" refers to a soldier assassinating someone (usually an officer) with a hand grenade, something that actually did occur at times during the Vietnam War.

As Daou says, "It's hard to deny that Coulter's words border on incitement."

The point is not to worry about every rightwing goofball who makes obnoxious statements. Those we will have with us always.

But Mad Annie is a Republican commentator who is taken seriously within her party, and is legitimized by mainstream media outlets from NBC to Time magazine who provide her forums to spew her hate. She is one of the main conduits by which far-right extremism gets "mainstreamed" into today's Republican Party.

Duncan "Atrios" Black has a sour comment on this phenomenon:

There's nothing these people can say which will stop the mainstream media from putting them on. It's all balanced out, you see, by the fact that Michael Moore is fat.

So, yes, Coulter identifies John Murtha as a worthy target of murder. She'll probably be rewarded with a show cohosted with Joe Klein where they can talk about how nasty liberal bloggers are.

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