Already I need to take a shower, and I've barely gotten out of my headline. I have this tightness thing happening in my neck and a scaly rash seems to be spreading right next to what might be real nice case of TMJ.
Thank you very much, Media Matters.
That's Mediamatters.org, David Brock's progressive website that regularly takes on the right wing and so-called liberal media for any dishonesty, mistakes and good ole-fashioned hypocrisy in their work, always backed up by actual transcripts and sound checks Good stuff.
Until yesterday.
That's when, Jamison Foser, Media Matters of America Managing Director, emailed out a call to arms for all good Mediamatter fans to contact newspapers and remind them that they might want to drop Ann Coulter's column.
Holey Goebbels, folks. Are we now handing the good fight right over to a far-right's cocktail-dress laden Adam's apple. What's next? Calling up Nancy Pelosi and having her increase the reach of the Patriot act? Award the Medal of Freedom to Michael Savage?
Of course Media Matters is not exactly asking for us to demand paper to pull Ann's column. That would be anti-what-we're-supposed-to-be. Instead they just want us to whine. Liberals are allowed to whine. We've been swell at it for the past six years. Then again, if the paper happens to pull her column, as nine have to date, well, that is the paper's choice. Not our pressure to drop her.
But truth be known, it is all about just that pressure. Pressure to keep someone who we dislike from writing for people who - for some unfathomable reason - enjoy Ann's, choke, work. Only we can't. Hideous demagogues fall from grace at a pace of their own making. We have to let her continue to spread her abominations until she crumbles is under the weight of their own turpitude. If not we become more like her and her ilk.
Oy. Defending someone as contemptible as Ann Coulter makes one feel some sense of camaraderie with the public defender who is obligated to take on Jeffery Dahmer's case even though you know damn well he's guilty. You know he's reprehensible but the law says he has a right to a trial. Or maybe it's closer to the ACLU defending the Nazi Party's right to march in Skokie. But defending her right to write we must.
I think I just threw up a little in my mouth.
Imagine if every time Keith Olbermann said something Bill O'Reilly didn't like, he tried to have him fired. Okay, bad example.
If Ann Coulter wants to write odiously ignorant essays and papers choose to print them, she and they should be allowed to. If it's a problem for you then repeal that problematic First Amendment. You want to threaten and/or boycott them, don't host a website that's supposed to act as a guardian of media truth; start hosting the Factor.
You want to write about how full of holes her inexplicable logic is, or report her latest unjustified attack on innocents, or defend the newest scapegoat of her toxic rankle, fine. Just don't try to stop her from expressing whatever poison her mind secretes.
Yelling "Ann Coulter" in a crowded theater is still perfectly permissible.
The First Amendment is like human emotion. You can't choose just the good emotions. You don't want to shut down sadness, you can forget about experiencing happiness. You shut down Ann Coulter, you shut down all freedom of expression. Dammit.
By all means, keep an eye on her, like you monitor an odd, irritating spot on the skin.
You may dislike all that Ann Coulter stands for, but don't stand for shutting her up. If you do, we all lose.
And that's when the spot turns into cancer.
Excuse me while I take a shower.
Steve Young is author of "Great Failures of the Extremely Successful"