11 March 2009

Jane, you ignorant slut

Rico says okay, that headline was really Dan Ackroyd berating Jane Curtin on Saturday Night Live, but surely Bill Maher would have liked to have used the line in his 'debate' with Ann Coulter, per this article by Dave Itzkoff in The New York Times:
Tucked into an angular lounge chair in an Art Deco suite above Radio City Music Hall on Monday evening, Ann Coulter, the conservative author, was awaiting her would-be adversary, the liberal comedian Bill Maher. She and Mr. Maher had agreed to face off in a series of debates over the next three nights, and Ms. Coulter was concerned that their material might go stale from repeated performances.
“Bill wants me to behave like a wife who laughs each time she hears her husband tell the same story,” Ms. Coulter said. “I told him I’m not an actress, or I’d have a bigger apartment.”
A few minutes later, Mr. Maher, host of the HBO series Real Time With Bill Maher, entered the room, dressed in jeans and a Planet Hollywood jacket. He hugged Ms. Coulter, and noted the high-heeled shoes she was wearing. “Did you get taller?” Mr. Maher asked. “I wanted to intimidate you,” Ms. Coulter replied teasingly. They sat as their moderator, Mark Halperin, an editor-at-large for Time magazine, explained the rules of the debate (“Basically, I’m going to stay out of your way,” Mr. Halperin said), then retired to separate dressing rooms.
This was not necessarily the sort of showdown that promoters expected when they signed up Ms. Coulter (whose books include Guilty: Liberal ‘Victims’ and Their Assault on America) and Mr. Maher (whose recent documentary, Religulous, satirized organized faiths) for a three-day tour.
The debates began on Monday in New York and were to continue Tuesday in Boston and Wednesday in Chicago. They begin the 2009 Speaker Series, an annual roster of public-affairs events. Last year’s calendar included former President Bill Clinton, former Senator John Edwards, and Rudolph W. Giuliani, the former New York mayor. Coming events feature Mike Huckabee, the former governor of Arkansas, on a panel with Arianna Huffington and D. L. Hughley (on 31 March) and the political strategists James Carville and Karl Rove (on 26 May). To begin the 2009 schedule, producers wanted theatrics as well as politics, with rivals whose verbal sparring would “inspire and impassion” audiences, said Melissa Ormond, the chief operating officer of MSG Entertainment, which produces the series. In Mr. Maher and Ms. Coulter, they saw outspoken entertainers who could reliably generate sparks (and ticket sales), assuming they would share a stage. “You’d be surprised how easy it was to convince them,” Ms. Ormond said.
Although Mr. Maher and Ms. Coulter play antagonists when called upon, they rarely have been mortal enemies. In the 1990s, Ms. Coulter, best known then as a lawyer, cable news analyst, and advocate for the impeachment of Mr. Clinton, was a frequent guest on Mr. Maher’s ABC series, Politically Incorrect, where she traded jabs with the likes of Jon Stewart and Chris Rock.
In a predebate telephone interview, Mr. Maher said that he and Ms. Coulter were good friends— “not dating, as people try to say on the Internet, but friends”— and that he respected her resolve. “Unlike so many people in America, she was not afraid to get booed,” Mr. Maher said.
Ms. Coulter likewise said that she respected Mr. Maher’s bipartisan approach to Politically Incorrect. “Unlike most snoozefest political shows, Bill booked guests who didn’t all agree with one another,” she wrote in response to questions sent by e-mail.
But in this decade, their relationship has on occasion turned contentious. When Ms. Coulter appeared on Mr. Maher’s HBO series in 2003, he accused her of making up facts. (He used far stronger language.)
And in 2007, when Ms. Coulter was criticized for remarking that she could not describe Mr. Edwards without using an antigay slur, she countered that the media should pay more attention to Mr. Maher, who, she said, had wished for then-Vice President Dick Cheney to be killed by a bomb. (Mr. Maher was defending the rights of bloggers to make such comments.)
Critics from across the political spectrum have complained that Mr. Maher and Ms. Coulter are essentially operating from the same playbook. “They share the assumption that the most extreme formulation of an idea is its truest one,” said Leon Wieseltier, literary editor of The New Republic.
In a blog post for The Daily Beast, Meghan McCain, the oldest daughter of Senator John McCain, wrote that Ms. Coulter was “offensive, radical, insulting, and confusing, all at the same time,” and that her appearances with Mr. Maher seemed “more like a traveling circus than a serious debate.”
Both debaters acknowledged that a certain amount of provocation was part of their strategy. “I’m a comedian,” Mr. Maher said. “I’m always trying to get a laugh, but I do not say things I do not believe to get a laugh.” In an e-mail message, Ms. Coulter wrote, “I’m trying to express ideas, usually about important issues, and if a point is made well, that will tend to elicit a reaction.”
At their best, said Andrew Ferguson, a senior editor at The Weekly Standard, Ms. Coulter and Mr. Maher aspired to be 'publicists', as the term was once applied to public intellectuals like H. L. Mencken and William F. Buckley Jr., meaning “a mediator between the world of ideas and the world of popular culture, who translates ideas into a more digestible form.”
Not that Mr. Ferguson expected a Coulter-Maher face-off to rival the Lincoln-Douglas debates. “It’s like the Battle of Stalingrad,” he said. “Any sensible person would want both of them to lose.”
Mr. Maher, who said he still regarded Ms. Coulter as “a witty, fun drinking companion”, hoped to use the debate to challenge her views. Ms. Coulter said she agreed to participate because, she wrote, “I’m getting a private car.” After being introduced by Mr. Halperin, Ms. Coulter and Mr. Maher each made opening statements. Ms. Coulter tweaked the news media for being too deferential to President Obama and for comparing him to Lincoln and Jesus. (“They like carpenters,” Ms. Coulter said of the media. “It’s plumbers they hate.”)
Mr. Maher praised the president for daring to quote Voltaire, and criticized Republicans for nominating Sarah Palin, the governor of Alaska, for vice president. (“They’ve gone from the party of Lincoln to the party of winkin',” he said.)
Then they fielded questions from Mr. Halperin on various topics, from Mr. Obama’s recent decision to lift strict limits on stem-cell research (Mr. Maher was in favor, Ms. Coulter opposed) to the causes of the economic crisis (Mr. Maher: greedy bankers; Ms Coulter: “yuppie-scum house flippers”). Though their exchanges were often heated— provoking cheers, boos, heckling and counterheckling from audience members— the combatants could be jocular. Skeptical of Ms. Coulter’s claim that many scientists do not believe in evolution, Mr. Maher told her, “You’re just being a dunk-tank clown, looking to sell more baseballs.” And when Mr. Halperin asked Ms. Coulter to comment on the recent war of words between Rush Limbaugh and the Obama administration, she lamented, “I have a book out— why couldn’t they have attacked me?” But when Mr. Halperin asked Mr. Maher if he agreed with Ms. McCain’s criticisms of Ms. Coulter, Mr. Maher declined to take the bait. Instead, he poked fun at himself. The perception that he and Ms. Coulter like to start fights is a mistaken one, he explained. “It’s just because others are wrong,” Mr. Maher said. “I would love a world where I never had to argue.”
Rico says he hopes someone televises this stuff...

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