Ann Coulter's Tweets Called "Anti-Semitic"

You can check the Tweets out here at Instapundit; the context was that she was annoyed that when asked, in the closing question, what candidates would do for America, several kept mentioning Israel.

I think Coulter was annoyed for two reasons: 1, I'm pro-Israel, but I gotta tell you, sometimes this pro-Israel agitation does get embarrassing to me. I'm pro-Israel, but I'm not as pro-Israel as an Israeli, and I would not compete with an Israeli as far as pro-Israel patriotism.

2, Coulter is obviously full-on nativist, America-for-Americans, and she's annoyed whenever the emphasis is taken off that.

I don't know if her tweet was anti-semitic, honestly. I think she thinks that her philosemtism is established enough that she can act as an Honorary Jews and drop otherwise-questionable bon mots like this. Actual Jews might very well disagree with her on this point.

For my part, I had a similar outburst when Christie pushed his dubious tale of being directly affected by 9/11 for the second time. (At least.) I said, "I can't believe I'm saying this, but shut the f*** up about 9/11."

Now, obviously, 9/11 remains something important to me, and as a general rule I think we should talk about 9/11. But Christie's use of 9/11 seemed to me to be obvious, clumsy, stupid attempt to propagandize for himself by pandering with his (weak) tale of 9/11 woe, and that annoyed me. *

I think Coulter was similarly antagonized by candidates she doesn't like pandering with the Israel Card, taking attention from her Beau of the Moment (Trump, obviously) and the only issues that currently matter to her (nationalism, the border, nativism).

She offers no apologies.

"You want to take that back?" Kelly asked the author about her tweet.

"No," Coulter responded, "I just tweeted the question --well, actually, I was tweeting all night when all the candidates were pandering, pandering, pandering. I wrote my column about it. They seem to be getting certain boxes: Have to mention Reagan, have to mention that they're pro-life, have to mention Israel."

"The entire Republican Party is pro-Reagan, pro-life, pro-Israel," she added. "The last question was: After you're president, how will America be better? And suddenly, we're back to Israel again. It's just this checking off of the boxes, and the virtues boxes and it's one of the things I like about -- in fact, I think they're probably pandering … to evangelicals, um, not Jews. It's just pandering, pandering, pandering, something we all agree on is not really separating the candidates."

Eh. As I've said, I'm in favor of a policy of looking for ways in which a statement is permissible and defensible rather than springing to assign it the least-charitable and most-outrageous interpretation.

And since I'm not aware of previous anti-semitic noises from Coulter, I don't see the predicate established for coming to the conclusion that she suddenly hates Jews (or has always hated Jews, but has been more savvy about concealing it).

But Ann Coulter, obviously, continues alienating a lot of her erstwhile fans.

More: Lee Harris discusses this.

* And obviously, I think, I would forgive this sort of pandering -- and even champion it as "smart politics" -- if it came from someone I supported. I imagine that's the case with Coulter too; if Trump had spoken up about his great devotion to Israel, she probably wouldn't have objected.

You notice pandering, and get pissed off by it, when it comes out of the mouth of someone you don't like. When it's from someone you like, you just shrug and say "Don't hate the player, hate the game. #Winning."

posted by Ace at 05:49 PM

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