MSNBC hosts Obama-bashing hatemonger Ann Coulter

[DeepModem Mom]

Media Matters for America: "Media Matters" by Jamison Foser
MSNBC still doesn't "get it": hosts Obama-bashing hatemonger Ann Coulter ... again

Ann Coulter peddles nothing but hate. Well, that isn't quite fair -- she typically throws in a few lies as well. But the hate is her bread and butter. MSNBC knows this; they fired her for it long ago. Yet they continue to host her.

Media Matters noted in October:

"As Media Matters for America documented, in the weeks following the release of her last book, Godless: The Church of Liberalism (Crown Forum, June 2006), Coulter made numerous appearances on MSNBC, CNBC, and their parent network, NBC, where she unleashed a stream of attacks on the widows of victims of the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. As Media Matters also documented, while NBC continued to provide Coulter an open platform with which to spew her inflammatory and offensive rhetoric, several NBC hosts and anchors -- including Tonight Show host Jay Leno, Today co-host Matt Lauer, and Nightly News anchor Brian Williams -- expressed disapproval of Coulter's 'harsh' and 'nasty' statements. On June 26, 2007 -- the date Godless was released in paperback -- Chris Matthews, host of MSNBC's Hardball, claimed that Coulter forces him to 'go to confession.' Matthews, however, has a history of inviting her on his show. Following an appearance on Today in June 2006 -- during which Coulter criticized the 9-11 widows for 'speaking out using the fact that they're widows' and 'using their grief' and 'the fact that they lost a husband' to make 'a political point while preventing anyone from responding' -- Williams devoted a segment of the Nightly News to the subject of 'civility in American life,' highlighting Coulter's comments. And yet NBC and its cable affiliates have continued to invite her on the air...."

Just yesterday, Coulter was a guest on MSNBC Live. A day earlier, she had referred to Barack Obama as "B. Hussein Obama" five times in a span of two minutes and once described him as "President Hussein." During her appearance on MSNBC, the cable channel touted her recent statement that Obama "wouldn't be running for president if he weren't half-black," which she has described as his "big accomplishment."...

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In August 2006, MSNBC's Keith Olbermann said of Coulter: "Why she has not been banned from this network, I do not know." That's a good question, and one (NBC News chief Steve) Capus should answer -- but it is also too narrow a question.

MSNBC is the channel that hired Coulter in the 1990s, only to fire her after her controversial comments to a disabled Vietnam veteran; that hired Michael Savage in 2003, then had to fire him for telling a caller to "get AIDS and die"; that hired Don Imus, then had to fire him for making sexist and racist comments about the Rutgers women's basketball team. This is a cable channel that has, for years, been a welcome home to highly questionable comments about race, gender, ethnicity, religion, and sexual orientation.....This is a cable channel that, in the middle of a monthlong controversy over its pattern of broadcasting sexist comments, chose to host Ann Coulter, a pundit whose defining characteristic is her tendency to make utterly inappropriate comments about women and minorities....

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This is what MSNBC is. It is the cable channel of Ann Coulter and Michael Savage and Don Imus. It is the home to Chris Matthews and Tucker Carlson and their deeply disturbed attitudes toward women. The longer MSNBC responds to legitimate concerns about the conduct of its hosts and guests by lashing out at critics and booking Ann Coulter again, the more clear it becomes that the problems at MSNBC go much higher than Chris Matthews.

http://mediamatters.org/items/200802150016?f=h_latest

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MSNBC host Keith Olbermann awarded right-wing pundit Ann Coulter the "bronze" in his nightly "Worst Person in the World" segment for her repeated references to Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Barack Obama as "B. Hussein Obama" and "President Hussein" during an appearance on Fox News' Your World. Referring to an earlier appearance on MSNBC, he also said: "Then we put her on this network today so she could do it again."

http://mediamatters.org/items/200802150017?f=h_latest

[NJSecularist]

1. Why these networks give Ann Coulter an audience - I'll never know

She's worse than Michelle Malkin, and that's saying something.

[aquart]

2. Maybe they think it's balance for Chris Matthews?

[KharmaTrain]

3. It's Like Inviting On A Flasher

They open their coats...expose themselves. Some are turned on, many are turned off...but everyone is tuned in.

Coultergeist's real vocation is: attention whore. She sells her outrage and uses every opportunity she can to stir the pot to get even more attention. 10 years ago, this shitck got her a lot of notice...book deals and the darling of the hate radio crowd. Now her act has begun to wear off...the country has changed but her shtick hasn't. Now instead of shocking and people chuckling, many are just tuning off. Her 15 minutes is now at the 14:58 mark.

[Angela Shelley]

5. I am hoping that your statement holds true.

It would be nice to have her "off the landscape".

[Warren DeMontague]

4. She's like a deranged skeleton on meth.

Once I thought maybe her whole thing was a big post-modernist Andy Kaufmanesque put-on, but no one is THAT good.

[Perry Logan]

6. She's quite the cundit.

[margotb822]

7. I bet she doesn't even vote

She probably stays at home and thinks of more inflammatory statements to make!