To be fair, that's what most political talk show hosts do, except for the aforementioned r****d Alan Colmes.
I think Bill Maher is one of the few political commentators who truly think outside the box. You can't put that guy in any category.
While I never really enjoyed his show, I did find it hilarious that it was cancelled for a politically incorrect comment.
Although I don't agree with squat he has to say, I think he is funny. Just his comments and his style. I used to really hate him, but I like his HBO show. He doesn't treat his guest with opposing views very kindly either.
I actually liked his views on Politically Incorrect. I thought they were really out there and made people think, rather than just sit there and say "Ahhh... shaddup!" like we do (or at least I do) when I watch these windbags on Fox News, CNN, and MSNBC.
He's an entertainer posing as a newsman, pretty much like the rest of FOX News. He's called the ACLU a fascist organization, compared Ludacris to Jeffrey Dahmer, and regularly throws out half-truths to incite his sheep. He's a goof basically. It's unfortunate that MSNBC has stooped to FOX News tactics with this O'Reilly clone Joe Scarborough and this Mike Savage guy with his neanderthal nation. Pretty soon all that will be left to watch for actually fair and balanced news will be the Lehrer News Hour on PBS.
I don't know about Bill Mahr not treating his guests with opposing views kindly. That hate monger Anne Coulter was always buddy buddy with him when she was on the show.
Bill O'Reilly and Sean Hannity are just highly paid blow-hards. They're the "pudding" of the news world.. just sensationalism with no real journalistic value. I watch their programs sometimes, mainly for a laugh. It's amazing to believe that anyone could find these two guys are "fair and balanced".
Well, the litany of her antics include much more than name calling. I think she's more of a fierce and shameless self-promoter than anything else.
I've seen Ann Coulter many times. She is a tart, but she substantiates her positions. I'd like Oski2005 to do the same. "Hate-monger" is thrown around so much by The Left that it is impersonal and meaningless. It is just a convenient label-- that's all.
Conservatives feel O'Reilly is fair and balanced. Jon Stewart once commented that he watches Fox News when he wants objective reporting. Of course he was doing this when he said it.
Her new book calls, in the title, liberals treasonous. Oski, how dare you say anything bad about cute little Annie?
Here's a little excerpt from a very interesting book I'm reading. "I first met Ann Coulter in 1996 when we were both hired to be pundits on the new cable news station, MSNBC... Coulter was eventually fired when she attacked a disabled Vietnam veteran on the air, screaming, "People like you caused us to lose that war!" But this was just one of the many incidents where she had leaped over the bounds of good taste into the kind of talk that is usually reserved for bleachers or bar fights. In her columns, published in one of the most extreme of all conservative publications, Human Events, she regularly referred to the president of the United States, Bill Clinton, as a "pervert, liar, and a felon" and a "flim-flam artist." She termed the first lady to be "pond scum" and "white trash" and the late Pamela Harriman a "w****." Coulter said these things all while appearing on air in dresses so revealing they put one in mind of Sharon Stone in the film Basic Instinct. The great Coulter's fame, the more malevolent grew her hysteria. In her 1998 book, High Crimes and Misdemeanors: The Case Against Bill Clinton, she wrote "this recurring nightmare of a presidency, we have a national debate about whether he 'did it,' even though all sentient people know he did. Otherwise there would be debates only about whether to impeach of assassinate." (Can you imagine what would happen to journalist implying we have George Bush killed?) Such was the wisdom of the alleged "constitutional scholar" whose work George Will quoted on ABC's This Week, (Will is not very particular about his sources. I counted exactly one work of history in Coulter's copious footnotes. Coulter has also been accused of plagiarism by a former colleague, but denies the charge). Shortly after 9/11, Coulter became famous again when she suggested, in a column published by the National Review Online, after seeing anti-American demonstrators in Arab nations, that we "invade their countries, kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity." Coulter's column was dropped by the magazine, but not because the editors objected to it's content. Editor Jonah Goldberg explained, "We ended the relationship because she behaved with a total lack of professionalism, friendship, and loyalty." (Coulter had called the editors "girly boys") Coulter remained unbowed. At a meeting of the National Political Action Conference, speaking of the young American who converted to militant Islam and fought along side the Taliban, Coulter advised "We need to execute people like John Walker in order to physically intimidate liberals, by making them realize they can be killed too. Otherwise they'll turn out to be outright traitors." She also joked about the proposed murder of the U.S. Secretary of Transportation, Norm Mineta. In her second book-length primal scream, Coulter compared Katie Couric of the Today show to Eva Braun. (She would later add Joseph Goebbels after Couric challenged her in an interview.) She termed Christie Todd Whitman, the former governor of New Jersey and head of the Environmental Protection Agency, a "dimwit" and a "birdbrain". Sen. Jim Jeffords as a "half-wit." Gloria Steinem as a "termagent" and a "deeply ridiculous figure," who "had to sleep" with a rich liberal to fund Ms. Magazine. But the errors are even more egregious than the insults, and her footnotes are, in many cases, a sham. The good folks at the American Prospect's weblog "tapped" went to the trouble of compiling Coulter's errors chapter by chapter. The sheer weight of these, coupled with their audacity, demonstrates the moral and intellectual bankruptcy of a journalistic culture that allows her near a microphone, much less a printing press. (if you doubt this, put down this book and log on right now to www.whatliberalmedia.com and follow the click to Appendix One) Coulter's View of the U.S. media can summed up as follows: "American journalists commit mass murder without facing the ultimate penalty, I think they are r****ded". In the New York Observer, Coulter joked about how wonderful it would have been if Timothy McVeigh had blow up the New York Times building and murdered all of it's inhabitants, apparently not even the evocation of a mass murder of journalists can curb Coulter's love affrair with the myth of a liberal media." Substantiated.
She is nasty. She oversteps propriety. She is a journalist-become-entertainer. She is a tabloid headline. She is not a hate-monger. It's all talk. I don't like her all that much... and I don't think she's that cute either... Hitler was a hate-monger. Saddam is a hate-monger. They take action.
To add to ewfd's info, here's just one, among many, choice excerpt from an Ann Coulter column published last September (but you could pick just about any of her columns, they all sound the same): Gore also complained that Bush has made the "rest of the world" angry at us. Boo hoo hoo. He said foreigners are not worried about "what the terrorist networks are going to do, but about what we're going to do. Good. They should be worried. They hate us? We hate them. Americans don't want to make Islamic fanatics love us. We want to make them die. There's nothing like horrendous physical pain to quell angry fanatics. So sorry they're angry – wait until they see American anger. Japanese kamikaze pilots hated us once too. A couple of well-aimed nuclear weapons, and now they are gentle little lambs. That got their attention. In this instance, I think the "hate monger" label fits pretty well. Interestingly, Coulter isn't very well respected in the more academic conservative circles. In fact, the National Review decided to drop her column in late 2001. Here's the NR's editor explaining the decision: "In the wake of her invade-and-Christianize-them column, Coulter wrote a long, rambling rant of a response to her critics that was barely coherent. She's a smart and funny person, but this was Ann at her worst — emoting rather than thinking, and badly needing editing and some self-censorship, or what is commonly referred to as "judgment." Running this "piece" would have been an embarrassment to Ann, and to NRO. Rich Lowry pointed this out to her in an e-mail (I was returning from my honeymoon). She wrote back an angry response, defending herself from the charge that she hates Muslims and wants to convert them at gunpoint. But this was not the point. It was NEVER the point. The problem with Ann's first column was its sloppiness of expression and thought. Ann didn't fail as a person — as all her critics on the Left say — she failed as WRITER, which for us is almost as bad. Rich wrote her another e-mail, engaging her on this point, and asking her — in more diplomatic terms — to approach the whole controversy not as a PR-hungry, free-swinging pundit on Geraldo, but as a careful writer. No response. Instead, she apparently proceeded to run around town bad-mouthing NR and its employees. Then she showed up on TV and, in an attempt to ingratiate herself with fellow martyr Bill Maher, said we were "censoring" her. By this point, it was clear she wasn't interested in continuing the relationship. What publication on earth would continue a relationship with a writer who would refuse to discuss her work with her editors? What publication would continue to publish a writer who attacked it on TV? What publication would continue to publish a writer who lied about it — on TV and to a Washington Post reporter? And, finally, what CONSERVATIVE publication would continue to publish a writer who doesn't even know the meaning of the word "censorship"? So let me be clear: We did not "fire" Ann for what she wrote, even though it was poorly written and sloppy. We ended the relationship because she behaved with a total lack of professionalism, friendship, and loyalty." Coulter's clearly got flash and bravado. But she is also sloppy with the invectives and name-calling to the point of damaging people on both sides of the political aisle. That probably won't make for a long career in political writing.
I think that is the reason I watch. That is where the entertainment comes in. The passion of Hannity and O-Reilly draw me in. Did anybody catch Sean Hannity completely blast that Democratic Congresswoman last night on Hannity and Colmes? The congresswoman bascially agreed with Tom Daschle's moronic comments blasting our president. That was classic. I usually agree with what they have to say because they provide better evidence to back up their claims than their guests do (the guests that go against their position)
