Topic: Media Research Center
Is Brent Bozell really as clueless as he appears to be about Ann Coulter's more violent statements?
He certainly appeared to be in a July 9 appearance on "Hannity & Colmes." Bozell attacked a blogger who allegedly called for the death of Rush Limbaugh and Ted Nugent (though, in fact, not until "WHEN they manage to inevitably push their litany of hatespeak into actual bloodletting, and full-blown civil war"), claiming this threat was ignored while Ann Coulter's threats against John Edwards were highly publicized and, in Bozell's words, "vilely taken out of context," despite the fact that there's a big difference between a blogger nobody had heard of until this incident and a million-selling author who appears regularly on TV.
When Alan Colmes (who noted the predicate before the blogger's threat) pointed out that Coulter is on record as stating that the only question about Bill Clinton was "whether to impeach or assassinate," Bozell responded: "I have never heard her say that." That's true only a narrowly technical sense; Coulter didn't speak those words but wrote them in her 1998 book "High Crimes and Misdemeanors."
Colmes also pointed out to Bozell that Coulter got the words of Bill Maher wrong and that Coulter was using Maher as a justification for her statement that rather than referring to John Edwards as a "faggot" in the future, "I'll just wish he had been killed in a terrorist assassination plot." Bozell tried to quibble, demanding, "Give me the quote, Alan," which Colmes did. Bozell then retorted: "But you haven't read the whole quote. I don't have it in front of me, but the whole quote said a lot more than that, and you know it."
If Bozell is that whiny and defensive against Alan Colmes, we can see why he won't appear on TV against most liberals (as we've noted). And his purported ignorance of Coulter's more controversial statements doesn't exactly ring true.
UPDATE: Sean Hannity claimed he "never heard" of Coulter's remark, either, despite the fact that he discussed it on "Hannity & Colmes" a year ago.
