Topic: WorldNetDaily
Looks we got somebody's attention. A few days after we raised the issue, Joseph Farah devoted his Sept. 24 WorldNetDaily column to whether Ann Coulter's "f---ing Jews" tirade will cause him to stop publishing her column.
His answer? It won't. His reason? Christian forgiveness, or something.
Farah states that since Coulter's remarks, he has "been inundated with requests and demands to exercise my authority as founder, chief executive officer and editor of WND.com to dump Coulter as a commentator" -- making sure not to mention us, of course.
He then explains: "If I believed she was truly an anti-Semite, that would be a different story. Then I would bounce her so fast it would make her blond hair flip. But I don’t think she is." He adds, "I would hope and trust the editors of WND’s commentary section would never allow her to make such an insensitive and inflammatory remark like that in our publication. I certainly would not condone it."
But WND has, in fact, published anti-Jewish commentary on its pages. In 2010, WND published a commentary by Pat Buchanan complaining there were too many Jews on the Supreme Court. And in 2012, WND columnist Burt Prelutsky argued that the so-called "war on Christmas" is a conspiracy pushed by "Jewish judges, Jewish journalists and the largely Jewish funded ACLU." So let's not pretend that the editors of WND’s commentary section have any particular sensitivity on the subject.
Farah then recounted the tit-for-tat between him and Coulter over Coulter's speaking to a group of gay conservatives and Farah dropping her as a speaker for his far-right political conference over it."People assumed I would dump Coulter’s column then," he write. "I did not. Why? I forgave her. That’s what Christians do." He suggests he's done the same for Coulter here, but he doesn't explicity say so.
Then, Farah turns the whole brouhaha into self-aggrandization, as he's prone to do:
There’s another reason I didn’t drop Coulter (and, no, it has nothing to do with traffic she brings WND).
This is the part very few people get: I actually believe in providing the broadest forum of stimulating commentary to be found in the English language. That’s what we do at WND, in addition to using our news section to uncover fraud, waste, abuse and corruption in government and other powerful institutions with WND’s team of enterprising, investigative and truly independent journalists.
Think about that.
Where else but WND do you find commentary from the far left to the far right and plenty in the middle?
Nowhere.
It’s unheard of at any other news organization today.
It’s a value I learned a long time ago as a newspaperman. But it no longer exists today in the New Media or the Old Media. WND stands alone in presenting both sides! Think of it.
Name one other news organization that strives to do this. Believe me, you won’t find one.
This is all utter horsepuckey. As we've repeatedly highlighted, exactly two of WND's three dozen or so regular columnists are explicitly liberal -- Bill Press and Ellen Ratner, whose presence at WND is merely window-dressing for Farah to claim he has a full spectrum of columnists -- while nearly all of the rest are on the conservative/libertarian end of the spectrum. We can't think of a single WND columnist who is a centrist, despite Farah's claim that he has "plenty in the middle."
Farah's claim that "WND stands alone in presenting both sides" is a baldfaced lie as well. "Name one other news organization that strives to do this," he says? Sure! To start with, the Washington Post, whose opinion pages include conservatives like George Will, Charles Krauthammer, Kathleen Parker, Jennifer Rubin and Michel Gerson as well as liberals like E.J. Dionne, Greg Sargent and Colbert King.
There's also a little publication called the New York Times, which includes right-leaning columnists such as David Brooks and Ross Douthat.
In fact, most daily newspapers in the U.S. attempt to present a spectrum of opinions on its commentary pages. For Farah to claim WND is literally the only publication publishing a diverse spectrum of opinion is not only false and ahistorical, it allows him to deny the fact that both WND's commentary and supposed straight-news pages are heavily skewed to the right.
And while we can't prove Farah's claim that the "traffic she brings WND" played no consideration into WND's decision to keep Coulter is a lie, we're pretty sure it is. After all , it was just last year that Farah was bragging how "her column still runs in WND every week, the place more people read it than anywhere else."
Interestingly, nowhere in Farah's column does he explain why he is keeping Coulter as a columnist on the basis of the quality of the content she provides. There's not even an attempt to blather about her providing a unique point of view or a track record of being intellectually provocative and writing a series of best-selling books.
Instead, he repeatedly and personally slags her at every opportunity, at one point stating, "Coulter is brash. She is angry. She is reckless. She’s badly in need of some accountability in her life. I hope she finds it along with some peace." The nicest thing he says about her is the backhanded compliment that he doesn't believe she's anti-Semitic.
It's clear Farah doesn't respect Coulter as a person or for the quality of her opinions, which again points us to the inescapable conclusionthat the only reason WND is keeping Coulter is for the traffic she brings to the website. Which, thus, makes Farah's argument that he's forgiven her anti-Semitic tirade sound more than a little hollow.
Farah would probably be the first to argue that Christian forgiveness shouldn't turn one into a doormat, but a doormat is exactly what Farah looks like here. He's constantly forgiving Coulter's transgressions, even when she's personally attacking him. By taking her abuse, he looks weak.
It's almost as if Coulter is trying to see how offensive she can be before Farah will drop her column at WND. It's clear that this will continue until her WND traffic numbers drop -- and not before then.
