It Was Funny When It Was Said By A Talking Doll, But....

I gave up on Townhall.com a long time ago, as you rarely learn anything from one of its screeds that you can't discern from the headline and byline. Daniel Larison apparently has a greater tolerance for palaver than I, and he brought my attention to Mary Katharine Ham's reaction to Coulter's "faggot" joke.

Point being, I had a soft spot for Ann. When I left N.C. to move to D.C. a couple years ago, a friend gave me one of those talking Ann Coulter dolls, which I immediately set about hiding in my liberal editor's office, rigged to squawk about liberalism every 10 minutes. Heh. Luckily, he was a good-humored man.

Oh, tee hee. What sort of things does that doll say?

"Liberals hate America, they hate flag-wavers, they hate abortion opponents, they hate all religions except Islam, post 9/11. Even Islamic terrorists don't hate America like Liberals do. They don't have the energy. If they had that much energy, they'd have indoor plumbing by now."

Oh, how hilarious. I mean, how unfunny. As Ms. Ham says,

I, for one, am proud that there are Middle Easterners, gay men and women, and other minorities for whom conservatism is an ideology that empowers. Don't they get enough crap from our lefty colleagues for "leaving the plantation?" Why should they be subjected to more from one of their supposed allies?

Am I wrong to infer that she intends that comment to include followers of Islam?

So the "joke" that was funny (or at least not inappropriate) when originally made by Ann Coulter, and which was funny when repeated by an Ann Coulter doll in her (good natured, tolerant) liberal editor's office, would have been horribly inappropriate if repeated years later at the CPAC event?

Why am I still left thinking that the real problem was the laugh track.