‘F--king Jews’ Rant - Ann Coulter Defends

 

The conservative pundit says she doesn’t hate Jews—just the Republican candidates sucking up to them.

Gadfly Ann Coulter's veneer of conservative cool came crashing down during the final minutes of CNN’s marathon debate.

Apparently offended by multiple expressions of solidarity with the state of Israel, she delicately tweeted “How many f---ing Jews do these people think there are in the United States?”

The reaction has been swift and—apart from the hard-right racists tweeting their approval with the hashtag #IStandWithAnn—uniformly outraged.

In an interview with The Daily Beast, Coulter said the controversy was all based on a misunderstanding. She didn’t mean to say that Jews were hoarding influence in this country. Not at all. “I’m accusing Republicans of thinking the Jews have so much power. They’re the ones who are comedically acting out this play where Jews control everything,” Coulter said.

This isn’t the first tangle of its kind. Those of us old enough to remember landlines still recall how another Republican pol put “fuck” and “Jew” together: Secretary of State James Baker, circa 1989. In fact, maybe Coulter’s words count as a kind of progress. Where Baker said, infamously, “Fuck the Jews—they don’t vote for us anyway,” Coulter is complaining that Republicans care too much about the fucking Jews.

But of course, beneath the superficial evolution is the same unforgivably anti-Semitic trope that runs like a poison thread from Henry Ford to Mahmoud Ahmedinejad to the Hebrew-haters “standing with Ann” on Twitter: that “the Jews” have disproportionate power and influence in world affairs.

And if Coulter’s point was to criticize Republican candidates pandering to Israel, I asked, isn’t it still problematic to say that a group of politicians think Jews have too much power?

“Well,” she interjected, “this episode is not going a long way to disprove that.”
Oof.

“My point was this whole culture of virtue-signaling where debates are about nothing. Look, Republicans all agree 100% that we are pro-Israel, pro-Life, pro-gun. So why do we spend so much time on these issues? It’s just pandering, so who are they pandering to?”

I asked whether Coulter could understand how some Jews might still be offended by its language, reminiscent as it is of the centuries-old canard that the Jews control Washington/Hollywood/World Banking/whatever.

“No,” she said, “I don’t think it was my language. I think it was ripped out of context and lied about…. Anyone following any of the debate in America knew exactly what I was talking about… My tweet was about Republicans and the pandering. It wasn’t about Israel, it wasn’t about Jews. It’s what Republicans are thinking in their little pea brains. I could say the same thing about Evangelicals. Who are you pandering to? A lot of it is to Sheldon Adelson and the Evangelicals…. This kind of suck-uppery is humiliating.”

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