The thing about Coulter was her obvious double coding. She knew her CPAC audience would dig her willingness to use a pejorative insult, and knew the press would condemn her. She calculated that the condemnation by the MSM would simply make her fans love her all the more. It may have been a miscalculation, but that remains to be seen. As long as pundits keep asking her on TV, her books keep selling, and not too many paper drop her column, she’s happy.

It was 1993. We (me and a beefy Ann-Arbor student) looked on dumbfounded as this NJ Tori Amos fan dropped the B-word repeatedly. And I asked myself: How did I get here? I’d experienced his heartfelt renditions of Tori’s greatest hits. He cried! Real tears! Tori’s songs were special to him, and he made us listen as he performed them on the keyboard he dragged out to Redmond. But here was a man who never asked WWTD? Because I’m pretty sure I’ve never heard Tori talk about “Bitches”.

Any-who: I can imagine a world where recognizably human people use the word “faggot” in a thoughtless, careless, childish, weird, but not-entirely-evil way. But Ann Coulter is not one of those people. The sooner you fuckers (by which I mean American war-mongers (by which I mean all of you (except Arthur Silber))) stop paying her to be a monster, the happier I’ll be.

I gots to stop drinking and typing,
PLUR

Yeah, it is.

As a pejorative like the word “nigger”, not so much. It’s more like a catch-all word to describe someone (usually a heterosexual) who may say or do something effeminate, but really, it can be used for anything. Someone annoying? Faggot. Someone stupid? Dumb faggot. Someone confused? What a lost faggot.

In my experience men and women of my age group (early to late 20s) use it. Be it the military, athletic teams, business professionals, grad students, or even non-profit employees, I hear it with a fair amount of regularity.

Locally, a morning radio show on WJFK 106.7 called “The Junkies” has on-air personalities that use it all the time.

I think DC journalistically/politically-minded 20-somethings are a bit out of the loop. And I don’t think you fall into this category, but they’re also a humorless somewhat dorky bunch. I’m not suggesting using the word is funny or what makes someone funny, but that IN MY EXPERIENCE (which I’m sure will be shit on for presenting my opinion) the word seems to crop up more – as used in the weird context I describe above – in circles that I personally have found to have a little more personality and fun about themselves. After all, stand up comedians IN THE CLUBS use it all the time as well.

I realize this is all pretty subjective and completely open to trashing. I also realize to those who take the word seriously that using it seems as awful as calling someone a “nigger.” But in the minds of people who don’t share that opinion (and they are numerous), most of whom are otherwise quite reasonable, they believe the term doesn’t carry the same weight as the n-word and they further attempt to defuse it by applying it to everyone but gays. Strange, really, and doesn’t make it right, but that’s been my observation.

By my rough estimate, more than half or the criticisms that conservatives are leveling are merely on the tactical ground that bigotry is bad for electoral purposes.

I’d rather see something that said: Ann, you demented piece of shit, conservatives respect the sanctity of home and hearth and therefore: (1) we don’t mock people for who they choose to sleep with and (2) we don’t level accusations that married men with children are homosexual in the absence of the evidence.

Of course, this is a fantastic, hypothetical version of conservatism that actually followed the belief of home-as-castle.