You may have heard that Ann Coulter has been banned "for life" from NBC, although another news exec quickly stepped up to deny that assertion. Considering the life-span of NBC news execs, the statement probably meant "for as long as I work here..."

Why would a network ban a best-selling author? Its a good question, because people tune in to see Ann Coulter (I know I do...), and that means ratings. Its the same reason Bill Maher keeps showing up on the Tonight Show--he's always a good quote.

Is it because Coulter offends their liberal political views? Possibly but I doubt it. All sorts of conservatives get on the morning talk shows.

No, I think the reason is more basic--Ann Coulter makes her hosts look stupid.

SMITH: You don't think as an African-American, that he was at some greater risk?

COULTER: No, I do not. Because every presidential assassin -- or attempted presidential assassin in the history of the nation has either been a liberal, a communist, an anarchist, someone on the left, or there were two who had no politics whatsoever unless you count John Hinckley, who is certifiably insane. So, you know, we have-

SMITH: Which goes back -- which goes back to -- to your basic point that everything that's wrong with America is the left's fault.

COULTER: No, I have -- I wouldn't have mentioned that all these presidential assassins were anarchists, communists, liberals, they were some form of, you know, basically Obama's base, other than the fact that everyone keeps talking about Obama being at some unique risk. Well, I'm sorry, Sean Hannity's at greater risk. Rush Limbaugh's at greater risk. I promise you George Bush is at greater risk. He has been physically attacked two weeks ago. There's a book fantasizing about George Bush's assassination. There's a movie -- a documentary fantasizing about George Bush's assassination. And there are more hits on going Google for Obama and assassination than Bush and assassination. So maybe we can stop talking about the threat of right-wing violence in a country that is teeming with left-wing violence. At the Democratic National Convention-

SMITH: Take a breath. Take a breath. Take a breath. Take a breath.

Smith, who frankly I've never, ever watched, which surprises me a little, started out the conversation by pulling on audience heartstrings, claiming deep friendship with murdered talkshow host Alan Berg. Berg was machine gunned by White Supremacists in Denver in 1984. The implication he was making is that "right-wing nuts" are gunning for Barack Obama.

Let's do as Smith asks and take a breath--does he have any knowledge, any evidence at all of a White Supremacist plot against Obama? No, of course not--this "journalist" is engaged in nationally broadcast bar-talk, although I have no first hand knowledge of how much alcohol he may or may not have consumed prior to the interview.

What a "journalist" like Harry Smith is supposed to do with a conservative diva like Ann Coulter is what Couric did to Sarah Palin--embarrass them in front of the country. However, since Peter Jennings died, no network anchor bimbos have the intellectual horsepower to hang with Ms. Coulter, and they invariably end up embarrassing themselves rather that the conservative harpy.

The left is an anti-intellectual movement, but with the ironic twist that they believe they are completely rational. That arrogance has led them to try on several occasions to debate conservatives. I recall the Sean Hannity debate with Salt Lake mayor Ross Anderson. The conventional wisdom (from the liberal-left), was that Anderson, a lawyer, would wipe the floor with former construction worker Sean Hannity. The depth of embarrassment at Anderson's dismal performance was as bad as the aftermath of a BYU victory over the University of Utah in their annual football game.

There is of course, no admission of such defeats, except the reluctance to debate, to go on Fox News or otherwise confront the conservative ideological challenge with anything more than ridicule and vulgar pejoratives.

Finally, it might be wise to address the liberal-left equivocation between White Supremacists and conservatives.

Racism has always been and still is a Democrat kind of thing, which has always been less about ideology and more about the political culture of class and race warfare. Do White Supremicists really believe in free markets and smaller government? I don't think so.

They seem to have far more in common with Illnois' black caucus that insist that a black man's Senate seat is forever more a black man's Senate seat, or with Harry "pick a white woman" Reid, than with George W. Bush (who actually has and had major administration figures of color...)

I got a heads up from John Hawkins of Right Wing News this morning that he was publishing another interview with Ann Coulter.

I was reminded how crazy you have to be to get into a battle of wits with this woman. Does she sit up and night and think of snappy comebacks and devastating observations or does it just come naturally? Its pretty scary either way.

There is a palpable fear in the mainstream media of having to interview Coulter, which is at least ever other year when the most recent book she writes predictably ends up a national best seller. Her appearance on the Tonight Show was in the realm of the bizarre. Leno looked like he was interviewing a cobra, except I've seen him look more relaxed with actual cobras. The guy did not wanna be there, and like so many other liberals looking cognitive dissonance in the eye, his interview technique was a pleading for Coulter to not slaughter his sacred cows.

What makes Coulter so "dangerous" compared to say, Jon Stewart, is that while Jon is amusing, his observations don't hold up to close scrutiny. Stewart feeds his audiences biases, which of course no one challenges. Coulter on the other hand is a comedy front end to some serious academic rigor. The expectation is that she is "so outrageous" that you can just dismiss her like you would, oh Kathy Griffin, but that's the rub--the more outrageous it sounds, the more money you can bet that its ground truth.

I recall when she wrote a column "claiming" that Max Cleland wasn't injured in combat (Cleland came back from Vietnam with three missing limbs...). Liberal pundits went bonkers. Cleland, a defeated Senator from Georgia, was being used as a prop by the John Kerry campaign to talk about the war in Iraq. Kerry claimed on several occasions that Cleland had lost his limbs in combat--sexing up the story and Cleland's credibility to criticize the Bush administration.

Amid angry insinuations that I "lied" about Sen. Max Cleland, I was attacked on the Senate floor by Sen. Jack Reed, Molly Ivins called my column "error-ridden," and Al Hunt called it a "lie." Joe Klein said I was the reason liberals were being hysterical about George Bush's National Guard service.

If you weren't familiar with Coulter, you may well have been shocked and appalled at her disrespect for a "war hero". Obviously lots of mainstream pundits took the bait and entered her kill zone.

It is simply a fact that Max Cleland was not injured by enemy fire in Vietnam. He was not in combat, he was not — as Al Hunt claimed — on a reconnaissance mission, and he was not in the battle of Khe Sanh, as many others have implied. He picked up an American grenade on a routine noncombat mission and the grenade exploded.

In Cleland's own words: "I didn't see any heroism in all that. It wasn't an act of heroism. I didn't know the grenade was live. It was an act of fate." That is why Cleland didn't win a Purple Heart, which is given to those wounded in combat. Liberals are not angry because I "lied"; they're angry because I told the truth.

A fuller account was given by FrontPage Magazine.

This terrible accident happened not on a battlefield but on a helicopter pad 15 miles away from combat. Cleland stepped out of a helicopter to go have a beer with buddies, saw a hand grenade on the ground, assumed that he had dropped it and picked the explosive device up. It had been dropped by another, inexperienced soldier who had left the weapon on a hair trigger setting. It detonated, devastating Cleland’s 25-year-old body and in an instant changing his life.

The one incident gives you an idea of the environment in which Ann Coulter wrote. Cleland himself is the source of the refutation, but the Kerry campaign, in collusion with the mainstream media, practically dared conservatives to unmask their lie on the premise that sympathy for a grievously injured veteran would allow them to simply condemn the observation as "unfeeling".

Coulter, as she always does, took the dare, and she was vilified. Yet the vilification others feared is a source of strength because ultimately and always, Coulter has the goods. Her books are meticulous sourced and footnoted. By comparison, a book by Joe Conason, which just happens to be an example of an entire class of books that Coulter derided as "liberal books with the word 'lie' in the title...", has sourcing that would embarrass a high school senior. I was astonished to follow references to opinion columns, other liberal books with the word 'lie' in the title, and various partisan website URLs. It amounted to, "George Bush is lying--Al Franken said so..."

The academic rigor serves her well because after you get pissed at her and fire up the browser to google some facts which with to refute her argument, its uh-oh time. That happens three or four times and the state media starts acting like Coulter is calling from collections.

In spite of having seven best-selling books and one of the most highly-recognizable names in the country, Coulter doesn't have a single inch of column space in any major newspaper aside from the conservative Human Events. Coulter has material prepared for that question too.

...the news industry is the only business where the customer is always wrong.

I suspect Coulter is going to prosper significantly over the next four years. Clinton was very, very good for Rush Limbaugh, and I expect Obama will be similarly profitable for Coulter. On the other hand, anyone wearing a bow-tie and expressing horror over the existence of Sarah Palin is in for some tough times.

Ann Coulter's gone too far this time. Calling Obama "Chocolate Jesus" doesn't offend me. Like Clint Eastwood I'm an equal opportunity offender. But Fox should ban that lilywhite beanpole pronto or the race hustlers will come a-hustlin' and when the hustlers come a-hustlin', well, dot dot dot ...

Oh wait, it wasn't Ann Coulter? It was Bill Maher? Impossible. Liberals don't use racist trash talk, it's against their religion. See this clip at 6:40 -

But for the real McCoy enjoy Tom Waits:

Update: After a little reflection I realise that 'liberal' doesn't apply to Bill Maher. I do think he's a liberalesque dope on Bush, Cheney, Iraq, religion and probably a lot else, but he's my kind of guy on some stuff, as in this clip from 1:17 -