In defense of Louis Farrahkhan

I love how he winds white people up

OK, now if I wrote a piece discussing how valuable Louis Farrakhan's contributions to American political life were, and how he managed to drive white people crazy, I would be under a sea of criticism. And not just from the usual suspects

Why?

Because sometimes crazy shit comes out of his mouth. So crazy that a panel of black intellectual and politicans, including Tavis Smiley, Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton rejected them in public in a room full of black people.

But here comes whiny ass titty baby Jon Chait defending that godawful piece they ran on Coulter

DEFENDING IDEOLOGICAL INCORRECTNESS:

Elspeth Reeve, our extremely talented reporter-researcher, penned a clever, interesting, very well-executed defense of despicable authoritarian pundit Ann Coulter. Now, I found her ultimate point to be highly unpersuasive, as I imagine most people did, but this was a piece less about the destination than the journey. What made her column interesting was not the counterintuitive shock value but the fact that she had thought-provoking observations about Coulter's role in the political culture, however indefensible her conclusion may have been.

Her piece attracted the ire of Atrios, someone named Charles P. Pierce, and other partisan hysterics. That, of course, is unsurprising. They cannot imagine the notion of measuring a piece by any criteria other than ideological correctness. There are a lots of smart and interesting liberal writers who aren't ideologically "surprising"--Rick Perlstein, Thomas Frank, most of the American Prospect staff, to name but a few. The Atrioses and the Pierces, on the other hand, offer their readers nothing but the certainty that they will confirm their ideological predilections. A world in which there are non-ideological criteria for judging an article--where being thought-provoking or smart matters--is a world in which they have no place.

--Jonathan Chait

Well, Jon, the reason her girl crush piece wasn't widely embraced was because it was a girl crush piece. Ms. Reeve showed no understanding of the destructive and vile way the insane racist, redbaiter Coulter, someone fired from National Review, conducts her business.

You can whine about political correctness all you want, but in all honesty, defending Coulter in TNR is hardly shocking. Why not defend Al Sharpton instead, that would be a real test of suprising your readers

But instead, they're treated to juvenile logic like this

es, yes, Coulter has said some terrible things. But I don't think it's the terrible things that really bother liberals. Coulter makes us cringe not when she lies, but when she says things we wish weren't true. Let's go to the tape. Asked to define the First Amendment: "An excuse for overweight women to dance in pasties and The New York Times to commit treason." Just completely terrible, I know. But I have to admit, I giggled--having recently covered a pro-choice rally where I interviewed a very nice young woman whose nipples were covered by naral stickers.

Is this supposed to be witty, or just hamfisted and stupid? It's the worst kind of mean girl put down. Yet she freaks when you ask her about her sex life or comment on her too old for her hair length blonde hair. I don't think she laughs at the tranny jokes tossed her way.

What Reeve is actually admiring is her bullying ways. She wishes she could bully people with as much flair as Coulter. Her girl crush admiration is devoid of any intellectual comprehension of what Coulter does, but total admiration for the way she humiliates and bullies people.

Chait's pathetic defense does her no favors. After running screed after screed against black politicians after the Connecticut Primary, a defense of Coulter looks mighty funny in that context.

There's a certain breed of Washington pundit that loves contrarianism when it's about blacks, or the poor or women. TNR has run contrarians like Ruth Shalit and Andy Sullivan and their bizarre racial theories. Last week, Marty Peretz issued an embarassing racist screed in defense of Joe Lieberman. And now Chait uses the coward's defense of being against political correctness.

Now the reason he's writing this is simple: TNR got hammered for running that silly girl crush piece. And his only defense is to lash out and say us liberals never challenge our readers.

Let me challenge my readers by defending Farrakhan and see what TNR would say about that.