Ann Coulter says Fox "News" isn't conservative

Filed by David Edwards and Muriel Kane When Ann Coulter appeared on Joe Scarborough's show on MSBNBC on Wednesday to promote her new book, Scarborough posed her a series of questions designed to elicit her trademark outrageous responses. MediaMatters has been hammering NBC hard this week over regularly providing Coulter with a forum to sell her books. On Monday, they charged that "in the weeks following the release of her last book, Godless: The Church of Liberalism ... Coulter made numerous appearances on MSNBC, CNBC, and their parent network, NBC, where she unleashed a stream of attacks on the widows of victims of the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks." On Tuesday, MediaMatters added that "the discussion of her book on Today marks at least Coulter's 195th appearance on an NBC-operated channel [since 1997], even though several NBC hosts and anchors -- including Tonight Show host Jay Leno, Today co-host Matt Lauer, and Nightly News anchor Brian Williams -- have expressed disapproval of Coulter's 'harsh' and 'nasty' statements." Perhaps because of overexposure, Coulter's responses to Scarborough appeared relatively tepid and low on the outrageousness meter. When asked about Bill O'Reilly, she replied, "This is so hard for me, because there is no way he would defend me if the shoe were on the other foot." She added, however, that she believed O'Reilly's remarks about eating in a black restaurant were "obvious" rather than racist. When Scarborough asked her why government spending continues to increase despite the presence of many conservatives in Congress, Coulter blamed it on the voters wanting "bread and circuses," on "the rash experiment with the 19th Amendment," which gave women the right to vote, and on a lack of public faith in capitalism. Coulter said of Rudy Giuliani that despite his weakness on issues dear to conservatives he still might be nominated because "he seems just crazy enough to bomb Iran. That could carry him through." Coulter also insisted that Fox News "isn't really a conservative station. What it is is a debate station. What you see is a conservative debating a liberal, whereas on many other stations you often have lots of liberals making similar but slightly differently nuanced points." However, she also implied that Fox might be considered conservative after all, saying, "It's just something conservatives like to do. Argue." In this related article, Raw Story reports on additional Coulter-related controversies.