When you see Ann Coulter in an interview, you can tell from the vacant, yet feral look in her eyes that she's trying desperately to think of the most outrageous thing possible to say. She's a two year-old who's desperate for attention and she loves it - loves it loves it LOVES IT - when Daddy spanks her. Never mind that fully 91.6% of what comes out of her filthy little mouth is about as coherent as Charles Manson after a week in the sleep deprivation tank. It's not about fact. It's not about truth. It's about LOOK AT ME I SAID A BAD WORD!!!

A few days ago s/he said a really bad word or two, wrapping her lips around John Edwards like he was the last unshaved mule willy on Earth, and gods, has the outcry been deafening. And now the trending iteration: what to do about her? Speak out against her (and for convenience, I will use "her" here). Ignore her. Make fun of her obvious masculinity (not everybody is using "her," it turns out). Stop publishing her rantings. And if you're one of the conservatives who's been enabling her Satan's Little Whore act, you know, for years, offer up hypocritical condemnations and pull the bitch's credentials.

Now, why would they want to do that? And what lesson can we take from the fact that they do want to do it?

Here's the thing. If you're the Dems, the last thing in hell you want is for Ann Coulter to stop talking. When you're arguing with a complete moron, the best strategy is to hand him/her a microphone and stand aside. (Actually, this is the basic Miltonian principle behind America's notions of the value of free speech, so I can't take credit for inventing the idea.) If you're a Republican, it's a bit trickier. Ann was fun when you were passing her around at fundraiser afterparties like a bottle of cheap tequila. She deflowered a whole generation of College Republicans in a series of campus whistlestops, and she actually served a purpose when she was out on the circuit "energizing the base." But damn, now the crazy skank done gone and got noticed by the mainstream, and in a flash she went from everybody's party favor to the party's biggest liability.

Right now, America is looking at her like she's the loose cannon love spawn of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Katherine Harris, and every time she opens her mouth in public she costs you votes that recent polling results indicate you can't afford to lose.

John Edwards is the luckiest man alive right now, and if you're Hillary, you have to be banging your head against the door wishing Man Ann had called you a carpet-muncher. If you're Obama, your people ought to be working around the clock trying sucker her into calling you a house nigger. And if you're anybody else (Richardson, Kucinich, Biden, etc.) you're desperately wishing she'd simply notice that you exist.

That's why the GOP disinfo machine is in full rage right now. I mean, let's be honest. Not only is this not the worst thing Coulter has said in the last few years, I'm not sure it even makes her Greatest Hits double CD set. She's so damned nuts that you could stick her in a room full of Iranian holocaust deniers and they'd all start nervously edging toward the door.

But we've never seen the Wide Right establishment call for her head. Not when she joked about poisoning a Supreme Court justice. Not when she said that liberals hate America worse than Islamic terrorists. Not when she accused 9/11 widows of "reveling in their status as celebrities." Not when she said "my only regret with Timothy McVeigh is he did not go to the New York Times Building." So what makes the attack on Edwards special?

Right. She has outlived her usefulness. The bloom is off that rose, as it were, and if something isn't done America might notice that hey, don't you guys all agree with her, more or less?

So whatever you do, folks, if you truly love freedom and great political drama, rage, rage against any attempt to silence this ... woman? Stand up in defense of her right to speak. Write your local conservapundit. The comment boxes at Little Green Footballs? Bang 'em like they were a screen door in a hurricane. Call Rush and demand that he put down those pills and throw his weight behind her like the Real American Conservative Hero® that she is.

Dammit, e-mail party chairman Mike Duncan at the Republican National Committee and insist that she be named the keynote speaker at the 2008 GOP Convention.

God Bless Ann Coulter. S/he's great for America. S/he needs to be heard. Lots.

(Note: It's okay, Ann. I'm just joking.)

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