Six minutes, 20 seconds. That's exactly how long it took Ann Coulter to completely contradict herself on Bill O'Reilly's show last night. Coulter came on to perpetuate a scrap she had during a sit-down Tuesday on MSNBC's Hardball with Elizabeth Edwards, who called in to ask Coulter to halt personal attacks against her husband, '08 presidential candidate John Edwards. Afterward, many speculated that the call was a crafty move by the Edwards campaign to co-opt Coulter for fundraising.
AP reported that Coulter's previous comment on Edwards—which essentially amounted to her calling him a "faggot"—helped him earn $300,000 in the first quarter. O'Reilly asked Coulter: Are you inadvertently helping Edwards raise money? "Not as much as I have made off of these attacks on me.... There are going to be a lot more Americans now that like Ann Coulter than hate Ann Coulter," said Ann Coulter, speaking on the subject of ... Ann Coulter.
Later, O'Reilly suggested that this all makes for good publicity for Coulter's books, and she shot back, "No it doesn't. This idea that I set out one day and said, 'I know! I'll tick off all of the publishing industry. I'll get the entire mainstream media to hate me. I'll get academia to hate me, and then I'll start writing books. I'll be rich by noon!' It's not a very good plan, Bill!"
On another topic, however, Coulter was lucid, succinct, and perfectly accurate. "I'm more of a man than any liberal," she said.