Wish I wrote it

Jon Swift's take on the Coulter/Edwards phone call.

But then Matthews played a terribly mean trick on Coulter, the beloved conservative pundit. It turns out he had agreed to let Elizabeth Edwards, the wife of Presidential candidate John Edwards, call in and confront Coulter without informing his guest beforehand. Coulter seemed shocked that Edwards even had a wife, since she had once called him a "faggot." Was her gaydar not working properly? she seemed to be wondering. Had all those men who had told her they were gay only done so to get her to leave them alone?

Sensing Coulter's vulnerability, Edwards then pounced, laying into Coulter for making personal attacks against her husband. Earlier that morning Coulter had said, "If I'm gonna say anything about John Edwards in the future, I'll just wish he had been killed in a terrorist assassination plot," which was a line she had probably worked on for months to prepare. By sandbagging Coulter like this, Matthews gave her no time to think of a witty put-down of Elizabeth Edwards, a cutting reference to Edwards' cancer perhaps, and Coulter looked off-balance. It was terribly unfair to Coulter.

Relentlessly, Edwards pressed on with her cruel assault: "I'm asking you politely to stop, to stop personal attacks."

"You're asking me to stop speaking? 'Stop writing your columns. Stop writing your books,'" Coulter asked incredulously. Clearly, Coulter's career would be over if she could no longer use personal attacks. What else would she do? It would be like asking Picasso to stop painting or asking Paris Hilton to stop doing whatever it is she does that makes her famous. Isn't it hypocritical to run a campaign that is supposedly based on helping people rise out of poverty, and then to turn around and attempt to impoverish Coulter?

But Edwards wasn't finished. She then laid into Coulter for her jokes about their son's death in a car accident. Coulter had hilariously claimed in a 2003 column that Edwards had a bumper sticker on his car that said "Ask me about my son's death in a horrific car accident." Apparently, Elizabeth Edwards is one of those humorless liberals who can't take a joke.