"You Couldn't Ignore Me If You Tried"

I just brought up a quick point in one of the comment sections that I think might deserve to be part of a larger discussion here on the main page.

This morning, Ann Coulter made an appearance on that bastion of estrogen-laden inanity, The View. From what I've been reading, a lot of people were apparently looking forward to what they figured would surely be the inevitable clash between Coulter and the Whoopi-Joy-Babs triumvirate. The fact is this, though: Coulter, just by being asked to appear on The View, won before she even stepped in front of the camera.

I may think Ann Coulter's completely full of shit, but I have to give her a lot of credit for one thing that she does very, very well: She exposes the bald-faced hypocrisy of the mainstream media.

She does it simply by virtue of her presence on shows like The View, or Today, or Good Morning America -- shows she slams constantly in the pages of her ridiculous books and yet still manages to secure invitations to. Ann Coulter knows that, as ratings-bait, she's simply too enticing for these shows to pass up. She knows that a contentious confrontation with her makes for great TV, which will translate into great numbers and therefore great revenue for whichever network she appears on.

Ann Coulter knows that for all the supposedly high standards the mainstream media collectively boast of upholding, any TV producer will gladly throw his or her ethics and better judgment under the bus for a carrot as tempting as the one she offers. By this measure, Coulter doesn't need to "win" the argument in the traditional sense when she faces down people like Whoopi Goldberg.

All she has to do is show up, and she's already won. No matter how entirely her adversary or interviewer may eviscerate and expose her on national television, that person lost the minute Coulter walked into the studio.