Friday, Feb. 20, 2009 06:17 PST
Joy Behar vs. Ann Coulter: The smackdown
As the smartest, funniest and most consistently liberal voice on "The View," Joy Behar has long been my favorite co-host. But last night, when she guest hosted "Larry King Live," Behar cemented her place in my heart. In an interview (posted below, in its entirety) with the noxious Ann Coulter, she was everything King has never been -- insightful, reactive, intelligent and more than willing to call bullshit when she saw it. And while Coulter is obviously ridiculous and certainly no feminist, it occurred to me as I was watching how rare it is to see two women discussing politics on a hard news program.
When the women discussed Coulter's recent appearance on "The View," Behar took her interviewee to task for claiming that Barbara Walters read an excerpt from her book "Guilty: Liberal Victims and Their Assault on America" as though it were "Mein Kampf." The statement could be seen as insensitive, Behar pointed out, because Walters is Jewish. Backed into another corner, Coulter offered her bigoted comment du jour: "If you can't mention Hitler or 'Mein Kampf' when anyone Jewish is interviewing you, then how about not having Jewish people interview?" Ah, yes. Get rid of the Jews. That would solve the problem!
Later in the interview, Behar called Coulter out for referring to former White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan as "retarded." The only response Coulter could think of was, "But I think he actually is," following up with the half-joke, "I think it is outrageous for the media to pick on a retarded press secretary and then treat him like he's suddenly Zarathustra."
Behar ended the discussion on the topic of single mothers, whom Coulter denounces in "Guilty" as being responsible for, among other things, 80 percent of the prison population. Behar's simplest question of the night was also her most effective: "Why don't you blame the men who knock these women up?"
http://www.salon.com/mwt/broadsheet/feature/2009/02/20/behar_coulter/