Well, at least Jeff still gets it:

Personally, I don’t feel any need whatever to issue public condemnations of Ann Coulter—though were you to ask me, I’d readily tell you that her remark was juvenile, and that it could well be seen as homophobic (though I am in no position to peer into Coulter’s soul; and of course, “faggot”—though tied to homosexuality—has long been wielded as a slur against masculinity, which has little to do with sexual preference, in much the same way “pussy” is used). And the reason I feel no need to publicly condemn Coulter is that Coulter has never spoken for me.

I said it before, and I meant it: you liberals get back to me when you’ve apologized adequately for more than thirty years of referring to anyone and everyone to the right of Ho Chi Minh as Nazis, racists, homophobes, misogynists, theofascists, and such-like. Get back to me when your side stops openly rooting for the enemy and endorsing the assassination of our elected leadership in time of war. Get back to me when your deranged Stürmgruppen LiberalJügend stops physically attacking people for daring to dissent from liberal cant. Until then, you shitbags have one hell of a lot of nerve asking for apologies from anybody, and I’ll see each and every one of you in Hell personally before you’ll ever get even the beginnings of one from me.

We’ll let you know when you’ve grovelled enough to erase the stain of your myriad hateful remarks. And no, we won’t be holding our breath waiting for it.

Although I can’t reasonably speculate on Ann’s true opinion about gay people, I’d be astonished to learn that it truly is anything like some of these bedwetting whiners think it is. If I thoroughly racked my brain I doubt I could come up with even two people of my personal acquaintance who give a tinker’s dam about anyone’s sexual preference. The evidence, for anyone interested in so ill-suited a platform for moralizing and hair-shirt modeling as the simple truth, says that she was trying to make a point about something entirely other than what the hysterics so perfervidly assumed.

In other words, her remark was a stupid, juvenile insult that bombed, and that’s ALL it was. It was not an expression of hatred for homosexuals (in fact, taken in context, it didn’t have much to do with sexual preference at all); it wasn’t an indication of what anybody else thinks about anything (except insofar as the hysterical, priggish reaction indicates a too-ready facility for prefab OUTRAGE!™ that ought to be mocked rather than indulged); and for those worried more about the political fallout and the prospect of “damaging” the conservative cause, the only people on the Right she’s capable of negatively affecting in any way are those who allow themselves to be stampeded by disingenuous liberals seeking apologies they have no intention of ever, ever accepting anyway.

Now, I admit there’s something to be said for taking the high road — not lowering ourselves to the liberal level even as we’re trying to oppose them as vigorously as possible, and blah de blah de blah. But there’s a lot more to be said for refusing to let them set the terms of the debate, and for not allowing them to summarily decide that we’re all homophobic, and that therefore every least word that comes out of any conservative’s mouth must be carefully parsed and vetted for offensive content before being stricken from the official record permanently, with a slight shudder and a small moue of disgust.

Because, see, the thing is this: no matter how we try, liberals will never be satisfied with our efforts to live up to their standards for politically-correct thinking. They will never, ever even so much as acknowledge that an effort has been made, much less declare themselves satisfied that we’re not all cartoonish Saturday-matinee monsters out for the blood of all who dare to differ from what we call the norm. And it’s supposed to be against our core principles to try to live up to such an unworthy and reprehensible standard anyway.

Don’t believe it? How many times has Bush tried to suck up to them, and what has been the result each and every time? One of the worst failures of the Iraq war was in going hat in hand to the UN and Europe beforehand, wasting eighteen months mewling pitifully in hopes of scrabbling up some meager diplomatic cover for making a move everyone with the slightest lick of sense knew had to be made sooner or later. Did the Left’s mindless hatred for him abate even one iota? Nope. Instead, no diplomatic cover was forthcoming, the antiwarriors exploded in a paroxysm of OUTRAGED!™ SHOCK AND HORROR at the very idea of preemptively defending so barefacedly evil a country as the United States, Europe scurried to conceal what it could of the staggering scope of its prewar corruption, and Saddam had plenty of time to transfer his WMDs to Syria, where they remain to this day. I won’t even bother reminding you of how Jabba the Senator broke it off in RINO George over the “No Child Left Behind” fiasco. Does Jabba display the slightest reticence in savaging Bush at every opportunity? No, he does not. And he never will.

Well, screw all that, frankly. Personally, I think it takes a whole hell of a lot more than just some piss poor excuse for a laugh line, from a speech nobody but nobody who wasn’t there would have cared about otherwise, to make every last conservatarian type in the country legitimately definable as real, card-carrying homophobes. And no, Coulter’s tasteless remark is in no way the moral or hate-speech equivalent of the despicable sort of rhetoric we see liberals get up to on a daily basis — and there is simply no reason on earth we should let them get away with claiming that it is. Even by their own wholly deplorable standard, poor Ann can’t quite make the grade as an out and out unhinged hate-machine.

During Bush’s tenure in office we’ve seen liberal Democrat congressturds unabashedly supporting an enemy of the country they falsely claim to care about defending, as when David Bonior went, with Jim McDermott, to Baghdad to show his enthusiastic support for Saddam over our own President (that’s right, the self-same Bonior who is now whoring for “Coulter Cash” for Silky Pony Edwards). We’ve seen these moonbats repeatedly call for the assassination of Bush. We’ve heard them encourage soldiers to frag their officers. We’ve seen them assume the worst of our leaders and our country time after time, while disdaining to notice the savagery and lawlessness of our enemies. We’ve heard rhetoric from the Left directed at our country, its populace, and its leadership that makes Coulter’s schoolyard insult, inappropriate and unnecessary though it was, sound as harmless as a glass of warm milk before bed. We’ve seen them actively trying to stifle free speech, in ways ranging from childish Internet games to actual physical violence.

What we haven’t seen is Howard Dean apologizing for any of it, or almost anyone else on the Left showing the slightest remorse.

And I think this whole “high road” business is as lousy a way to continue losing to the soulless, amoral jackals of the Left as I can imagine anyway. If we’re going to keep losing to these assholes, let’s not lend credence to their idea of us as a bunch of preening Puritans while we’re at it. Let’s stop dancing to the screeching caterwaul they call a tune for a change. If they want to sit down and have a good cry because the political playground got a little too rough for them, well, let ‘em. But let’s not join them ourselves. Personally, I hardly think any rich white patriarchal godbag who was willing to hire someone like Amanda Marcotte as his blogatrix has any business demanding apologies for anyone over his own, or anyone else’s, hurt feelings — or, for that matter, sending his wife out to the blogosphere to fight his battles for him. Perhaps Ann could offer up one of those “I’m sorry you were offended” non-apologies the liberals are always so ready to insincerely proffer to all and sundry.

I’m not defending Ann here, any more than I would dream of apologizing for her. If some gay people were hurt by her remarks, well, I truly do hate it for ‘em. They might need to toughen up a bit. A lot of us probably do. But people are going around acting as if there was some serious harm done, to anyone at all, and the truth is it’s all going to be forgotten before summer gets here. And it damned well ought to be, because as scandals go this is one of the more pointless I’ve seen in a long life of paying attention. There simply is no point in conservatives flopping around on the floor like a fish over something like this, and as for the liberals, well, they were already frothing at the mouth anyway. At least this gives them a distraction for a while, from going over every other word said at CPAC with a fine-toothed comb, looking for something else to be OUTRAGED!™ about.

There is simply no action any right-thinking person can take that will make vermin of Glenn Greenwald(s)’s ilk stop hating us. And the idea, as several righty bluenoses have put forth, that their poor defenseless children are going to somehow be scarred for life by being accidentally exposed to the word “faggot” is…well, it’s pathetic. Frankly, people, if your children are that delicate, you’ve got way more to worry about than just some mildly salty and inappropriate language.

I won’t bother taking that thought to its obvious conclusion. But the more stouthearted among you know what I mean.