This past week saw a political controversy of sorts. Chris Matthews of MSNBC's Hardball had Ann Coulter on the program. During the interview, calls were taken and one such caller was Elizabeth Edwards, wife of Presidential candidate John Edwards. She came on to ask Ann Coulter to stop the personal attacks on her husband. For those who haven't followed, in the past, Ann has suggested that John Edwards had a bumper sticker that read "Ask Me About My Dead Son" (referring to the Edwards son who passed away at 15 years of age), called John Edwards a faggot and most recently said that she would no longer talk about John Edwards, she just would wish he would die in a terrorist attack.
For those that have spent more than 10 seconds listening to Ann Coulter, this is what would be called par for the course for her. That being said, Ann Coulter is correct when she claims that the Edwards campaign uses her remarks to raise money. One needs only go to the Edwards homepage and, after skipping the intro, is a tally meter congratulating everyone for reaching their donation goal of $9 million dollars by June 30th. Directly underneath that tally total is a link to what Ann Coulter has said about the Edwards campaign. Ann Coulter is a financial boon to the Edwards campaign, and one has to wonder just how much John Edwards really minds the attacks, given they are probably his most effective money raising strategy, given he is trailing both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama amongst the Democratic hopefuls when it comes to acquiring campaign cash.
Ann Coulter benefits as well here. Ann is plugging the release of her most recent book in paperback, and at a time where even some Republicans have begun to back away from her, and some newpapers have went as far as to drop her syndicated column, nothing helps book sales quite like contrived controversy. Let's not kid anyone, she wasn't on a giant of a news show when she appeared on Chris Matthew's program, it is one of the lowest rated news shows on cable, hardly an outlet that will generate more than a few hundred thousand viewers on any given evening. By national programming standards, that is a pittance. But the buzz that went with the controversy of taking on a candidate's wife will get the moonbats into the bookstore if they haven't already bought the hardback version.
Even Chris Matthews wins here, because for a brief moment in time, people get to talk about his show, as though it means something, which doesn't happen every day when so few people normally watch it. It becomes a basis for people to tune in in hopes of seeing another like controversy, even though one on this scale isn't likely to happen again any time soon, as higher profile guests will now think twice about appearing on the program for fear of being "ambushed" by another staged caller calling in. But for a nanosecond, people will pay attention to Chris Matthews, which is a nanosecond longer than they normally would have.
So at the end of the day your winner here is.....everybody.
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