Coulter’s remarks haven’t gone unpunished: her columns have been dropped from newspapers and her speaking engagements often attract protesters. However, the more publications and shows drop her, the more she is embraced as a maverick. But will there come a time when she goes too far or, worse, when Coulter fatigue sets in? Radhika Sanghani gives a perspective from the other side of the pond in the UK’s Daily Telegraph: “If you haven’t heard of Ann Coulter, you may want to count your blessings and stop reading now.” Sanghani says Coulter “seems to be on a personal campaign to be the most hated woman in her country, and by the look of things, she’s succeeding.”
Liam O’Brien, an expert in media criticism and pop culture at Quinnipac University, told ABC, “I think [her comments are] highly calculated. I’m not sure she knows what trigger on which verbal gun she is going to pull at any given moment, but I think at any particular time she has three or four of these things that are controversial and inflammatory enough to get national press notice above and beyond whatever the topic is of her book or talk show.”
Following her controversial statement about Jews on Donny Deutsch’s program in 2007, far from losing viewers and fans, requests for Coulter’s appearances increased, and perhaps the same will happen after her outrageous tweets about Jews and Israel following the GOP debates. While Coulter says offensive things about many groups, getting dangerously close to the tipping point with Jews, many of whom support her because she speaks well of Israel usually, seems to be good for her ratings. After the incident on “The Big Idea,” when she said Jews needed to be perfected, Coulter’s publicist Diana Banister told ABC News, “No one has been reluctant to book [Coulter] and we’ve had as many requests as ever, probably more.” There was speculation then that Coulter’s career as a media figurehead might be over, and those predictions were incorrect, as they might be now. Even if talk show hosts and interviewers refuse to book her, Coulter still has social media, her website and her books. In fact, a well-publicized refusal to book her might just generate more interest in her.
