Al Franken vs Ann Coulter. Who ya got?

Apparently they were speaking at the University of Judaism.

Here are some examples of Ann Coulter's wit.

Coulter immediately referenced the massive immigration rallies that were taking place across Los Angeles.

“I don’t remember the last time I saw that many angry Mexicans,” she said.

“Now I know why my towels were a little late coming up to my hotel room.”

“Evil does not seem to be part of liberals’ vocabulary,” she said to scattered applause and many boos.

“There will never be enough evidence for liberals to defend America.”

“Democrats are generally one of America’s domestic enemies.”


And then there was this topical analysis: “The war in Iraq has been a magnificent success,” she said. “We’re only a few years into the rebuilding.”

Wow! I cannot believe they let her out in public.

What did Al Franken have to say?

A former “Saturday Night Live” writer, Franken used a liberal amount of humor in his attack on the Bush administration, the war in Iraq, conservative pundits like Ann Coulter and Ann Coulter herself.

“I’m talking about an increasingly secretive, incompetent and corrupt Federal government that rewards cronies,” he said to applause. “I also want to discuss with Ann the coarsening of dialogue in this country.... Ann has said repeatedly that liberals hate America. I disagree.”

Franken told of a standing ovation he received following a speech he gave to cadets at West Point (“It was an audience not so very different from this one,” he deadpanned to the largely Jewish crowd).

There, he said, “I told them we’d been lied into the war in Iraq.”

Franken also attacked the Bush administration and the Republican Congress for neglecting the economy, Americans without health insurance “and the poorest in our society.”
Throughout his speech, he hammered home his serious points with humor, and the crowd — most of it — loved his patter.

Coulter is an aberration. She exists just to make the most outragous right wing allegations that the rest of the neo-con herd is still just a little too sane to say out loud. She is a joke. A very dirty, poorly told joke.

But Franken has been lowering his level of discourse to match this type of partisan sniping. And that is just sad.

Franken is smart, erudite, and mostly pretty damn funny. But when he allows himself to trade body blows with these useless windbags he often does not choose the higher road. I have heard him say nasty snarky things that sound like liberal versions of the crap that spews out of Rush Limbaugh. This just serves to confuse those in the political middle even more.

The pundits on both sides seem to have lost the ability to have disagreements which do not dissolve into angry name calling, and partisan attacks. I have staked out my side of the debate and so I am not affected by a disappointing showing by Al Franken or any other liberal pundit. But there are many in this country who are just confused by all of this back and forth. They would like to really understand what makes the two sides different and even better which one, if any, is right.

To do this we need to speak with passion and sophistication. Let the muck rakers on FOX news shout and belittle the guests on their shows. Let them cut the mikes of people who dare to disagree with them. We need to stand for something more profound.

We are right. We do not need to resort to ridiculous attention getting stunts. Americans are looking for guidance. If we really believe we are right then we have to earn their respect. The progressives have a golden opportunity to really fill the void that these disenfranchised people are feeling.

Let these right wing hate mongers scream until they are blue in the face. When they are done we will quietly and intelligently explain why they are mistaken and what is really the truth of the matter.