The truth of it, however, is that the jokes didn't go far enough to be funny. Some unlikely sympathizers argued that the jokes had gone too far. Instead, the jokes left a sordid feeling, partly because so many of the attacks were based on her looks: the retired quarterback Peyton Manning compared her to a horse Rob Lowe said she appeared to be wearing a skeleton costume the British comedian Jimmy Carr called her a "truck-stop transvestite whore" and suggested that she should kill herself.
Yet it was difficult to take much satisfaction in her comeuppance, such as it was. Still, never before had a panel done it quite so vigorously.Ĭoulter's look of wounded bewilderment was catnip to many viewers she has, after all, made her living as a kind of insult comic of the right, gleefully punching down at whatever marginalized group is in fist’s reach. She probably should have seen this coming: Comedy Central has been organizing these celebrity roasts since 2003, and the format encourages roasters to target each other nearly as often as they do the guest of honor. But, during the event, sitting straight-backed and stone-faced onstage among her fellow-roasters, each of whom had just taken a turn at ridiculing her, Coulter appeared surprised not only by the rawness of the jokes but also that she had been made the subject of them in the first place. The episode, which aired on Monday, left them in: "The only person you will ever make happy is the Mexican who digs your grave" and "I haven't seen you laugh this hard since Trayvon Martin got shot.”Ĭoulter is normally a canny performer, and she often seems to court, and even to revel in, a degree of abuse from her detractors. Buzz about the vitriol of their remarks spread immediately following the taping, with many people wondering if the worst of the insults would survive the editing process.
Then, a few nights later, at the taping of Comedy Central's roast of the actor Rob Lowe, where Coulter had agreed to appear in order to promote the book, her fellow-roasters (and their joke writers), perhaps recognizing that the handsome and likable Lowe was too bland a target, took aim at Coulter as well. First, the release party for her new book, "In Trump We Trust: E Pluribus Awesome!," was rendered sombre after her subject promised a "softening" of his stance on immigration, just as Coulter's book was touting its awesome hardness. The final week of August was a rough one for the conservative commentator Ann Coulter.