Joseph Farah devoted his Sept. 17 WorldNetDaily column to criticizing Ann Coulter’s “f—ing Jews” tirade, calling it “a staggeringly inappropriate and ugly comment” that’s likely anti-Semitic and puts her in league with Iranian mullahs.
What Farah didn’t do is admit his role in perpetuating her work as a right-wing bombthrower — just like the Media Research Center did — nor did he say he would do the one thing he could to send a meaningful message by canceling her column.
Farah rather laughably laments that “It’s sad to see Coulter degenerate into a slur machine, one who seems so desperate for fame at any cost that she will say anything and possibly do anything to maintain a career as, frankly, a thuggish commentator.” But thuggish commentary is what WND is all about — from Mychal Massie to Jesse Lee Peterson to, well, Farah himself.
Besides, Farah is on record as encouraging Coulter’s thuggishness and her transformation into the “slur machine” he now purportedly despises. In 2005, WND proudly re-edited a Coulter column to restore a description of Helen Thomas as an “old Arab” that her syndicate had removed.
It wasn’t until 2010 that Farah took offense to anything Coulter had said or written — and that was only because she wasn’t being extreme enough. Farah dropped Coulter as a keynote speaker for WND’s “Taking America Back National Conference” that year because she spoke to a gay-Republican group, sparking a war of words between Farah and Coulter.
But if Farah was really mad about Coulter, he could have canceled her column. But he didn’t, presumably because it’s reportedly a driver of traffic to WND’s website.
As of this writing, Coulter’s column remains in the lead spot in the list of WND columnists that appear on Thursday.
Farah can rant all he wants to about Coulter, but he has the power to harm her pocketbook. That he has so far refused to do so — and in fact has helped her to become the person who would refer to “f—king Jews” — demonstrates he doesn’t have the courage of his convictions.