On the July 6 edition of MSNBC's Countdown, host Keith Olbermann named right-wing pundit Ann Coulter the winner of his nightly “Worst Person in the World” award for telling a Denver radio station that liberals consider “anal sex and fisting” to be “part of our deepest privacy rights.”
As noted by Media Matters for America, on the July 3 edition of the Denver-based radio program, The Mike Rosen Show, Coulter told guest host Jon Caldara that he would have a “perfectly pleasant argument” if he discussed “Darwinism, gay marriage, abortion” or “anything” with “the most Bible-thumping, fundamentalist, born-again Jesus freak Christian, i.e., someone like myself.” Coulter then asserted that, by contrast, "[t]ry talking with a liberal about a lit cigarette in a nonsmoking section if you want to see fanaticism." Within moments of drawing that distinction, Coulter claimed that “health fanatics, when it comes to smoking, encourage every form of polymorphous perversity,” including “anal sex and fisting.”
Olbermann noted that Coulter was not being named “Worst Person” for “the plagiarism stuff.” On the July 5 edition of Countdown, Olbermann hosted a plagiarism expert to spell out allegations against Coulter and wondered whether Coulter had attacked former New York Times reporter Jayson Blair, who resigned from the Times amid allegations that he fabricated facts and committed plagiarism. She did.
From the July 6 edition of MSNBC's Countdown with Keith Olbermann:
OLBERMANN: But first, time for Countdown's latest list of nominees for “Worst Person in the World.”
The Bronze to the Australian television channel, network Seven, promoting its coverage of Saturday's rugby match between its hometown nation Aussies and New Zealand by altering the video of the New Zealand players so it looks like they are all carrying women's handbags. That's sportsmanship.
Our runner-up, Brian Heidik of Atlanta, arrested after he shot a puppy in his backyard with an arrow and threatened to shoot another one. He claimed he'd mistaken them for coyotes that had been harassing his pets. What the hell are the puppy sizes down there in Georgia? The punch line, of course: Mr. Heidik was the winner four years ago of Survivor: Thailand. And what exactly are we teaching our Survivor candidates to survive on?
But our winner: Coultergeist -- not the plagiarism stuff, something different. She told a Denver radio station that while liberals opposed people's rights to smoke in restaurants, they seemed not to be worried about the health consequences of, quote, “polymorphous perversity.”
She concluded, sarcastically, quoting her again, quote: "[A]nal sex and fisting, that's part of our deepest privacy rights." Ann. Ewww! One of my producers proposed this headline: “Woman with Adam's Apple Denounces Anal Sex and Fisting.” Ann Coultergeist: today's “Worst Person in the World!”
