Coulter: "Offensive remarks OK if they're not true!"

The story, if you haven't heard it by now, is that conservative "writer" Ann Coulter, at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), said, "I was going to have a few comments about John Edwards but you have to go into rehab if you use the word 'faggot.'"

But don't get upset, because she wasn't accusing the Democratic Presidential candidate of being a homosexual, nor was she implying anything negative about homosexuals by using that "f" word. It would only be insulting, according to Coulter, if Edwards really were gay.

The word I used has nothing to do with sexual preference. It is a schoolyard taunt, and unless you're going to announce here on national TV that John Edwards, married father of many children, is gay, it clearly had nothing to do with that. It's a schoolyard taunt.

You hear that? Coulter's use of an offensive term was not offensive because it wasn't true. It's only a harmless "taunt" meant to call somebody's masculinity into question and make implications about their sexual preferences by using negative stereotypes of a minority group.

Nothing offensive about it. Unless, of course, somebody else wants to out Edwards as really being gay. Come on... I double-dog dare you...

What Coulter is saying with this "apology" is that she'd gladly admit to making offensive anti-gay remarks if somebody will step forward with proof that John Edwards enjoys hot man-on-man action.

And this is the state of political discourse in America in 2007.