Is Donny Deutsch an Edwards Man? Is There a Koulter Klan?

Anyone contrarian enough to tune into CNBC in prime time certainly doesn’t tune into The Big Idea with Donnie Deutsch thinking it’s going to be an hour on theology -- Dogma and Kerygma with Donnie Deutsch. The host can hardly claim he booked Ann Coulter with the idea that they were going to discuss the Christology in Paul’s Letter to the Ephesians, or they were simply going to discuss how conservative women could franchise McCoulter’s formula. He booked her looking for snap,crackle, and pop, for ratings and headlines, a chance to get his multi-millionaire mug on the Today cameras.

(Or was there an underlying political gambit: Hmm, isn’t that John Edwards donations Donny Deutsch just made?)

Coulter’s verbal bombs keep inspiring liberal media types to abandon facts and leap into wild overgeneralizations. At the Huffington Post, St. Petersburg Times columnist Eric Deggans boasted: "I'm past the point of shock at her words; Coulter earns her daily bread by saying the stuff most other right wing extremists have the good sense to keep to Klan rallies and white supremacist chat rooms."

How can Deggans not be read as saying everyone who’s ever enjoyed a Coulter column is a virulent racist who attends Klan rallies (and you know when the Klan gets 250 people in a muddy park in Kentucky, they think it’s skinhead Nirvana.) It’s certainly not the slightest bit true that KKK-pleasing copy is her "daily bread."

Deggans is amazed that when Coulter is attacked by the network stars, conservatives rise en masse to her defense. But that is because an attack like this seems like an attack not simply on her, but on all conservatives – certainly people who enjoy Coulter’s books and barbs -- in general.

He should not be so amazed on this one, as Deutsch was incredibly provocative and overstated as well when he started comparing Coulter to Ahmadinejad and equating her convert-them-all line into a kill-them-all line. Deggans and his Klan line also seems to imply murderous lynch mobs. It’s especially odd for conservatives to feel lumped in with the Klan when you’re Catholic. They hated my fathers in faith, too.

All that said, I think Coulter is not the first person conservatives would send to an interfaith dialogue on television. Her TV persona is the antithesis of Christian charity and humility. When addressing a member of the Jewish faith, suggesting you’re the "perfected" version of him is not exactly how to win converts and influence people. Certainly the notion of man being perfected in Christ in no way resembles the idea that Christians are perfected people as they struggle on Earth. A Christian in interfaith dialogue would often begin with humility, in the way he or she should pray: without Christ, I am nothing.