ABC's Overnight Anchor Jokes About a ‘Skinny Death Match' Between Paris Hilton and Coulter

ABC's "World News Now," a news program that airs at 3:30 am Eastern, when most people in the U.S. are fast asleep, replayed Jake Tapper's earlier "World News" report on the war of words between Elizabeth Edwards, the wife of Democrat presidential candidate John Edwards, and Ann Coulter during its broadcast on Thursday.

At the conclusion of the report, hosts Taina Hernandez and Ryan Owens (pictured at right) had a brief exchange, in which Owens proposed an "Ann Coulter blackout," similar to a "Paris Hilton blackout" that the program apparently has, and Hernandez, as a counterproposal, joked, "Or we can pit them together in some kind of skinny death match." At the end of Owens and Hernandez's exchange, and as the weather report began, someone in the control room at ABC queued-up Elton John's "The B**ch is Back."

Video (1:11): Real (1.93 MB) or Windows Media (2.18 MB), plus MP3 audio (463 kB).

I guess ABC News isn't above the "politics of hate," or to paraphrase Elizabeth Edwards' words to Ann Coulter, "the debasing of political dialogue."

Below is the transcript of the Hernandez-Owens exchange on Thursday morning's "World News Now:"

RYAN OWENS: "Ok. I have an idea."

TAINA HERNANDEZ: "Ok?"

OWENS: "You know how we have a Paris Hilton blackout? "

HERNANDEZ: (Laughs) "Yes?"

OWENS: "How about an Ann Coulter blackout?"

HERNANDEZ: "Ah, no Coulter cash for us."

OWENS: "No."

HERNANDEZ: "No. All right. Or we can pit them together in some kind of skinny death match?"

OWENS: "Skinny death match?"

(Unidentified person off-camera) "Or go to jail together."

OWENS: "Here's your weather."

HERNANDEZ: "Or go to jail together. That's Peter. Here's your weather."

[Hat-tip to FreeRepublic.com poster L.N. Smithee's thread.]