There's nothing into which Saturday Night Live can't work its liberal politics--even a conventional game-show sketch. NBC aired a re-run of the February 24th SNL last night, and watching it this morning I spotted what you might call a "subliminable" anti-Ann Coulter product placement.

In "What's That Bitch Talking About?" two contestants viewing a succession of women offering bare snippets of dialogue have to guess what they're talking about. The male contestant is consistently clueless. But Tina Fey's character gets it uncannily right every time, down to details that would in reality be impossible to guess. Sample: a woman murmuring "okay" into a phone is indeed getting directions to a margarita party to celebrate her graduation from DeVry, etc.

The male loser is sent packing, but not before he receives a lovely parting gift in the form of the home edition of "What's That Bitch Talking About?" Cut to a quick close-up of the package featuring four women: Whitney Houston, Queen Elizabeth, a beauty queen who's presumably Miss South Carolina of "US Americans" fame, and, most prominently featured . . . Ann Coulter. See screencap.

View video here.

Unless you've been asleep or out of the country for a month, you're well aware of claims by Hillary Clinton and NBC's "Saturday Night Live" that media are totally in the tank for Barack Obama.

On Wednesday, conservative author Ann Coulter was Steve Malzberg's guest on WOR radio, and she couldn't agree more with this assertion about the mainstream media's love affair with the junior senator from Illinois.

After Malzberg mentioned Michelle Obama's recent despicable comments about our country published in The New Yorker magazine and reported by NewsBusters Wednesday, he asked his guest what impact Mrs. Obama might have on the election. Coulter responded (seven-minute audio available here):

Has American journalism degraded so far that a magazine with a circulation of over 1 million would allow one of its columnists, in an article about a Republican nominee for president, to refer to a popular albeit controversial author as a "skanky bitch-whore?"

Such was the case in the most recent issue of "Rolling Stone" wherein Matt Taibbi, in a tremendously defamatory piece about John McCain, also took the opportunity to vulgarly attack Ann Coulter whilst regularly besmirching conservative talk radio hosts Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity.

For those with a strong stomach and/or a masochistic strain, the hits in this rancid pile of detritus came early and often (emphasis added throughout, h/t NBer Rusty Arnold, vulgarity alert!):

Doesn’t look like an olive branch to me. Writing in today’s (Tuesday's) Wall Street Journal, novelist and sometime Republican activist Mark Helprin (not to be confused with Time magazine’s Mark Halperin) takes a series of insulting personal shots at the radio talk show hosts who’ve criticized John McCain for his numerous anti-conservative positions.

Helprin, whose last big political job was working as an advisor to Bob Dole in 1996, calls hosts like Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity “hairdressers [who] can talk all day long to one client as they snip...the depth of their thought is truly Oprah-like,” even as Ann Coulter is “relentlessly crocodilian.” For what it's worth, Helprin’s Wikipedia entry calls him a “conservative commentator.”

By now, most NBers are likely aware that Ann Coulter spoke to the Young America's Foundation Friday in a room down the hall from CPAC. Townhall.com has the entire speech on video here.

What folks might be less aware of is that Mark Steyn also spoke at CPAC Friday, and gave a speech that is absolutely must-see (video available here, h/t NBer motherbelt). I highly encourage all to view both.

That said, one of the fascinating issues raised by Coulter was that she would vote for McCain if he picked Romney as his running mate. Do the vehemently anti-McCain members here agree? Would this "heal" the Party, and bring enough Conservatives home to launch a real battle against Billary or Barack?

Would other conservative talkers get on board this ticket as well?

Friday’s edition of Today on NBC had several conservative-denigrating moments over the ideological direction of presumptive GOP nominee John McCain. Matt Lauer interviewed columnist Ann Coulter. He threw a spitball about conservatives being babies: "Critics of conservative voices right now are saying for the first time in a very long time, the conservatives have lost. They haven't been able to choose their nominee and it's the political version now of a 3-year-old saying, ‘if you can't play the game the way I want to play, I'm taking my football and I'm going home.’ How do you respond to that?"

Tim Russert acknowledged in his pundit’s corner that conservatives must be assuaged, but that if McCain gives an inch to his right, "the Straight Talk Express will be derailed." For liberal media types, since 2000, Straight Talk was a way to equate talking liberal with talking "straight," that liberalism has all the straight answers. Here’s a fuller bite of Russert:

Conservative columnist and outspoken John McCain critic Ann Coulter will deliver a speech today at 4 p.m., only, it won't be under official CPAC auspices. The speech will be webcast over at Townhall.com's Web log.

Update/Clarification: Coulter's remarks are part of a reception held at CPAC to be hosted by the Young America's Foundation (YAF).  Coulter is not speaking as an officially-sanctioned CPAC guest but rather as the guest of honor at a YAF reception.

"View" co-host Joy Behar offered her political expertise to explain the conservative opposition to John McCain: Conservatives support "torture" (a liberal propaganda term for CIA interrogation methods of actual terrorists). On the February 4 edition of "The View," Behar, who considers the term "fringe liberal" "name calling," explains why "very extreme right wing conservatives" oppose McCain.

BEHAR: Ann Coulter, she says, Coulter, who makes a living by being provocative, picked a predictably offensive reason to oppose McCain. Quote, from Ann, "he has led the fight against torture at Guantanamo." That’s why she doesn’t like him because he is against torture. I think that’s fascinating.

GOLDBERG: I think if she meets him, he would torture her.

BEHAR: Well, she tortures us plenty.

The voters had a temper tantrum last week . . . Parenting and governing don't have to be dirty words: the nation can't be run by an angry two-year-old. -- Peter Jennings, November 14, 1994, on the Republican landslide.

[C]onservatives . . . can choose to stand aside from history while having a temper tantrum. But they should consider that the American people might then choose not to invite them back into a position of responsibility for quite a while to come. -- William Kristol, February 4, 2008, on conservative aversion to McCain.

It's one thing to have been bawled out by the late Peter Jennings. But do conservatives have to have their knuckles rapped by one of their own, Bill Kristol? Apparently yes, as per the Weekly Standard editor's New York Times column of today, Dyspepsia on the Right.

ABC's Jake Tapper took some jabs at conservative columnist Ann Coulter in a February 1 post to his Political Punch blog. Coulter, no McCain fan she, went so far as to facetiously pledge on "Hannity & Colmes" that she'd campaign for Hillary Clinton if she were the Democratic nominee and Sen. McCain her GOP opponent.

To my judgment, Tapper did land a few good hits in laying out his case for how, objectively speaking, McCain is to the right of Clinton, but he then swung a left hook in his conclusion that unfairly dismissed other conservative critics of McCain (emphasis mine):

Columnist Ann Coulter should probably not sign up to be a guest on Bill Maher’s HBO show anytime soon. Maher writer Chris Kelly took her column on the death and funeral of her father, John Vincent Coulter, and mocked her and the dead man relentlessly on The Huffington Post. He even compared her dead father to Hitler. Remember, in our Special Report, we recalled Arianna Huffington proclaimed her site wouldn’t be known for "flame-throwing, name-calling, and simplistic attack dog rhetoric." (What a pile of souvlaki that boast was.)

Chris Kelly, who on this day qualified as the Least Compassionate Man in America, explained he had "taken the liberty of going through the eulogy -- cutting the Kennedy material -- and punching up the rest." Such as:

The longest baby ever born at the Albany, N.Y., hospital, at least as of May 5, 1926, who grew up to be my strapping father, passed away last Friday morning.

And by "strapping" I mean, "he beat me with a strap."

In the November 15 Rolling Stone, the hippie mag interviews a pile of politicians, media stars, and rockers to celebrate its 40th anniversary. Jon Stewart, host of The Daily Show, was interviewed by Jeff Sharlet of The Revealer. In a strange interview he unloaded the usual criticism on Ann Coulter, but praised old American socialists Eugene Debs and Norman Thomas. Coulter came up as Stewart tried to say that no one mocking the government today is a "Soviet dissident," that our discourse is free enough that "It's very difficult to shock anybody any more. I'm not even sure what the subversive edge is." This exchange followed:

ROLLING STONE: Ann Coulter suffered repercussions from calling John Edwards a faggot.

JON STEWART: As a businessperson, she has made a choice: "Even if I narrow my audience to true believers, there’s enough money there. I have to keep pushing until it’s just me and one other crazy person with a lot of money." Maybe she’ll be hired by a crazy billionaire, just her and him, and he’ll go, "Say something about lesbians! Heh-heh! 9/11 widows! Gimme another!"

Ann Coulter's been a naughty girl! She has to go sit a time out in the corner, according to Chris Matthews, who's withdrawing the distinct and high honor of inviting the columnist on "Hardball" as punishment for the Donny Deutsch row, which was hyped by the liberal smear machine Media Matters for America.

And I thought that was only reserved for attractive business reporters who didn't lean into the camera.

Here's how Gail Shister of TVNewser reported the matter today:

Looks like Hardball is playing hardball with Ann Coulter.

MSNBC's Chris Matthews says it will be "a while" before the incendiary conservative pundit is invited back to the show.

Boxing enthusiasts saw quite a barnburner Tuesday evening when conservative author Ann Coulter took on liberal media member Alan Colmes on Fox News's "Hannity and Colmes."

As this was the first time the pair met since Coulter's now famous "Jews need to be perfected" comment, it was a metaphysical certitude this issue would surface.

Not surprisingly, Colmes did not disappoint, as irrespective of any other pressing matters facing the nation, this was the first topic he raised with his guest, and in so doing, set off quite a firestorm when he said Coulter was using "the classic language of anti-Semitism."

As this is just too marvelous to interrupt with needless commentary, what follows is a partial transcript of this delicious battle between right and left with a video available here for your added entertainment pleasure (h/t Hot Air):

Earlier this month, Karl Rove said he was a fan of NewsBusters. Count Ann Coulter, author and humorist, as another prominent conservative who is a fan of NewsBusters.

Moments ago, I spoke with her during a conference call for bloggers in which I asked her for her thoughts on MSNBC host Chris Matthews.

Before I got to my question, however, Coulter interrupted. "I love NewsBusters," she said and then turned to my query. Here is her answer:

"Chris Matthews is the perfect example of the media's 'it girl' mentality. He's been on TV forever and been shoved into America's face for years and what does he have like 26 or 27 viewers?

"The media is always trying to pawn these 'it girls' of the moment off on us, I mean look at Ashleigh Banfield who was talked about as if she were the Second Coming. But no one watched. I have no idea where she is today. The same thing applies to Matthews."

It's one thing for the creators of the wildly successful "Obama Girl" to produce a new video attacking conservative author Ann Coulter for her recent statements regarding Jews needing to be perfected.

Yet, as the song refers to Coulter as "a whore," "petty," "hateful," and someone that "ignores civilian casualties," it seems rather absurd that ABC's Jake Tapper not only blogged about it, but also that ABC would actually post the video at its website.

Sadly, there it was at Tapper's blog Political Punch Friday:

Don Feder doesn't take Ann Coulter seriously "as an evangelist," but "no one can get the left going like Ann." He captures some stunning Coulter-hatred in the media.

The piece de hysteria (believe me, the competition was stiff) was a column by L.A. Times media critic Tim Rutten, who darkly warned that, "The rails leading to Auschwitz were greased by precisely the opinion Coulter expressed on American television this week."

Rutten -- who's saying that evangelizing facilitates genocide -- needs to be kept away from a keyboard, for his own safety.

In an interview with televangelist Joel Osteen and his wife on Thursday’s CBS "Early Show," co-host Hannah Storm began the segment by asking Osteen: "Last week, conservative right-wing pundit Ann Coulter made waves, she said, quote, "Christians consider themselves perfected Jews,"saying that it would be "a lot easier for Jews if they would become Christians." What did you make of her remarks?" In contrast, ABC’s "Good Morning America" managed to interview Osteen without such politically charged language on Monday.

Storm then followed up with the bizarre theological observation: "And there should, should there be sort of an Old Testament, New Testament debate going on at this point in our country? Is that productive?" Coulter comments aside, last time I checked Christians believed in both parts of the Bible Hannah.

Continuing the theme of political correctness, Storm was impressed with the diversity of Osteen’s flock:

One of the most stunning things about your church, you know, when someone attends one of your services, you do see all races there. You see black, you see white, you see Hispanic, you see gay couples, you see family people, you see janitors and CEOs. What is it about your message that crosses all of those boundaries, that's so universally accepted?

She even went on to ask Osteen about critics who say: "You're Christianity-lite, you should be talking about suffering and sin and all the real, you know, things that happen to people." Apparently Storm sees "real" Christianity as being nothing but doom and gloom. Sorry Hannah, most Christians do not operate like the mainstream media.

On Monday’s edition of "The View" on ABC, Barbara Walters despaired that Ann Coulter is getting any attention for her religion remarks on CNBC last week. When Whoopi Goldberg suggested she get an invite to the show, Walters yelled "No! No! No!" She declared "there are so many wonderful, fascinating people on this show, and we don't have time for all of them. So I'd rather have positive, rather than controversial, rather than negative."

Walters also expressed her displeasure that a Jewish man was dating Coulter. "Doesn’t he care? Doesn’t it matter?" Joy Behar agreed with the insult: "This a woman who thinks 'Schindler's List' is a comedy, okay?"