GMTA. Last night I posted an item on David Shuster's hypocrisy in branding Bristol Palin and Levi Johnston "unwed parents," pointing out that the MSM would never normally use such an un-PC term, preferring to speak reverentially of "single mothers." This morning, Ann Coulter appeared on Today to discuss her new book, Guilty, and by coincidence, an important focus of Ann's remarks was . . . the liberal media's "exaltation of single-motherhood."
I'll leave it to my fellow NewsBusters to recount the entire story of Ann's Today appearance, including the way NBC apparently scurried to have her on this morning's show after Drudge ran a story asserting that the network had imposed a lifetime ban on the conservative firebrand. For present purposes, let's focus here on the similar themes struck here and by Ann on the subject of single-motherhood.
Here's what I had to say last night:
He stopped short of demanding they be branded with a scarlet 'U.' But the suddenly puritanical David Shuster insists that the proper term for Bristol Palin and Levi Johnston is "unwed parents."
Now, it is of course true that Bristol and Levi are parents and unwed. But when's the last time you heard an MSM type refer to an "unwed mother" or "unwed parents"? As we all know, the approved PC terms are "single mother" and simply "parents" or "partners."
Not having yet read Guilty, I was unaware that Coulter, dubbed the "Conservative Queen" in the Today chyron, devoted an entire chapter to the issue.
MATT LAUER: [In the book] you also say that the liberal media and Democrats are out to accomplish the same thing: they want to destroy America. So, I mean, go ahead: why do liberals and the media want to destroy America?
ANN COULTER: Why? Their motives? Well, I'd have to be their confessor of psychologist to understand that. I'm describing the results. And a beautiful example of this--my Chapter Two of the book--is the exaltation of single-motherhood. It's promoted in the New York Times and in glossy women's magazines and in Hollywood movies. And we now know after 30 years of promoting single-motherhood, of the courts destroying the institution of marriage, that children raised without fathers are filling up the prisons. 70% of the teenage runaways, of teenage pregnancies, of rapists --
LAUER: Hasn't the mainstream media also done extensive reporting on the problem of the disintegration of the American family --
COULTER: Not so much --
LAUER: -- about the responsibility that needs to be held by men and fathers; that sort of thing?
COULTER: Not so much, actually. I think I document that pretty well here. Barbara Ehrenreich, who used to be a regular reporter for Time magazine and the New York Times, and she's constantly denouncing the nuclear family. The National Organization for Women has a bumper sticker: 'A Nuclear Family Can Destroy Your Whole Life.'
As can be seen in the video clip, the discussion continued in that vein for some time.
So . . . back to Shuster. Had he perhaps gotten an advance copy of Guilty, was persuaded by Ann's arguments, and has suddenly become a conservative cultural warrior? Was that behind his insistence that Bristol and Levi be branded "unwed parents"? Somehow I doubt it. A cyber-prize to the first reader who notes an example of how Shuster next refers to a mother in the same situation as Bristol.
