Crooks and Liars put on display an amazing Ann Coulter meltdown (No One Is Paying Attention to Me Hair Flip, patent pending). Ordinarily, I would not give any type of publicity to anything Ann Coulter, but when there’s an opportunity to witness public embarrassment of such a worthless windbag, I admit a guilty pleasure in answering that particular door.

What is interesting about this segment is how terrible an exploration of ideas the entire bit is. Sean Hannity talking over Michael Brown, Kirsten Powers talking over Ann Coulter (and spiritedly emerging victorious!). I pity people who look to this Fox News failure of a forum for inspiration or to learn about public policy and politics in America. While not perfect, I preferred Bill Maher’s Politically Incorrect as a roundtable for bringing together different perspectives to explore political ideas. Or, on a local front, Teddy Bart’s Round Table. Heck, even a lot of folks in the local blogosphere defend their partisan fiefs without Coulterian bluster.

We certainly value and strive to achieve civil dialogue on Liberadio(!). While controversy may sell, civil dialogue doesn’t have to be a boring process, and even when it is, it might still be important. At the end of the day, my interest in dialogue is the power of ideas. And antagonistic shouting diatribes frankly don’t have a lot of power in the face of civil dialogue exploring rich and often complicated ideas. When I shop in the mediasphere, I often leave controversy on the shelf except when unavoidable, and I recommend that others do, too.

Ann Coulter, the committee finds you unmutual!

This post was written by Freddie