You know how CAIR has asked that polite society consider shunning Ann Coulter because her column from week before last strongly implied that Muslims are smelly?

Well, it made Rush Limbaugh laugh. At least, he SAID it was the news item that caused the giggling fit.

Smells Like Coulterphobia

When I saw this headline on Thursday I just busted out laughing: Ann Coulter Says Muslims ‘Smell Bad’; CAIR: Media Should Reject Commentator’s Bigotry.

It’s a story on the PR Newswire, which is where people put out press releases and hope the media will pick up on them and turn them into big news stories, so I’m sort of falling into a little trap here but I can’t avoid it. It?s just too funny. Poor Ann. This is what you get for being out there, my friend.

The story comes from the Washington-based Council on American-Islamic Relations. ?A prominent national Islamic civil rights and advocacy group today called on major media outlets to end their association with a controversial conservative pundit who recently suggested that Muslims ?smell bad.? The Washington-based Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) said syndicated columnist Ann Coulter, who frequently appears as a guest on cable news programs, made that Islamophobic remark in a recent commentary on Mel Gibson’s new film ?The Passion of the Christ.? Coulter wrote: ?Being nice to people is, in fact, one of the incidental tenets of Christianity (as opposed to other religions whose tenets are more along the lines of ‘kill everyone who doesn’t smell bad and doesn’t answer to the name Mohammed’). She also referred to: ?(The Prophet) Muhammad’s many specific instructions to kill non-believers whenever possible.? [snip]

This headline is misleading. She did not say Muslims smell bad. She has been twisted and turned, which is what happens to much of what Ann says. They have to twist and turn it because she’s so direct that they can’t deal with that.

Rush, if Ann is just “so direct that they can’t deal with it,” and “they” are twisting her words, why don’t YOU tell us what she was saying?

And if your only point is that she didn’t flat-out SAY that Muslims are smell, but merely “suggested” it, like the body of the article says, then what part of Ann’s direct and forthright message is being twisted?

And speaking of Ann’s sensitive nose and her admirable directness, here’s part of a “Hardball” transcript from last summer:

CHRIS MATTHEWS: Let me ask you about this book [TREASON]. This book is very interesting, and I am not going to comment. I am going to let you comment on it:
“The principal difference between fifth columnists and the cold war versus the war on terrorism is that you could sit next to a communist in a subway without asphyxiating.”
What does that mean? I just want to know. What does that mean? I want to know.

ANN COULTER: It means what it says. The second difference is, that in far more time the enemy that we?re up against now has killed far fewer people.

MATTHEWS: So, but the enemy smells. Is that your knock against Arabs? I mean, that?s your point here. You sit next to them and you are asphyxiated while sitting next to them.

COULTER: I?m just drawing the differences between the old war and the currents war.

MATTHEWS: Is that a way to win friends in the Arab and Islamic world by saying they stink?

COULTER: I think it is a way to get people…

MATTHEWS: Is that deep?

COULTER: … to read my book, so I thank you.

Wow, that was pretty direct of Ann to admit, under interogation, that she engages in racial and religious slurs just to sell books.

But I still wonder about Rush thought Ann was talking about. And I wonder if he was able to recapture the deep spiritual insights he gained from her column after the medication wore off.