OOPS. Did an intemperate, incoherent post late last night, and have removed it. (What's your excuse for the leaving the rest of them up?--ed. Where were you when I needed you?--re) It was about Andrew Sullivan's response to Sam Tanenhaus on Ann Coulter and what ST seems to consider her erstwhile enablers (now critics) in the conservative movement. Sullivan thinks Tanenhaus unfairly "paint[s] diverse and serious writers like Dorothy Rabinowitz and David Horowitz as indistinguishable from Coulter." Well, Horowitz did write things like "Traitor in Chief," which more or less accused Clinton of selling us out to the Red Chinese. It's just a hop, skip, and a jump (maybe just a hop, actually) from that sort of thing to Coulterland. So it's piquant to see him, and a few others, now drawing a cordon sanitaire around her work.

But on sober reflection, it may be a good thing that they've distanced themselves from Coulter, even if only for ass-covering purposes. The high pitch of internet discourse hasn't been the best friend of reason -- I'm living proof of that -- and a dial-down here and there can't hurt.