Tuesday, March 6, 2007
Syndicator Keeps Ann Coulter
The distributor of conservative pundit Ann Coulter’s column, Universal Press Syndicate, has no plans to drop her column despite the flap she created with her recent "faggot” comment.
Coulter used the gay slur in reference to Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards during a March 2 speech at the American Conservative Union’s Political Action Conference.
So far three newspapers that carried her column have announced that they would stop running it, and the gay rights group Human Rights Campaign has launched a letter-writing effort demanding that Universal stop distributing the column.
But in a statement, Universal’s president and editor Lee Salem said: "The contracts with the many writers and cartoonists we represent call for specific products and we have no legal interest in what they may do or say outside of that relationship.
"In the case of Ann Coulter (and others across the political spectrum whom readers have urged us to drop), she is not an employee and we have no legal power to ‘fire’ her, though, of course, any of her subscribing newspapers can drop her column at any time.
"Whether the words she chose in referring to John Edwards were misplaced humor or outright bigotry, we would not have distributed them in her column.”
Coulter’s column runs in about 100 papers.
The distributor of conservative pundit Ann Coulter’s column, Universal Press Syndicate, has no plans to drop her column despite the flap she created with her recent "faggot” comment.
Coulter used the gay slur in reference to Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards during a March 2 speech at the American Conservative Union’s Political Action Conference.
So far three newspapers that carried her column have announced that they would stop running it, and the gay rights group Human Rights Campaign has launched a letter-writing effort demanding that Universal stop distributing the column.
But in a statement, Universal’s president and editor Lee Salem said: "The contracts with the many writers and cartoonists we represent call for specific products and we have no legal interest in what they may do or say outside of that relationship.
"In the case of Ann Coulter (and others across the political spectrum whom readers have urged us to drop), she is not an employee and we have no legal power to ‘fire’ her, though, of course, any of her subscribing newspapers can drop her column at any time.
"Whether the words she chose in referring to John Edwards were misplaced humor or outright bigotry, we would not have distributed them in her column.”
Coulter’s column runs in about 100 papers.
