Ann Coulter on 'The View': Fireworks From the Start

Ann Coulter, promoting her book "Guilty: Liberal Victims and their Assault on America," appeared on ABC's "The View" this morning. As you can imagine, they didn't talk about the NFL playoffs.



At one point, the discussion focused on Coulter's opinion about single mothers. Not the one forced into being a single parent by divorce or a death of a spouse, but rather the women who choose to be single mothers. Here is a transcript provided by NewsBusters.org:

[Whoopi] Goldberg immediately asked Coulter, "What is your issue with single mothers?" and cited stats from "Guilty" that said 70 percent of inmates in prisons come from single-parent homes." Coulter tried to defend her statements but Goldberg wouldn't let her finish before attacking the studies Coulter used:

COULTER: We now have 30 or 40 years of social science research. I mean, I'm just citing, this is um, you know, dressed up numbers crunching. I'm just giving the numbers. 80% of the inmates in prisons were raised by single mothers. About 70% of the runaways of the child, um juvenile delinquents, juvenile murderers, rapists, raised by single mothers. And the point is this didn't happen by accident. The illegitimacy rate alone has gone up over 300% since 1970. And as I describe in my book, this was a specific plan by the left attacking the nuclear family the most famous example --

GOLDBERG: Wait a minute.

ELISABETH HASSELBECK: I just want to go --

GOLDBERG: I'm sorry, I know you want to do this left thing because that's what you do, that's your act.

COULTER: No, it's because I think it's true.

GOLDBERG: But I do want to know, because a lot of what you've cited in terms of this, just specifically this, is based on sort of not great research. Because we've seen this research discounted time and time again.

Colleen Raezler of NewsBusters.org sums it up perfectly:

There is no doubt that Coulter's statements are provocative and can inspire heated discussion. However, it could be that the gals were more hostile to Coulter than other controversial personalities simply because of her conservative views. After all, when Bill Maher, another controversial personality appeared on "The View," he was greeted with open arms and able to fully defend his film "Religulous," a movie many religious people found extremely offensive.

The full transcript is on the NewsBuster.org site.