MICKEY KAUS NOTES THAT THE NEW YORK TIMES THINKS ANN COULTER’S PRO-GAY STATEMENTS ARE SOMETHING NEW.

Holson sneers that Coulter’s “sudden zeal” regarding gays “might might strike some as an opportunistic grab for a spotlight that has faded somewhat.” But it wasn’t very sudden. Coulter has a whole chapter in her book If Democrats Had Any Brains They’d Be Republicans on why gays should join the GOP. The chapter is called “No Gays Left Behind!” The book came out in 2007. (In it she quotes herself from 2006: “I like gays. I like all gays. And not just the ones who are Ann Coulter drag queens.”) I’m told she also said the same thing about gays and Republicans in the Q &A at the very 2007 CPAC conference where she made her controversial John Edwards/Isiaiah Washington/John Edwards “fa–ot” joke (though I can’t get the video to work). Pretty shrewd of her to realize in 2007 that in two years the Tea Parties would rise up and steal her “thunder”—so she’d better start going for the gays!

I can explain this. To know what Ann Coulter writes in her books, they’d have to know what’s in her books. That would require reading Ann Coulter’s books — and worse yet, admitting it in print, which no self-respecting Timesian would do. Far better to make a major embarrassing error (one of three Kaus dissects) — and thus actually score points when busted by Mickey, since this makes it clear to the NYT crowd that your mind is unpolluted by contact with Coulter’s writing.

Stupid anti-intellectual Tea Partiers. Next they’ll expect you to know who Friedrich Hayek is. Who has time for that stuff?