Culture War Smackdown: Joy Behar vs. Ann Coulter — The Highlights

For the second night of her new 9pmET HLN show, Joy Behar brought in an old nemesis: Ann Coulter. You may recall that in February, Behar interviewed Coulter when she was guest hosting on Larry King Live, and even the likes of Entertainment Weekly and New York Magazine thought that Coulter outmatched her. Their second matchup, in May, was a stalemate. How did the liberal Behar, who recently told Mediaite “I’m a talk show host, not a journalist,” fare against the self-described conservative “polemicist?” Interview highlights, and video, after the jump.
0:00-0:41: Behar opens with a gambit: invoking the late Don Hewitt. According to Behar, Hewitt’s response to the first Behar-Coulter debate was “this is the first time I’ve ever really liked Ann Coulter,” but “you know what, but I think it’s just an act.”

Coulter: “I got a lot of comments, to this day –”

Behar: “From Don Hewitt?”

Coulter: “Yes, he was calling me, saying “it’s the first time I’ve really liked Joy Behar.” laughter from the studio audience.

1:05: Ann Coulter says that the thing that made her happiest was Bill Clinton’s impeachment. “I suspect the second happiest is going to be Obama’s impeachment.” Straight-up trolling.

2:45-3:50: Coulter launches into a solid, if talking points-y, economic attack on health care. “What you want in insurance is to insure against catastrophes.”

Behar trips her up nicely when she gets too dramatic:

Coulter, gesturing behind herself: “Look, it would be a lot cheaper if we weren’t paying for their, their restless leg syndrome.”

Behar: “Whose restless leg syndrome? What are you talking about?”

Evidently, many members of the Joy Behar Show stage crew suffer from restless leg syndrome, and they’re ruining it for everybody.

5:00-5:10: Behar agrees that some Bush protesters were nasty, but says that at least it wasn’t about his race. Coulter: “how do you know?”

5:20: Freudian slip? Behar, on Glenn Beck calling Obama a racist: “that’s like Lindsay Lohan calling David Hasselbeck — David Hasselhoff — an alcoholic.” “I’m sorry, Elisabeth, I didn’t mean Hasselbeck.”

5:45: BREAKING NEWS: Coulter: “I love Glenn Beck.”

7:45: Discussing Sarah Palin: apropos of nothing, Coulter launches into a Charlie Gibson impression: “What do you think of the Palin doctrine? That’s what I heard her give.”

9:25: Coulter on Sarah Palin’s endlessly rehashed Katie Couric gaffe, in which she couldn’t name a book or magazine she read: “She’s young! She’s the Internet generation!”

10:35: Behar’s parting zing, giving Coulter no time to respond before the end of the segment: “[Palin]’s like Gaddafi.”

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