Tonight, there is actually a reason to watch Jay Leno. As PZ has been excited about over at Pharyngula George Carlin and Anne Coulter have been coscheduled tonight and the potential for fireworks has a few people excited.

There's been lot's of talk lately about whether or not to ignore Coulter, indicating we are not alone in being unsure of how to deal with her brand of crazy. Kos seems to share the tinkerbell theory that she's kept alive by the attention lavished on her for being outrageous.

The left could've learned the same lesson regarding Coulter. The more we protest her and bitch about her, the more books she sells and TV appearances she books. There's no better way to kill an opponent in politics than to ignore him or her. If no one pays attention to you, you are no longer relevant.

Whereas PZ Myers believes in the boiling frog theory that the mounting conservative craziness needs to be opposed (and mocked) or else the heat gets turned up higher and higher and before you know it, you're completely surrounded by ignorance.

Lots of people have been telling me to ignore Ann Coulter: that she says outrageous things to get attention, that addressing her antics is exactly what she wants, that the best thing to do is to starve her of the publicity. I sympathize, I really do. It's giving her and her kind far too much credit.

However, I've been hearing the same argument applied to creationists for about 25 years. "Ignore them and they'll go away," or "Serious scientists don't pay attention to the lunatic fringe," they say. We tend our little gardens, and we don't worry about what the crackpot next door is growing in his. But hey, have you noticed something?

Neglect doesn't work.

Here's a counterargument: "The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing." I've watched good people do nothing about creeping lunacy and anti-intellectualism for decades. I watched appalled when that senile fool Reagan was elected. I was even more appalled when George W. Bush, airhead extraordinaire and utterly unqualified ignoramus, became president. The citizenry howls to destroy the science standards in our public schools, or complacently votes to lower property taxes at the expense of our children's minds. While we've quietly raised a rich crop in scattered little plots, we are about to be overwhelmed by the nightmarish weeds that overrun our neighbors'. We must stand up and shout, finally…and hope it's not too late.

Then again, PZ is of course particularly pissed off at her because her book attacks evolution. That's a good way to get his attention. Her arguments are a joke of course. She's really figured out a good niche, just write crazy conservative blather and people will buy your book. I really don't think I'm violating Godwin's law anymore when I compare her to a certain dictator whose name begins with H. She really does exist to just pander to the worst type of dehumanizing hatred towards vast swathes of the population for attention. It's bizarre though, all these Christians and right wingers getting behind a 44-year-old unmarried harpy who wears revealing miniskirts everywhere and bitches about immorality. Do they really believe her? Do they really think she's a virginal flower of Christian love and abstinence? Some have parodied this apparent masochism but I think it's just another funny aspect of the woman to mock.

Anyway, Scoobie, her long time nemesis, has a blog dedicated to debunking Godless. He had good luck showing the scholarship of Slander and Treason was fraudulent. It's getting towards the point where we're going to have to have a talk with Random House about their publishing authors who fabricate and lie under the guise of scholarship. Hopefully he'll find out about the Hitler or Coulter quiz and take a ride.

By the way, for some other good TV watching, watch Bush criticize a blind reporter for wearing sunglasses.