Is Ann Coulter okay?
Not in the abstract "what kind of person would espouse those abhorrent statements ?" way. I mean literally: Is she alright? Has anyone checked on her? After the vicious drubbing she took during the recent Comedy Central Roast of Rob Lowe, I'm starting to worry.
Coulter, currently hawking her just-released hardcover "In Trump We Trust: E Pluribus Awesome," was perhaps the most inexplicable guest on the celebrity dais during Lowe's (only marginally more-explicable) televised roast, which aired on Monday night. There, the arch-conservative mega-troll sat through speaker after speaker, taking it directly in the teeth as it became clear that she, not Lowe, was to be the evening's main course.
The jokes were savage, ranging from the political to the scatological, from the hilarious to the downright uncomfortable. Leading the charge was the evening's roastmaster, David Spade, who explained that "She seems stiff and conservative, but Ann gets wild in the sheets. Just ask the Klan."
It wasn't the only time the infamous racist group was invoked at Coulter's expense. As Saturday Night Live's Pete Davidson noted "Last year we had Martha Stewart, who sells sheets, and now we have Ann Coulter, who cuts eyeholes in them." (Joked Spade: "Is Pete white? Is he black? Ann Coulter needs to know, so she can decide if she hates him.")
Comedian Nikki Glazer took things a notch higher, jesting that "Ann Coulter has written 11 books…12 if you count Mein Kampf."
"Roastmaster General" Jeffrey Ross, heir apparent to insult-comic icon Don Rickles, took aim squarely at Coulter's opposition to same-sex marriage. "What's your thinking on that?" he asked. "If I can't get a husband they shouldn't, either?"
Even roastee Rob Lowe got in on the fun. After Coulter's turn at the mic generated few signs of life from the audience ("I’m hoping to persuade you all to vote for Trump. Most of all I want you David [Spade], because it would prove the media is lying when they say that Trump won’t get the vote of a single spade."… Oof) Lowe mused that "after your set tonight, we've all witnessed the first bombing that you can't blame on a Muslim."
It was folk-singer Jewel, however, who had the best line of the night. Jewel, who once appeared alongside Lowe on his short lived series The Lyon's Den, noted rightfully that the evening had been full of racially, sexually, ethnically offensive humor. "I do want to say as a feminist that I can’t support everything that’s been said tonight," she explained upon taking the mic.
"But as somebody that hates Ann Coulter," she added with a chuckle. "I'm delighted."
Coulter, for her part, attempted to explain away her own sub-par performance as an example of bad editing, which left alleged in-room laughter on the cutting room floor when the roast went to air. It's a charge rebutted by Ross, who told TMZ Coulter was exactly as bad as she looked on TV.
But, he added "I think anybody who comes to a roast and puts themselves out there deserves credit."