Ann Coulter may love comedy more than she hates liberals. I know, because back in the early months of 2001, she and I were friends.
We met in a private internet community called “The Stump,” launched in 2000 by Jay Kogen, who won an Emmy for writing a Frasier episode. The Stump was populated with TV comedy writers and funny actors. It was a free-wheeling conversation space and when Coulter joined, some members of the Stump did not welcome the brash conservative warmly. But I’d read her book, High Crimes and Misdemeanors: The Case Against Bill Clinton, and agreed with a lot of it. Also, to paraphrase Lou Grant, I like brash.
Coulter didn’t stick around the Stump for long so I reached out to her on my own. We became AOL Instant Messaging buddies for three reasons: (1) she liked that I’d worked on Letterman, The Simpsons, and created the ABC sitcom Sabrina, the Teenage Witch; (2) Coulter was a night owl and her East Coast 2 a.m. was my West Coast 11 p.m.; and (3) I shared a first name with Coulter’s mother.
