Ann Coulter Wows Leno Audience

Liberals may hate Ann Coulter, but the folks in the audience of Jay Leno’s "Tonight Show” roared their approval of the controversial author when she was introduced on Wednesday night.

Asked by Leno to explain all the controversy surrounding her No. 1 best-selling book "Godless: The Church of Liberalism," Coulter said: "Well, I wrote a book and liberals were hysterical. Every time I write a book liberals are hysterical. It happens all the time.”

Noting that Leno had joked about her the night before, saying that like the Wicked Witch in "The Wizard of Oz” she had a house fall on her as a result of her book, Ann countered: "I just dropped my house on the mainstream media.” The audience cheered.

Ann explained that before the book came out she gave it to her friends, including liberals, and not one of them complained about her remarks about the so-called Jersey Girls.

"Not my friends, not my editors, not the lawyers and not the liberals, pulled out the chapter on the Jersey Girls,” she said. Coulter has drawn fire from some – including Hillary Clinton – for attacking the four New Jersey widows who pushed for an independent commission to investigate the 9/11 World Trade Center attacks that killed their husbands. Coulter accused the women of "reveling in their status as celebrities and stalked by grief-arazzis.”

Commenting on Leno’s complaint that political discourse nowadays is so nasty, Coulter said: "We hear this all the time, about how civil things were back when there were only three TV stations” and nobody could talk back to the liberals.

Now, she said, there has suddenly been an alleged "disruption of civility” only because conservatives can talk back thanks to talk radio, the Internet and Fox News.

Asked if she is hurt by liberal attacks on her, Coulter said she wears them "as a badge of honor.” She added that she was surprised that liberals have failed to object to being called "Godless,” and have concentrated their fire on one small part of one chapter, when she criticized the Jersey Girls.

The much anticipated fireworks between Coulter and acid-tongued comedian George Carlin never came off, with Carlin sitting beside Ann smiling and saying nothing throughout her conversation with Leno except to note that he had to "move to the right” to allow Ann to sit beside her host.

During her 8 1/2 minutes on stage, Ann was interrupted by vigorous applause time and again.