Right-wing blowhard Ann Coulter took her incendiary views to a whole new level Thursday, this time finding the silver lining in Japan's nuclear disaster.
During a segment on Bill O'Reilly's Fox News show, the conservative firebrand tried to calm jittery viewers by telling them "radiation is good for you."
Coulter went on to say that a growing body of evidence shows exposure to radiation above levels the government deems harmful actually reduces cancer.
The wannabe plutonium pundit cited her website's latest column, "A glowing report on radiation," in which she wrote, "With the terrible earthquake and resulting tsunami that have devastated Japan, the only good news is that anyone exposed to excess radiation from the nuclear power plants is now probably much less likely to get cancer."
Coulter pointed to articles in The Times of London and The New York Times as proof.
"So by your account, we should all be heading for the nuclear reactor" leaking radiation in Japan, joked a skeptical O'Reilly.
Some 140,000 people have been evacuated from a danger zone around the country's damaged reactors.
"You have to be responsible," he added.
"The prevailing wisdom is there's a level of radiation that's gonna hurt you and perhaps kill you ... What you say may be true - there may be some doses of radiation that in the human body can ward off infection. But in something like this, you gotta get the folks out of there, and you have to report worst-case scenarios."
O'Reilly pointed to the 1945 atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki as proof that radiation kills, but Coulter wouldn't budge.
She is the latest pundit to cause a stir for their controversial remarks on the tsunami and earthquake that devastated Japan.
CNBC anchor Larry Kudlow was slammed after callously saying he was grateful the human toll was far worse than the economic toll.
He later apologized.
He later apologized.
Rapper 50 Cent also made a foot-in-his-mouth comment on Twitter.
"Wave will hit 8am them crazy white boys gonna try to go surfing," he wrote. "Look this is very serious people I had to evacuate all my hoes from LA, Hawaii and Japan. I had to do it. Lol."
Comedian Gilbert Gottfried was fired earlier this week by insurance company Aflac for insensitive tweets he posted, including, "Japan is really advanced. They don't go to the beach. The beach comes to them."
ashahid@nydailynews.com
ashahid@nydailynews.com
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