Here is an excerpt from The Observer/Guardian- The Gaurdian as you all know is a Far leftwing publication, at least by American standards:
>> Lethally blonde
Ann Coulter has made a career out of saying the unthinkable. Last week the bestselling American author caused outrage when she described the widows of 9/11 as 'witches' who revelled in their husbands' deaths. Mixing soundbites with short skirts, this former lawyer has become the most extreme - and popular - polemicist in America. How did that happen?
Gaby Wood
Sunday June 11, 2006
The Observer
Ann Coulter has a stalker. She doesn't like to dignify his actions by talking about him, but she'll tell you, if you ask, that he's what the FBI class as the most dangerous kind - John Lennon's assassin was one of these. They're the sort that start out as fans and turn into your worst enemy.
Feelings about Ann Coulter run high and extreme. Often described as 'the Republican Michael Moore', Coulter is possibly even better equipped than Moore to offend people, because, it seems, she is 100 per cent shameless. Actually, make that 99 per cent. 'I've always told my friends,' she says, 'if only I could be a black Jewish homosexual - then we could really have some fun! Then I could say anything!'
Luckily, she is a woman, which puts her in a so-called minority and gives her considerable ammo (literally - she is very much in favour of guns, partly on account of the stalker). James Wolcott described her in Vanity Fair as 'the Paris Hilton of post-modern politics'. Eric Alterman, columnist for the Nation, calls her 'Rush Limbaugh in a miniskirt' (Limbaugh is a popular right-wing talk radio host). Sean Penn has an Ann Coulter action figure on his desk - which he uses to put out his cigarettes. Press a button and the doll speaks: 'Why not go to war for oil? We need oil. What do Hollywood celebrities imagine fuels their private jets? How do they think their cocaine is delivered to them?'
Coulter's weekly column is published in Human Events, once Ronald Reagan's favourite paper. It is read by few outside the conservative heartland, yet she has achieved a notoriety that suggests a far greater circulation. Liberals love to hate her, some conservatives hate her, but every time she writes a book - and Godless, published this week, is her fifth - it's an instant bestseller.
She's a little like Batman, or the Joker. You don't hear from her for a while then suddenly you can't miss her. This is a can't-miss-her moment. On Tuesday she went on the Today Show, NBC's morning programme, defending the passage of Godless that concerns the 11 September widows who lobbied for the creation of the 9/11 commission. She describes them as 'witches' who have cashed in on their husbands' deaths.
On Wednesday she took up the entire front page of the New York Daily News: 'Coulter the Cruel', it blared, next to a picture of Coulter smiling as if she'd just been crowned Miss World. On Thursday Hillary Clinton fought back against what she called a 'vicious, mean-spirited attack'. Perhaps, Clinton suggested, Coulter's book should have been called 'Heartless'. At a public reading in Long Island a town councilman presented Coulter with a letter requesting an apology. Triumphantly, she tore it up. Ah! The book tour had begun.
'This is of course exactly what she wants,' says Joe Klein, who tells me that she inspired a character in his Primary Colors. He adds: 'She's a really cancerous example of the American political disease. You know, there's a whole generation of people in this country who think a serious political discussion is Ann Coulter and Michael Moore yelling at each other. It's driven serious, nuanced conversation out of the market.'
Her effect, however, has to be carefully calibrated - yes, she's a loudmouth right-winger, along the lines of Limbaugh and broadcaster Bill O'Reilly, and far more iconic than both of them. But is she no more than a jester? How dangerous is she?
'She's not dangerous,' Joe Klein clarifies. 'The phenomenon she represents is dangerous'. Alterman agrees: 'The effect is to make racism and other forms of chauvinism acceptable in polite society. You're a killjoy if you take her seriously.'
The night the Twin Towers fell she wrote a now famous column suggesting that 'We know who the homicidal maniacs are. They are the ones cheering and dancing right now. We should invade their countries, kill their leaders, and convert them to Christianity'. She took a whole lot of people with her. She is, as blog king Mickey Kaus, self-described 'neoliberal' and friend of Coulter, says, 'one of these people who's had the so-called Fox effect, of rallying voters to the polls that nobody thought existed'. Coulter became a pied piper for a certain kind of patriot.
Entire chapters of other people's books (Alterman's, and liberal radio host Al Franken's) have been devoted to pointing out her factual errors. Coulter has written a book taking down Bill Clinton (High Crimes and Misdemeanors); one about the so-called collected lies of the left (Slander); a collection of previously published columns (How to Talk to a Liberal); a volume celebrating the work of Joe McCarthy (Treason). Godless is an expression of her religious views, and takes in the obvious issues: abortion, science, the death penalty ...
Some of Coulter's more charming opinions are that the country would be better off if women couldn't vote, that in December 2001 America should have attacked France, and that the death penalty should be brought back everywhere. She supported apartheid in South Africa, she has gently suggested that Timothy McVeigh should have blown up the New York Times building, she believes that defending the right to abortion is akin to defending slavery. Airlines, she says, should have - and flaunt - a policy of racial profiling: 'You are now free to move about the cabin - Not so fast, Mohammed!'
I am due to meet Ann Coulter for lunch, but there has been some confusion over the location. Her PR emails me to apologise. 'As you might imagine, her schedule is very hectic, and I do not have total control over her until next week,' she writes, effortlessly confirming my suspicion that Coulter is in fact an automaton. Total Control? How does that work? One week, her book publicist; the next, Dick Cheney? I soon learn that this idea is ridiculous. Coulter would never let a moderate like Cheney get his hands on her.
When I arrive at the restaurant, Coulter is sitting down, which is just as well because had I seen at first how tall she was, I might have fainted. Coulter's look is that of someone who has paid close attention to the hairstyles favoured in Stepford, and to the eyeliner worn by the evil android in Metropolis. Her motto might as well be: you can never be too rich, too thin, too blond, too tall, or too rude. She has a mane of expensively blond hair, the crane-limbed body type of a pterodactyl, and a smile that seems entirely un-Machiavellian. Now I understand.
All the interviews I've read involve the interviewer (usually a liberal man) wanting to dislike her and coming away with some excuse for her behaviour, on the grounds that she is actually quite nice in person. And it turns out to be true that she makes everything seem like a joke. She loves to argue, she smiles and laughs with every answer she gives. She's like a puppy waiting to be thrown a ball. Look, she says, I'm just doing this for fun. I'd rather be a married stay-at-home mom, but until that happens, taunting liberals seems like a good way to fill up my day.
After we've ordered our drinks, I ask Coulter whether she thinks she owes her success to a conservative following, or to liberals' need for a bogeyman.
'Oh, that's a good question,' she chuckles. 'One of my favourite liberal friends has laughed about how it's just like clockwork: they attack you, and all it does is give you publicity, and they can't help themselves - they just keep attacking. Liberals hate me because I understand them better than they understand themselves. They pretend not to get the joke.'
As the first plane went into the World Trade Centre, Coulter was in a cab on her way to LaGuardia airport. She was listening to the radio she always carried with her, before i-Pods were invented. 'At first I thought it was some shock jock joke,' she says now, 'but then everyone was pulling the same joke'. When the second plane hit, she leaned forward and told the cab driver the news. He didn't react. He was a Muslim. Coulter was instantly alarmed.
After spending all day in a bar in Queens (the bridges were shut, the subway had stopped, she couldn't get back into Manhattan) she wrote her infamous 9/11 column on her laptop, and hasn't changed her view since. Was that her position before, I wonder?
'No, I never cared about the Muslims,' she says of the people she more frequently refers to as 'ragheads'. 'It seemed like a morass - that's why so many popular jokes are based on peace in the Middle East. I thought, it's a morass, other people are dealing with it, I'll write about Clinton.'
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You see how one sided these statements are, they have nothing really good to say about Ann Coulter .
This guy's observations are as propagandistic and misleading
and the tripe and vitriol you get from Al Franken or John Stewart,
let alone more obvious examples like Micahel moore or Salon.com
What a crock! Coulter's 45. The only way she could be a stay-at-home mom at her age is get married next week and have a kid the next day. And she knows that.
She loves throwing red meat, and she knows, because she's blonde and skinny, men who fantasize making love to a piranha will always come to her defense, no matter what she does.
Coulter made a choice a long time ago, she's acting on that choice, and would never have it any other way. She would die without the publicity and, now, without the money.
...All the interviews I've read involve the interviewer (usually a liberal man) wanting to dislike her and coming away with some excuse for her behaviour, on the grounds that she is actually quite nice in person.Bingo!And it turns out to be true that she makes everything seem like a joke. She loves to argue, she smiles and laughs with every answer she gives.
She's like a puppy waiting to be thrown a ball.
Look, she says, I'm just doing this for fun...
That's our Ann -- reveling in the intellectual repartee --- where she is the undisputed MASTER!