Posted on 07/28/2006 2:46:39 PM PDT by jwalburg
I may disagree with what Ann Coulter says but I will defend to the death Oscar Wilde's right to say it. Describing the same kind of widow that set Coulter off, he quipped: "Her hair turned quite gold from grief."
Wondering what life in America would be like if Coulter used a stiletto instead of a sledgehammer is a tempting but futile excursion into dreamland. Suppose, for example, she was confronted, like Jennie Churchill, with a pompous young man who boasted that his financée's virtue was "priced above rubies." Without missing a beat, Jennie said, "Try diamonds." But if the young man said the same thing to Coulter?
"The godless liberals are trying to link Pat Robertson to Charles Taylor's diamond-smuggling cartel in Liberia while they cry crocodile tears over the poor starving Africans they're helping to starve by conniving with radical ANC goons trained by Winnie Mandela who controls every mine in South Africa, all because they hate Robertson's Christian beliefs so much they'll be cheering and dancing in the streets if Taylor and the God-hating Marxists succeed in smearing him!"
If Coulter lacks Jennie Churchill's sophisticated wit, neither does she show any trace of Dorothy Parker's lethal impishness. Parker's assessment of her dependent husband -- "Alan will always land on somebody's feet" -- would probably leave her cold. Not because she didn't get it, but because it is so perfectly epigrammatic that there is no way to "mischaracterize" it, to use Coulter's favorite fighting word; it can be quoted in context, out of context, or out of the blue without losing a thing.
Wit keeps sexual repartee from being offensive; the sharper the wit, the cleaner the joke. Challenged to use the word horticulture in a sentence, Parker immediately shot back, "You can lead a horticulture but you can't make her think." Her opinion of the current crop of debutantes: "If they were laid end to end I wouldn't be a bit surprised." The English adventuress who broke her leg in the middle of her divorce trial: "She probably did it sliding down a barrister."
By contrast, Coulter's sexual remarks are at once grim and flippant. Commenting on a psychologist's plan to teach children about gay sex in a loving way, she said: "How can you teach children about anal sex in a loving way? Or any sodomy, for that matter?"
I am not saying that everyone has to be witty and original and overflowing with dazzling bons mots -- after all, Coulter is a lawyer and I wouldn't want to see her let down the side. I am just curious to know why she was content to call Katie Couric "the affable Eva Braun of morning TV." Couldn't she come up with something better? How about Simper Fidelis?
And why a Nazi comparison in view of her own strenuous objections to the way liberals "characterize" right-wingers -- herself in particular -- as Nazis? Why would she call the liberal Couric a Nazi? Did she mean to imply that Couric is anti-Semitic, or anti-Israel in the far-Left fashion? And since Eva Braun has no identity without Hitler, who was his stand-in on the morning show supposed to be?
Maybe what she was striving for was not a Nazi but a German, one of those take-charge Teutonic battle queens like Brunhilde who ran the show, so to speak, to imply that Katie Couric ran the morning show and hence the whole country from her powerful liberal throne while cloaked in phony affability. This certainly works better than the powerless, pathetic Eva Braun.
But Coulter knows her audience too well for that. While she herself is familiar with Brunhilde, chances are the average American is not, so she probably decided to use Eva Braun whether it made sense or not because everybody knows who she was from seeing all those war movies. And even if they don't, she needed the name of some bad person, and "Eva Braun" sounds like a big, mean Nazi dyke, so -- hey -- it's good enough.
At her best, Coulter writes well, but the chief source of her success is that she is a perfect match for the American ideal: smart as a whip but dumb as a post, educated but not learned, sexy but not sensuous, all at the same time. She would not hesitate to choose a sledgehammer over a stiletto because her instincts would pull her back from what the 18th century called "demolishing your enemies without raising your voice." She would know that if a writer uses a stiletto, a lot of people might not get the point, but they would definitely get the loftiness that accompanies irony and understatement. And so, knowing that being called an elitist spells ruin, she opted for a sledgehammer and raised the roof instead.
Her timing was perfect, putting her before the television cameras just in time to take advantage of the whoosh. That's the sound cable news uses to signal each new 15-second segment in a roundup. They report the latest border debacle, then they go whoosh! and start talking about midwestern floods. When they finish the floods there's another whoosh! and the subject changes to the stock market. Gone are the days when a break was signaled by a soft rattle of the host's fake papers and a murmured "We'll be back in a moment." Now, if a revered philosopher came on a show, the host would say, "Hold your thought, Plato," and cut to whoosh.
CNN has the loudest whoosh, a harsh wheezing sound so labored that at first I thought it was me. After all, I made my NR debut 16 years ago with a cover story called "I'd Rather Smoke Than Kiss." But no. The whoosh is television's way of telling us that we are being swept up and borne aloft on gusty torrents of swirling excitement. To train us to gasp, they walk us through it by gasping for us.
The whoosh needs a blowhard and it has gotten Ann Coulter, a one-woman Hyde Park Corner who, love her or hate her, is saving television from itself by never uttering Guestisms -- those gummy little nothings that guests keep saying over and over without thinking until everybody thinks they have said something thoughtful. Four of the most frequently heard Guestisms are:
"That's a good question."
"You can indict a ham sandwich."
"I saw the gentleman kick the store clerk in the head."
"Y'know, Greta . . ."
Coulter has been called so many names that it won't be long before somebody creates a site listing them all under CussOutCoulter.com, but my favorite among the printable ones is "Twiggy with Tourette's." I vetoed virago because its original meaning -- "a woman of stature, strength, and courage who is not feminine in the conventional way" -- should be reserved for the likes of Joan of Arc. As for the devolved meaning, it may fit her but I have a mental block against this usage because it's the way intellectual snobs say "bitch."
You know who the real winner in the Ann Coulter controversy is, don't you? The Geico insurance company. Whenever their ad comes on after I've been watching Coulter do her howling Boudicca number, their little gecko lizard seems so plangent and defenseless that I want to hold him close and protect him. I feel completely mischaracterized and it's all her fault.
Florence King's National Review columns are collected in STET, Damnit!: The Misanthrope's Corner, 1991 to 2002.
King could have used the example of the affable Eva Clinton who once said with charm and grace, and a dash of feminine humor, "You F.....G Jew Bastard!"
Ann Coulter I know, but who's Florence King?
The envy of Coulter's intelligence, awareness, and achievement is quite obvious. What a loser [female dog].
I don't know how Dorthy Parker would have stated that - forgive me.
The truth is that Florence has been trying for decades (?) to be what Ann is now. But Ann is actually very stilletto - every column contains many wonderfully clever barbs. Same for live interviews. Just her line at the end of the MSNBC interview where the woman remarked to Ann, after viewing a video of her ten years after her first appearance, 'your hair was much blonder then,' Ann replied, without missing a beat, 'I lived in Washington then.'
Florence... really. Ann's column has more intelligent, clever lines in her weekly column than you do in a years worth of Misanthrope's Corner.
"At her best, Coulter writes well, but the chief source of her success is that she is a perfect match for the American ideal: smart as a whip but dumb as a post, educated but not learned, sexy but not sensuous, all at the same time."
Meow. I smell the fumes of jealousy here. Ann is a true American, she takes these issues personally and undertands the danger we're in from leftist ideals - THAT'S the reason for the straight talk. And, THAT's the reason she's so successful with the average American.
People used to double talk and 'nuance' like leftists, and obviously Ms. King, get distinctly uncomfortable with directness and confrontation. Which is of course the entire point.
Flowery self ingratiating BS.
People who write like this love themselves.
"...dumb as a post..."
Doubtful!
Preferring a sledghammer over a stiletto is a very American thing. The stiletto, when used as a weapon vice the tool used in needlepoint, is a cowardly weapon. It is used by sneaking up behind and driving in to pierce the heart, or into the neck to pierce the brain. A sledgehammer used as a weapon power and passion harkening back to hearty warriors facing one another on the field, intentions and motives clear.
The writer of this article should just go back to sipping herbal tea and trading droll, pithy banalities with other droll pithy tea sippers. I prefer discourse with Americans.
Top sends
"...lead a horticulture indeed."
King's writing reminds me of the Monty Python line "Smart people like me who talk loud in restaurants -----"
um...she's a real gem, who knows her way around a gerund. You should go out, say to a library, and check out her books, most notably "Southern Ladies and Gentlemen" and "With Malice Toward All". Her books on misanthropy make Bob Tyrell look like a kindergartner.
This is one smart cookie and Ann should perk up and listen to what she says.
Then again, your responses, if meant seriously and you could well be kidding, would be just what Ann has decided will play and what Florence is lamenting is the state of even conservative education.
I'll opt for the chance you're kidding, though and just consider this one of those times when I can give Florence the nod she has richly earned.
um...she's a real gem, who knows her way around a gerund. You should go out, say to a library, and check out her books, most notably "Southern Ladies and Gentlemen" and "With Malice Toward All". Her books on misanthropy make Bob Tyrell look like a kindergartner.
This is one smart cookie and Ann should perk up and listen to what she says.
Then again, your responses, if meant seriously and you could well be kidding, would be just what Ann has decided will play and what Florence is lamenting is the state of even conservative education.
I'll opt for the chance you're kidding, though and just consider this one of those times when I can give Florence the nod she has richly earned.
Eva Braun is a woman who saw Hell from the inside, and laid down next to it every night, preferring the elixir of notoriety and access to the deserted integrity of anonymity.
Which sums up Couric pretty well, if you ask me.
Pretty straitforward: The intellectual snobs at NR don't like the fact that she has more followers than they do.
So...Matt Lauer is Hitler? I somehow think the guy isn't quite that evil, just a newshead, after all.
Did someone say Anne Coulter + stilettos? Any pix?
Obviously the author spends a lot of time with the History Channel on the tube.
That's exactly right. Ann knows how to wield a stiletto, and does it frequently. But she also knows what Florence doesn't: how to use a sledgehammer when it is called for, and she uses it masterfully!
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