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.
Florence King does make a point. Not so much about Ann as about today's American audience. Many of them are not well read, and cleverness is not their strong suit. Look at Leno's crowd or Letterman's crowd. What appeals to people is brash confrontation, boorish insults and crude and childish humor.
Ann is doing a public service, and in a way that most people will listen. Florence King may lament the loss of more refined humor, but she can't single-handedly change the world. It may not be great, but it's where we are. You won't get on CNN with references to Boudicca.
(Boudicca: "tradition tells that all of south east Britain came to her side, ready to die for the Queen who was fierce enough to take on the Roman Empire." AD 62, http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/historic_figures/boudicca.shtml)
My, the check-pants Republicans at NR don't like playing second fiddle to Ann Coulter. After they fired her they thought she would just go away.
If Ms. King is so smart why did the "affable Eva Braun" bit go right over her head? Ann did not call Couric a Hitler, a Nazi, or Brunhilda for good reason. She chose her words carefully and they are brilliant. Katie is not inherently an evil person, but she is the smiling face that stands next to evil and tells everyone it is OK.
It's also a cheap shot to take the two or three best things a person said in their entire life and compare it with Ann's efforts from the past week. Mark my words, by the end of her life Ann Coulter will have many more quotable quotes than Dorothy Parker. Or Florence King.
The "posts" on this thread illustrate Ms King's point re La Coulter's fans.
No, the duplicitous mainstream media (which celebrates Couric as one of its brightest stars) and its Goebbels-like twisting of truth is the modern-day equivalent of the Nazi regime.
But you knew that.
Wow.. What an unflattering photo! That one DOES make her look like a man. Usually she looks damn fine, but sheesh!
Both of your comments were quite insightful. Well done.
Sorry Mr. Bow, I wasn't kidding. It would appear that you know more about her than I do but if this is how she writes, I think she's a bore.
Maybe you know, does she really think the 'horticulture' joke was that funny and witty?
I don't know what Ann decides will play but she seems to be genuine to me, and tells it like it is. I admire that, though it may put me in the fence post category.
I'll stick with Ann and Sobran.
I haven't read her books. I have read enough of her columns to decide not to read her books.
Liberals won't be stopped by a stiletto. That's like using a .38 on a gorilla - just enough to make him mad.
Nor is Ann like a sledgehammer. She's more like a shotgun blast to the face - which WILL stop a liberal gorilla in its tracks.
Although, when I read this article on NRO, I only thought, "Meow!"
I guess paint means a lot to you! I think she is a good-looking woman. She also articulates enough information and propaganda, that she is an extremely valuable card-carrying member of the VRWC...
Florence King is a Virginia lady of very mature years, a lesbian, a humorist, and a professional curmudgeon in the style of a female Andy Rooney who has written with incising humor about her Southern heritage, among other things. She is not in competition with Ann because she's not principally a political writer (though her columns are carried by NR) and because she's twice Ann's age and semi-retired. She quotes Dorothy Parker because Dorothy was the reigning wit of her youth, and was unquestionably very sharp in her use of the English language to make her points.
I admire Ann Coulter very much. Dorothy Parker unquestionably came up with some zingers, but only occasionally in her career. But unlike Ann Parker was not required to produce them on TV on the spur of the moment, rebutting for an hour the uninformed and unfair hysterics of spitty Chrissy Matthews and similar louts.
Gotcha. When I read the article I envisioned her as Rush Limbaugh describes the Feminazi's.
In general, I'll take the people on this site over the snotty, self-important, arrogant fans of King and her ilk.
'spitty Chris Matthews and similar louts'
That got a good laugh out of me. You should write a column.
I can't agree, but that's what makes horseraces.
"Twiggy with Tourette's" is a kinda funny.
Florence King is one of the most esteemed contributors to NATIONAL REVIEW who retired a few years ago. I've personally never appreciated her as much as many other readers, I find her writing a bit too nuanced (dense) for my enjoyment. I think she used to always have her articles inside the back cover.
Thank you. I find my fellow FReepers to be very insightful and witty. I dropped NR years ago.
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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All I know is that I eagerly read all of Ann's columns right through to the end, laughing all the way. While this particular analysis, left me bored at the second paragraph, where upon I quickly skipped to the comments.
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