Now, here is some entertainment...
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.
I liked some of the intelligent quips King attributed to other people, but didn't really see any originals in the article.
I wonder why not?
CT,
For men to recover from watching a news "babe" like Katie Couric, they need Viagra!
Sometimes a Sledgehammer is the proper too; especially when dealing cement-headed democrats that can't grasp concepts not draw in crayon.
If you don't know who Florence King is..you can't understand a word said. Florence King invented the persona Anne now inhabits. Florence is the orginal, Anne is her progeny. I suspect Florence is jealous that she can no longer be Anne.
Ah, so to coin a phrase from that witty Chris Rock,
She's 'one of those smarty art nigga's.'
Sorry, I haven't had much sleep.
Fixed.
Well, if old Flo is jealous she can't be Ann, why is she lowering herself by insulting and mocking her?
Don't sound like much of a writer if that's what shes got to sink to.
I have cringed a bit at some of Ann's outrageous statements, but her sledgehammer polemics are appropriate for the current concrete-brained media environment. Dorothy Parker would be ignored, but Ann gets noticed. Ann's ideas reach liberals, and I bet she changes minds.
Long live Ann.
"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."
So she's sort of the stilletto to Molly Ivins' sledgehammer?
1) Florence King is a crappy writer judging by this article
2) Florence King is jealous of Ann Coulter
3) Somebody needs some attention (say in baby talk voice)
Ann C is a realist and doesn't overestimate the intelligence of the American public.
For instance, a guy I know, always been a conservative. His Dad too. But not well read or well educated.
His Dad saw M.Moore's Farenheit 911 and believed it all. Changed from a Bush fan to a Bush hater.
The (grown) son saw Gore's "An inconvenient truth". Believed it and now is a global warmer.
I asked the son if he or his dad had read up on both sides of these stories. Nope.
It's incredible to me that people accept other viewpoints without examining all sides before choosing one.
Now, here is some entertainment...
Coulter creates literary vignettes that are informative and funny..........King draws mental pictures using a push broom dipped in paint........
Oooooo
This was close to being insightful.
It is still full of funny bits, though. Of course, none of them are original with the author, but then, I never expect much of liberals.
"and in the morning, you will still be ugly."
False dichotomy, that. Some of us are both on-this-site, and snotty, etc.
Look, I enjoy Coulter (in small doses) but Ms King's right. Coulter knows her audience and she plays to it with verbal sledgehammers and tacky clothes.
What do you make of un-snotty King fans, btw?
unless they are like the bent one and fantasize about cheek capacity...
Yes, and that's smart. Ann tailors her MSM messages for a very wide audience that includes political illiterates. She must scare the hell out of the typical ignorant leftist-by-laziness. Good for her.
His Dad saw M.Moore's Farenheit 911 and believed it all. Changed from a Bush fan to a Bush hater. The (grown) son saw Gore's "An inconvenient truth". Believed it and now is a global warmer.
Sad cases. I think you are describing "moderates" with limited commitment to intellectual honesty.
I wouldn't characterize Ann's humor as childish at all. She can be blunt, but she can also be subtle, using understatement in a deadly fashion. Her humor is sophisticated and uses a startling variety of technique. People pick up on the bold kinds because they are so obvious, but she uses all kinds of literary forms.
I agree.
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