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.
Touche!
Ann just needs to update her books with "Ann Coulter for Dummies", where every single remark she makes has footnotes explaining to what she is referring.
That's not a bad idea!
I am glad there a few fans of Florence King on board.
Coulter and King do differ in style. Both have their fine points, both are intelligent, and both write extremely well. Florence King is dense at times, and at times, I did not enjoy every topic. But she wrote well - and her pen cuts like sword, both ways. When King stopped writing for NR - and it was in the inside back cover - I stopped subscribing.
Here is an excerpt from a column written by Florence King March 23, 1998 after Clinton and his diddling in the White House:
"WHEN Clinton's post-scandal approval ratings soared the Left saw blase sophistication and the Right saw moral corruption, but Americans are neither sophisticated nor corrupt, just childish and democratic. What they really approve of in Clinton's behavior is the way he takes the adult out of adultery and the in out of sin. If he had kept a soignee thirtyish mistress and visited her discreetly the whole country would have felt threatened. Mistresses are for kings and discretion is elitist by definition, but love on the rope line suggests a limitless participation that reduces adultery to the minor crime of tumescence in office.
To prevent his kindergarten from swelling beyond the acceptable class size that concerns him in tranquil moments, he ought to reconsider a woman he met a few years ago: the five-hundred-year-old Peruvian mummy he said he'd like to date.
She might not be bad if he put his mind to it. As Agatha Christie said: ``An archeologist is the best husband any woman can have. The older she gets, the more he is interested in her.''
I agree that not all of those adjectives apply to what Ann does. I was speaking about what appeals to the American public. Ann is clever, but she is also blunt and confrontational. She is not often subtle.
The crude and childish reference came to mind when I thought of late night talk shows and prime time sitcoms.
I like Florence King's writing as well. She has from time to time done book reviews in The American Spectator, and I always enjoy those.
But if someone is going to represent the conservative position on one of those talking head shows, I would pick Ann.
Oh, I agree completely.
For some older columns of Florence King, see:
http://www.nationalreview.com/mc/misanthrope_archive.html
Her particular phrases and observations will bring back some pleasant memories for you, perhaps;)
we heard you the first time - ;o)
Then you have a difficulty.
That's just perfect.
Intellectual snobs at NR?
Open your window because you can probably hear me laughing. Besides Derbyshire, Stuttaford, and O'Sullivan you'd have a hard time coming up with regular contributors that one could describe as intellectual.
To each his own, I guess. I did not find her analysis of Clinton here terribly artful, and while the prose was sophisticated, it seems sophisticated for no purpose, as if to say, look at me, I can throw around three-dollar words! Mark Steyn uses a wide vocabulary, but he does it with purpose as well as panache, not only to decorate his prose with stylistic flourish, but to emphasize his arguments. But I guess you can't tell much about a writer from one or two sample paragraphs. I'd be more willing to look further at King if she hadn't woodenly called Ann "dull as a post."
Context is the heart of comparison.
Look, fine nuanced elite humor is fine, but if most people
don't know what a "barrister" is, they won't get the
joke. Your comments have to speak to the people.
Right now, unfortunately, people don't know a lot of history,
their vocabulary is limited, and their fine literature
library is empty. But they understand baloney when they
see it, and Ann can talk to them, and to the MENSA crowd
also.
So Florence King...nice try...maybe we will someday be
as well finished as you are...and we can enjoy stiletto
commentary. Nay?
Look, Buckley writes hella dense and always send me to the dictionary at least once per column - but the man has a POINT to his writing.
I was one question off from a perfect SAT verbal. I read a lot of Russian literature badly translated and I have been published often. I can get Shakespears most subtle jokes.
Crap - I edited that last post and it re-wrote itselt after I posted it. Anyway, it is as coherent as the King quote you just gave us.
I think Ann came up with a better descriptor for them......
Never heard of Florence King or Dorothy Parker.
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