Watch Ann Go Whoosh! - Analyzing La Coulter

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:

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.

jwalburg wrote: "I'd be more willing to look further at King if she hadn't woodenly called Ann "dull as a post.""

I never apologize for anyone else's behavior (or writing style for that matter) but you are taking King's remark of context.

By the way, you can safely count me among the Ann Coulter defenders as well as a Florence King fan.

Here is the whole paragraph:

"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."

To me, what *that* paragraph says is:

The American ideal is someone ismart - but in the sense of common sense and does not wear their smartness on her sleeves and brags; someone with school learning but who does not pontificate, who is not pedantic; someone attractive, even sexy, like your girl next door - not someone vamping around with more skin than clothing, not someone with silicone lips or wardrobe malfunctions.

Take a hypothetical example of a guy running for sheriff. Let's say the guy has a *doctorate in criminology. But he won't advertise it. His campaign signs will read

James "Big Jim" Walburg for Sheriff

not:

Dr. James T. Walburg wants to be Your Sheriff.

Why? Walburg may have ample school learning, but the average voter, like me, can not relate to Dr. Walberg, only "Big Jim".

When "Big Jim" campaigns, Big Jim shows up in jeans and and western wear. Not the shirt and tie and fancy suit he got his diploma in. He is plain spoken, talks about crooks and bad guys - not elements of society battling socio-economic and cultural forces that manifest themselves in crime against societal norms.

In short, *Dr.* Walberg does NOT meet my *ideal* of the sheriff, but Big Jim does. You get the point.

And now, to Ann Coulter. I *really like her. Why? Smart as a whip but yet can play as dumb a post and trap someone on live TV no less. She is clearly well-learned, legal background, extensive grasp of the English language, and can cut through BS with a sword, not a stiletto. She has a good analytic capability. Finally, she is easy on the eyes.

In other words, Coulter is a perfect match for *my American ideal. Which is exactly what King said. ;)

The disagreement I *do have with King's current article is that Coulter's being the perfect match for the American ideal is *not* the only reason for Coulter's success. You, I, and many here on FR can relate to *what* Coulter says. We enjoy seeing a good slap down at the Liberals, particularly live. The Liberals have enjoyed extensive media coverage for years - it is about time that the tables are turned.

Florence King writes well, she polishes her phrases, perhaps too smoothly. Her lifestyle is inconsequential to me. And she probably wishes she were as popular as Ann Coulter. But times have changed.

It is unfortunate that some Coulter threads on FR have turned acrimonious. Probably for every two or three Coulter defenders there is someone who wishes she would express an opinion in a different way. Coulter does exemplify our time, IMO, and that is what King says.

It is also unfortunate some are attacking the messenger (King), rather than the message.... When King was writing for NR, you could often count on her to expose the Clintons innards with a scalpel. But she was an equal opportunity cutter. Her scalpel sliced anyone who demonstrated folly.

In fact, her columns were titled "The Misanthrope's Corner". http://www.nationalreview.com/mc/misanthrope_archive.html

Someone once asked King, "Why do you hate people?" To which King replied, "Who else is there?"

End of essay;)

I'll stick with Ann and Sobran.

Florence King is okay.

She's a good writer who never has anything good to say about and hardly much more than that that's good about anything. She actually says more good things about Ann here than she does about most of her subjects.

Ann and Florence do different types of writing--- Florence writes to be funny whereas Ann writes to make an impact, and usually a political one.

So even though I've enjoyed reading Florence King, I can understand your comment that you like Ann Coulter much more than her.

But Joe Sobran? Maybe he was okay back when he (along with Florence King) wrote for National Review. I have to disagree there. Sure, he still writes good columns from time to time on literature, culture, maybe sometimes even on political issues. But today the guy is an anti-American, anti-Israel clod:

"The 9/11 attacks would never have occurred except for the U.S. Government's Middle East policies [support for Israeli defense] which are pretty much dictated by the Jewish-Zionist powers that be in the United States. The Zionists boast privately of their power, but they don't want the gentiles talking about it."

http://www.sobran.com/issuetexts/2002-04.htm
http://www.sobran.com/fearofjews.shtml

In "Fear of the Jews" the guy even twists Abraham Lincoln's desire to free slaves and send them to Africa before he was elected President. Sobran claims this means that Lincoln, far from being a humanitarian, simply wanted an all white nation... But in point of fact, the idea that blacks should be helped to re-colonize Africa was held by many fighters against slavery. http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/aia/part2/2h59.html

I agree Ann is great. But Joe Sobran stands against, rather than with her--- at best he is a "September tenth" columnist.

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