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The right-wing cult of contrived masculinity
Salon ^ | Tuesday March 6, 2007 | Glenn Greenwald

Posted on 03/08/2007 10:13:53 AM PST by presidio9

In a very vivid way, this Ann Coulter moment is shining a light on the right-wing movement that is so bright that even national journalists would be able to recognize some important truths if they just looked even casually. Kirsten Powers was on Fox last night with Bill O'Reilly and Michelle Malkin and, as shocking as it is, Powers managed to ask the only question that matters with this whole episode, thereby forcing Malkin to make the critical concession, the one which right-wing pundits have been desperate to avoid:

KP: [Coulter] has said a lot of horrible things . . . . she's done all these things. And I don't understand why if this is the pre-eminent conservative movement place to be speaking, why she is chosen as a person to speak . . .

BO: Why do you think they invited her, Michelle?

MM: She's very popular among conservatives. And let me say this. I have been a long-time admirer of much of Ann's work. She has done yeomen's work for conservatism. But I think, lately, over the last couple of years, that there has been this penchant for hurling these kinds of bombs.

And there is a divided opinion among grass-roots conservatives about what she did. I was one of the people who condemned the raghead comment last year . . . . If going into 2008, that is what the Republican Party is trying to do and win back the Congress and take the Congress and win the White House, having her there is not going to be a help.

This is why -- the only reason -- Coulter's remarks are so significant. And the significance lies not just in this specific outburst on Friday but in the whole array of hate-mongering, violence-inciting remarks over all these years. Its significance lies in the critical fact that Malkin expressly acknowledged: "She's very popular among conservatives." The focus of these stories should not be Coulter, but instead, should be the conservative movement in which Ann Coulter -- precisely because of (not "despite") her history of making such comments -- is "very popular." (Note, too, that Malkin urges that Coulter be shunned not because her conduct is so reprehesensible, but because her presence "is not going to be a help" win the 2008 election).

While lazy journalists will ingest and repeat until their death the storyline that right-wing bloggers and the conservative movement have finally denounced Coulter once and for all, she was absolutely right when she said last night, sitting by her good friend Sean Hannity, that nothing will change as a result of these comments. As she correctly observed: "This is my 17th allegedly career-ending moment."

There may be a handful of decent (though largely inconsequential) conservatives who genuinely want to disassociate the movement from her, but that is not going to happen, because it cannot. And Sean Hannity -- whose fans, like Coulter's, number in the millions, not the thousands like the anti-Coulter-bloggers -- made that very clear as he defended her comments as obvious "humor," claimed the comments were taken out of context, etc. etc. The real conservative leaders, the people to whom millions of conservatives actually listen -- the Rush Limbaughs and Sean Hannitys and Ann Coulters and the CPAC itself -- are going to continue exactly as they were, and Coulter is going to continue to play exactly the central role she has played in this movement.

Are there any journalists at all interested in figuring out why this is the case? If Coulter is such a blight on humanity, such a monument to indecency and all that is wretched in our political culture, what does it say about the political movement that has been running our country for the last six years (at least) that they embrace her so enthusiastically?

Coulter plays a vital and irreplaceable role in this movement. The reason I linked to that Bob Somerby post on Maureen Dowd yesterday is because he makes the critical point -- one which Digby, among others, has been making for a long time, including in a great post last night -- concerning how the right-wing movement conducts itself and the rhetorical tool they use not only to keep themselves in power, but more importantly, to keep their needy, confused, and scared base feeling strong and protected. As Digby put it:

The underlying premise of the modern conservative movement is that the entire Democratic party consists of a bunch of fags and dykes who are both too effeminate and too masculine to properly lead the nation. Coulter says it out loud. Dowd hints at it broadly. And the entire press corps giggles and swoons at this shallow, sophomoric concept like a bunch of junior high pom pom girls. Coulter insisted last night that she did not intend the remark as an anti-gay slur -- that she did not intend to suggest that John Edwards, husband and father, was gay -- but instead only used the word as a "schoolyard taunt," to call him a sissy. And that is true. Her aim was not to suggest that Edwards is actually gay, but simply to feminize him like they do with all male Democratic or liberal political leaders.

For multiple reasons, nobody does that more effectively or audaciously than Coulter, which is why they need her so desperately and will never jettison her. How could they possibly shun her for engaging in tactics on which their entire movement depends? They cannot, which is why they are not and will not.

The converse of this is equally true. As critical as it is to them to feminize Democratic and liberal males (and to masculinize the women), even more important is to create false images of masculine power and strength around their authority figures. The reality of this masculine power is almost always non-existent. The imagery is what counts.

This works exactly the same as the images of moral purity that they work so hard to manufacture, whereby the leaders they embrace -- such as Gingrich, Limbaugh, Bill Bennett, even the divorced and estranged-from-his-children Ronald Reagan and Coulter herself -- are plauged by the most morally depraved and reckless personal lives, yet still parade around as the heroes of the "Values Voters." Just as what matters is that their leaders prance around as moral leaders (even while deviating as far as they want from those standards), what matters to them also is that their leaders play-act as strong and masculine figures, even when there is no basis, no reality, to the play-acting.

Ronald Reagan never got anywhere near the military war (claiming eyesight difficulties to avoid deployment in World War II), and he spent his life as a Hollywood actor, not a rancher, yet to this day, conservatives swoon over his masculine role-playing as though he is some sort of super-brave military hero. Meanwhile, Jimmy Carter, who actually graduated the Naval Academy and was assigned to real live nuclear submarines, is mocked as a weak and snivelling coward who should not have a ship named after him.

And the ultimate expression of faux, empty, masculine courage and power is, of course, the Commander-in-Chief himself -- the Glorious Leader whom John Podhoretz hailed in the title of his worshippful cult book as The First Great Leader of the 21st Century -- with the ranch hats and brush-clearing pants and flight-suit outfits that would make the Village People seethe with jealousy over his costume choices. Just behold this poster which was a much in-demand item at past CPAC events (h/t Digby), which makes as clear as can be how these Bush followers have tried to idealize their Leader:

That laughable absurdity really reveals the heart of this movement. It is a cult of contrived masculinity whereby people dress up as male archtypes like cowboys, ranchers, and tough guys even though they are nothing of the kind -- or prance around as Churchillian warriors because they write from a safe and protected distance about how great war is -- and in the process become triumphant heroes and masculine powerful icons and strong leaders. They and their followers triumph over the weak, effete, humiliated Enemy, and thereby become powerful and exceptional and safe.

The second-most astonishing political fact over the last six years -- after the permanently jaw-dropping and incomparably disgraceful fact that 70% of Americans believed as late as September, 2003 (6 months after the invasion) that Saddam Hussein personally participated in the planning of the 9/11 attacks (a fact which, by itself, profoundly indicts all of our political and media instititutions at once) -- is that the 2004 presidential candidate who actually volunteered to fight, in actual combat, in the Vietnam jungle was the one depicted as the weak subversive coward, while the candidate who used every family connection possible to avoid ever fighting was depicted as the brave, masculine, fighter-warrior who had the backbone to stand down the Evil Enemies and protect us all.

That is why so many of them who have never been anywhere near the military -- and will never go near it even as their wars are endangered by a lack of volunteers -- have a monomanical obsession with military glory, with constant displays of how "resolute" and "courageous" they are, with notions of forced "submission" and "humiliation" of their opponents (just take notice of how central a role those concepts play in neoconservative "arguments"), and with depicting those who oppose the wars they cheer on as "cowards" (even when the cowards in question are decorated Marines with 30 years of service).

John Dean and Bob Altemeyer have both documented this dynamic as clearly and convincingly as can be. People who feel weak and vulnerable crave strong leaders to protect them and to enable them to feel powerful. And those same people crave being part of a political movement that gives them those sensations of power, strength, triumph and bravery -- and they need a strong, powerful, masculine Leader to enable those feelings. And they will devote absolute loyalty to any political movement which can provide them with that.

That is just the basic dynamic of garden-variety authoritarianism, and it is what the right-wing, pro-Bush political movement is at its core -- far, far more than it is a set of political beliefs or geopolitical objectives or moral agendas. All of it -- the obsessions with glorious "Victory" in an endless string of wars, vesting more and more power in an all-dominant centralized Leader, the forced submission of any country or leader which does not submit to the Leader's Will, the unquestioning Manichean certainties, and especially the endless stigmatization of the whole array of Enemies as decadent, depraved and weak -- it's just base cultural tribalism geared towards making the followers feel powerful and strong and safe.

The Coulter/Hannity/Limabugh-led right wing is basically the Abu Grahib rituals finding full expression in an authoritarian political movement. The reason people like Rush Limbaugh not only were unbothered, but actually delighted and even tickled by, Abu Grahib is because that is the full-blooded manifestation of the impulses underlying this movement -- feelings of power and strength from the most depraved spectacles of force. The only real complaint from Bush followers about the Commander-in-Chief is that he has not given them enough Guantanamos and wars and aggression and barbaric slaughter and liberty infringement. Their hunger for those things is literally insatiable because they need fresh pretexts for feeling strong.

And that is where Ann Coulter comes in and plays such a vital -- really indispensible -- role. As a woman who purposely exudes the most exaggerated American feminine stereotypes (the long blond hair, the make-up, the emaciated body), her obsession with emasculating Democratic males -- which, at bottom, is really what she does more than anything else -- energizes and stimulates the right-wing "base" like nothing else can. Just witness the fervor with which they greet her, buy her books, mob her on college campuses. Can anyone deny that she is unleashing what lurks at the very depths of the right-wing psyche? What else explains not just her popularity, but the intense embrace of her by the "base"?

Observe in the superb CPAC video produced by Max Blumenthal how Coulter immediately mocks his physical appearance as soon as she realizes that he is a liberal. And the crowd finds it hilarious. That is what she does. She takes liberal males, emasculates them, depicts them as "faggots" and weak losers, and thereby makes the throngs of weak and insecure followers who revere her feel masculine and strong. There is no way that the right-wing movement can shun her because what she does is indispensible to the entire spectacle. What she does is merely a more explicit re-inforcement of every central theme which the right-wing movement embraces.

Whatever else is true, let us dispense with the myth that Coulter is some sort of fringe or discredited figure among conservatives. That such a claim is pure myth is self-evident and has been for some time. But journalists who do not rely on such evidence can at least rely on Michelle Malkin's assurances: "She's very popular among conservatives." Now the simple task for journalists is to ask why that is and what that means about this movement.

UPDATE: Atrios posts one of the most stomach-turning though illustrative episodes, where various key media stars swooned over the very embodiment of right-wing contrived masculinity.

* * * * * * *

On a (somewhat, though not entirely) different note, I have an article now posted here at Salon on the implications of the Libby conviction.


TOPICS: Constitution/Conservatism; Editorial; News/Current Events; Politics/Elections
KEYWORDS: coulter; leftistgarbage
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To: joyspring777

What is the DU?


101 posted on 03/08/2007 11:42:23 AM PST by LiberalGunNut
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To: joyspring777

And once you tell me what the DU is, why not dispute me on the facts?


102 posted on 03/08/2007 11:43:11 AM PST by LiberalGunNut
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To: ansel12

Correct. As for John Kerry, he expected to be stationed in a fleet vessel offshore from the combat zone, and was shocked when he was transferred to Swiftboat duty. He then carried out a program of using exaggerated "wounds" to obtain an early discharge, went home, and engaged in treason.

As for George W. Bush, learning to fly a notorious tricky and dangerous jet fighter is hardly the duty one would choose if one wanted to get through the war safely and easily. Bush had no guarantee he would not be sent into combat, anyway. That would better describe what Al Gore did as a "reporter" in Viet Nam.


103 posted on 03/08/2007 11:44:04 AM PST by hellbender
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To: LiberalGunNut

Wow. A real live troll. Neato.


104 posted on 03/08/2007 11:44:41 AM PST by ohioWfan (PRAY for our President and our troops!!)
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To: presidio9

Kirsten Powers is a former clinton worker. Everything she says is scripted by the clinton machine. FOX made a huge mistake by hiring her, and compounded it by not running a banner reading "Clinton Spokeswoman" under her every time they show her.


105 posted on 03/08/2007 11:47:25 AM PST by ozzymandus
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To: ClearCase_guy
She did not call him a faggot.

LOL Okay, if you must believe that, go for it.

106 posted on 03/08/2007 11:49:27 AM PST by MEGoody (Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.)
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To: Cyclopean Squid; U S Army EOD
Ann helps the conservative cause very much although she discomforts the tea, crumpets and exaggerated civility set of "conservatives" who find losing comfortable and do not care what is said so long as the sayer is puckering up near professionally offended liberal patoot. "CS's turn to curtsy, CS's turn to bow" is NOT a conservative slogan.

Ann refuses to be a wussocrat and that offends the wussocrats and their "conservative" sympathizers who regard manners as being more important than eliminating wussocrats. We are not "wet" Brit Tories with crocheted hankies up our sleeves. Nor should we ever aspire to be.

107 posted on 03/08/2007 11:50:11 AM PST by BlackElk (Dean of Discipline of the Tomas de Torquemada Gentlemen's Club)
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To: Victoria Delsoul
The underlying premise of the modern conservative movement is that the entire Democratic party consists of a bunch of fags and dykes who are both too effeminate and too masculine to properly lead the nation. Coulter says it out loud. Dowd hints at it broadly.

LOL ping.

108 posted on 03/08/2007 11:55:41 AM PST by Alberta's Child (Can money pay for all the days I lived awake but half asleep?)
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To: AreaMan
no its not.. this is

109 posted on 03/08/2007 11:56:15 AM PST by absolootezer0 (stop repeat offenders - don't re-elect them!)
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To: rhombus
Same old, same old...right wingers are hypocrites. Yawn.

Christians today are Nicer than Jesus/God...

Very interesting read for those that would pretend Jesus was a girly man at best.

110 posted on 03/08/2007 11:56:26 AM PST by LowOiL (Paul wrote, "Let love be without hypocrisy. Abhor what is evil" (Rom. 12:9))
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To: conservatism_IS_compassion

Jane Wyman (Wife #1 of Ronaldus Maximus) was interviewed in 1976 or 1980 as to what she thought of him running for president. Their divorce (many years earlier in the late 1940s)) had been a legendarily nasty one. Nonetheless, Jane Wyman told the inquiring leftist reporter: "Our country would be very fortunate to have Ronnie as president." She went on to praise him effusively.


111 posted on 03/08/2007 11:56:35 AM PST by BlackElk (Dean of Discipline of the Tomas de Torquemada Gentlemen's Club)
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To: EagleUSA
"decent (though largely inconsequential) conservatives"

I will never allow immoral liberal swine to define decency for me.


112 posted on 03/08/2007 11:57:08 AM PST by sinclair (When they come down from their Ivory Towers, Idealists are very apt to walk straight into the gutter)
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To: hellbender

Correct, and even more pointedly, George W. applied for a transfer to Vietnam for air combat duty.


113 posted on 03/08/2007 11:58:24 AM PST by ansel12 (America, love it ,or at least give up your home citizenship before accepting ours too.)
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To: presidio9; Ann Coulter
Ann Coulter used the word faggot at CPAC..
to call out all the RINOs that showed up.. BRILLIANT!...
They dutifully lifted their heads like the actors they are..

They exposed themselves.. CHECK MATE..
Shes a genius..

114 posted on 03/08/2007 11:59:23 AM PST by hosepipe (CAUTION: This propaganda is laced with hyperbole....)
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To: MHGinTN
Was this written by Mandy's husband?

Mandy Grunwald? She's married to Matt Cooper, the TIME magazine reporter.

115 posted on 03/08/2007 11:59:41 AM PST by freespirited (Demand perfection, get Hillary.)
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To: BlackElk

She is classless and frankly since this happened the only thing she has exposed is the ugliness of the pure conservative faction. This board is becoming embarrassing.


116 posted on 03/08/2007 12:00:38 PM PST by Cyclopean Squid (Patron Saint of Mediocrity)
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To: presidio9

Glenn's a faggot


117 posted on 03/08/2007 12:02:15 PM PST by Dick Vomer (liberals suck......... but it depends on what your definition of the word "suck" is.,)
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To: presidio9
The underlying premise of the modern conservative movement is that the entire Democratic party consists of a bunch of fags and dykes who are both too effeminate and too masculine to properly lead the nation.

And just today NARAL hag Kate Michaelman said that John Edwards was the Wimmen's candidate.

Could Ann be more on?

118 posted on 03/08/2007 12:02:50 PM PST by NeoCaveman (Hillary Hugo Chavez wants to "take those profits" away from you, for the common good)
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To: LiberalGunNut
So a guy who join the reserves during peace time and was a lifeguard is more courageous than a guy who was on a Swift boat on the Me Kong River in the middle of the Vietnam war?

Kerry 9/11 admits doing nothing about terrorism while on defense committee. http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1108783/posts

Kerry Met With Viet Cong And North Vietnamese In Paris In 1971 http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1091943/posts

Book That John Kerry's Campaign Doesn't Want You To See--The New Soldier http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1095936/posts

Exploding the myth that brave Kerry said "send me!" to the fight... in his own words! http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1189361/posts

The last one is for you LiberalGunNut..... Hypocrite

119 posted on 03/08/2007 12:02:59 PM PST by LowOiL (Paul wrote, "Let love be without hypocrisy. Abhor what is evil" (Rom. 12:9))
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To: presidio9

John Dean and Bob Altemeyer have both documented this dynamic as clearly and convincingly as can be.

Whoa, wish I waa man enough to "document the dynamic".

Demorats, Baaaaaaah!


120 posted on 03/08/2007 12:04:21 PM PST by tet68 ( " We would not die in that man's company, that fears his fellowship to die with us...." Henry V.)
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