Coulter's High Road (Slander: Liberal Lies About the American Right) POP POLITICS ATTACKS COULTER

Thank Ha-Shem someone has finally written a book that lifts the discourse of our current political debate to a higher level. Ann Coulter’s Slander: Liberal Lies about the American Right decries the policy-wonk, cable TV, name-calling inanity that is so in vogue these days. To wit:

“The ‘you’re stupid’ riposte is part of the larger liberal tactic of refusing to engage ideas…. Your refusal to submit to name-calling means you were overwhelmed by the force of their argument that you are a penis-head.” (p. 121)

“They [liberals] are painfully self-righteous, they have fantastic hatreds, and they could not see the other fellow’s position if you prodded them with white-hot pokers.” (p. 26)

And then, perhaps to prove that she doesn’t need white-hot pokers to see the other fellow’s side:

“Liberals have been wrong about everything in the last half-century.” (p. 197)

You know, until I read Slander I had always assumed that Coulter was just a loud-mouthed, right-wing freak without a subtle bone in her gangly body.

Clearly I was wrong. This kind of refined language and lack of embellishment is truly a testament to the conservatives’ discursive high road, penis-heads and all.

Coulter calmly imparts such wisdoms as Michael Moore is a “college dropout and working-class phony’; Gloria Steinem is a “deeply ridiculous figure” and feminism has produced nothing but “sluts”; Christie Todd Whitman is a “birdbrain”; “Most politicians would rather face down the Viet Cong than be ridiculed by Katie Couric” who is described as the “affable Eva Braun of morning TV”; Hillary Clinton is “particularly grating” for her “Valley Girl penchant for saying ‘real’ when she means ‘really’” (that is real grating, ain’t it?); Al Gore is both an intellectual “mediocrity” and a “little Miss-Know-It-All”; Adlai Stevenson was a “boob” and a “bilious blowhard”; and Jesse Ventura is a “loud-mouthed anti-Christian bigot.”

I would like to thank Coulter for finally leaving those vacuous name-calling days behind to create an honest and cerebral debate about the issues. It is refreshing to finally have a frank and open discussion about these ideological impasses.

Since Coulter is so open to various viewpoints, I am certain she would appreciate my response to her assertion that the liberal media is in the business of spreading lies. For example, Coulter claims that a cherished liberal lie is that Santa’s house is melting. In order to rise to the level of dialogue that Coulter has started here, I am going to have to tell you the uncomfortable truth: Santa’s home is indeed melting.

I am sorry it has come to this, but global warming is a liberal strategy to eliminate Christmas, thereby alienating the Christian right (which, of course, doesn’t really exist anyway, except as a cautionary tale that liberals tell their children at night) and securing the Jewish vote once again.

What could be more impressive than melting down Santa’s house and declaring Chanukah a national holiday for all Americans? Besides, it has been long suspected that the elves are really Santa’s slaves, and liberals see human rights abuses abounding in the far right’s sacred Christmas dungeons. Instead of hiding behind global warming, let’s just own it: Santa must die.

Coulter also is on to the most cherished liberal secret of all: She asks why liberals must persist in believing that Bill Clinton -- the “adulterous felon”-- is Elvis Presley. Well, isn’t he? Why is Coulter so sure this is a lie? Have you ever seen Elvis and Clinton in the same room together? I mean, come on, look at the evidence: Both eat extraordinarily odd (and often Southern) foods; both love young, young women; and both have enormous charisma and sexual magnetism (and I think I speak for all women here when I say that I can’t think of anything more alluring than Elvis eating banana-fried peanut butter and bacon sandwiches or Clinton eating a Big Mac in his jogging shorts. Sexy!).

Isn’t it possible that Elvis reinvented himself as the man from Hope? And for that matter, has anyone ever seen Priscilla and Hillary in the same room?

“They [liberals] will look you in the eye, every four years for their entire insipid lives, and insist that the Republican de jour is ‘stupid,’” writes Coulter, adding, “(Cher on Bush: ‘He’s stupid.’)” I am not sure what is scarier here: that Coulter is aware that our left-wing lives are insipid or that she somehow found out that Cher is one of our top policy strategists.

I, for one, would trade my insipid life for Coulter’s life, which seems so serene and well reasoned. Oh, by the power of Cher, what I would give for such balance and mental sanctuary.

Coulter even cites unimpeachable examples of the insipid lives of liberals. When wealthy Democrats say they don’t need a tax cut and are willing to pay their share, Coulter understands that this is just “pure braggadocio.” “‘I want to pay more taxes’ is a way of saying that, no matter how much the government takes, they will still have enough money to keep drinking Dom Perignon and making out in the hot tub,” she writes.

Once again, Coulter has got us. I derive no greater pleasure in life than leaving my gold house in my Alfa Romeo (parked under the money tree in front of my sapphire swimming pool next to the oil well) to go hang out with starving Republican CEOs and boast about my dedication to paying my taxes. What I should do is demand a nice, big tax-cut. Then perhaps my insipid life would have more meaning.

I have learned many things from Slander (for Coulter is nothing if not didactic): Ronald Reagan was not too old to be president; Al Gore got straight A’s in art in high school; The New York Times “used the phrase ‘Christian right’ approximately eighty billion times” to describe John Ashcroft (and I’m sure that is an exact figure because Coulter does not exaggerate); and Katherine Harris can wear all the damn make-up she wants to.

I also learned that conservatives habitually find themselves selling oodles of books despite a supposed lack of publicity due to liberals’ ironclad grip on the media. Indeed, Coulter’s book is currently No. 1 on The New York Times’ best-seller list.

And so I suppose that with a little grit, pluck and determination a conservative can make a difference in this world, transforming American debate into something high-minded and fair. Finally, Coulter taught me that you don’t have to read a whole lot of fancy books in order to write one (especially if you have LexisNexis). And, in that spirit, I learned that you don’t have to rack your brain to find ways to write a damning review.

ASSISTANT MANAGING EDITOR

Sacha Zimmerman

Sacha Zimmerman joined The New Republic as an assistant editor in September 2001. Before joining The New Republic, Sacha was the copy and layout editor of The Business Gazette, part of The Gazette newspaper chain in Maryland. Sacha has also written and edited for Time Out New York, PopPolitics.com, The Gloucester County Times, The Bridgeton Evening News, The Salem Sunbeam, and The Syracuse New Times. Sacha received her M.A. in magazine journalism from S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications at Syracuse University in 2000. She is a 1995 high honors graduate of Binghamton University where she received a B.A. in philosophy. She also completed one year of law school at Georgetown University Law Center. Additionally, Sacha has studied at Columbia University, worked at The Princeton Review, and earned a fellowship to live, work, and study in Israel.

~~~

What is Sacha's point exactly?

"Here's my 1,122 words. Where's my check?

~~~

Any putzhead can write a string of flip paragraphs.

And not hit the broad side of a barn.

But it takes Ann Coulter to do what Ann Coulter does:

Split the arrow.

Eat your heart out, Sacha, and yes, you are chopped liver.

Any putzhead can write a string of flip paragraphs.
And not hit the broad side of a barn.
But it takes Ann Coulter to do what Ann Coulter does:
Split the arrow.
Eat your heart out, Sacha, and yes, you are chopped liver.
Exactly.

See also the WSJ analysis of such slander of "Slander" by MELIK KAYLAN:

Dr. Johnson, Meet Ann Coulter!
Wall Street Journal ^ | Monday, August 26, 2002 | MELIK KAYLAN
Posted on 08/25/2002 10:27 PM Pacific by pittsburgh gop guy

Dr. Johnson, Meet Ann Coulter!
By MELIK KAYLAN
An apocryphal version of a famous Dr. Johnson remark about women preachers has come down to us as rather nuanced in its meaning. He is reported to have said that seeing women preaching is like seeing a dog walking on its front legs, not because it is well or badly done but because one is surprised to see it done at all. In this version, the remark is not intended to be boorish or unchivalrous -- but simply to illustrate something so unexpected as to be startling, perhaps so startling as to border on spectacle.
The remark resonates in the mind as being strangely applicable to Ann Coulter, the conservative firecracker and best-selling author of "Slander: Liberal Lies About The American Right." There are many surprising dimensions to the Coulter phenomenon. She has defied expectation, overturned prejudice even, in so many ways. She surprises, at the most basic level, by her effortlessly guilt-free flights of extroversion, her fierce -- but never humorless -- conservatism.
We have been programmed to think that such impassioned outrage, and outrageousness, are permissible only on the left, from counter-culture comedians or exponents of identity politics, certainly not from nice blonde Connecticut-born Republican girls. From Lenny Bruce, George Carlin, Angela Davis, Reverend Farrakhan, yes. Ann Coulter -- heaven forbid. She cannot claim that her affronts have been much exaggerated by her enemies -- she has certainly courted outrage, called Katie Couric "an affable Eva Braun," dreamed out loud that all liberals be obliterated, that liberal media organs be bombed. It's merely that such effrontery sounds more palatable in the mouths of Black Panthers. After all, why isn't she happily occupied practicing the peaceful arts of a soccer mom in some leafy suburb as befits her heritage?
Well, Miss Coulter isn't and it has upset a lot of entrenched opinions. Prejudices of this kind stem from a lazy assumption that really blistering free speech belongs more to critics of America's flaws than to celebrators of its virtues. The difference between Miss Coulter's and the Black Panthers' fuming is surely very clear. They meant it literally, bombs and all. Miss Coulter, on the other hand, acts out her thoughts in a kind of "what if" political theater, a tongue-in-cheek agitprop, and believes that most Americans understand the difference. Most Americans apparently do, as her book has topped the bestseller lists for many weeks now. Why then don't her infuriated critics get it?
By all accounts, they have tried long and hard to keep ranks closed against her to shut her out of the media game. Why would anybody even pretend to believe that Ms. Coulter wishes any real harm to the New York Times or wishes to convert all Muslims forcibly to Christianity (a post-9/11 flight of fancy that got her fired from National Review)? The answer, one suspects, is that she and her foes insist on different visions of America. Her foes see a fragile society full of rifts and flaws, oppressions and simmering resentments that can turn into open strife any moment. Ergo, free speech, however offensive, belongs morally on their side as an instrument of social palliation. Miss Coulter, as she has often demonstrated, inhabits a sturdier America with a self-confident unapologetic culture centered somewhere in the heartland. In her America, political and personal, even ethnic quips get thrown about with abandon in fierce raillery, everybody laughs about it afterwards and the country is none the worse for wear. Miss Coulter, bless her heart, would take no offense at the analogy from Dr. Johnson. Her detractors would insist that she should.
Considering that most gatekeepers to our national media, out of laziness or conviction, would prefer to filter out her kind, Miss Coulter's very survival as a public figure has been her most startling trick, indeed has offered a kind of breathtaking spectacle. For much milder remarks than she daily defiantly serves up, we've seen veteran broadcasters hounded out of their careers. Yet there she still is enduring on the tightrope, however threadbare it may be by now, her long-limbed signature silhouette poised precariously aloft, riverine blonde locks riffled by the breeze and legs coltishly pirouetting above the shark pool.
Friends and foes alike, at this point, have put down their banners and turned to gape at the pure principle of anti-gravity she has come to represent. She herself admits in a recent New York Observer profile that no mainstream American publication will employ her. So she chooses, she says, to talk directly to mainstream America over their heads, and book buyers have rewarded her handsomely for it. It's hard to know if this means that they applaud all of her harsher utterances, or simply her defiance and longevity in the face of adversity. To borrow from Dr. Johnson -- watching Miss Coulter survive tenaciously on the tightrope, they may not care whether it's well or badly done, but they're surprised -- and delighted -- to see it done at all.
Mr. Kaylan, a New York writer, is completing a history of Istanbul.
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