Posted on 07/19/2003 8:45:08 AM PDT by mandingo republican
July 20, 2003 Blond Lightning on the Far Right By DAVID CARR
LOUD, friendly argument was preoccupying a table at Bella Blu on the Upper East Side. Over pasta and a fair amount of white wine, the group of seven was shouting down someone who suggested that the Bush administration lacked a clear plan to wage peace in Iraq. It was the kind of self-satisfied, opinionated crowd that validates Manhattan life and provokes antipathy from the rest of the country.
The startlingly thin, pretty woman at the end of the table listened, but contented herself with a plate of lobster ravioli for most of the dinner, smiling quietly when a particularly tangy bit of rhetoric landed on the table. When dinner was finished, she ordered dessert and abruptly switched seats. And while she dug into her chocolate soufflé, Ann Coulter served up the red meat, reprising her day job as a paid banshee.
"Liberals don't care what is going on over there," she said, showing a fine set of teeth. "They want us to lose, they want our opponents to triumph, and they want Bush out of the White House."
After a five-minute filibuster, she leaned back in her chair, her work done. Ms. Coulter, 39, needs to husband her resources. Since "Treason: Liberal Treachery From the Cold War to the War on Terrorism" (Crown Forum) was published at the end of last month, she has given 160 television, radio and newspaper interviews.
With a television face and a politician's instincts, Ms. Coulter has made a career out of career-ending statments. ("We should invade their countries, kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity," she wrote of Muslims on the National Review Web site after Sept. 11 in a column that prompted her departure.) "Treason" is no less inflammatory. In it, Ms. Coulter reaches back into history to Senator Joseph R. McCarthy, the ultimate tar baby of American politics, and hugs him like a teddy bear. Senator McCarthy, she has come to believe, is a misunderstood patriot who saved the country from itself.
The unvarnished id of American conservatism, Ms. Coulter has long been a target of anyone to the left of Patrick J. Buchanan, but the wholesale indictment in "Treason" of Democrats as traitors has drawn withering fire even from fellow outriders on the right. David Horowitz, a Coulter ally who picked up her column for FrontPageMagazine.com after it was dumped by the National Review Online, assailed the book on his site, saying it "compromised her case and undermined her attempt to correct a record that desperately needs correction." Writing in The Sunday Times of London, Andrew Sullivan suggested that she "plays directly into the hands of the left by defending the tactics of Joe McCarthy." And Dorothy Rabinowitz of The Wall Street Journal suggested, "The senator — who knew something about the art of outrage merchandising — would have understood the latest of his public advocates."
"I love all these conversions on the road to Damascus," Ms. Coulter shot back. "Many of these people never supported me anyway."
She is used to being disowned by former allies. She has been fired by MSNBC more times than George Steinbrenner canned Billy Martin, and she has come to grips with life as a single girl, personally and professionally, endlessly peddling her Lethally Blond franchise to a reluctant media that finds her reprehensible, but not resistible.
"I was hired and fired, I don't know, four or five times," she said, sitting in Bryant Park on Thursday. "They had an idea they wanted one liberal, one conservative, one moderate. And then every time I'd say something conservative, they would tell me that was over the top. I love that phraseology. I was like a dog listening to a high-pitched noise. `Over the top. Bad dog, bad dog.' "
Ms. Coulter cultivates antipathy with the prowess of Martha Stewart in an herb garden. Hatred moves units, and Ms. Coulter has the best-selling books to prove it. Her previous book, "Slander," spent weeks at the top of the New York Times best-seller list, and "Treason," a tendentious trip through American political history, is ranked No. 2 on the best-seller list today. Her sway with a narrow band of people who nonetheless number in the millions means she cannot be ignored.
"She has emerged as the top conservative voice of a new generation, and she has the sales to back it up," said Matt Drudge, the impresario behind the DrudgeReport on the Web. "And just because she is disguising it in a "Sex and the City" persona doesn't mean she is not an important political figure."
As a full-time book flogger, Ms. Coulter rivals in ubiquity Drew Barrymore's run-up to the "Charlie's Angels" sequel. At times, she almost cops to being a self-drawn cartoon.
She arrived for an interview on "Scarborough Country" on MSNBC last week swinging a pink Betsey Johnson shopping bag. Inside was a gift for a reporter, a Barbielike Ann Coulter action figure, which is in development. "When they're finished with it, it will talk," she said. Of course it will.
The possibility of adventure hangs near when Ms. Coulter appears on mainstream television, and Diane Sawyer looked nervous at the end of last month to see Ms. Coulter seated beside her. On "Today" last year to promote "Slander," Ms. Coulter tangled with Katie Couric, a television personality she had christened in her book as "the affable Eva Braun of morning television." Ms. Couric introduced her guest as a "right-wing telebimbo," and things went downhill from there. The segment ended just about when Ms. Couric, America's sweetheart, seemed ready to leap from her chair and choke Ms. Coulter, America's other woman.
Ms. Sawyer all but used a tongs to pick up "Treason" and struggled for something polite to say about the author, finally concluding, "She is, of course, so successful."
Ms. Coulter batted aside the compliment and corrected Ms. Sawyer's introduction, pointing out that she had mixed up the subtitles of the two books. "This book is about treachery," she said. "The last book was about lies," she added, leaving out "Duh," but implying it with a laugh.
The interview ended with Ms. Sawyer observing that Ms. Coulter would be slugging it out on the best-seller lists with Senator Hilary Rodham Clinton. "She has a three-to-one pound advantage over me," Ms. Coulter pointed out. Ms. Sawyer looked as if her head might fly off. (Ms. Coulter later said that she was mostly referring to Ms. Clinton's hefty book.)
For many of the country's elites — the kind who dine on hand-turned pastas on the Upper East Side — Ms. Coulter seems to be a puppet short a few strings: fun to watch, but in danger of tipping over. Out in those middle places that cable news addresses, however, she is a visionary and truth-teller, as well as a babe.
Ms. Coulter's beauty is not cuddly and accessible. A quick look at the cover of "Treason," with her black dress an etched hourglass against a white background, suggests she has the fat content of a can of Diet Coke.
Yet her looks are undoubtedly part of her draw. "Good Lord, lookin' good, Ann," wrote one appreciative visitor to her Web site, which includes 25 pictures of Ms. Coulter accessorized, for example, by a gun and Ronald Reagan.
Although she is frequently tagged as being a sex object for older men on talk radio, her publicists say her appearances on campus produce the most rabid response. At an appearance at Six Flags in New Jersey, she was swarmed by admirers who circled the table where she was interviewed and hung around for hours.
But though she often extols the virtues of places like Kansas City and claims to love the hoi polloi, she seems to like them best at the other end of the television set. Take her taste in ski hills. "Vail was going more family-oriented," she complained, recalling a time when she avoided Aspen because it was full of celebrities from Los Angeles. "I'm sitting enjoying my margarita in the hot tub, and these kids rolled this enormous snowball, like bigger than my entire body, heaved it in the hot tub. And I stormed up to our room and I told my skiing partner: `O.K., that's it. No more Vail. We're going to Aspen.' Who am I kidding? I love superficial L.A. people."
In many ways, she is what she impales: a child of privilege from New Canaan, Conn., with a better understanding of polo than the subtleties of professional wrestling. Bob Guccione Jr., the owner of the now-defunct Gear magazine and son of a porn magnate, dated her for a time.
"I don't believe that the politics are real," Mr. Guccione said. "It is a product. If she was reasoned and balanced, she knows no one would care. By being completely outrageous, she has created a broad spectrum of people who follow her."
"She is out on a limb and bouncing up and down," he added. "I think she knows it's going to snap, but I don't think she cares in the least."
The gadfly who gives voice to the people in flyover land lives more like Carrie Bradshaw than Carry Nation. She drinks, she smokes and dates energetically. And she has friends, many of whom do not share Ms. Coulter's taste for McCarthyist bon mots. Ms. Coulter has friends who work in unions, friends whom she has kept dear since high school and friends who do what she does, like Bill Maher, but use their airtime to suggest that she and her fellow travelers are a threat to the Republic.
She indicated in one profile that she was friendly with the comedian Al Franken, but Mr. Franken does not share the warm feeling.
"I consider her to be a political person who gets her value added from deception and invective," he said, noting that he is writing a book that will do some deconstruction on Ms. Coulter and fellow conservatives called "Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them: A Fair and Balanced Look at the Right."
David Brock, a former friend and recovering conservative, said a profession of inimical opinions leads to "an inflated view of self, alongside a secret or not-so-secret desire to invite scorn and persecution."
"I think that she has made a mistake with this book," he added. "Where do you go next? Holocaust denier? Slavery defender?"
Although she chose to lease an apartment in Miami this year to be close both to the beach and Mr. Drudge, who is among her best friends, she keeps an apartment in Manhattan with an address "more classified than Dick Cheney's location" because she has had trouble with overzealous fans.
New York holds a certain perverse appeal for Ms. Coulter. Full of the kind of overeducated sons and daughters of privilege she deplores and a mayor whom she sees as a crusader against civil liberties, it is an ideal place for her particular kind of target practice.
"If you have a fabulous amount of wealth and you can do anything you want and what you really long to do is have control over other people, that's really not a good sign," she said. "I'm waiting for Michael Bloomberg to insist on exercise once a day for all New Yorkers. You must abandon cars, ride bikes to work and have a warm glass of milk before retiring at night."
Copyright 2003 The New York Times Company | Home | Privacy Policy | Search | Corrections | Help | Back to Top
An interesting notion, except that Mr. Lincoln, a Republican, ended slavery in the U.S., and it's the conservatives that are friends of Israel.
Liberals have made an art of distorting reality, or, not to put too fine a point on it, lying.
Robert Bork
Clarence Thomas
Newt Gingrich
Trent Lott
Now we can add Ann Coulter. If it is not the Liberal politicians, it is the liberal media attacking amyone that can make them look bad with simple facts and logic.
PS: I know I missed many names, but those came to mind right away.
Al Franken-stein...filthy little man
lies and the liars who tell them written by a liar and rabid anti American
where do you go next Al...
Back to Moscow...a "How to" book on Pedophilia? Transexuals you have known and loved? "Marx and me"?
Equally ridiciulous accusations....
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/948938/posts
Do you think Ann has a food taster when she eats out in NYC?
...oh,,PHOTOS PLEASE!
The author can barely conceal his disdain for "those middle places," aka, the non-elite.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.