Commentary: Coulter’s Take on Berry’s ‘Mau-Mauing’ Reveals Her Own Insecurities (Slams Ann)

In those rare moments where I’m actually embarrassed, I have a standard quip that eases the burden: “I’m used to being embarrassed. I’m a black conservative.”

Well, it’s pull-the-paper-bag-down-over-my-head time again, courtesy of Ann Coulter, who for the purposes of this column is Miss Ann Coulter, and I give not a tinker’s dam whether she pardons the pun.

Coulter is the conservative author and columnist who can match wits and words with the best of them. She’s fairly good-looking, but she’s no Halle Berry (More on that later.)

I pondered whether I should pick up Coulter’s latest work — How To Talk To A Liberal (If You Must) — when I saw it in a local bookstore recently. I’ll have to admit, I hesitated. As a black conservative, I do indeed have trouble talking to liberals. It’s almost as vexing as talking to white conservatives who are totally clueless on the matter of race.

In How To Talk To A Liberal, Coulter unleashes her inner clueless white girl, and lets her run buck wild for well over 300 pages. Oh, it’s not all bad. Her pieces on the 2000 presidential election, and how the U.S. Supreme Court got it right while the Florida Supreme Court got it wrong, are classic. So much for President George W. Bush “stealing” that election.

“(Halle) Berry successfully mau-maued her way to a Best Actress Award … ” Coulter wrote of Berry’s winning the Oscar in 2002 for Monster’s Ball. Then, after that gratuitous bit of race-baiting, Coulter accused Berry of some race-baiting of her own to win the Oscar when the sultry actress pointed out — correctly — that black actors and actresses still have trouble getting some roles.

You see what’s going on here, don’t you? Coulter had no problem with Denzel Washington winning an Oscar the same year. His was “deserved,” according to Coulter. It was Berry — despite a near unanimous consensus that she did indeed turn in the best performance by an actress that year — who “mau-maued” her way to an Academy Award.

This is nothing but catty hater-ation. What bothers Coulter is not Berry’s “mau-mauing,” but the knowledge that she’ll never even come close to being as fine as Berry is. Memo to Miss Ann: put your claws back in, dear.

Coulter really got buck wild on the issue of the Confederate battle flag, which still bugs a lot of black folks. It doesn’t bug me as much. I’m more concerned that Coulter all but accused Berry of terrorism, probably the better to increase her street cred with the David Duke wing of American conservatives (How this slight escaped those black folks who vigilantly ferret out every offense to the race is beyond me.). But Coulter said enough things wrong in defending the Confederate battle flag that are worthy of correction.

“Man for man,” Coulter wrote, “the Confederate army was the greatest army the world had ever seen.”

That would actually be the Zulus under Shaka, and any military historian worthy of being called one would tell Coulter that.

Southerners fly the Confederate battle flag, Coulter contended, to commemorate their glorious military heritage, not because of racism. But then she slipped and let in a little truth.

“The Ku Klux Klan did not begin using the Confederate flag until the fifties,” Coulter wrote. That’s true, but the total truth is that it wasn’t just the KKK. Southern state legislatures, schools and plenty of non-KKK folks found new love for the Confederate battle flag in the 1950s. If Coulter wanted to be honest, she could have given the precise date.

Yes, the Confederate battle flag flew highly and proudly after the Supreme Court ruled segregated schools unconstitutional. Wherever the forces of integration clashed with those of segregation there were good ol’ Bubbas waving the Confederate flag and yelling about how they’d die before they let nigger boys into their schools and rub up against white gals like, well, like Ann Coulter, for example.

That was the battle the neo-Confederates wanted to wage when their precious flag made its reappearance in the 1950s. It would be refreshingly honest if they — and Coulter — would simply admit that.

Here's Ann's original column. In my Opinion, a bullseye, in addition to being hilarious.
__________________________________________

Ann Coulter March 29, 2002

I Like Black People Too, Julia!

I tuned in late and consequently can speak only to the last three hours of Halle Berry's acceptance speech at the Academy Awards last Sunday. But inasmuch as she engaged in wild race-baiting to get her Oscar, her expressions of shock were not very believable. She had spent weeks complaining about one time she did not get a role because of her color. It was the part of a forest ranger. Arnold Schwarzenegger probably has trouble getting cast as a ballet dancer, too.

And yet still, somehow, white guilt worked on Hollywood liberals! Berry had successfully mau-maued her way to a best actress award and then acted surprised.

It's interesting that Berry makes such a big deal about being black. She was raised by her white mother who was beaten and abandoned by her black father. Clearly, Berry has calculated that it is more advantageous for her acting career to identify with the man who abandoned her rather than the woman who raised her.

Demanding that everyone marvel at her accomplishment, Berry gushed: "This moment is so much bigger than me." Whenever people say something is not about them it's always just about them. This is a turn of phrase meant to remind the audience of the importance and beauty of them. Berry said her triumph was a victory "for every nameless, faceless woman of color who now has a chance because this door tonight has been opened."

Yes, at long last, the "glass ceiling" had been broken. Large-breasted, slightly cocoa women with idealized Caucasian features finally have a chance in Hollywood! They will, however, still be required to display their large breasts for the camera and to discuss their large breasts at some length with reporters.

Thus, Berry has explained her philosophy on nude scenes, saying: "(I)f it's what the character would do, then I'd use my body in any way that would best serve that character." This, she said, is her "strong belief." But what does it mean, exactly? Don't all people undress sometimes? All people pick their noses, but vapid Hollywood actresses don't insist on showing us that in every movie on the grounds that it is "what the character would do."

In fact, Berry's unseemly enthusiasm for displaying "these babies," as she genteelly refers to her breasts, reduces roles for any women who lack Berry's beauty queen features. If movies must include soft porn scenes, the audience is entitled to demand performers with sexual characteristics they would like to see in a soft porn movie. Somehow, characters played by Whoopi Goldberg are never the sorts of characters who would do things in real life like undress or have sex. And by the way, Billy Bob Thorton isn't cutting it for the female audience.

When they are young, nubile Hollywood actresses all utter the same idiotic cliches about the artistic value of nudity in movies. Then they expect us to feel sorry for them when parts dry up after they become old and start to sag. Live by the breast, die by the breast.

But Berry's self-aggrandizing pap was merely a footnote to the main theme of the awards ceremony, which was: Julia Roberts loves all the black brothers! It was a point she felt could not be made too often or with too much condescension. Her presentation of the best actor award began with the exciting revelation that she had just kissed Sidney Poitier!

Having once famously proclaimed she did not want to live in a world in which Denzel Washington had not won an Oscar for best actor, she preceded her announcement of his award saying, "I love my life!" This was about her, not him. It was her personal triumph over racism. The only patronizing remark Roberts skipped was to note that Washington and Poitier were "articulate."

After Washington accepted his award, Roberts leapt on him and would not let go. It was as if he had grown some sort of exotic Julia Roberts wart. Not only Washington, but, more urgently, his wife deserves great credit for their forbearance. Whatever indignities Hollywood has visited on blacks in the past, it would be hard to top this.

Whenever white liberals are in trouble, they always run to the blacks. Immediately after the Monica Lewinsky scandal broke, Monica went to a Washington Wizards game where she hoisted some poor unsuspecting black girl onto her lap in full view of the cameras. Bill Clinton dropped the subtlety and dashed off to Africa. After his abomination of a presidency, Jimmy Carter built housing in Harlem.

Apparently, Oscars night was Hollywood's shot at patronizing blacks to generate goodwill -- perhaps as wartime penance for its long-standing hatred of America.

It's too bad Denzel Washington's Oscar was tainted by Hollywood's self-serving night of condescension. He deserved that award. And he deserves a special award for not punching Julia Roberts in the mouth.

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