Posted on 07/05/2003 4:28:35 PM PDT by Pokey78
Few would dispute that she’s a babe. Lanky, skinny, with long blonde hair tumbling down to her breasts, Ann Coulter has been photographed in a shiny black latex dress. She’s whip-sharp in public debates, has done a fair amount of homework and has made a lot of the right enemies.
If much of modern American conservatism has made headway because of its media savvy, compelling personalities and shameless provocation, then Coulter deserves some pride of place in its vanguard.
But that, of course, is also the problem. In the ever-competitive marketplace of political ideas — in a world of blogs and talk radio and cable news — it is increasingly hard to stand out. Coulter’s answer to that dilemma is twofold: look amazing and ratchet up the rhetoric against the left until it has the subtlety and nuance of a car alarm. The left, in turn, has learnt the lesson, which is why the attack dog Michael Moore has done so well.
In fact, it’s worth thinking of Coulter as a kind of inverse Moore: whereas he’s ugly and ill-kempt, she’s glamorous and impeccably turned out. (Her web page, anncoulter.org, has a gallery of sexy images.) But what they have in common is more significant: a hysterical hatred of their political opponents and an ability to say anything to advance their causes (and extremely lucrative careers).
Coulter’s modus operandi is rhetorical extremity. She was fired from the conservative National Review magazine when, in the wake of 9/11, she urged the invasion of all Muslim nations and the forcible conversion of their citizens to Christianity.
As Brendan Nyhan, the media critic, has documented, her flights of fancy go back a long way. No punches are pulled. Ted Kennedy is an “adulterous drunk”. President Clinton had “crack pipes on the White House Christmas tree”. You get the idea.
In Coulter’s world there are two types of people: conservatives and liberals. These are not groups of people with competing ideas. They are the repositories of good and evil. There are no distinctions among conservatives or among liberals. To admit the complexity of political discourse would immediately require Coulter to think, explain, argue. But why bother when you can earn millions by being insulting? Here are a few comments about “liberals” that Coulter has deployed over the years: “Liberals are fanatical liars.” Liberals are “devoted to class warfare, ethnic hatred and intolerance”. Liberals “hate democracy because democracy requires persuasion and compromise rather than brute political force”.
Some of this is obvious hyperbole designed for a partisan audience. Some of it could be explained as good, dirty fun. It was this formula that gained her enormous sales for her last book, Slander, which detailed, in sometimes hilarious prose, the liberal bias in much of the American media.
Her latest tome ups the ante even further. If biased liberal editors are busy slandering conservatives, liberals more generally are dedicated to the subversion of their own country. They are guilty of — yes — treason.
A few nuggets: “As a rule of thumb, Democrats opposed anything opposed by their cherished Soviet Union. The Soviet Union did not like the idea of a militarily strong America. Neither did the Democrats!” Earlier in the same vein: “Whether they are defending the Soviet Union or bleating for Saddam Hussein, liberals are always against America. They are either traitors or idiots, and on the matter of America’s self-preservation, the difference is irrelevant.”
And then: “The myth of ‘McCarthyism’ is the greatest Orwellian fraud of our times. Liberals are fanatical liars, then as now. The portrayal of Senator Joe McCarthy as a wild-eyed demagogue destroying innocent lives is sheer liberal hobgoblinism. Liberals weren’t hiding under the bed during the McCarthy era. They were systematically undermining the nation’s ability to defend itself, while waging a bellicose campaign of lies to blacken McCarthy’s name.”
Coulter does not seek to complicate her view of liberals with any serious treatment of the many Democrats and liberals who were ferociously anti-communist. Scoop Jackson? Harry Truman? John F Kennedy? Lyndon Vietnam Johnson? She doesn’t substantively deal with those Democrats today — from Senator Joe Lieberman to The New Republic magazine — who were anti-Saddam before many Republicans were.
She is absolutely right to insist that many on the left are in denial about the complicity of some Americans in Soviet evil, the guilt of true traitors such as Alger Hiss or the Rosenbergs, who helped Stalin and his heirs in their murderous pursuits.
Part of the frustration of reading Coulter is that her basic causes are the right ones: the American media truly is biased to the left; some liberals and Democrats were bona fide traitors during the cold war; many on the far left today are essentially anti-American and hope for the defeat of their country in foreign wars.
But by making huge and sweeping generalisations about all liberals, Coulter undermines her own arguments and comes close to making them meaningless. If you condemn good and bad liberals alike, how can you be trusted to make any moral distinctions of any kind? And by defending the tactics of McCarthy, she actually plays directly into the hands of the left.
What she won’t concede is that it is possible to be clear-headed about the role that some liberals and Democrats played in supporting the Soviet Union, while reviling the kind of tactics that McCarthy used.
In fact, when liberals taunt conservatives with being McCarthyites, conservatives now have to concede that some of their allies, namely Coulter, obviously are McCarthyites — and proud of it.
Ron Radosh, one of the most reputable scholars who has studied the McCarthy era in great detail, is appalled at the damage Coulter has done to the work he and many others have painstakingly done over the years.
“I am furious and upset about her book,” he told me last week. “I am reading it — she uses my stuff, Harvey Klehr and John Haynes, Allen Weinstein etc, to distort what we actually say and to make ludicrous and historically incorrect arguments.
“You might recall my lengthy and negative review in The New Republic a few years ago of (Arthur) Herman’s book on McCarthy; well, she is 10 times worse than Herman. At least he tried to use bona fide historical methods of research and argument.”
Radosh has endured ostracism and abuse for insisting that many of McCarthy’s victims were indeed communist spies or agents. But he draws the line at Coulter’s crude and inflammatory defence of McCarthy: “I think it is important that those who are considered critics of left/liberalism don’t stop using our critical faculties when self-proclaimed conservatives start producing crap.”
Amen. American politics has been badly damaged by the scruple-free tactics of those like Moore and Coulter. In some ways, of course, these shameless hucksters of ideological hate deserve each other. But America surely deserves better.
Ann Coulter is the best of America. Michael Moore is America's garbage. Andrew Sullivan is clueless.
Shorthand insults do not elevate the discussion. I oppose policies, not personalities. Unless one believes that Jimmy Carter should be running things due to his strong personal character, I really think we need to get off the politics of personal destruction, because we are going to get some really lame Carter like people running the world.
How about socialism is wrong. Affirmative action is wrong. Even if I have smoked a joint, cheated, swore or did anything else improper, it does not change the fact that socialism is wrong. If you have lived as pure as the driven snow, but still advocate bad policy, you are still wrong.
That is my point I guess. Coulter goes for the zingers instinctually and it can become a battle of name calling. Those who want no change win in that battle. If people remember first that you called Kennedy an adulterous drunk, and remember no more, you have lost. If they know first that Kennedy is screwing up our educational system and trying to fiddle with health care, you win in the long run.
You can count on it their scared to death of her she pulls no punches and takes no prisoners .
Sounds a whole lot like my wife!
Where is the hyperbole here?!?!?
But Fat Ted is also a homicidal coward. He is a good swimmer, though.
Well, he did.
That was the best one I could find on her site.
I know other guys like Coulter but she needs to eat. She needs to eat a lot!
Excuse me, but that should read: Kennedy is a bloated, murderous, adulterous, socialist, brain-dead drunk.
Coulter’s modus operandi is rhetorical extremity. She was fired from the conservative National Review magazine when, in the wake of 9/11, she urged the invasion of all Muslim nations and the forcible conversion of their citizens to Christianity...I though Ann defended this position rather nicely in her interview with Katie Couric last year:
COURIC: You were also fired, I guess, because you wrote in the National Review that we should--when it came to fighting terrorism, "We should invade their countries, kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity."
Do you still believe that that's the best way to combat terrorism worldwide?Ms. COULTER: Well, that's a somewhat dishonest quote. I was referring to the people in the previous sentence of that column, cheering and dancing in the streets right now. And, in fact, this--the way that was so widely misquoted is an example of what I describe in my book, which is the constant mischaracterization, switching a small word, taking out the word, apparent. It makes a big difference and these subtle differences that are then glossed over as if there's absolutely no difference, to try to portray conservatives as crazy people, as--as Nazis, slave owners...
COURIC: Well...
Ms. COULTER: ...sexist, homophobic. How about dealing with our ideas? I mean, I've written two books now, I've written hundreds of columns, I've been on TV hundreds of times. The idea that someone can go out and find one quote that will suddenly, you know, portray me, 'Just dismiss her ideas. Read no more. Read no further. This person is crazy!' This is precisely what liberals do all the time.
COURIC: But obviously--but obviously, the National Review had a problem with these articles and some of the pieces you did because you were fired from that job. Can you elaborate or at least tell us what you exactly meant?
Ms. COULTER: Well, that--that also isn't quite true. I mean, I write a syndicated column. I write for Human Events. That's the newspaper that hires me. People buy a syndicated column, they drop the column. But a lot of people don't like me for a lot of different reasons, including...
COURIC: Well, why don't you explain what you meant then.
Ms. COULTER: ...that they're my competitors.
COURIC: What do you think is the best way to--to battle terrorism?
Ms. COULTER: Well, point one--point one and point two, by the end of the week, had become official government policy. As for converting them to Christianity, I--I think it might be a good idea to get them on some sort of hobby other than slaughtering infidels., perhaps that's the Peace Corps, perhaps it's working for Planned Parenthood, but I've never seen the transforming effect of anything like Christianity...
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.