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Does
Anyone Take This Woman Seriously?
November
5, 2001
by Why
I find it hard to believe that anyone in the USA takes Ann
Coulter seriously. For those who don't watch the FOX News
Channel, or have seen her on Politically Incorrect, she is
a conservative syndicated columnist whose column appears in,
among other places, Yahoo! News.
I am not so sure about her "conservativeness" as much as
for her intense hatred for liberals. Most traditional conservative
columnists, such as George Will or Robert Novak, are well-educated
and talented writers who make their viewpoints clear. Whether
you agree with them or not, what they write is usually worthwhile
reading material. Ann Coulter's commentary, on the other hand
is the literary equivalent of junk food; purely empty calories
that will only wind up accumulating in places where it is
not wanted. It makes your brain fat and sluggish just like
too many cheeseburgers makes the rest of your body fat and
sluggish. Yes, you can indeed be made stupider by reading.
Sadly, plenty of people do take her seriously.
I should warn you before you read further, this woman is
not only utterly without talent, she is exceptionally vile.
She doesn't seem capable of writing above a sixth-grade reading
level. I suppose that's just as well, since her intended audience
reads at about a fourth-grade level, so they feel unjustifiably
smart when they can read her column without moving their lips.
Let's examine her latest column, for instance.
This piece is called, "The Eunuchs are Whining." In this
screeching tirade, she accuses liberals, and by that I mean
anyone to the left of Pat Buchanan, of being a bunch of un-American,
bleeding-heart, effeminate weenies for the unpardonable sin
(to those of her ilk) of having misgivings about some aspect
of the war on terrorism. According to her, those of us who
are not 100% grade-A conservatives who worship the ground
George W. Bush walks upon, are as opposed to everything that
the United States of America stands for as the subhuman garbage
who destroyed the World Trade Center with thousands of people
inside. That is about the most outlandishly preposterous thing
I have ever hear anyone say.
Ms. Coulter is famous for such sweeping generalizations as
that described above. I haven't even begun to critique the
entire piece, just the one-sentence opening paragraph. It
gets worse. She says, "Not exactly smashing stereotypes of
liberals as mincing pantywaists, the left's entire contribution
to the war effort thus far has been to whine." Not so. I,
for example, am a drilling Army Reservist. I stand ready to
do whatever is required of me, should I receive the call.
I took the same oath that Mr. Bush took thirty years ago,
but unlike Mr. Bush, I never ignored that oath when it became
inconvenient. Although we have more than our fair share of
freepers in our ranks, we are not all raving conservative
lunatics.
Next, she has the unmitigated gall to call Walter Cronkite,
widely venerated as the most trusted man in America, who (unlike
the Chimp in Chief) actually went to Vietnam as a correspondent,
the "president of the Ho Chi Minh Veneration Society", a "self-serving,
multimillionaire Martha's Vineyard boob", and "the most pious
blowhard in America." She then points out that he compared
Jerry Falwell to the Taliban. I must admit that isn't a very
accurate comparison; for one, the Taliban clerics wear beards
while Mr. Falwell's porcine visage is clean-shaven. We are
then supposed to be horrified when she points out Mr. Cronkite's
reaction to Jerry's recent comments regarding liberals and
certain other groups pissing God off and thereby causing the
WTC tragedy as "the most abominable thing I've ever heard."
She says, "Liberals compare Jerry Falwell to the Taliban,
but then are furious with George Bush for not being Jesus
Christ." Well, I'll be the first to admit that's a bit much
to expect, but is it too much to expect that our President
be reasonably adroit about world affairs, can put together
a coherent sentence all by himself, and actually set an example
for his countrymen. Instead, we have a pResident who is best
known for his "deer in the headlights" stare when asked a
simple question for which nobody gave him a 3x5 card.
Next, she insults a fairly large chunk of the American population.
"Liberal soccer moms are precisely as likely to receive anthrax
in the mail as to develop a capacity for linear thinking,"
she says. Does Ms. Coulter even know what linear thinking
is, let alone have the capacity for it herself? What about
conservative soccer moms? Well, apparently, they can't think
for themselves either. "Women," she says, " -- and I don't
mean to limit that to the biological sense -- always become
hysterical at the first sign of trouble." I wish she would
tell that to the women serving their country in Afghanistan.
No, I wish she would come over and say that to my wife. I
guarantee you, that would start the fight of the century."
Finally, she lashes out at other, more liberal journalists
(the 99% who disagree with her) who point out that conflicting
messages are being sent by the Bush administration, particularly
Department of Justice, that have us all scratching our heads
and wondering which message to believe. On one hand, we are
being alerted to imminent terrorist attacks and the fact that
airport security still isn't quite up to par, but on the other
we are supposed to go ahead and fly. We are told that the
economy is a horrible mess and it will be awhile before it
gets better, but we're supposed to whip out that plastic as
if Bill Clinton was still in charge.
According to Coulter, members of the Fourth Estate who point
out these inconsistent and conflicting messages from our own
government are "...like eunuchs in a harem: They know how
it's done, they've seen it done every day, but they're unable
to do it themselves." How charming. They stand accused of
"creating a Princess DI-like hysteria" among the public. Frank
Rich of the New York Times is told to "go listen to a Rodgers
and Hammerstein sound track" and chill out rather than merely
point out that finding the source of anthrax being sent through
the mail is proving to be more of a challenge than anticipated.
Reading Ann Coulter is as bad for you as saturated fat, that's
for sure. Too bad there isn't a Food and Drug Administration
to make people like Ann Coulter put labels on the drivel she
writes for public consumption; brain cells are being choked
to death from her virulent brand of intellectual cholesterol
just as surely as the cheeseburger Dick Cheney had for lunch
is hastening the onset of his next heart attack.
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