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Ann
Coulter and the Cancer of the Far Right
July 17, 2002
By Rafique Tucker
 I've
been interested in politics since I was 12, and while I've
never actually gotten involved in politics personally, I have
made it a personal mission of mine to stay informed about
the world around me. I'm only 22, but those ten years seem
like a lifetime, considering all that's happened. I have seen
a lot in my 22 years on God's green Earth, but what I have
witnessed in the past ten years, is enough to break a faithless
man's spirit.
I love this great country of ours, and I have witnessed the
rise of a cultural and political mindset that aims to literally
suck every bit of life out of our institutions. I have tried
to shy away from this reality, but recent events have convinced
me that this reality cannot be ignored. I have said it in
message board posts a hundred times, but it bears repeating:
The modern conservative movement in general, and the Republican
Party establishment, is morally bankrupt.
Making a statement like this bothers me somewhat, particularly
because my best friends are Republicans, and there are a lot
of people I admire who are in the GOP. The fact is most decent
people in the mainstream - Republican and Democrat - are proud
Americans who want the best for the American people. However,
when it comes to the activists, talk radio dittoheads, pundits,
media whores, and of course, the politicians, it's a different
story.
The fact is, millions of innocent Americans have been duped.
They have committed themselves to a party that has not only
lost its moral compass, but stomped on it. There are many
examples of the soulless banter of the GOP elite (Rush Limbaugh,
Sean Hannity, Tom DeLay), but one that always comes to mind
is a strange creature of pure hatred and venom that presents
herself in the form of a blonde woman named Ann Coulter.
I have seen my share of nonsense from the far-right, but
Coulter has crowned herself empress. Coulter has managed to
produce a record of so many vile comments, half-truths, and
most often, outright lies, that it boggles the mind that people
take her seriously. The things she has said, from her "invade
their countries, and convert to Christianity" remark, to her
remarks against women's suffrage, to her mindless defense
of Jerry Falwell's disgraceful post-9/11 comments, it goes
on and on.
What seems to escape me is how people like Sean Hannity can
defend her day in and day out. She blames liberals for everything
that's gone wrong in the past 50 years, and Bill Clinton for
the last ten years. She has openly called liberals traitors,
un-American, wimps, and crooked, without ever presenting facts
to even remotely back up her lies.
She and her right-wing buddies whine about conservatives
being slandered in the press (without facts to back it up
of course), but say nothing about the liberals that are slandered
and libeled in the press by conservatives and the so-called
liberal media. When she is asked to justify her slanderous
and libelous remarks, she whines about liberals not understanding
the difference between truth and fiction. No, Ms. Coulter,
I know what libel is, and I know what slander is, and I just
want you to back up your own bullshit.
Yet, the sad fact is, she can't, and none of them can. Hannity,
Coulter, and others talk about how that Democratic Party is
devoid of ideas. It's baseless nonsense like this that makes
me want to yell, "I know you are, but what am I?" The fact
is, conservatives haven't come up with anything new in ten
years, and at least in the old days, the thoughtful conservatives
actually debated the issues.
At least the thoughtful reactionaries tried to justify it
with honest debate. Nowadays, all the Coulterites can do is
delay, distort, and destroy. The Democrats have plenty of
ideas, it's just that the Repubs don't like them. As Morgan
Freeman said in The Sum of All Fears: "It adds up,
you just don't like what it adds up to."
The Coulterites write books, and think that because they're
popular, the message must be good. Everything popular isn't
always right, and everything right isn't always popular. In
Nazi Germany Mein Kampf was a bestseller, but obviously Hitler's
Nazi diatribe was not a good thing. Harry Potter is a bestseller,
but many conservative Christians have a real problem with
that. The Bible isn't very popular in a lot of places, but
it's still the Word of God (for all the non-Christians reading
this who are offended, I'm just expressing my faith).
Two weeks before Coulter's book came out, Mike Moore's Stupid
White Men was a hit. Something tells me that Coulterites
still didn't like the book. My point is this: Conservatives
today have proven that they have nothing left. When corporations
cook the books, they blame Clinton's penis. They ignore their
own deregulation efforts years earlier. When legitimate questions
about Bush and Harken, and Cheney and Halliburton are raised,
they deny it, and accuse Dems of playing politics. When terrorists
fly planes into the Twin Towers and the Pentagon, they argue
over whether the family of a person who gave his life to save
American lives should receive charity, because the hero happened
to be gay.
They blame Tom Daschle for their screw-ups. The politicize
the war, they waste our tax money on a failed drug war and
corporate welfare, and then they give away tax breaks to the
rich. They invent new ways to screw the poor. They keep alive
the insidious myth of the liberal media. They demonize anyone
to the left of Reagan as a socialist. They defend crooked
cops, bash intellectuals, and support a sweeping theocracy.
They claim to be godly, but they don't even have a form of
godliness. They lie. They cheat. They steal elections.
The far-right elite have duped mainstream Republicans, and
all of America. It bothers me to have to tell my friends that
their Party doesn't care about them. It bothers me that the
Hard Right has moved into the mainstream. It bothers me that
people who lecture us on less government, don't mind handing
over our liberties. Abraham Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt, and
Thomas Jefferson must be writhing in their graves, and for
those Pharisees who claim to be doing the work of the Lord,
I suggest they read Matthew 7, and Matthew 23.
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