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.