Coulter Coulter Coulter

The New Republic, which used to be a liberal magazine, has published a loving tribute by Elsbeth Reed to Ann Coulter for being pugnacious and having a grain of truth in her lies (Reed's analysis not mine). She then inexplicably turns Ann Coulter's success into a cautionary tale about Liberals and Gender Issues.

All wrapped up in liberals' snarky comments about her hair is a wellspring of latent guilt for judging her by her hair. Even after all those gender studies classes in college, even after having known/befriended/dated/been That Girl who Doesn't Shave Her Pits, after pretending to like Ani DiFranco, liberals still can't get over her hair. I love Ann Coulter because, in her, I see a loudmouth on the assembly line, fighting not to be squished and whittled and boxed into the shape Washington seems to think fits a girl just right.

I don't even know what that's supposed to mean, exactly. For the record I think Ani DiFranco ha done some quite fine music (and some very annoying polemics). To The Teeth is a damn fine album, for example. I don't have to pretend to like her and my liking her doesn't come from some sort of liberal guilt.

By the same token, I don't like Ann Coulter because she's pretty much insane. Her goal is quite simply the elimination of liberals. And given her comments in the past, I have to assume that she would be willing to support quite extreme methods to achieve that goal.

Neither of these opinions is based on any kind of guilt or desire to be a good feminist or whatever else she's referring too here.

At any rate I'm far from the only one who found this article a bit crap. The Daily Howler did quite a number on it, "It’s hard to get dumber than this piece by Reeve, but her flat-out inability to reason is the raw meat on which Coulter feeds." Lance Mannion also wrote on the article pointing out the sort of society Ann Coulter and others are trying to create.

What's not "kind of" true but all true is that it has been the Bush Administration and its flunkys and apologists in Congress and in the Media who have been using emotional responses to 9/11 to shut down debate.

Criticize the President and you're a traitor giving aid and comfort to terrorists.

Object to the Radical Christian Right's attempts to outlaw freedom of choice and women's autonomy, replace science in school with superstitious twaddle, deny gay people status as citizens, and generally force a backwards cult of male authoritarianism they call Christianity on the whole country, and you're Godless.

Suggest in any way that the Republican Right wing agenda's not a boon and a gift to the nation and you're a liar, a malicious slanderer, who can only be properly argued with while holding a baseball bat.

That's Ann Coulter's shtick in a nutshell.