Jun 07 2006
Anne Coulter Needs To Keep Quiet
Ed Morrissey has noticed a another Anne Coulter disaster-gaffe in her interview with Matt Lauer promoting her new book (which I will not be reading):
LAUER: On the 9-11 widows, an in particular a group that had been critical of the administration:
COULTER: “These self-obsessed women seem genuinely unaware that 9-11 was an attack on our nation and acted like as if the terrorist attack only happened to them. They believe the entire country was required to marinate in their exquisite personal agony. Apparently, denouncing bush was part of the closure process.â€
“These broads are millionaires, lionized on TV and in articles about them, reveling in their status as celebrities and stalked by griefparrazies. I have never seen people enjoying their husband’s death so much.â€
Ed Morrissey rightfully compares Anne to Ted Rall, one of the most despicable people on the planet. I don’t know what happened to Anne, but she is a walking disaster for conservatives. I was at CPAC when she made her disasterous comment about Ragheads. That was a horror too. At a time we need moderate Muslims to stand by our side and resist the Islamo-fascists Anne detonated a mega-ton stink bomb. Personally I doubt she should ever come back to CPAC. Because we don’t need Begala-Carville-Rall clone, we need all those Muslim-Conservatives groups that set up their tents at CPAC for a week showing solidarity.
I have no problem with anyone speaking in this country – it is their right. And they definitely deserve the right to be respected when speaking from conviction and painful experience, and not slandered and hurt in this way. Anne Coulter is no Conservative. She cannot be. Either that or I am no conservative. There is no way to condone such cruelty. Anne, sit down and just don’t talk anymore. You have done enough damage.
Addendum:Â The 9-11 widows respond to Coulter’s disgraceful comments:
Contrary to Ms. Coulter’s statements, there was no joy in watching men that we loved burn alive. There was no happiness in telling our children that their fathers were never coming home again. We adored these men and miss them every day.
It is in their honor and memory, that we will once again refocus the Nation’s attention to the real issues at hand: our lack of security, leadership and progress in the five years since 9/11.
There is much more, so please read the entire response.
Pierre,
I’ll ask again: Who the hell appointed you the arbiter of who is and is not a conservative?
Oh yes, I am not a real conservative. I think for myself. I do not allow my politics to be dictated to by a self appointed minority of extremists who believe they have all the answers, who have no resepct for the opinions of others and who would rather accomplish absolutely nothing than give an inch. Sounds like Cindy Sheehan doesn’t it?
The Democrats got too big for their britches and had a fall and the same thing can happen to the Republicans if the 20% of the population who seem to be under the impression they are actually indicative of how Americans think do not exercise a little self control in the arrogant loud mouth department..
The truth is without people like me and AJ and Harold etc a lot of far right wing extremists [who are not conservatives] would be out in the cold with Buchanan. Let’s see in 2000 he got about 1% of the vote, less than half of what Nadar got. Oh yeah, people really go for that kind of talk.
Extremes meet.
PierreLegrand, at least someone on here is in touch with reality.
“Ann is doing what other conservatives don’t have the balls to do and that is understand what the left is all about and go after them with a hammer and knife. Conservatives have been playing nice and polite with the Left since around 1930 and all its gotten them is second place”
You just watch the votes on partisan bills. The Dems and Inds always stand together and the Repubs always split because they try to be reasonable. The Dems damn sure don’t try to be reasonable only 100% partisan. That’s why we can’t get something like Social Security reform passed despite controlling both houses and the white house. The Dems sure didn’t split their vote, and why. they knew some Repubs were nice and didn’t want to hurt the Dems feelings. The Dems know they can pass the same thing because when they get in control they will be UNITED. For some reason, we have a lot of people on the right , be it Repubs, Conservatives or whatever that just don’t get it. Same with this Senate bill, See the vote. That way the Dems get credit for supporting it, Latino votes, and by the Repubs being divided, it makes it looks like it’s the Repubs that won’t pass it. You can be absolutely sure that if the Repubs voted 100% for it, the Dems would immediately oppose it. By keeping the vote split, when the Border finally, if ever, gets enforcment, the Dems can blame everything on Repubs and still get the Latino votes. Democrats are furious about being out of power and are shrill about it. Ann is trying to point out how ridiculous it is and here we have the Repubs condemning her.
“The point of Ann Coulter was to shock others into realizing that the Emperor has no clothes…one does not do that by mentioning it politly in a subdued fashion as has been the Republican fashion. Reagan was a counter to that habit….y’all seem to forget just how outspoken he was.”
How does that saying go? Nice guys finish last, the more Repubs play nice, the closer to “last” they get
Enforcement:
Reality?
I was at the home of an elderly lady today who heard about this. She is retired here but was born and raised in New York. She is a life long Republican.
What did she have to say about Ann? She said “What a bitch”.
Believe it or not, this is not about politics. Most people find this kind of attitude offensive when it is directed at people who have suffered a loss. It is tacky.
Pierre,
I’ll ask again: Who the hell appointed you the arbiter of who is and is not a conservative?
Left by HaroldHutchison on June 7th, 2006
Well HH, even if he’s self appointed, he’s doing a damn fine job of it.
By the way, why is it your place to question if he is, in fact, a duly appointed arbiter? God may have appointed him.
TERRYE, so my comment would also be, What a bitch. But not talking about Ann.
“Believe it or not, this is not about politics. Most people find this kind of attitude offensive when it is directed at people who have suffered a loss”
kinda naive aren’t you Terrye, it’s not about politics? Ask Cindy Sheehan, she suffered a loss and loved him so much she hasn’t even marked his grave. You think she’s not a bitch? The only suffering she appears to be bearing is if she doesn’t get enough publicity.
OPEN YOUR EYES!!!!
Our eyes are open … just not wildly so. Why do people think it is okay to behave with a maturity level of a junior high school student when it comes to politics? I prefer not to use speech, even in a political context, that I can not use in any venue. In other words, we are always examples to others in our community and when we start behaving in that manner, it telegraphs that behavior like that is accepted. Soon we begin behaving that way all the time and before you know it, we have a population in perpetual road rage mode. Disagree with something? Attack it with the most hateful vitriol you can manage. Sorry. That isn’t my style and I don’t tolerate that kind of behavior in my home either. When someone is on TV they are actually being invited into people’s livingrooms. I wouldn’t behave in a way on television any differently than I would behave in a stranger’s home. She could have made her point without the hate or at least been more careful to narrow her attack to specific individuals explicitly.
And you know what? It’s just going to get worse because as the people on the far right become more irrelevent through their lack of self control, they will become even more enraged which will make them even more irrelevent. Nobody pays much attention to someone raving to the extent that you can almost feel the spittle coming through the screen.
Enforcement:
Tacky…. I said she was tacky. I think Cindy Sheehan is insane.
Jeez, I have a right to be offended without having to explain that to you or anyone else.
I think there is something in what I said above that is kind of interesting too. I believe both the far right and the far left will become increasingly irrelevent. But I also believe that the extremes account for less of the Republican party than they do the Democratic party. In other words, I get the impression that there are more extreme Democrats than extreme Republicans and so when the extremes marginalize themselves as extremes always do, the Republicans will be left with more than the Democrats.
For example: In California, Republican registrations have remained fairly steady over the years while Democratic registrations have been in a steady decline. Voters registering Independent have been increasing. The same is true in Texas in that the numbers if Independents are climbing at a fast rate but I believe registrations with both parties are in decline there. This happens when party rhetoric begins to move to the extreme and fails to radicalize the membership. Each side ends up in their bastion with their chior to preach to but the congregation heads for the door.
I see the current state of affairs as being that there are more centerist Republicans than Democrats. Rudy, for example, kicks the pants off any of the proposed Democratic candidates in presidential polls and picks up a huge chunk of the Independent vote even if the radical right doesn’t vote for him. In other words, Rudy’s base is in the center. Independents don’t have a problem crossing party lines. In fact, that is the basis of their political identity. They aren’t going to march lock-step with either party. Can the Democrats ditch the Kos kids and get away with it? I doubt it. But we could ditch our extreme members and probably not only survive, but thrive.
Most people do not like extremsits, they scare them.
The Coulter Attack…
Is it harsh? Sure. A small number of widows have made claim to a moral authority on the War against Terror. They cannot be questioned because their husbands died…..give me a effin break. Why must everyone tiptoe around these things? Always PC…
And by extreme, I mean the really extreme. You know, the ones that voted for Pat Buchanan in the 2000 presidential election (all 449,895 of them). There aren’t that many of them but the Republicans seem to weight them more than they are worth in the pandering department.
On reflection, it probably would be a good thing to see if, elsewhere in the book, Ann did indeed introduce the 9/11 widows specifically as the infamous FIVE who became media darlings by bashing Bush. But then, I don’t really care. I used to like Ann Coulter, but her bottomless-snark shtick began to wear a little thin after a while, and I decided that I’d had enough of her when she denounced Harriet Miers as “Caligula’s horse” and left me wondering how I missed the news that Harriet Miers had been outed as either rock-stupid, a Hillary-Clinton clone, or both. (I’m still puzzled by the War Against Harriet Miers to this day.)
Oh, my, kiddies, can’t we save some of this for the opposition? We’re all on the same (generally speaking) side.
Yes, Ann Coulter says some … yeah! Really harsh sometimes, and too biting obscures the wit, and the humor falls flat. Most of the time, though, her points are valid and delivered in memorable style (whether one likes her style is a beholder thing).
Certainly comments like “raghead” are way over the edge, but that isn’t really typical of Coulter — just that, when she’s the one making that kind of crude faux pas, it gets such endless coverage it begins to seem as though she’s the one repeatedly saying it.
But even that doesn’t negate her intelligence or her scholarship, both of which are impressive. Her research on the Venona Project, and the inroads communism actually made into high levels of our government, and the elements behind the destruction of Joe McCarthy (who actually had it more right than wrong) are to her credit, regardless of how she delivers the punchlines.
And her credentials as a conservative — NOT a “right wing zealot” — are stellar. Sure, there have been and will be issues (such as the Miers nomination) where the twain simply doesn’t meet. That’s the inevitable result of independent thinking, as opposed to lockstep thinking that most of us fault liberals for.
By way of “disclosure” I should probably mention: I’ve had a framed frosted glass sign with ceramic lettering that says “BITCH” hanging over my workspace (where ever that may’ve been) for about 30 years. So, yeah, maybe it takes one to know and appreciate one.
What is really troubling me about this recent bickering, though, is this: Throughout the 1960s and 1970s, when the far left was on the asendency, I noted a fairly constant evidence of a humor factor among the left that was missing on the right.
The left may have been, and they were, wrong on all the issues — but they generally projected a more inviting and likable image as individuals than the humorless, too-straight-laced, stiff-lipped, unsmiling, rigid and disapproving face of the right, usually represented by John Birch Society oh-so-glummers.
The first and most obvious change I noticed happened shortly after a Doonsebury cartoon included a White House telephone number, and a nudge for readers to call the number and give Reagan what for.
The Reagan White House response? An answering machine message directing callers to numbers for the Doonsebury author, agent and publishers! I for one was delighted, and over the following dozen years watched the humor switch to the other foot, up to and through the Gingrich-led Republican Revolution and continuing to the Bush 43 White House.
Meanwhile, the left just kept getting angrier and more vitriolic. And they started losing, and got even angrier and so it went. The image they project is not very inviting.
Up until now, the right has appeared to be a much more appealing option. I really would hate to see us lose that edge.
Reagan was the master. He also knew when to make himself and/or his administration the butt of his own jokes. It is very disarming of the opposition when you make fun of yourself at just exactly the right moment. It makes any further attacks to appear unfair. Remember Reagan’s “hole in the foot” award given to his Secretary of the Interior? Perfect and at exactly the right point in time. It disarmed the critics completely.
The Coulter Controversy…
Ann Coulter’s gimmick is that she’s basically a right-wing version of a left-wing pundit, except she usually doesn’t cross the line. I take that back: she usually doesn’t do a Mike Powell-esque long jump over the line.
……
MerryJ1, I think you make good sense. I admit, in the last month or so I’ve lost my usually robust, rather sarcastic sense of humor. Watching the immigration “debate” or food fight on the Right has ceased to be amusing and turned me into a worrywort. I’ve lost friends, and I’ve been truly shocked by some of the backwards-ass thinking and kooky conspiracy theorizing. Every day it seems more and more of GWB’s so-called “base” piles on with accusations that are hard to distinguish from the unhinged Left. Bush Derangement Syndrome knows no party lines.
Back to Ann C. I don’t want to pile on her. She’s free to do her thing, and God bless her on the mission. I guess it’s me who’s changed. Or it’s bad timing due to all the current ugliness within our own ranks. As I said above, I’m just not in the mood to respond like Pavlov’s dog to this familiar marketing strategy — throw out some red meat . . . siren on Drudge . . . get all jazzed up . . . rush out and buy another book. If I really thought she could change hearts and minds, I’d be more of a cheerleader. But since I personally don’t need to be convinced about ‘liberal godlessness,’ I’m taking a pass on this ride.
There is a good comparison to Ann’s style. Peter Schweizer wrote an excellent, immensely entertaining book titled “Do As I Say (Not As I Do).” I listened to it on CD. Schweizer uses a velvet hammer to Ann’s sledge hammer. Even as he is pointing out the shameless hypocrisy of Lefty heroes like Michael Moore, Nancy Pelosi and Noam Chomsky, he avoids personal insult, assigning motives or reading minds, and sticks to the facts using strictly publicly available information — like MMoore’s stock portfolio (which Moore claims doesn’t exist) that includes evil Halliburton stock. Schweizer also manages to teach conservative & capitalist principles in a very appealing, inviting way. He praises his subjects for their career successes (which depend oddly enough on free markets & capitalism) and he gently cajoles these windbags to come clean, stop bashing this country, and join the great American experience.
Well, different strokes. Ann sure has managed to shake things up in about 24 hours time. She owns the spotlight for the moment. And I have to say, her hair colorist is phenomenally talented. She looks angelic.
CROSSPATCH, I admire you, I couldn’t have written a better description of you than your self description copied from your comment. Thanks for saving me the effort. Enforcement
“And you know what? It’s just going to get worse because as the people on the far right become more irrelevent through their lack of self control, they will become even more enraged which will make them even more irrelevent. Nobody pays much attention to someone raving to the extent that you can almost feel the spittle coming through the screen. ”
Left by crosspatch on June 7th, 2006
TERRYE you said:
“Jeez, I have a right to be offended without having to explain that to you or anyone else. ”
You sure do, and since you apparently don’t have the capability to do so, you shouldnl’t
CROSSP, your observation, quoted below is totally meaningless. So Some Repubs register as independent and some Dems do, then they vote as they always have. NOBODY votes Independent.
“In California, Republican registrations have remained fairly steady over the years while Democratic registrations have been in a steady decline. Voters registering Independent have been increasing. “