Constrast James Lileks on Ann Coulter with the Wall Street Journal's editorial page. Which one comes out on top in the "moral responsibility" sweepstakes?
...I was interested to note on the Thursday anabasis that few were paying attention to Ann Coulter’s remark in an New York Observer interview:
Is your tape recorder running? Turn it on! I got something to say."
Then she said: "My only regret with Timothy McVeigh is he did not go to the New York Times Building."
I told her to be careful.
"You’re right, after 9/11 I shouldn’t say that," she said, spotting a cab and grabbing it.
I think most anti-idiotarians have written her off - if they didn’t dislike her for other reasons already - and have no desire to be associated with her. They smell a publicity seeker, a tone-deaf anvil-whacker: Yeah, Anne, Whatever. Well, let me be on record that this is an appalling and inexcusable remark, and it turns my stomach. Of course she was being outrageous to make a point, but it was a stupid point, stupidly made, and it has the effect of making those indifferent to her presence in the ranks wish she would dry up and blow away. McVeigh blew up a fucking daycare center, Anne; that ought to be your main regret, not that he failed to drive a shard of glass through Maureen Dowd’s eyesocket.
No doubt some on the left winced when Mikey Moore agonized over the terrorists’ decision to strike New York, because it hadn’t voted for Bush. Same thing. Cheap shot, loud mouth, small mind.
And the Wall Street Journal:
Posted by DeLong at August 26, 2002 07:40 AM | TrackbackDr. Johnson, Meet Ann Coulter!
By MELIK KAYLAN
An apocryphal version of a famous Dr. Johnson remark about women preachers has come down to us as rather nuanced in its meaning. He is reported to have said that seeing women preaching is like seeing a dog walking on its front legs, not because it is well or badly done but because one is surprised to see it done at all. In this version, the remark is not intended to be boorish or unchivalrous -- but simply to illustrate something so unexpected as to be startling, perhaps so startling as to border on spectacle.
The remark resonates in the mind as being strangely applicable to Ann Coulter, the conservative firecracker and best-selling author of "Slander: Liberal Lies About The American Right." There are many surprising dimensions to the Coulter phenomenon. She has defied expectation, overturned prejudice even, in so many ways. She surprises, at the most basic level, by her effortlessly guilt-free flights of extroversion, her fierce -- but never humorless -- conservatism.
We have been programmed to think that such impassioned outrage, and outrageousness, are permissible only on the left, from counter-culture comedians or exponents of identity politics, certainly not from nice blonde Connecticut-born Republican girls. From Lenny Bruce, George Carlin, Angela Davis, Reverend Farrakhan, yes. Ann Coulter -- heaven forbid. She cannot claim that her affronts have been much exaggerated by her enemies -- she has certainly courted outrage, called Katie Couric "an affable Eva Braun," dreamed out loud that all liberals be obliterated, that liberal media organs be bombed. It's merely that such effrontery sounds more palatable in the mouths of Black Panthers. After all, why isn't she happily occupied practicing the peaceful arts of a soccer mom in some leafy suburb as befits her heritage?
Well, Miss Coulter isn't and it has upset a lot of entrenched opinions. Prejudices of this kind stem from a lazy assumption that really blistering free speech belongs more to critics of America's flaws than to celebrators of its virtues. The difference between Miss Coulter's and the Black Panthers' fuming is surely very clear. They meant it literally, bombs and all. Miss Coulter, on the other hand, acts out her thoughts in a kind of "what if" political theater, a tongue-in-cheek agitprop, and believes that most Americans understand the difference. Most Americans apparently do, as her book has topped the bestseller lists for many weeks now. Why then don't her infuriated critics get it?
By all accounts, they have tried long and hard to keep ranks closed against her to shut her out of the media game. Why would anybody even pretend to believe that Ms. Coulter wishes any real harm to the New York Times or wishes to convert all Muslims forcibly to Christianity (a post-9/11 flight of fancy that got her fired from National Review)? The answer, one suspects, is that she and her foes insist on different visions of America. Her foes see a fragile society full of rifts and flaws, oppressions and simmering resentments that can turn into open strife any moment. Ergo, free speech, however offensive, belongs morally on their side as an instrument of social palliation. Miss Coulter, as she has often demonstrated, inhabits a sturdier America with a self-confident unapologetic culture centered somewhere in the heartland. In her America, political and personal, even ethnic quips get thrown about with abandon in fierce raillery, everybody laughs about it afterwards and the country is none the worse for wear. Miss Coulter, bless her heart, would take no offense at the analogy from Dr. Johnson. Her detractors would insist that she should.
Considering that most gatekeepers to our national media, out of laziness or conviction, would prefer to filter out her kind, Miss Coulter's very survival as a public figure has been her most startling trick, indeed has offered a kind of breathtaking spectacle. For much milder remarks than she daily defiantly serves up, we've seen veteran broadcasters hounded out of their careers. Yet there she still is enduring on the tightrope, however threadbare it may be by now, her long-limbed signature silhouette poised precariously aloft, riverine blonde locks riffled by the breeze and legs coltishly pirouetting above the shark pool.
Friends and foes alike, at this point, have put down their banners and turned to gape at the pure principle of anti-gravity she has come to represent. She herself admits in a recent New York Observer profile that no mainstream American publication will employ her. So she chooses, she says, to talk directly to mainstream America over their heads, and book buyers have rewarded her handsomely for it. It's hard to know if this means that they applaud all of her harsher utterances, or simply her defiance and longevity in the face of adversity. To borrow from Dr. Johnson -- watching Miss Coulter survive tenaciously on the tightrope, they may not care whether it's well or badly done, but they're surprised -- and delighted -- to see it done at all.
And my response to the WSJ on this article:
Editor,
Ann Coulter’s ‘effortlessly guilt-free flights of extroversion’ includes remarkably guilt-free flights of outright lies.
Chief among the canards she has never been truly called to account for is her (in)famous claim that Katie “an affable Eva Braun” Couric called Reagan an “Airhead”. Many of the other flights of fancy in her ‘bestselling’ book, including ‘NYT disses Dale Earnhart’, ‘Left hates Phyllis Schlafly’, ‘Press ridiculed Reagan after the ’84 debate’ have been documented elsewhere.
Ann Coulter is the female version of Howard Stern meets Bob Grant. She may be drawing attention, but then so does a carnival barker. She is shameless enough to review her own book without attribution (“As noted in the excellent new book Slander… Murdering The Bell Curve!)
Let us not confuse applause at a college binge drinking with applause at the performance of the Boston Symphony Orchestra. Being on the NY Times bestseller list is no proof of quality.
Ann Coulter is a bright woman who appears determined to be the Al Sharpton of the Right: Loud, incessantly shrill and showing scant respect for facts.
Being on a *hardback* bestseller list is actually not necessarily always a guarantee of having sold all that much ...
Posted by: Daniel Davies on August 27, 2002 02:39 AML. Ron Hubbard's books made the bestseller list because Scientologists bought copies and then returned them to the "church" to be recycled back to bookstore racks.
This Coulter "#1" thing makes me suspect similar tactics.
I'm very right of center, but Coulter went way over the edge.
That 9-11 comment is incredibly offensive to all those who suffered from McVeigh....not to mention very, very creepy.
Ann, meet Jesse and Al.
The funny thing I find, though, is that even though Ann Coulter is outrageous and loathsome, the mainstream right doesn't seem to have a problem with her the way the mainstream left has a problem with, say, Al Sharpton. It seems to me that the mainstream left of this country (Tom Friedman types) see themselves as trying to guide the country toward a rational, socially just path that steers between right-wing forces of privilege (Bushies) and obscurantism and left-wing forces of tribalism and reaction (Naderites). At least, that is how I like to perceive myself as a fairly conventional leftist type, and I think that most convention moderate leftists perceive themselves -- correctly or incorrectly -- largely the same way.
The American right seems to perceive itself differently, though. It seems to see itself as a grassroots, populist movement trying to overcome entrenched, privileged liberalism, but facing opposition from a liberal elite. As such, they seem to see extreme right-wingers (a la Coulter) as being on their side even if they aren't extremists themselves. I'm not a conventional right-winger, so I'm not so sure about this, but that seems, to me, to be how the conventional right perceives itself. Any conventional rightists on this blog could offer their perspective, though, since they know what being a conventional right-winger is like more than me.
Julian Elson
Posted by: Julian Elson on August 27, 2002 11:15 AMI disagree somewhat with your post, Julian.
Maybe I don't read enough of the mainstream left, but I don't exactly see them tearing down Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson. In fact, I keep seeing their names and faces in the mainstream press.
Now, since the left controls the mainstream media (some 90% plus identify themselves as liberals or democrats), I suspect the Right will allow the more outrageous types simply because sometimes they are needed in order to get heard. Not saying this is right or even productive, just an explanation to what you perceive. (Though, frankly, I don't see that many that are truly out there being tolerated by the Right. Or at least not anymore of them than the Left tolerates.)
Posted by: Mark on August 27, 2002 12:01 PMRepublicans may be comfortable having Ann Coulter about simply because Coulter can be counted on to support Republican candidates.
Ralph Nadar no longer supports Democratic candidates.
Al Sharpton can not be counted on to support Democratic candidates.
Loyalty counts in politics.
Posted by: on August 27, 2002 12:02 PMI found the lumping of Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton highly questionable. Yes, I know, they do have one thing in common. At least you didn't throw in Farrakhan too.
Posted by: zizka on August 27, 2002 12:51 PMIf the Left controls the mainstream media, how come 90% of the MM endorsed Bush (each time)?
Posted by: Andrew S. on August 27, 2002 03:12 PMJust curious: why is the coupling of Sharpton and Jackson with Coulter (same type, different end of spectrum) questionable if the basis is lack of measured, rational discourse on the best path for our nation?
Posted by: Mark on August 27, 2002 03:53 PM" Ann Coulter is a bright woman who appears determined to be the Al Sharpton of the Right: Loud, incessantly shrill and showing scant respect for facts."
and
"...even though Ann Coulter is outrageous and loathsome, the mainstream right doesn't seem to have a problem with her the way the mainstream left has a problem with, say, Al Sharpton."
and
"...the coupling of Sharpton and Jackson with Coulter (same type, different end of spectrum...."
Oh yeah, great comparisons. Ann Coulter writes a book titled "Slander", while Al Sharpton is found to be liable for damages in a court of law for actually SLANDERING police and prosecutors in the Tawana Brawley case.
Coulter tells jokes about people being killed, while Sharpton incites people to actually do it: In Harlem where seven whites were killed by a gunman-arsonist at Freddie's Fashion Mart. Not to mention Sharpton's helpful role in the Crown Heights riots.
Of course, Bill Bradley, Al Gore, and Hillary Clinton all had no problem with Sharpton during the 2000 NY Primary.
It's not quite accurate to say that nobody on the right has called Ann Coulter to account. She got fired from the *National Review* for inflammatory remarks about the need to convert Muslims to Christianity. Rightly so. This country is for all practical purposes at war, and the last thing we need is loose cannons like Miss Coulter complicating our relations with our Muslime allies.
Posted by: Joe Willingham on August 28, 2002 05:11 PMOkay, okay. Ann Coulter is not in Jesse Jackson or Al Sharpton's league. Agreed. But like those two buffoons on the left, she's starting to become a buffoon. *That* was my point -- *not* equating Jesse and Al's sins to Ann's. Ann is telling a message I think is right, but is hurting her cause and all on the right by saying stupid stuff that distracts from the message. So, in that way, she is like Al and Jesse, quibble as you may. Perhaps a better comparison of Ann's alter-ego on the left would be Paul Begala....
Posted by: Mark on August 29, 2002 03:03 PMShe's a bit of an exhibitionist, but hey, that's show biz.
Posted by: Joe Willingham on August 29, 2002 09:18 PMNothing wrong with show-biz if that's what you're in. I thought Coulter was a public intellectual. I'm not against being provocative -- I love Derbyshire's work. But once provocative crosses over to asinine, then you've got a problem if you're claiming to be something other than entertainment.
Posted by: Mark on August 30, 2002 09:12 AMI love Derbyshire, he's a fine columnist. But he's no intellectual, and I don't think he pretends to be. As for Miss Coutler, intellectual is not her shtick. She's a liberal-baiter in the Rush Limbaugh tradition.
Victor Davis Hanson is a public intellectual, if writing for the *National Review* makes you public.
Hanson, a professor of Classics at Fresno State, is an eloquent advocate of the pro-war view in the current debate.
I can remember when the left used to be outrageous and consider it fun. But now over there it's all "harumph, scold, scold, scold", and the fun is all being had over on the other side.
Some of you folks seem to be suffering from "right wing envy". ;-)
http://slate.msn.com/?id=2070301.
She even tells them what she's doing, and they still fall miss it. Kinda like Bob Gibson with his fastball. In the now infamous Observer article, the reporter quotes her thus:
>> She said she "takes joy in liberal attacks. It’s like coffee. I mean, usually when I write up a column, I know what’s going to drive them crazy. I know when I’m baiting them, it’s so easy to bait them and they always bite. That is my signature style, to start with the wild, bald, McCarthyite overstatements—seemingly—and then back it up with methodical and laborious research. Taunting liberals is like having a pet that does tricks. Sit! Beg! Shake! Then they do it." <<