Ann Coulter sends out an email bulletin periodically.
Her latest one is headlined:
“THEY SHOT THE WRONG LINCOLN“
And proceeds to roundly criticize Republican Lincoln Chaffee.
Look, she’s a source of amusement to a lot of people, but I’ve got to say – I’m not amused, I’m disgusted. She’s not a random comment troll at DU, she’s a best-selling author. What exactly does she have to do to get shunned? How far does she have to go?
Will someone let me know, please?
She got hit pretty hard for her “Christianize the Arabs” bit, but recovered. I can’t help but think she is the Energize bunny of the demagogue world: She keeps going and going.
I’ve never been a fan. She’s a comic, and I don’t like her kind of humor. (I prefer the kind of joke that’s just as funny or even funnier if you realise it’s on you. That kind of genuinely gentle ribbing is not Ann Coulter’s style.)
My guess is, a lot of people like her looks. If she pigs out (or more likely starves herself into being a frightening skeleton) and starts dressing badly, she’ll vanish. Till then, she stays.
AL-
Shun her just because you don’t like what she has to say? How Liberal of you. And open minded, I might add.
BWAH-HAH-HA!
The Hobo
AL – It’s her schtick. Extreme hyperbole and off-the-wall crap to make a point. Like you, I don’t always appreciate the way she makes her point, but I usually agree with the point. I’m sure you, like myself, realize that AC’s not really recommending that someone should shoot Lincoln Chaffee.
Like Mr. Hobo above, I’m a bit bemused that you want her “shunned”; altho’ I’m at a loss to understand what you mean by “shunned”, who you expect to do it and how…
BTW, I’m not subscribed to her email list. Why are you?
Robo –
Shun her is somehow hard to understand? She’s a national figure because people pay attention to her. If they stopped, she’d have to find a new line of work.
And it’s not that I don’t like what she says as in I disagree with – it’s that when people say “blow up the Ny Times building” or “Shoot Lincoln Chaffee” I’ve got a bit of a problem.
And you should, too…
A.L.
I haven’t noticed her celebrating on the podium, like Al Sharpton, with Senate nominees.
I’ve argued for some time, including here at WOC, that Coulter has a corrosive effect on this country’s ability to debate critical issues we face.
She’s the far right’s equivalent of all the leftist irresponsible idiots from the 60s and 70s — by insisting on reducing important issues to juvenile but destructive attacks, she makes it harder to reach the centrists on important issues.
And centrists are who determine elections in this country. But more importantly, at a time when we NEED to seriously and urgently come to something like a national consensus on Iran, islamacist terror, borders and immigration, she irresponsibly makes that harder rather than easier to do.
Ann is awesome! She’s funny as heck and always on the right track. If Stephen Colbert had made the Lincoln quip, his audience would have loved it. But God forbid a funny, attractive, conservative female! A lot of men are intimidated by assertive women. That’s the real reason there are complaints about her.
So, AL — why are you talking about someone you want to shun? I haven’t mentioned her in… hm, three years. You’re right: people talk about her because she’s being talked about.
You want to know what it takes to get her shunned? Well, one thing it takes is the will to ignore her.
Dammit, Grim. Did you have to be so obviously, commonsensically right?
OK, I’m done with her…and I’m wrong to have paid any attenton at all.
A.L.
Ann is great, she tells it like it is, no BS just straight to the point. The west is going to die, not killed by your average friendly hezzie but by our own white liberal assholes and their pathetic policies.
A lot of men are intimidated by assertive women. That’s the real reason there are complaints about her.
That was a silly strawman when it was used to defend Hillary, and it’s just as silly in this case.
What Grim and Rand Simberg wrote goes double for me. She’s not being attacked because she’s “assertive,” she’s being attacked because she’s a professional provocateur who says outrageous things to get people upset (and not just those on the other side). Best way to deal with her and people like her is to deny her the attention she needs.
RKB and AL give Coulter a lot more credit for being a participant in the debate than she deserves. She’s an entertainer, not a thinker.
Having a Democrat party chairman who says “I hate Republicans.” is a lot more corrosive than anything a celebrity like Coulter says.
Debate of this ferocity is not unknown in American political history. It comes at times when the prevailing political philosophy is being overthrown and replaced by a new one. The rise of the Democrat-Republicans replacing the Federalists, the Jacksonian Ascension, the Republican emergenmce, the New Deal and the Great Society were all periods of vicious polemic and calumny. And not the only ones.
The real questions is whether we are now in such a transition period, or a new permanent plateau. Because both parties triangulate to get only 51% of the vote, represent very few political principles, and their primary purpose is to elect officeholders, not to advocate and implement policies, we may be in a plateau where change does not come until some external crisis moves the populace dramatically to one side or the other. And while it may make the debate more civil, such a crisis has little else to recommend it.
So let’s learn to live with the corrosion. It may be a sign of health and happiness.
She’s a grobian schmuck. There are lots of them. Why should I be worried about this one?
vertex11 wrote: “…But God forbid a funny, attractive, conservative female!”
Well, as the Bard (Meatloaf) wrote: Well, two outta three ain’t bad and you can take your pick out of the list which one you think she is, and your choice’ll say a hellova lot more about you than it will her.
For all of the focus on Ann Coulter’s latest cry for attention, I’m surprised that this little gem from Paul Hackett went unnoticed:
Senor is the son of a Holocaust survivor. Paul Hackett of course is living proof that while we generally ascribe honor and virtue to the men and women who serve in our military, there are exceptions.