More on the Ann Coulter Video
Posted on August 9th, 2006 in Uncategorized | 11 Comments »
After listening to the below video again, I noticed a couple of things that I didn’t focus on the first time around.
First, in making her absurd case that Bill Clinton is secretly gay, Coulter describes Clinton as having “a whiff of the bath-house about him.”
Which is, of course, the defining characteristic of male homosexuality…if you’re a bigot.
Note also Coulter’s retort to the young, dark-haired, olive-complexioned woman who asks her how she can call herself a good Christian and use the word “fag.”
(A reasonable question.)
Coulter shoots back, “And you’re a good Christian, I suppose.”
What does that mean, exactly? Is Coulter saying that anyone who questions her is automatically “godless,” to use her word? Or suggesting, in a derogatory way, that the woman is Jewish or Muslim?
Why doesn’t Chris Matthews just have David Duke on his show and be honest about it?
11 Responses
8/9/2024 10:36 am
Because, Coulterian fag-logic notwithstanding, Mathews doesn’t want to bang David Duke, as he clearly does Missy Ann.
8/9/2024 10:37 am
Richard, you say you’ve spent time with this woman socially, and find her charming in person; but doesn’t the wide gap between public and private persona itself turn your stomach?
8/9/2024 10:41 am
Yes. Increasingly, it does. I used to find Ann merely outrageous, now she just strikes me as vulgar and hateful. And no matter what she’s like in private, the public personna outweighs that.
8/9/2024 11:06 am
Why did you hire her? In not being part of the solution do you think you were part of the problem?
8/9/2024 11:13 am
I hired her because we were a non-partisan magazine, and, though we tended to get more Democratic readers because of the editor-in-chief, we took seriously the job of reaching out to conservatives. And at the time—this was back in 1998—Ann was vehement, but not nearly as over-the-top as she has become.
8/9/2024 11:23 am
Isn’t it a caricature of conservatism to suppose that ‘vehemence’ makes something an effective mode of outreach to conservatives? (And if you’re a nonpartisan magazine why is it called ‘out’reach instead of just ‘reach’? Or, ‘quality’?)
Now, of course, conservatism IS that caricature, having embraced the self-understanding media decision-makers placed on it.
I seem to recall moreover that there was little but poison being spewed by media-spotlighted conservatism around that time — something about a White House intern and “high crimes and misdemeanors”?
In not being part of the solution do you think you were part of the problem?
Truly curious,
Standing Eagle
8/9/2024 11:44 am
This is much ado about not much. Forgive me, but George magazine was all about the shimmer and glimmer — i.e., the style, not just the content, of politics. Ann Coulter fit nicely into that. And honestly, not having printed her would not have made George a part of the solution, because I don’t think that was the magazine’s intent anyway.
8/9/2024 12:05 pm
She has indeed dropped all substance in favor of poison, and I won’t defend her. But I have to say that it’s the 90s’ high-water mark of political correctness-the most divisive trend in modern American politics, largely authored by reactionary liberal democrats-that sowed the seeds of said conservative vehemence.
8/9/2024 12:54 pm
Oh, spare me, both of you anonymouses. It’s hard to tell which claim is more insidious — that certain aspects of culture are exempt from ethical and civic considerations, or that instances of extremism anywhere justify discursive insanity everywhere else. What crap. (And by the way, these are moral arguments I’m propounding, not legal ones. Deploring is not censorship, and neither is it an attack on Richard to ask him the honest question about his compunction in having hoisted Coulter to prominence.)
To the first anonymous, I would add very forcefully that in focusing on the ‘glimmer and shimmer,’ or whatever, _George_ is not alone. All of our political culture is now exercised in spaces that would define themselves the same way. No one wants to be McNeil-Lehrer — everyone wants to be Don Imus.
You ask the producers of the Chris Matthews show whether bringing on Ann Coulter represents them doing their job. They’ll say Sure, they’ll hide behind content-neutrality, and they’ll say the show is about the personality of politics. Just like you say _George_ was about style rather than substance.
The difference of course is that it used to be plausible for the editors of _George_ to claim that the role of serious civic discourse was occupied by other players. That was quickly ceasing to be true, though, thanks to Ken Starr, Lucianne Goldberg, and the deep venality of Al Gore’s boss. And to the infusion of glimmer-hunger into every area of the media, and, chicken-and-egg style, its audience.
On another note, can anyone explain to me why Bill Kristol is working at Harvard? The things he says are a disgrace and I don’t see what his qualifications might be. What a story that would be, Richard!
Standing Eagle
PS. There are so many lies in the phrase “largely authored by reactionary liberal Democrats” that it makes me physically ill. Almost every word could be replaced by its opposite without changing the truth content. (Do you even know what ‘reactionary’ means?) Most significant of course is claiming that mainstream political figures were involved in fringe academic endeavors at altering language.
8/9/2024 2:04 pm
I finally watched the whole thing. This woman is evil. Her dismissive epithet of the olive haired young questioner — “little miss smarty-pants” — shows just who’s adhering to the tenets of political correctness and who isn’t. Conservative pundits from Bill “Loufah” O’Reilly to Rush “Oxycodone” Limbaugh to Ann “I’m prettier and smarter than you so F off” Coulter employ the oldest form of political correctness in the book: if you disagree with me you’re a [commie/fag/wimp/etc]. This stuff has nothing to do with legitimate discourse and everything to do with marketing. If we stop “buying” them, will they stop talking? One can only hope.
8/9/2024 2:35 pm
To Standing Eagle:
I assume Kristol was brought in by a combination of his old teacher, Harvey “Manly” Mansfield and Larry Summers, who likes that type of “public intellectual”. Why anyone would be listening to rather than locking up any of these failed neocons is a puzzle to me. And the notion that we should expose students to their ignorance is pretty disturbing.