Is Ann Coulter Off?
Today is Monday, 5 March 2007.
Ann Coulter has always been off, in the sense of rotting food.
Her comment at last weekend’s Conservative Political Action Conference, however, may indicate she’s also off her game.
She once was known for reliably over-the-top vile and stupid statements.
“I think the government should be spying on all Arabs, engaging in torture as a televised spectator sport, dropping daisy cutters wantonly throughout the Middle East and sending liberals to Guantanamo.”
Or: “Not all Muslims may be terrorists, but all terrorists are Muslims.”
Or, arguably her “masterpiece”, regarding 9/11 widows: “I’ve never seen people enjoying their husbands’ deaths so much.”
So her CPAC comment was very lame: “I was going to have a few comments on the other Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards, but it turns out you have to go into rehab if you use the word ‘faggot,’ so I — so kind of an impasse, can’t really talk about Edwards.”
Nothing even vaguely clever or creative there: just a schoolyard bully imagining they’re hilarious geniuses by throwing around common vile slurs.
But the CPAC audience nevertheless rose to the occasion, with extensive laughter and cheering.
I’m not sure there’s an actual technical term for what Coulter does. She’s of the ilk of Rush Limbaugh and Bill O’Reilly, mixing neo-fascist rhetoric with barnyard bigotry into a vile stew of “entertainment”.
(They remind me of the Nazi Julius Streicher, who published the newspaper Der Stuermer. It combined fascism, anti-Semitism, and pornography. He was hanged at Nuremberg.)
But Coulter needs to remember the first rule of marketing such tripe: each comment must be more “creative”, outrageous, and incendiary than the last. Of course, at some point, one ends up off the scale, and finds one’s audiences (and revenues, the primary consideration) radically diminishing.
Such was the case with Robert Welch, founder and owner of The John Birch Society. He began by “discovering” a network of Commie anti-white supremacists in the U.S. Air Force, and escalated to naming Dwight Eisenhower (!) a “conscious agent of the Communist conspiracy”. Welch and the JBS then found themselves consigned to the outer regions.
On second thought, Ann, I hope you get your mojo back, and accelerate toward the cliff. The sooner we’ve seen the last of you, the better.
Ann Coulter has always been off, in the sense of rotting food.
Her comment at last weekend’s Conservative Political Action Conference, however, may indicate she’s also off her game.
She once was known for reliably over-the-top vile and stupid statements.
“I think the government should be spying on all Arabs, engaging in torture as a televised spectator sport, dropping daisy cutters wantonly throughout the Middle East and sending liberals to Guantanamo.”
Or: “Not all Muslims may be terrorists, but all terrorists are Muslims.”
Or, arguably her “masterpiece”, regarding 9/11 widows: “I’ve never seen people enjoying their husbands’ deaths so much.”
So her CPAC comment was very lame: “I was going to have a few comments on the other Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards, but it turns out you have to go into rehab if you use the word ‘faggot,’ so I — so kind of an impasse, can’t really talk about Edwards.”
Nothing even vaguely clever or creative there: just a schoolyard bully imagining they’re hilarious geniuses by throwing around common vile slurs.
But the CPAC audience nevertheless rose to the occasion, with extensive laughter and cheering.
I’m not sure there’s an actual technical term for what Coulter does. She’s of the ilk of Rush Limbaugh and Bill O’Reilly, mixing neo-fascist rhetoric with barnyard bigotry into a vile stew of “entertainment”.
(They remind me of the Nazi Julius Streicher, who published the newspaper Der Stuermer. It combined fascism, anti-Semitism, and pornography. He was hanged at Nuremberg.)
But Coulter needs to remember the first rule of marketing such tripe: each comment must be more “creative”, outrageous, and incendiary than the last. Of course, at some point, one ends up off the scale, and finds one’s audiences (and revenues, the primary consideration) radically diminishing.
Such was the case with Robert Welch, founder and owner of The John Birch Society. He began by “discovering” a network of Commie anti-white supremacists in the U.S. Air Force, and escalated to naming Dwight Eisenhower (!) a “conscious agent of the Communist conspiracy”. Welch and the JBS then found themselves consigned to the outer regions.
On second thought, Ann, I hope you get your mojo back, and accelerate toward the cliff. The sooner we’ve seen the last of you, the better.
Labels: Ann Coulter
posted by HH at 8:21 AM
2 Comments:
This is not to defend Ann Coulter. However . . .
You state, and I agree, that her version of political commentary is of the "entertainment" version (much as some people view Nancy Grace's style). Thus, Ann is in the the same industry as comedians - "entertainment." Not every joke is a homerun. That one "lame" comment/joke/whatever was a clunker for her.
I would guess you need not worry, HH. I am sure she has not lost her touch.
Hello -
Would you please contact me regarding John Enis? I just heard.
Thank you,
Brian Petty
petty@surgery.wisc.edu
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