Little Annie Coulter, Bearer Of Light And Reason
Ann Coulter has been engaged (by her own count, in 2005) at least three times over the past twenty or so years (not counting the stalking by the sort of obsessives who like an 'Ilse, She-Wolf Of The SS' type of woman. In each case, the Manchild she bonded with was able to recognize that, after mating, Coulter would paralyze them and lay her eggs in their still-living flesh. They left; so sad, but predictable.
She's been a buzzing, insectile noise on the American cultural scene for almost twenty years. Her shtick is predictable, too: Show up, wherever they'll have her; then, say something so offensive that even her hosts are taken aback; and thereby guaranteeing some buzzing and chittering in the media about that terrible person Ann Coulter... until the next time she does it. It's a merry-go-round of insult and excess that has made her a good deal of money.
Billy And Annie: Kamaraden Of The Rethug Reichskanzeleri
She frequently makes incendiary, insulting references about - well, anyone she wants to: Muslims, Liberals (whom she seriously believes should be tried for treason and executed (“Whenever the nation is under attack, from within or without, liberals side with the enemy... liberals are always against America," she wrote), Gays; Blacks; and anyone else who strikes her fancy at the moment. She suggested that suicide bombers should detonate a truckload of explosives outside the New York Times offices.
In a string of books (most of them making best-seller lists only due to a standard tactic: Bulk purchases, by Right-wing organizations, who then have to sell them to secondhand bookstores as remaindered) and a continuing column -- like Lard Boy and Little Mikey Weiner do on radio -- Coulter vomits out an unending tirade of hatred and insult.
Apparently, she enjoys it. When confronted about what she's said, or written, Coulter claims that she was only being 'funny', that she is really the victim -- of not being "politically correct" -- and simply misunderstood.
However, she hasn't been too successful with her shtick lately. Unless the Lumpen Right do actually take over, her fifteen minutes may be up, because the country appears to have little time to notice Annie's antics, as they're more concerned about keeping their jobs, feeding their children, not having to live out of their cars; you know -- what's now the usual for most of us.
And even if the Teabaggers eventually do run the country
A Proud, Rising Teabagger America Is Conway Twitty's America
Even so, last night at HomoCon, the convention for the gay conservatives, Coulter was one of the featured speakers (And, addressing a roomfull of "them" didn't sit well with other Rethugs). True to form, she stood up and told them (as reported by Megan Carpentier of TPM Media), ' "Marriage is not a civil right. You're not black." It was part of a larger argument on which she later elaborated, telling the crowd that the 14th Amendment only applies to African-Americans and that it does not, in fact, apply to women, LGBT people or other minorities."
(A curious note: One of Coulter's ex-fiancees, conservative
Coulter also suggested that the conservative gay community should drop support of any equality-of-marriage issue, and join forces with those who oppose abortion, because "As soon as they find the gay gene, you know who's getting aborted."
(Coulter neglected to mention that it is conservative evangelical christians, and conservative Catholics, who are the primary opponents of abortion -- and who believe homosexuality is a sin [the Old Testament indicates is punishable by death] and that the lesbians and gays who were listening to Coulter are damned, living a lifestyle "against god and natural law", predators of children; and worse. I'm sure they'll jump at the opportunity to join forces with America's Taliban.)
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And The Absolute Surety Of Belief Lead To, Every Time
...in addition to her comments about civil rights [Carpentier reported], she also accused single parents of breeding muggers and blamed the decline in marriage in the African-American community on welfare, "the subsidization of single parenting" and overly liberal child support laws. Coulter's comments about civil rights being "only for the blacks" rubbed many people the wrong way as well.
However, Coulter made an ironic joke about oppression, and the amount of money in the gay community -- compared to other minority communities. "Blacks must be looking at the gays saying, 'Why can't we be oppressed like that?'" Coulter quipped, and the comment "garnered plenty of laughs from the well-heeled crowd."
Why Couldn't They Be 'Oppressed Like That'? Possibly
For Reasons Annie Can't Fathom In Her Own Experience
Yeah... I bet people living in Bedford-Sty, the South Bronx; Detroit; Cleveland; Baltimore; Central L.A. and the Oakland Flats, would all get a chuckle, too, out of a humorous comparison between the experience of a bunch of predominantly white and rich people, with their experience of being Black in America.
To be discriminated against and made to feel shameful, because of who you are, hurts -- but African-Americans aren't in a Closet about who they are. It's not possible. And most of the people in the HomoCon crowd could have no concept of what discrimination because of the color of your skin feels like... which made Coulter's joke a bitter, self-serving, throwaway line.
In the comments section following Carpentier's TPM article, someone else noted (changes only made for proper usage and punctuationt) that they weren't sure they could expect any other sort of performance from Annie,
... but Ms. Coulter is no fool and she clerked for a Supreme Court Justice no less; she knows very well that the 14th Amendment applies not just to black Americans but to a whole host of other classes, including classifications of gender and alienage. It is true that the Supreme Court has not yet recognized homosexuals as a protected class for 14th Amendment purposes, but it is obscenely disingenuous for Ms. Coulter to assert the 14th amendment only protects black Americans. Equal protection means equal protection - the language of the Amendment itself has no qualifiers.
So -- Little Annie will have spent all this time being someone who is publicly (and, according to some who've commented to the media, privately) angry, insulting; done everything to live up to the persona of outrageousness she's created. She'll continue the same pattern: Making execrable comments, grabbing media attention in Left and Right Bolgistan, again, for a while; then, yet another book contract, followed by a speaking tour; and after a time, that will lead to yet more execrable comments...
That will go on for a few more years (she's still a fairly fit, if anorexic, fifty). I don't think she can compete with the Sarah Palins -- Coulter's not an evangelical; she's not working-class. She's not a Populist Wingnut -- she's worked to be one of the pampered, wingnut Elite, and I don't believe that's who is lining up to 'lead' the Teabaggers. Glenn Beck comes off as a The Really Smart Guy Next Door Who Hearts Jesus, and cries, and gets big ratings Market Share -- and that's what those manipulating the Rising New Right want.
Annie comes off as Too Smart -- the cool blonde in High School who would never even look at a full-of-the-lord (or something) Regular Guy. Annie doesn't have Regular Girl-next-door, Xtian-pinup appeal like Little Sarah... and she knows it. Coulter will always have some niche on the Right -- but the new mainstream being courted is vibrantly, decisively evangelical, fundamentalist, and intolerant in a way only True Believers can be.
As her influence in the Rightist community fades, Coulter will no longer be what she labored to become -- a "marketable commodity". She will age. Without the adrenaline high of notoriety, the constant reaffirmation that she is someone, what will she fall back on? Most people confuse their true selves with some adopted persona; people who have "made it" have agents, publicists, secretaries -- a whole structure to support the false notions celebrities create about themselves.
As a result, Coulter may not be able to relate to others outside that created self, or to establish relationships of any real intimacy -- and so gets to spend her declining years as a sad, older parody of someone who used to be famous for a while.
If I were Annie, and knew that "Obscenely Disingenuous" could be my epitaph, I'd work overtime to make sure that never came true.
But I'm only a Dog -- and, oddly, I seem to know better than Annie.
UPDATE (10/9/10): Well, it's nice to be agreed with, even in part.
She calls herself "the right-wing Judy Garland", now.
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