Counter-Coulter
7 November 2008 | 10:30 PM
It’s no secret that conservative commentator, Adam’s apple sporter and total waste of a C-cup Ann Coulter is a red hot bucket full of crazy. I used to anxiously and angrily pore over her wack-a-do columns or vitriolic visits to Fox News, feeling my blood pressure rise and that vein popping out on my forehead until eventually I’d storm off in disgust, unsure whether to write an angry screed in answer to her or merely revel in visions of her cast as Prometheus for eternity. But I’ve mellowed a lot since those days, and I’ve come to realize that in the end she’s just a bitter, Cornell-educated harpy who will say or write anything to sell her books. Maybe she believes what she’s saying, or maybe she’s just a cynical pseudo-intellectual capitalizing bottom-of-the-barrel nationalist sympathies: either way, she’s an irrelevant crank. The fact is, the Republican party has done so much over the last eight-to-twelve years to repudiate (and eradicate) intellectualism that Coulter is all they’re left with, lobbing grenades and cackling at all of attention it brings her.
Anyway, even though I’ve managed to largely avoid her for the past couple of years, I explicitly sought out her first post-election column, along with the perspectives of other nutty right-wingers, just to get a flavor for how they were handling the Obama win. She’d been surprisingly quiet (for Coulter, at least) in the months and weeks leading up to the election, so I wasn’t exactly sure what I’d find: would she be silent and chastened, or would she be strident and impassioned? As it turns out, she’s neither: she’s just bat-shit fucking crazy. It’s not so much a column as it is a collection of hastily-composed insults, the journalistic equivalent of a “your mama” jokes, only without any of the cleverness. I’m sure she envisions it to be a call-to-arms for conservatives, a rallying cry to stick to their guns (literally) and shove America back to the right through a sheer force of their collective will. Instead, she just sounds like an insolent, attention-starved kid, stomping her feet and clucking her tongue loudly and hoping we’ll notice.
Sure, on one level, the shit she says is scary, if you take it seriously enough. I mean, look at what she had to say about our erstwhile former Miss Alaska runner up and vice presidential hopeful:
Indeed, the only good thing about McCain is that he gave us a genuine conservative, Sarah Palin. He’s like one of those insects that lives just long enough to reproduce so that the species can survive. That’s why a lot of us are referring to Sarah as “The One” these days.
“The one”, Ann? Really? The person who doesn’t know that Africa is a continent, not a country? Oh, I forgot, Africa doesn’t matter to you. OK, my bad. So, Annie, what do you think the Grand Old Party should do to regroup?
How many times do we have to run this experiment before Republican primary voters learn that “moderate,” “independent,” “maverick” Republicans never win, and right-wing Republicans never lose?
See, on the surface of it, shit like that is almost enough to make your blood boil. However, when you think about it, the truth is she’s beyond irrelevant: she’s a museum piece, a vaguely-trans-gendered dinosaur who just happens to be into both the Grateful Dead and Mein Kampf in the original German. The country’s not buying the shinola she’s selling, this “real America” and every-black-person-is-a-terrorist bullshit. She’s an anachronism, just like Sean Hannity and Bill O’Reilly and all of the other blowhard cranks on the right. Their time has come and gone.
America’s great because complete fucking lunatics like Ann Coulter can write books, get on the television and say whatever they want to. Knock yourself out, Ann. No, seriously: I’d like you to punch yourself in the face. Zing! Or, um, maybe you should just pay Henry Rollins a visit?
Posted by Andy in Politcally Incoherent