THE ANN COULTER TRAIN WRECK
This week while I was waiting for my muscle conductivity pain test to start (don't ask - let's just say it involved needles, electrodes and me yelling "stop!! AAARRRRRGGGG!!!") I picked up the paper and read Ann Coulter.
Oh there's plenty of female train wrecks in the news. Brittney Spears and Lindsey Lohan. There's the Deborah "How many politicos paid my escort service for sex countdown" Paltrey. There's Victoria Beckham, who'd look a lot sexier if she wore an outfit that actually had a bottom-half. Rosie O'Donnell can't seem to keep her mouth shut long enough for the oxygen to return to the planet. Hillary gave Obama a smack-down at the debates. The list goes on and on.
Why are people still listening to Coulter? She looks like Skeletor with big boobs. She's nasty and foul-mouthed. She's a hypocrite and a shill for the neo-cons. When her ex-boyfriend, Bob Guccione, Jr. told the world the kind of um... sex... she likes, you'd think she'd have just been lady enough to stop making herself a target. And she's an embarrassment to me as a woman and a human being. I guess guys find her sexy? (Might be the only way to shut her up, come to think of it)
I did a little reading up on Ann and came across this from Bill Scher. Sounds sane and doable to me.
Please, my friends on the right - she's making you all look bad. People will associate you with HER!! Agree or not, your opinions are important to the American discourse. Please get away from this dog and brush off her fleas!
Does Ann know Larry's a Jew?
How We Can Retire Ann Coulter
By Bill Scher
How to deal with a noxious but prominent commentator like Ann Coulter? Confront her bigoted remarks and outright falsehoods? Or ignore her in hopes of dimming her spotlight?
It would seem to be a lose-lose proposition.
Getting a rise out of her political opponents is her job, so challenging her on the merits only helps her sell books, which keeps her on TV.
But unless you buy out Rupert Murdoch and control your own media empire, dimming her spotlight is seemingly impossible, no matter how tightly you shut your eyes and close your ears.
Bob Borosage notes that TV producers, desperate for ratings, have no shame in booking the vapid Coulter. And I'm not holding my breath waiting for shame to arise.
Coulter's train wreck qualities practically guarantee a ratings bump for all audience-starved newstainment shows -- both from hard-core fans and disgusted opponents.
So can anything stop her from filling the national discourse with more hate and lies?
Yes. If she loses her fans.
That's not as crazy as it sounds.
After she called Muslims "ragheads" at the 2006 Conservative Political Action Conference, and John Edwards a "faggot" at the following year's conference, some conservative bloggers expressed their disapproval. An open letter posted on several conservative blogs last March said:
Coulter's invective is a sign of weak thinking and unprincipled politicking.
CPAC sponsors, the Age of Ann has passed. We, the undersigned, request that CPAC speaking invitations no longer be extended to Ann Coulter. Her words and attitude simply do too much damage.
Sage advice.
Coulter is arguably as much of a personification of the failure of conservatism as George W. Bush.
While Bush epitomizes the substantive failure of conservative policies, Coulter represents the failure to speak to the daily concerns of most Americans.
Her protestations that no one listens to her ideas mask her clear preference for insults over ideas -- the more hateful and sophomoric, the more she can claim persecution by political correctness.
As a liberal, am I afraid of Coulter? No. Read the last five years of my writings, she barely comes up.
There are hundreds of conservatives that work harder, influence more news, and generate far more unchallenged misinformation for me to worry about.
But she's a distraction who impedes a serious engagement over ideas.
Conservatism is headed towards its nadir, and conservatives can deal with that reality in two ways.
They can choose to enable Coulter, lash out at the world and wallow in a persecution complex.
Or they can choose to let her rants languish on the shelves.
When her sales drop, so will her bookings. With her off the stage and ceasing to be a distraction, conservatives will better able to engage in a factual debate over the direction of our country.
It's up to conservatives to decide if that's what they really want.
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