“You
should see Polythene Ann
She’s so
good looking
That she
looks like a man
You should
see the old hag
Dressed
in conservative drag
Yes, you
should see polythene Ann”
----parody of the
Beatles “Polythene Pam”
As noted
several times, I began these chronicles eight years ago in response in part to
the vilification, vituperation and vitriol of the ‘idiot’ wrong directed toward
liberals, progressives and others who have a greater understanding of sound
public policy. Foremost among the
merchants of hate and intolerance were the likes of Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck
and, of course, Ann Coulter.
Back in
the day, in my college years, I had a reputation for not suffering fools
gladly. A friend of mine, witnessing an
exchange I had with a young pro-war adherent of Bill Buckley’s “Young Americans
for Freedom” was moved to comment after the debate that he’d only seen two
people in his life that would verbally kick a person when he had the best of
the argument. “Bill Buckley and you, you
son-of-a-bitch!” he exclaimed. And this
observation came from a close friend of mine.
Mind you this was during the heat of disagreements over the war in which
everything was on the table; everything from one’s patriotism to one’s sexual
preferences were by one’s opponents considered fair game. Debate was seen, and indeed at times were, no-holds-barred,
take no prisoners, blood on the floor, gladiatorial events; sometimes even
among friends.
When it
came to vitriol, my friend Larry Hamp was moved to remark, “no one holds a
candle to you, you prick.” I responded
by reminding him that when you are dealing with swine you have to fix your heel
securely upon the back of their neck and never let them up. A lesson contemporary liberals and
progressives have been slow to learn.
“While
others say don’t hate nothing at all
Except hatred”
(1)
I have
mellowed over the years becoming, over time, more complacent and tolerant. But the shrill voices arising on the
political wrong, careless and ignorant of facts and spouting the kind of
intolerance and hatred that I had seen in the adversaries of my youth have
stretched the bounds of tolerance and re-awakened the visceral reactions all
too familiar to this old political gladiator. Inspired by an adage of another old friend
that “if you want to kill the rats, you’ve got to climb down into the sewer”,
and in reaction to the miserable discourse of the likes of Limbaugh, Beck and
Coulter, I decided to dust off the lethargy of the intervening decades, hone my
old skills, and re-enter the colosseum.
Accordingly,
calling Ann Coulter a “Banshee from hell”, I set about in an early post
dismantling the ‘vicious little vixen’ in a mere two paragraphs. Comparing her to a ‘Praying Mantis’, I
concluded by calling her a “feminine Johnny Appleseed walking the landscape
sewing kudzu wherever she goes; casting false pearls before real swine”. (2)
It was a
deliciously disparaging little piece coming as it did when she was the wet dream of
a host of young white conservative males. She was everywhere in those days, on
television talk shows, in op-ed newspaper columns, in books on the newsstand.
One couldn’t go anywhere without one’s sensibilities and intelligence being
continually assaulted by her endless harangues. Featured, in 2005, on the cover
of “Time”
under the heading “Ms. Right”. Heather
Digby Parton, writing for “Salon” characterized Coulter as one
of the “edgier breed
of right-wing provocateurs”. (3)
As
“The Sporting News”, in this new ‘age of shoddy’, would later make
a mockery of sport by granting Chicago White Sox designated hitter Adam Dunn it’s
“Comeback of the Year” award, and Major
League Baseball would follow suit the next summer by making a mockery of the
All-Star game by putting Dunn, hitting near the Mendoza Line, on the American
League team, So the mainstream media following the example of Time, moved to
recognize the new ‘age of shoddy’, by enshrining the “Queen of Hate” and
granting legitimacy to her faithless relationship to the truth.
“In 2000”, Parton writes, “she (Coulter) had won the Media
Research Center-presented “Conservative Journalist of the Year” award, and the
Clare Boothe Luce Policy Institute gave her its annual conservative leadership
award “for her unfailing dedication to truth, freedom and conservative values
and for being an exemplar, in word and deed, of what a true leader is.”
Parton
asks us to consider the meaning behind the titles of, and the statements in,
her most notorious screeds:
“High Crimes and Misdemeanors: The Case Against Bill
Clinton,” “Slander: Liberal Lies About the American Right,” “Treason: Liberal
Treachery from the Cold War to the War on Terrorism,” and a collection of her
columns, called “How to Talk to a Liberal (If You Must): The World According to
Ann Coulter” — all of which were very successful. The theme of these books is
obvious from the titles. She was famous for her cleverness in hating and
baiting liberals. And in those heady days of conservative apotheosis, with sex
scandals, stolen elections, terrorist attacks, unnecessary wars and liberalism
on the run as never before, Coulter was the most deliciously vicious of all the
haters. Among her famous quotes of the era were:
•The “backbone of
the Democratic Party” is a “typical fat, implacable welfare recipient.”
•“My libertarian
friends are probably getting a little upset now but I think that’s because they
never appreciate the benefits of local fascism.”
•“If you don’t hate
Clinton and the people who labored to keep him in office, you don’t love your
country.”
•“We should invade
their countries, kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity”
•“Congress could
pass a law tomorrow requiring that all aliens from Arabic countries leave… We
should require passports to fly domestically. Passports can be forged, but they
can also be checked with the home country in case of any suspicious-looking
swarthy males.”
And one of her most memorable (to me at least) was this
one:
“We need to execute people like John Walker [Lindh] in
order to physically intimidate liberals, by making them realize that they can
be killed, too. Otherwise, they will turn out to be outright traitors,”
Coulter later clarified what she meant;
“When I said we should ‘execute’ John Walker Lindh, I
mis-spoke. What I meant to say was ‘We should burn John Walker Lindh alive and
televise it on prime-time network TV’. My apologies for any misunderstanding
that might have occurred.”
If that reminds you of certain fundamentalists operating
today in the Middle East, you wouldn’t be alone.
“Slander” and “Treason” were filled with such vitriol. And
they were also cited by numerous critics for their many inaccuracies. Coulter,
like her talk radio funhouse mirror image, Rush Limbaugh, always slithered away
from any such controversies simply by claiming that she’s a comedian of sorts.
Here’s how that Time Magazine article illustrated her comedic talent:
"People say [continues Parton] that Jon Stewart has blurred
the line between news and humor, but his Daily Show airs on a comedy channel.
Coulter goes on actual news programs and deploys so much sarcasm and hyperbole
that she sounds more like comedian Dennis Miller on one of his rants than
Limbaugh. Consider an exchange on Fox News in June 2001 with Peter Fenn, a
Democratic strategist. At the time, Barbra Streisand had suggested that
Californians practice more conservation, to which Coulter responded:
COULTER: God gave us the earth.
FENN: Oh, O.K.
COULTER: We have dominion over the plants, the animals, the
seas.
FENN: Oh, this is a great idea.
COULTER: God said, ‘Earth is yours. Take it. Rape it. It’s
yours.’
Coulter and Fenn were both laughing. But her
rape-the-planet bit would later be wrenched from context and repeatedly quoted
as Coulter nuttiness. “What p_____ me off,” Coulter says, “is when they don’t
get the punch line.”(4)
What ‘Polythene
Ann’ doesn’t understand is that the cretins who are her audience do not understand
the nuances of irony and sarcasm. These
are people prone, like any good Lutheran, to take things at face value and
quite literally. Others chose to
interpret her bombast as some perverse form of humor:
“There was a lot of controversy over Coulter’s words in
that exchange, but the author of the Time puff piece, John Cloud, helpfully
explained that it was only because they didn’t understand the context. A lot of
people believed him after reading that article, people like MSNBC host Lawrence
O’Donnell who said in 2006:
'Do not make the mistake of taking Ann Coulter seriously.
She does fancy herself something of a comedian, a political comedian, and when
you press her on a lot of these things, you find out that what’s really
underneath it is the intent to make a joke. Now, it’s a joke that generally
works only with the extreme right wing of the Republican Party. But she doesn’t
mean a great deal of what she says.”' (5)
Mean it
or not she has grown wealthy by polluting the airwaves and reducing political
discourse by appealing to the base political instincts and the lowest
intellectual common denominator. The
result is that she has become an embarrassment to her own movement.
Like her
contemporaries Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck, news of her decline is spreading
as report circulate on the internet that she is no longer a welcome guest on
mainstream media. Citing Parton’s
article in “Salon” the liberal blog “Ring Of Fire” featured an essay
entitled “Right-Wing Corp Media has Dumped Coulter: It’s Killing Her Ego and
Wealth”.
“Now, they won’t give her the time of day. At a recent book
signing for her most recent piece of pseudo-journalistic tripe, ¡Adios
America!, she was heard whining, “They’re ignoring me, now!” According to Annie Lowery of The
Intelligencer, Coulter’s pathetic lamentation continued:
‘I haven’t been on CNN yet, because I was made up, my hair
was done, I was mic’ed up, I was walking to the set…He [Don Lemon] was doing a
full hour on the Doogans or whatever their name is…the next night, ‘We’re going
to do all Doogans again.’ And then the next week, it’s the cop who yelled at a
girl in a bikini! And then it’s Bruce Jenner!’
Actually, Ms. Coulter, it’s “Duggars,” not “Doogans.” The self-preoccupied Princess of Putrid and
Poisonous Prose couldn’t even get that right.” (6)
Indeed,
it has been reported she has even been refused an invitation to address that veritable
concave of conservative idiots, the annual C-Pac Convention. Ring of Fire Radio, commenting on her impending
demise had this to say: “It may also be due to the fact that the GOP finds
itself between a rock and a hard place over the immigration issue. On one hand,
the aging herd of ignorant white males is hanging on every word that comes out
of Donald Trump’s mouth about building walls and deporting “furriners” – an
issue that Coulter’s Tweets and other writings put on steroids. On the other
hand, Republicans know they cannot afford to alienate Hispanic voters (though
the damage is in all likelihood, done).” (7)
She has become such a disgrace and embarrassment to the conservative movement
that she is now left helplessly whining in the wilderness.
Her
pending departure, along with Limbaugh and others, is a sign of hope. Perhaps we can return to more civil discourse
by transforming the current ‘Rescumlican’ party back into the Republican Party
of our ancestors; back to a time when both parties venerated government, when
both parties sought common ground, when both parties could reach compromise and
work together, when both parties exhibited mutual respect.
_________
1. Dylan, Bob. “It’s Alright Ma (I’m Only Bleeding). “Lyrics
1962-85” Alfred A. Knopf, New York 1992.
Page 176
2. www.wandererandshadow.bogspot.com
September 30, 2007: I Stink
Therefore I Am, Polythene Ann, False Pearls Before Real Swine
4 Ibid.
5. Ibid.
7. Ibid
