Eric Alterman: Ann Coulter lowers public debate (again and again and again)
Here is it, 11 or so years, hundreds of network television appearances, millions of books sold, countless New York Observer suck-up interviews and one loving Time magazine cover later, after I first sat down next to her skinny ass on an MSNBC set - when she was then an anonymous aide to then-senator Spencer Abraham - and I am still writing about the ridiculous phenomenon of Ann Coulter.
I actually don't begrudge Coulter. The woman is a genius. She understands just how vapid, brainless and driven by right-wing bias and cliché is the American political discourse, and she exploits this opening for everything it's worth. Nothing about Coulter is necessary, of course; there is already plenty of hate being spewed and weak people being mocked, marginalized and dismissed as inferior to white Christian conservative Americans. But the fact that she manages to create these mini-tempests in proverbial teapots every time she releases a new book - most of which are not even really books - and the mainstream media continues to play its same Pavlovian role is usefully instructive of just how craven and conservative our culture has become.
I know it's Abe Rosenthalish/Daniel Patrick Moyinhanian to quote myself. But I've been making the same point about Coulter for more than half a decade. In 2002, I wrote in the Nation:
"It's degrading to have to write about Coulter again. As a pundit, she is about on a par with Charles Manson, better suited to a lifelong stay in the Connecticut Home for the Criminally Insane than for the host's seat on Crossfire. Her books are filled with lies, slander and phony footnotes that are themselves lies and slanders. Her very existence as a public figure is an insult to our collective intelligence ... . I should really be writing about the campaign by neocon chickenhawks to intimidate Howell Raines and the New York Times on Iraq. But fortunately, John Judis and Nick Confessore have taken responsibility for that, leaving me to the less ominous but more baffling phenomenon of the bestselling Barbie-doll terrorist-apologist, who continues to be celebrated by the very media she terms "retarded" and guilty of "mass murder" while calling for their mass extinction by the likes of her ideological comrade Timothy McVeigh."
I try to ignore her. But here we are again. This time she's calling for the conversion of the Jews. As with whether John Edwards really is "a faggot," or whether we should be killing Arab children (or New York Times journalists) en masse, it's too stupid a discussion in which even to engage for anyone with the slightest bit of self-respect. But it does play with her base, which is significant in and of itself. And personally, I'm looking forward to seeing how well she survives this one. After all, didn't anybody tell Annie we control the media?
This might just be the end. Boruch Hashem.
Read entire article at Guardian
I actually don't begrudge Coulter. The woman is a genius. She understands just how vapid, brainless and driven by right-wing bias and cliché is the American political discourse, and she exploits this opening for everything it's worth. Nothing about Coulter is necessary, of course; there is already plenty of hate being spewed and weak people being mocked, marginalized and dismissed as inferior to white Christian conservative Americans. But the fact that she manages to create these mini-tempests in proverbial teapots every time she releases a new book - most of which are not even really books - and the mainstream media continues to play its same Pavlovian role is usefully instructive of just how craven and conservative our culture has become.
I know it's Abe Rosenthalish/Daniel Patrick Moyinhanian to quote myself. But I've been making the same point about Coulter for more than half a decade. In 2002, I wrote in the Nation:
"It's degrading to have to write about Coulter again. As a pundit, she is about on a par with Charles Manson, better suited to a lifelong stay in the Connecticut Home for the Criminally Insane than for the host's seat on Crossfire. Her books are filled with lies, slander and phony footnotes that are themselves lies and slanders. Her very existence as a public figure is an insult to our collective intelligence ... . I should really be writing about the campaign by neocon chickenhawks to intimidate Howell Raines and the New York Times on Iraq. But fortunately, John Judis and Nick Confessore have taken responsibility for that, leaving me to the less ominous but more baffling phenomenon of the bestselling Barbie-doll terrorist-apologist, who continues to be celebrated by the very media she terms "retarded" and guilty of "mass murder" while calling for their mass extinction by the likes of her ideological comrade Timothy McVeigh."
I try to ignore her. But here we are again. This time she's calling for the conversion of the Jews. As with whether John Edwards really is "a faggot," or whether we should be killing Arab children (or New York Times journalists) en masse, it's too stupid a discussion in which even to engage for anyone with the slightest bit of self-respect. But it does play with her base, which is significant in and of itself. And personally, I'm looking forward to seeing how well she survives this one. After all, didn't anybody tell Annie we control the media?
This might just be the end. Boruch Hashem.