Thursday, June 28, 2007

She Sells Sanctuary

It's impossible to get too worked up anymore over Ann Coulter's toxic buffoonery du jour, without duly acknowledging the context whence it originates.

Elizabeth Edwards pleaded Tuesday with Ann Coulter to "stop the personal attacks," a day after the conservative commentator said she wished Edwards' husband, Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards, had been killed by terrorists.


Well, of course she did -- and by "she", I could mean either Coulter or Elizabeth Edwards. Each ably fulfilled their assigned role in this kabuki; Coulter peddling her usual inane rubber-glue blather for the morons who still take her seriously, Mrs. Edwards rightfully articulating the position of the aggrieved wife/mother. There were no real surprises to be had, aside from waiting to see just how much lower Coulter can set her bar for sheer personal indecency. I halfway expected some cancer humor.

What might have been a little more useful would be for the Edwardses to ask Tweety what his fucking problem is, why he persists in having this nasty shrew on his stupid-ass show. There's nothing wrong with wanting some "spice" or "zazz" or entertainment value when discussing ordinarily staid, serious issues. But there is a line between "entertainment value" and being a flat-out pimp or huckster. Tweety decided to have Coulter on for the full hour, why? Because her plagiarized sack o' crap is now out in two-ply paperback. Good reason, right?

If we had something approaching a functioning collective consciousness in this nation's political discourse, it wouldn't even merit pointing out that that alone belies the idiotic myth of the "liberal hate America media" that somehow persists. Even though it's mostly in the tiny minds of the literal morons that Coulter speaks for, the myth never seems to get the final, swift, permanent retribution it has deserved for so long. Tweety lamely tries to say that Coulter is a guest because she moves books (even if it is at bargain-basement prices). Well, Noam Chomsky writes a lot of books too. Unlike Coulter, he even writes them himself, and he attributes his sources. I doubt if Tweety will ever have Chomsky on as a guest, much less for a full hour at a college campus, which is precisely where Chomsky moves most of his inventory. So what are we missing here?

Over the years, Coulter has made herself into the one-word locus of rage and invective from sensible people. She persists in the game because she has no boundaries, and is unafraid to scrap. There is no way Coulter would ever call on to a talk show to berate a guest she disagreed with, without also dragging the host into it. That is the way this game is played; in for a penny, in for a pound.

I understand and respect the Edwardses' effort to maintain some sort of dignity in the face of endless cheap shots from "people" such as Coulter. But that's a sucker's game; they might as well ask the sidewalk loon with the "End of the World" sandwich board to take a bath and find something useful to do. Shame does not work on the shameless; sense has no meaning to the senseless.

The only way there's even the hope of gaining traction in that direction is to clearly discuss how their barmy schtick devalues the shows that traffic in it, and embarrasses the dipshits who actually pay money and spend time to wallow in it. You paid money for what; you stood in the audience for what? No, I don't respect an "honest" difference of opinion, not when you're giving money and attention to someone who lives and breathes total intellectual dishonesty. I just want to know what the fuck is wrong with the people who buy and read the books uncritically, and the media weasels who keep lavishing valuable speaking time on inveterate liars and cranks.

Let's quit yanking our chains, o people of dignity. Forget challenging Coulter on her ruination of even marginally coherent discourse; how about calling her enablers in the media and her retard fans on their bullshit? Either bring in some real smackdown on Coulter, or consider yourself the wiser for not feeding her the troll chow she thrives on. Because she speaks for the remaining dead-enders, the empirically challenged, people who would be doing their country a huge fucking favor by seeing a psychiatrist instead of using the ballot box as therapy for their fever dreams of the liberal Dolchstosslegende. These are just fucking dumb, spiteful people. Her mission is to legitimize and energize them, give them rhetorical cover. The mission of the responsible media should be to strip that cover away.

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