In the pre-post-ops about “how conservatives should change their game plan if we lose”, we’ll hear a lot about how “Rush Limbaugh” and “Ann Coulter” cost us the election, even though I haven’t seen Coulter’s face on TV for about a year and Rush has more daily listeners than the Big 3 networks combined have evening news viewers — and most people who criticize them have never heard or read a word they said.
I’m a little dismayed at Hog On Ice of all people getting kinda sucky on us here, but he’s become a Christian, and more and more, to be perfectly honest with you, I’m beginning to think Nietschze was onto something after all…
Ann Coulter raises millions (no exaggeration) for Democrat candidates, and she has probably never converted a single person to conservatism. Tell me I’m wrong. Have you ever seen a Democrat scratch his head and say, “Wow, maybe Ann Coulter has a point”?
It’s fun to vent, and liberalism is inherently silly and self-contradictory, but in the end, we are all Americans, and most of us want what’s best for everyone. We should stay focused our ultimate goals–peace and prosperity and unity–instead of settling for the short-end thrill of calling another person an assclown.
There’s a lot wrong with that (“unity”?! The hell?) But I stuck with Coulter:
a) Can you actually prove that about Coulter (or is that just, well, Coulter style hyperbole on your part?)
b) so what?
It isn’t every polemicist’s role to convert. Others exist primarily to sustain, that is, the morale of the converted.
Did the King read Thomas Paine and go, ‘Wow, he’s right! I’m an ass!’?
No. But when Washington read Paine’s pamphlets to his troops they went out and won.
Basically? What Andrea said.
Except for Coulter not being funny. True, sometimes she isn’t. Who consistently is? But I’ve always felt the “anyway she isn’t even FUNNY!” charges to be lame and point-missing.
Go beyond her jokes, lame or otherwise. Have you ever read a columnist who works her Lexis-Nexis subscription like that? The way she goes back and finds what the polls were saying this time last election, and the one before that, back to 1980?
Liberals pouting she’s not funny are just trying to distract you from her real weapon, her devastating research skills. Conservatives shouldn’t fall for that liberal close up magic trick just to be (ugh!) agreeable.
No one is a liberal because once upon a time they were one over by some fair, balanced, politely phrased arguments anyway.
They’re liberal because they didn’t like the way that poor Sidney Poitier got treated in that movie they saw 30 years ago.
You think I’m kidding.
PS: PJ O’Rourke is just as bitchy and ‘mean spirited’ as Coulter. He’s said the worse thing about Kent State was that not enough students were killed; that ‘come on, America was FOUNDED by right wing Christians with guns’ etc.
Were you to put PJ O’Rourke’s name on the next Ann Coulter column you and your friends would hail it as genius. Yes Virginia, there is (I’ll try to think of a better word) sexism on the right wing, too.
UPDATE: A reader writes —
Hog on Ice is a dope.
I was a Democrat. I voted for Kerry. Then I read Ann Coulter’s “Godless” and when I wasn’t laughing at lines like “The only sort of authority Cindy Sheehan has is the uncanny ability to demonstrate, by example, what body types should avoid wearing shorts in public” (p.128) I was feeling betrayed by my liberal upbringing and education. She planted the seeds to my conversion to conservatism. Mark Steyn’s “America Alone” brought it to full bloom. And you, Kathy, are my daily watering.
