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This website is being renovated throughout 2008. Pages and the content of pages will continue to change until the end of the year and there may be some inconsistencies and missing links. Please do not quote from or link to specific pages (apart from the home page) without contacting the webmaster first. Ann Coulter doesn't bother me ... ... but her audience does By © Martin Foreman Word Count: 800 words Publication date: September 24, 2006 I don’t have much contact with Ann Coulter. We’ve never met, I haven’t read any of her books and I usually turn the television off whenever she appears. When I first came across her, I was curious, of course. A vivacious, attractive woman in figure-hugging costumes talking politics made a change from the ponderous statements emerging from La Condi or Senator Hillary. And it was certainly an improvement on pugnacious O’Reilly and Dittomeister von Limbaugh. My fascination didn’t last long. The absurdity and offensiveness of Coulter’s statements soon had me hitting the remote. I even revised my opinion on Bill Reilly, whose irascibility seemed benign in comparison with Coulterian vitriol. But I like to keep informed and from time to time I force myself to dip into her website. This week’s (Sept 20) blog is relatively moderate, arguing that John McCain’s defense of the Geneva Convention doesn’t protect Americans. There are the usual personal insults, although less vicious than usual, and digressions into the irrelevant, but she does make a serious point. Pointing out that Al-Qaeda and others don’t respect the Geneva conventions, she argues that “The belief that we can impress the enemy with our magnanimity is an idea that just won't die.” Maybe the fact that the idea just won’t die - like the idea that the earth revolves around the sun or that abortion is not baby murder - is an indication that there is some truth in it. And maybe the fact that the US military - the men and women who actually defend America - recognizes that abusive practices are counter-productive* - is another indication that Coulter’s machoism-in-the-wrong-place-and-wrong-time weakens rather than strengthens the country. I could get used to this quieter, gentler Coulter - one that reacts like an angry but aging Rottweiller rather than an angry Rottweiller maddened by rabies - but I suspect that this version is an aberration. By all accounts the old Coulter reasserts herself in her latest book, Godless, where she uses an extended metaphor - the Church of Liberalism - to damn the usual rightwing demons of atheism, legalized abortion, evolution, public schools and so on. Predictably, many on the political right praise the tome. Others - who will inevitably be termed liberals irrespective of their real political inclinations - dismiss it as yet another collection of poorly argued prejudices, so misrepresentative of the facts that it qualifies as fiction or libel. (For opposing views, see the National Review Book Service and Matthew Provonsha’s Skeptics Society review.) None of this particularly bothers me. Now that I have become familiar with her, my immediate, emotional response of anger has given way to a more considered response. I suspect that while she actually believes what she writes and says, she is not actually driven by a need to save America from the threats from without and within. People whose primary motives are altruistic - driven by outside needs - tend to seek out new information and change their attitudes and opinions accordingly. People who are primarily driven by internal needs tend to seek out information that corroborates their pre-existing beliefs. This has nothing to do with political perspective - both liberals and conservatives can be open or rigid in their thinking. Most of us are influenced by both external and internal factors although in different ratios. George W, for example, is mostly driven by internal certainties, but occasionally the outside world impinges on his consciousness and he changes his thinking accordingly. Coulter has a valid political perspective but it is severely weakened by her use of false “facts” and weak or illogical arguments. If she really does want to convert others to her cause, why does she not choose to strengthen her argument with a reality check? Because she is driven less by love of country or respect for right-wing values than the need to make a strong impression on those around her. The seeking of fame and notoriety, the need to shock and insult others, and the need to create both fans and enemies, all suggest a fundamentally insecure individual with little sense of self-worth. And for that we should not revile but pity her. Coulter has nothing to offer but bigotry. In a rational world, she would be dismissed as only another loudmouth whose capacity for talk far outweighs their capacity for thought. What is disturbing is not Coulter nor what she says, but that others - publishers, radio hosts, television stations - so willingly promote it and that so many buy into it. America has become a country where ignorance and bigotry are prized, where people bully each other rather than learn from them. By seeking confrontation rather than compromise and by replacing inquiry with prejudice, Ann Coulter and her fans do not serve America, they destroy it.
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