The politically correct speech Nazis are on the March against Ann Coulter, again. Oh, hey, did I mention that these particular speech Nazis are Republicans? Oh, yeah, baby. Just more evidence that conservatives are opposed to women who speak their mind.
The criticism of Ann is interesting on several levels. On one level, it makes perfect sense. She says rude and thoughtless things. She can be smart and pithy, and often uses that ability to craft the most biting, hurtful thing she could say. Often, these particular things don’t add anything of value to the debate.
It is not a criticism of using personal tragedy to advance a cause (something common to almost all the humanity, in one way or another, as a strategy to make something good and add meaning to what otherwise might appear to be a senseless tragedy) to say that the Jersey Girls were “enjoying” their husband’s deaths.
In and of itself, it really doesn’t advance the idea that people on the left are using the personal tragedy of themselves and others in order to shield their ideas and agendas from scrutiny or criticism. There may be something to that, as many point out, but what Ann said—and, in most cases, most of the inflammatory things she says—don’t actually do anything to make the case that the folks that are 100% in her camp say that she meant. If such popular, straight-forward punditry needs translation, then she isn’t getting the job done. Unless the job is simply to inflame passions and inspire debate and thus help market herself which—along with appearing in something skimpy, but not too skimpy, and black on every book cover—is what her inflammatory rhetoric is, most likely, all about.
One could also argue about karma and how nature abhors a vacuum and how for every action there will be an equal and opposite reaction, so, naturally, for every Al Franken or Michael Moore or Bill Mahr there must be an Ann Coulter to bring balance to the force. But perhaps that’s a discussion for another day.
Another criticism made frequently about Ann also makes sense: she does tend to make blanket statements that condemn entire groups of people, without even the qualifications of "whacko" or "extreme" that most boisterous pundits use to distinguish, say, plain vanilla environmentalists from whacko environmentalists, or liberals from extreme leftists.
Godless is just another example of this, as she makes the fairly absurd assertion that liberals are inherently atheists, when liberalism is full of Christians. They may disagree on doctrine, on how to apply the gospel to their lives, on how to best walk with God, and the sort of works we’re called to, but they believe in God. Just because there are liberal politicians who clearly don’t believe in God who claim they do so they don’t seem as God-less as Coulter accuses them of being doesn’t make that true of the rank-and-file liberal, most of whom (I believe) are honest when they claim a deep and abiding faith in God and Christ. In Ann’s excellent book, Treason, she makes the blanket statement that, essentially, there were no anti-Communist liberals, and it’s just not true. There were plenty of democratic-socialist liberals in McCarthy’s day, as well as useful idiots, who were anti-Communist, and fought Communism tooth and nail, just there were many on the left who worked in league with Russia to infiltrate and corrupt the American political process.
But if Ann sometimes seems out-of-touch with reality, so do her critics. One common refrain I’ve read recently regarding Coulter—a this is from conservative pundits—is how terrible it is that other conservatives might defend her. More specifically, how conservatives are “circling the wagons”, as it were, to defend this indefensible harlot. Yet I’ve seen no sign of conservatives circling the wagons to defend her. Indeed, the same folks (for example, here, on RedState) note that noted conservative pundits Captain Ed, Hugh Hewitt, RedState, The Anchoress, Ace of Spades, The Strata-Sphere, and others have all attacked Coulter, not defended her. And what defenses I’ve seen have been individuals expressing their dissenting opinions, rather than “conservatives circling the wagons”.
A little more on circling the wagons: The idea that people who disagree with you--especially if there's more than one person who disagress with you--rightly or wrongly, are "circling the wagons" seems, to me, to fail a basic test of logic. That is, if I agree with you, rather than the folks who are challenging you, am I not, "circling the wagons", as well? Under scrutiny, it's little different that accusing someone who disagrees with you of daring to disagree with you.
This may be a legitimate criticism of major media when it came to, say, Rather-gate, when so many in the media (including Bill O'Reilly) rallied to Dan's defense, because it was one of their own who was under attack. But most of the defense of Ann, right or wrong, seems to come from people who genuinely agree with her, or at least are not sufficiently in disagreement with what she said, or how she said it, to be as outraged as you are. Or simply don’t like the implication that speech should be non-offensive or politically correct to be permissible.
While they may indeed be wrong, and others might be right, I don't think "circling the wagons" is a valid criticism. I think it's a cop-out. If these folks are really wrong, then their arguments can be taken apart on their own merits. It's about the same as the liberal criticism that many conservative like Ann because she's blonde and wears short skirts. In fact, that criticism may actually be more valid than the empty accusation of "circling the wagons". At least, I think there's probably more truth to it. She is, after all, actually blonde. And she does wear short skirts.
In the same post on RedState.com (titled, interestingly, Boycott Ann Coulter), the author takes 7 quotes out of context and demands to know if these quotes are “true”:
•"liberals are always against America. They are either traitors or idiots..."The idea being that we should all be smart and think they are obviously false. The fact is, most of them probably are true, because they are expressions of opinion or preference, presuming they weren't sarcastic and taken out of context (such as the First Amendment comment). Making exceptions for sarcasm and rhetorical devices, most of her expressions opinions would be as truthful as any other expression of opinion, assuming she's not actually lying about her opinion.
•"I think we ought to nuke North Korea right now just to give the rest of the world a warning."
•"Press passes can't be that hard to come by if the White House allows that old Arab Helen Thomas to sit within yards of the President."
•"We need to execute people like John Walker in order to physically intimidate liberals, by making them realize that they can be killed, too."
•"My only regret with Timothy McVeigh is he did not go to the New York Times building."
•"Frankly, I'm not a big fan of the First Amendment."
•"We need somebody to put rat poisoning in Justice Stevens' creme brulee."
The last one, about Justice Steven’s crème brulee, was done in the context of re-stating a liberals desire that Clarence Thomas die of heart disease, asking what the reaction would be if a conservative said something like that? Well, now we know: self-professed conservatives would take it out of context and try to imply that that’s what she actually said, that we need to kill Justice Stevens!
I would argue that substituting terms in a statement to illustrate hypocrisy is a time-worn rhetorical device that is useful for informing. Taking such statements out of context as calls for murder from a raving right-wing pundit is also time worn, but perhaps less excusable. And, certainly, one would expect liberals to do it, but the number of conservatives doing it is impressive.
So, does Ann really speak truth to power? Not always. Most of Ann's untruthful statements come from blanket statements about entire groups that simply aren't, and cannot, be true, such as the suggestion that all liberals are not Christians, or are anti-Christian, and suggesting that good Christians aren't (and can't be) liberals. As with her assertion that liberals never did anything to fight communism (many did, just not the pro-Communist liberals) these are blanket statements too broad to be true, but incorrect specifically in the fact that they indict an entire group as sharing all the specific "sins" of a subgroup. Some liberals are obviously Christian, just as some are obviously anti-Christian. Saying they are all the same is just wrong.
But, assuming that Ann was factually accurate on every issue (as she does a good job of documenting and footnoting, even if she does, on occasion, seem to leave some important parts out), does that justify advocating nuclear war? Suggesting that the Jersey Girls enjoyed their husband's death?
And turning that around: does the fact that Ann is inflammatory and (presumably) self-aggrandizing and cynically manipulative of the media disqualify her research into topics like the McCarthy-era, where it would seem that liberal spin has become a form of religious canon that most conservatives were too timid to touch?
Not trying to be difficult--or, God forbid, circle the wagons, because the last thing a conservative or a Republican should ever do is defend one of their own, or even risk appearing to do so--but it seems to me that the Ann Coulter issue is a little more complicated than: "She's bad, she lies, she's not a conservative, boycott the book!"
For full disclosure, I don't have much sympathy for boycotts, be it Ann Coulter or the Dixie Chicks. Individuals should, of course, make their own decisions about such purchases, but those who agitate for the boycotting of books cast doubt on the strength of their ideas (or, at the very least, their rhetoric) by comparison. Dismissing the folks who support her, or at least want to give her rudeness the benefit of the doubt, or a plausible excuse, as "circling the wagons" also doesn't strike me as a particularly effective argument against their support. Presumably, everybody who supports somebody who says things you don't like is then "circling the wagons". While not as mean as many of Coulter's comments, such criticisms are equally empty and do nothing to convince the folks who think that Ann is the cat's pajamas that they are wrong.
There’s also a school of thought that says because Ann says outlandish and offensive things, nothing she has said can be treated seriously, or that, essentially, if you agree with her that McCarthy was rail-roaded you agree with her on everything she’s ever said, ever. One would think this sort of argument would be self-evidently wrong, but apparently not. Or that, if Ann speaks on issues and calls herself a conservative and says mean things, then it means that all conservatives are mean and wrong, unless she’s excommunicated or killed. That’s just nuts.
In keeping with that logic, should we treat Al Gore's appearance on SNL with the same seriousness we might treat An Inconvenient Truth? Or is An Inconvenient Truth actually just a silly joke, like the SNL skit of him being president in a alternative reality? How much political commentary is lightened with levity? Should we dismiss the commentary because the commentator makes a joke? Or because of the substance of the commentary?
Reductum ad absurdum: if I state nine facts and one lie, do the nine facts make the one lie true? Or does the one lie make the nine facts false?
Or have I instead presented nine facts and one lie, and the facts should be preserved and acknowledged as true while the lie should be refuted and dismissed as false?
The idea that it's "all or nothing" is foolish (although consistent with Thomas Sowell's analysis of liberalism being an ideology of categorical solutions, where trade-offs, or having to take the bad with the good, is unacceptable, thus the baby must always be thrown out with the bathwater, or one "perfect" solution is worth the sacrifice of everything else).
Disagreeing with her is perfectly legitimate. Calls to boycott her are, in my opinion, ill-considered.
Unfortunately, it seems that the conservative "big tent" can accomodate folks who are pro-drug legalization, pro-gay marriage, pro-amnesty-for-illegals and pro-nation building, but can't accomodate someone who says nasty, mean-spirited things about liberals, including these sins: "saying something that is true, or at least very plausible, about liberals, in a way that is overly-harsh and mean" and "making blanket hyperbolic statements about whole groups of people that are, in fact, only true of some of the people in that group".
While, frankly, I think Ann takes it too far, both in blanket statements and generally nastiness, the idea that she needs to be ostracized or excommunicated for that is just nuts. And it's not an issue of "turning on our own", but of turning on speech that we disagree with or we don't like (bad enough), but with the qualifier that such things are worse if said by ostensible conservatives about ostensible liberals or ostensible Islamfascists.
Sheesh. Perhaps all us conservatives should get together and draft some speech codes? So at least conservative commentators will know when speaking their mind will get them evicted from the conservative movement?
Because I'd hate for the liberals to think one conservative in a hundred might be full of piss and vinegar and occasionally talk out of his-or-her ass now and again.
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