Friday, June 29, 2007

Ann Coulter: Mean Girl


She purses her lips provocatively, flashes a half smile, as if she’s sharing a secret, intimate joke with the TV camera, and then there’s that toss of her thick blond mane. Then she slightly lowers her head and tips it to the side as she looks coyly into the camera again.
Of course, she’s wearing the ever-present little black dress hiked thigh high and her legs are crossed as she sits slightly sideways on the stool.
I don’t know why nobody has ever noticed this before, but Ann Coulter’s body language, while lobbing her nasty little bombs of hatred, is that of a barroom skank at a pickup joint at half past three in the morning. Closing time. There’s a slight air of desperation as she flirts, minces, and attempts to seduce the audience and the usually male talk show host.
Closing time at the bar and she’s got to seal the deal. Sell that controversial book she's hawking.

But the statements are getting more outrageous. The little lines around her mouth and eyes are ever so slightly harder than they used to be. The act is wearing thin as the pre-pubescent Young Republican boys who used to lust after her in their adolescent fantasies grow up, find their own wives, have children and actually begin to worry about things like decency and civility and the kind of world they want to leave their children.

Meanwhile, the talk show hosts are starting to get ever more alarmed at her outrageousness and the public's possible blowback. You never know when the audience is going to develop another one of those Imus revulsion moments and sympathize with one of her victims. Bullies, after all, always go too far and cause their own downfall.

When Elizabeth Edwards called in to the Chris Matthews show and challenged Coulter for her dreadful statements, wishing John Edwards had died in 9/11, the audience cheered, not for Ann, but Elizabeth.

What Coulter, like Neal Boortz and others of that ilk do is lob their verbal stink bombs and if anybody tries to hold them accountable, they rear up like a cornered rodent with its back to the wall and scoff that they were just joking. They are bullies who try to intimidate their critics into silence by falling back on the old, tired accusation that their opponents lack a sense of humor or are too “politically correct.”

Nope.

You don’t have to be a dour, politically correct stick in the mud to see that this is simply rudeness. Vicious rudeness. This type of a corrosive battery acid tongue has done more to cause the break down of society than any atheistic statement Christopher Hitchens or Daniel Dennet could have made. Civility is the glue that holds any society together. All the Pat Robertson “decency rallies” won’t cure the indecency and crudeness that the Coulters, Boortzes and Imuses spew.

But the interesting thing about Coulter was that at the end of the Chris Matthews show, when Elizabeth Edwards was dressing her down, Coulter was shifting uncomfortably in her seat. She looked impatient and annoyed. And that’s when it struck me; she’s nothing more than a former sorority deb who feels entitled to be a mean girl because she’s pretty and has always gotten away with it.

Well, it's time to end Coulter's free pass. And it looks like Elizabeth Edwards, a serious woman with depth and brilliance, has done just that. What else to do about Coulter? Don't censor her for goodness sake. Just keep calling in those Coulter dollars. When Democratic candidates start raking in money from those who object to Coulter's behavior, her own fellow Republicans will turn on her. And don't worry about their accusation that we are exploiting her bad behavior.
Yeah, so?
Once she causes us to win a few elections we can take a poll and see who has the lack of sense of humor.

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

"I don’t know why nobody has ever noticed this before, but Ann Coulter’s body language, while lobbing her nasty little bombs of hatred, is that of a barroom skank at a pickup joint at half past three in the morning."

HAHAHAHAH!! Hysterical, but I would have never expected that from you AIAW!!!

F.T. Rea said...

AIAW,

Your portrait of Coulter is a bull's-eye. But I must say that just because she wears her hair blonde, wears her skirts short and exhibits the contrived body language you noted, it doesn't mean she's attractive to all men.

That's the strangest part of her popularity -- Coulter's supposed sexiness is a joke to me.

Vivian J. Paige said...

Excellent post - and dead on!

Karen Duncan said...

Thanks Vivian!

And Terry, I agree that not all men - mature and intelligent men - wouldn't necessarily find her schtick attractive. That's even true among politically conservative men. It appeals to a certain adolescent mentality as much because of her outrageous personality as because of her appearance. It's that combination.

And NLS - there's a lot about me you'd never suspect and cattiness is only the tip of the iceberg :)

kestrel9000 said...

Yeah. What NLS said! The Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest is your oyster for the shelling.
Excellent!

Karen Duncan said...

Ah kestrel, what a compliment. Indeed, on some dark and stormy night, I shall shell that inexecable oyster.

But, alas, this was not fiction but a spoof on Coulter's own style of character assassination. But when you must explain irony (sigh)