Posted on 06/27/2011 8:02:08 AM PDT by Kaslin
It seems strange to say that Ann Coulter is underrated. Every book she writes is a bestseller — her new one, Demonic, is no exception. When she’s on tour, you can barely turn on a TV or radio without seeing her face, hearing her voice. I was in a restaurant with her once and she was so swamped with admiring members of the public I felt like I was part of a movie star’s entourage. (I don’t really do entourages, but if I had to be part of one, I was glad it was hers.) All the same, I don’t think she gets the respect she deserves.
I don’t expect anyone to give her the Pulitzer Prize. The Pulitzer is one of those prizes liberals give to other liberals so they can call each other “prize-winning.” It’s appalling, however, that in a country where a blithering bomb-throwing hack like Paul Krugman is given an ongoing column in a prominent former newspaper, Coulter is considered too incendiary to have a mainstream column of her own. Her weekly piece online is routinely so witty, slashing and packed with information that it makes even some of the best newspaper columns look like pretty weak sauce in comparison.
I know a lot of serious conservative journalists who haven’t read Coulter or who talk about her work as if it weren’t quite the thing. She’s another one of those pundit babes on Fox News, isn’t she? — all right, maybe the Mother of all Pundit Babes — but not someone you actually take the time to read, doncha know. I haven’t seen a single review of Demonic in a major Old Media outlet. I can’t find one in a Google search either. It reminds me of the experience I had many years ago when I stumbled on the work of a rising pop novelist named Stephen King. For years, I went around telling my intellectual friends that King was something new and fresh on the writing scene. For years, they went around calling him “post-literate,” or “sub-literate,” until the sheer inventive power of his prose overcame their snobbery.
When Ann Coulter is good — and I think Demonic is one of her best — she is doing something special and doing it at a level that makes her unique. It’s not just the heavyweight research or the fearless disdain for received opinion. Her flexible, sardonic, rigorous and unabashedly jokey prose creates an iconic voice that humanizes her polemic and compels you to engage with her specific and original worldview. People are wont to say off-handedly “you either love her or hate her,” but they don’t seem to understand that that’s a writerly achievement of the first water.
Demonic makes an argument more complex than her other books. Books like Slander and Treason tended to marshal legions of facts and examples in support of ideas like “the mainstream media lie,” or “liberals are unpatriotic.” Demonic revives the 19th century science of “crowd psychology,” and argues that left-wing politics descends from the brutal and ultimately enslaving mob madness of the French Revolution whereas conservatives have inherited the mantle of the American founders, who feared the mob above all. The book operates like a prosecutor building a case and even at its most one-sided, is often scarily convincing. The chapters in Part III on violence are brilliant. Had I hair, it would’ve stood on end.
Coulter has her weaknesses, of course. She tends to bark “yes,” the moment the mainstream media say “no,” which will only lead you to the truth about 90 percent of the time. She can go off on tangents (though she doesn’t here). And her take-no-prisoners style… well, takes no prisoners, which isn’t always the surest path to argumentative victory.
But she is, I’m convinced, one of the essayists of the day, possibly of the age, and some of her writing will be taught in schools long after the work of more sober and “respectable” journalists is forgotten.
I just don’t get why she is pushing Christie so much. I’m not sure Ann is really all that conservative. Still, she makes libs’ heads explode and I appreciate that.
I haven’t read her book but the title is definately right on. These liberal bastards are under Demonic influence. There is no other explanation.
It’s a terrific book, by far her best since “Godless,” in my opinion. I was on the library reserve list two months before the publication date ;-).
What a combination.
How does she defend being a Romney type republican when it comes to putting the rubber to the road?
Why write the books if she then instructs us to elect Romneys to lead us.
I think she pushes Christie because he is highly skilled in verbal combat and at reframing the debate on his terms instead the liberals terms. He’s an oratory ninja that works the media over time and again, which is very refreshing.
A solid conservative is useless if he’s a limp noodle.
And a RINO is just useless.
I’ll jump on board and say that I was very impressed by “Demonic”. She’s always good, but in this book she is great.
Why write the books if she then instructs us to elect Romneys to lead us.
I totally agree with you!! I find too many conflicting things that she does. She talks a good Conservative game, but her actions prove otherwise too many times.
Dating a muslim & her choices for the 2011 are not in agreement with MY conservative ideals. It's too easy to do the talk!! That's the problem with the RINOS in the Republican party too!! They do everything they can to conceal who & what they really are.
I was going to comment - but lost all thought after viewing her pic.
To quote the Obamaloon, “Ah....er....uh....uh.....”
Her books are good and make valuable points. Then in interviews she pushes the biggest RINO for Pres and says Palin should stick to a Senate run in AZ. Add that to her paling around with people like Bill Maher and saying she like Joy Bahar and it makes you wonder whether she is really conservative, or just a bomb thrower looking for attention.
LOL
RE the lack of major book reviews for Coulter’s works. Join the crowd. A book I worked on, “Unfit for Command”, never got reviewed by the Wash. Post or New York Times, though the Times attacked it through one of their hack cultural writers.
It sold out, over 700,000 copies, more like 800,000, without a major book review, and knocked John Kerry’s presidential ambitions right into the crapper.
How do you say “Bay Hap River”, John?
One thing the Left doesn’t understand about normal people, is that “we common folk” stick together, esp. those of us from Vietnam. Using the internet and word-of-mouth, hundreds of thousands of vets were told about the book and this had a ripple effect to their families, friends, colleagues, etc.
The same applies to Coulter’s works, esp. with the availability of Fox Cable TV, its various shows, and talk-radio.
It is no wonder that the Left, thru Comrade Genochowski (FCC) and Free Press, want to control the internet thru “net neutrality” (the marxists wrote the original concept of controlling the internet). They realized, like Orwell, that a real “free press” was the enemy of the totalitarians (Stalinists, Castroites, Chavezistas, and Obamites), but it allowed others to express their opinions and share their experiences without interference or censorship (which the print media exercised with glee).
I was one of the founders of Accuracy in Media back in the late 60’s, and we found out first hand how the MSM could censor opposing views by blocking access to their “letters to the editor” and “Opinion” pages. That was why AIM was founded, to get around this blockade of opposing views.
What Ann Coulter, Bernie Goldberg, Michael Medved, Ben Stein, Media Research Center, Andrew Breitbart and others have done, is to run this “blockade” at full speed, and in Ann’s case, to sink all ships and take no prisoners. Nothing wrong with that.
We are in a war for the survival of America’s freedom and, in the larger picture, the survival of the western world/freedom. Just take a look at the world’s map today and you can see that freedom is taking it on the chin big-time, and is declining faster than Anthony Weiner’s career did.
George Orwell knew well about what he wrote. I hope people read “1984” and “Animal Farm” before it is too late.
Thanks to Coulter and the other conservative/liberatian writers, many eyes have been opened to what is going on her in America and around the world. They are the next generation of the “Committees of Correspondence” from colonial times, the new “Paul Reveres”, shouting and printing out warnings of the approaching enemy. (PS: Sarah Palin was basically correct). I hope Americans listen and read what they have to say.
Our future depends on it.
I am half-way through Demonic on my Kindle, and I heartily agree. She has masterfully integrated social science (LeBon), and history (the French vs. the American Revolution) in her indictment of the modern Democratic Party as a "mob."
I don’t think anyone can call Christie a true RINO—he’s just got too much in the way of guts. He’s no wimps. RINOs first and always—are wimps.
Limp noodles are useless, RINO’s are dangerous, often trampling conservatives in their rush to the other side.
But my point was, that Coulter is overlooking some of Christies apostasies because she admires his skills at verbal combat, something she’s no slouch at herself.
We need to GMO some of those skills into conservatives.
U.S. Attorney Christopher Christie surprised many at a Dover church public forum when he said sneaking into the United States is not a criminal act.
“Being in this country without proper documentation is not a crime,” Christie told more than 60 residents and town officials. “The whole phrase of ‘illegal immigrant’ connotes that the person, by just being here, is committing a crime.”
Being undocumented may be a civil wrong, but it’s not a criminal act, Christie said.
http://www.nj.com/news/index.ssf/2008/04/immigrants_and_their_advocates.html
Just yelling at people doesn’t mean you are tough.
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