Posted on 08/13/2002 10:21:41 AM PDT by TLBSHOW
Introduction to Politics
Everything you already suspected about American politics but thought was too ridiculous to be true.
In a recent column, Charles Krauthammer wrote what is bound to be one of the master's classic columns. It opened: "To understand the workings of American politics, you have to understand this fundamental law: Conservatives think liberals are stupid. Liberals think conservatives are evil."
Oh yes. It kinda is that simple. Politics 101 students take note.
Any way you look at it, political discourse in America is pathetic. No one could blame you if you've done a little praying that Osama bin Laden is dead and without access to Larry King. Imagine him watching serious debate over whether or not we should say "one nation under God." Imagine him listening to pundits argue about whether the president should be stationed in Texas this month.
But all of that is just the tip of the iceberg. The real stupidity comes when the pundit game becomes Right-vs.-Left. Things that would be considered hate crimes if lobbed at liberals are par for the course when it's conservatives who are the targets.
And, of course, it's not only the pundits. If it were just the pundits, we wouldn't be complaining. It's the news anchors. It's the front-page news editorialists posing as reporters in the nation's most-read papers.
It's no breaking news, of course. But in Slander, Ann Coulter does an excellent job of throwing example after example in the faces of many of the media folks she's finding herself head-to-head with now that she's in book-tour mode. That her "interview" with Katie Couric was widely hailed as a win for Coulter is remarkable — and the whole interview, and others like it, are proof that Ann is far from delusional.
If you think it's all conservative whining, pick up Ann Coulter's book and take a look for yourself.
An aside: NRO is being mentioned in many of Coulter's interviews of late. No complaints here — all publicity is good publicity. The prevailing storyline is that NRO "censored" Ann and then "fired" her. But Ann set things straight in her now-infamous Today Show interview. After running one column — on Sept. 13 — that garnered a lot of attention (from CAIR-types especially), we declined to run a follow-up, and after some public statements from Coulter (using the word censorship) that we disagreed with, NRO decided to drop her column. We all got some publicity from it and other venues picked up her column. No firing, no censorship. Just an editorial decision.
Now, back to Slander. The book reminds me why we picked her syndicated column up in the first place — Coulter has a way with words. And she has a laser-like ability to home in on the hypocrisies and cruelties and stupidity of the Left.
When Coulter lays out the case, you wonder how adults can actually watch and read this stuff. It's terribly grade-school in its intellectual level. Take, for instance, the perennial argument that Republicans are just plain dumb:
Howell Raines, former editorial page editor of the New York Times, who covered the Reagan White House with the Times's trademark objectivity, asserted that "Reagan couldn't tie his shoes if his life depended on it." And still, somehow he won the Cold War. Al Gore told Virginia voters at a campaign rally that they should re-elect Virginia Senator Chuck Robb because his opponent, Oliver North, was supported by "the extreme right wing — the extra-chromosome right wing." (The presence of an "extra chromosome" is the birth defect that creates Down's syndrome.) The Washington Post famously reported as hard fact that followers of Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson "are largely poor, uneducated and easy to command." Paula Jones was attacked by Newsweek's Evan Thomas as "some sleazy woman with big hair coming out of the trailer parks." Aren't these the same people constantly demanding campus speech codes, an end to "intolerance," and "hate speech" laws — so that no one's feelings get hurt?
Also, Republican women are ugly. Remember the Linda Tripp treatment. Or Katherine Harris. Or Bonnie Erbe's cruel, unjustifiable swipe against fellow panelist Linda Chavez on that insufferable PBS show To the Contrary (yes, they are even mean on PBS). The list goes on.
Maybe it's understandable, Coulter offers. "Perhaps if conservatives had had total control over every major means of news dissemination for a quarter century, they would have forgotten how to debate, too, and would just call liberals stupid and mean. But that's an alternative universe. In this universe, the public square is wall-to-wall liberal propaganda."
Coulter does a lot of useful things in her book. Besides reminding conservatives they aren't crazy, and that they really are being called names in American homes on a near-daily basis, she deconstructs the sham phrase "religious right" — providing some handy numbers as well as pointing out that "the religious right is a totemic symbol, a permanent terrorizing influence on the brainwashed masses." Coulter also gives well-deserved kudos to Phyllis Schlafly, who single-handedly stopped the Equal Rights Amendment — no simple feat, that — and yet is treated like a simple wacko with no claim to historical fame: not a legitimate political player, but a schoolmarmish prude.
Coulter's book is a success and some of the liberal media types surely hate her for it. But if she's right — and the evidence seems to suggest that she is — they've had some practice. And Slander evidently has had some resonance beyond the Media Research Center fundraising base, because the book is hot — topping the New York Times and Amazon.com lists for multiple weeks. Katie Couric may have been snippy, but the book was unveiled on The Today Show. She's debated Phil Donahue about it. Last night I walked into the 42nd Street bus terminal in New York City and saw it there, prominently displayed at the first Hudson News newspaper hut. You really can't beat that for getting word out. And maybe, just maybe, below the protests, Katie, Phil, & co. know it's true.
and to think I was trying to get a boycott going of NRO when they dropped Ann.
I'll bet he tells all his buddies that he knew TLBSHOW way back when, before he became a famous right wing political commentator.
Yes it is.
She is truly a jewell.
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