dana west
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Sep-16-2002
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Message #5273 posted by dana west (Info) October 18, 2007 00:21:37 ET
From The Darkest Recesses
Of Ann Coulter's Soul -- A Confession
By Michael Goodspeed
10-17 -2007
This morning, I nearly choked on my coffee when I followed a link to
Ann Coulter's website and read what at first glance appeared to her
final valedictory from public life. In her article, An Open Letter
to Readers
(http://www.anncou lter.com/cgi-local/article.cgi?article=214) she
writes: "I've been participating in a charade for nearly eleven
years, now. Quite frankly, I'm sick of it. You have all been a part
of a sick joke that I began considering shortly after first get ting
on the air. At first, it was quite interesting to see how people
would react when I would use twisted logic and poorly masked
bigotry.
"But eleven years is a long time to be living a fake life, and I can
no longer tolerate this f alsity. Even someone as fake as I tires out
eventually."
After a bit of rambling rhetoric on the ideal of spiritual unity
amongst Americans, Coulter signs off with a promise that seems too
good to be true: "And with that, my precious viewers, I bid you
adieu. My career as a media figurehead is over."
A few moments after waking, my intellectual discernment was not at
its sharpest, and I briefly wondered if Ann's statement might not be
entirely sarcastic. Perhaps her whole public life really had been a
misguided social experiment intended to gauge public reaction to
asininity and bigotry. I could see how such an experiment might be
useful to the fine folks at the Tavistock Institute; to know the
reliable tri ggers of racial, religious, and ideological hatred in
human beings is invaluable information for those who would incite
civil unrest and violence for their own nefarious purposes.
But alas, Ann is not yet owning up to such a role in America's
deliberate destruction. She postscripts her Open Letter to Readers:
"Haha, did it again. Oh, those silly web admins...they just
embarrass themselves."
It's not surprising for Coulter to use witless, unimaginative
sarcasm as a means o f jabbing at her enemies, real and imaginary.
But it is surprising (to me, anyway) that her sarcasm reads as such
a frank admission. This lame, unfunny, faux valediction may well
offer a rare insight into the purgatorial realm of Ann Coulter's
soul.
The purpose of sarcastic humor is to parrot ideas in a manner that
exposes them as totally untenable. Therefore, to include in a
sarcastic narrative statements that no sane person could
disagree with is to risk confusing and th us alienating one's
audience. So either Ann does not understand the guiding principle
behind sarcastic humor, or one MUST interpret every word of her
"open letter" as unmitigated sarcasm.
Consider her weird, pretend lip-service to religio us harmony amongst
Americans:
"Here's the truth, I don't care what people believe. Jews don't need
to be 'made perfect' as I so arrogantly proclaimed to Editor &
Publisher not a half week ago. I don't even care if people are
Muslim. G ranted, I don't know much about the religion or the people,
but they are people. This is something that we cannot forget, they
are in an abhorrent situation. These people are in need of
education. Perhaps if we did not participate in causing them misery,
they would not hate us so.
"In fact, does it really matter whether we are Christian, Jewish,
Muslim, Atheist, or even Pagan? We are one nation. One. We should
not let petty differences separate us, we are all American, and
should act in that manner."
How does one delineate Ann's sarcasm from her true beliefs in the
above statements? She concedes that Muslims are actually people, and
that many of them live in "an abhorrent situation." But then she
quips, "P erhaps if we did not participate in causing them misery,
they would not hate us so."
In the past, Ann has made it abundantly clear she laughs at the
"liberal" notion that many Muslims justifiably hate America due to
the violence and death they've suffered at the hands of our
government ("Not all Muslims may be terrorists, but all terrorists
are Muslims," from Coulter's syndicated column September 28, 2001.
"If only we could get Muslims to boycott all airlines, we could
dis pense with airport security altogether," from Coulter's website
November 22, 2006). Therefore, this comment can only be viewed as
pure sarcasm. But what about her other comments, that Muslims are
actually "people," that we are "one nation," and "We should not let
petty differences separate us, we are all American, and should act
in that manner."
As horrific as it may seem, one can only conclude that every
sentence, every word of Ann's "Open Letter" is intended as sarcasm.
She openly mocks the unending misery of Muslims everywhere, denying
(through her sarcasm) their very humanity, then she laughs at the
lofty ideal of an America undivided by religious, racial, or
ideological differences -- an ideal she has alwa ys bizarrely
identified as "liberal." We can tell that she's being wholly
sarcastic because of her unerringly consistent stance on all of the
above issues. And if nothing else, Ann IS consistent -- unlike most
politicians, she has precisely one note and one message in all
company, in every situation.
Ann Coulter has made clear she believes in ONE true religion, ONE
correct pathway to God, and it is the job of pious people everywhere
to ENFORCE it on the entire planet. Her perspective on how America
should treat Islamic nations suspected of harboring terrorists is:
"We should invade their countries, kill their leaders and convert
them to Christianity." (Source:
http://www.nationalreview.com/coulter/coulter.s html) Such a
sentiment is totally unsurprising from a woman who once proudly
boasted that she "always agreed" with the late Reverend Jerry
Falwell. (Source: http://mediamatters.org/items/200705180003)
This is the same figurehead who infam ously stated, "My only regret
with Timothy McVeigh is he did not go the New York Times Building."
(Source:
http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/a/ann_coulter.html). In a
cultural climate that saw Don Imus lose a national radio show on the
basis of one asinine comment directed at black female athletes
("nappy-headed hoes"), and in a climate where a young man gets
tasered for loudly asking a question at a John Kerry rally, Ann
Coulter is permitted again and again to step over every line of
public decorum, even advocating religious warfare and murder. (The
Internet database is so replete with vile, violent, murderous quotes
from Ann Coulter that I see no need to enumerate them at greater
length here).
The saddest element of Coulter's sarcasm is the violent opposition
she reveals against her own happiness. She mocks the notion that "we
are all American," and "We should not let petty differences separate
us." Since she has built an extremely lucrative career on exploiting
"petty differences" and inane ideological disparities, it's not
surprising that she prefers a nation at war with itself, clearly
demarcated along lines of "conservative" and "liberal," the saved
and the damn ed, the good and the evil. Like all miserable people,
she demands that the external world reflect the blood-soaked
battleground of her internal environment. This makes Ann right at
home in the intellectual climate of the media age, where polemical
rage usurps sound reasoning and the loudest and most grotesque
command the most attention.
Miss Coulter, you claim to be a God-fearing Christian who seeks to
embody the teachings of Jesus during your time on Earth. You may
think your sarcasm is a weapon against your "enemies," but in fact,
it is only a weapon against yourself.
"Sarcasm I now see to be, in general, the language of the devil; for
which reason I have long since as good as renounced it."
--Thomas Carlyle
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