Thursday, April 21, 2005
Ms. Right?
Here is a copy of the letter I sent to TIME for its unforgive-able title piece this week.
Once in New York, I caught a glimpse of Ms. Coulter as she left the TimeWarner building, having just been on CNN. She cut an imposing figure, her eyes darting about, perhaps for liberal miscreants. When I whispered with awe, "There's Ann Coulter." My wife asked (not hearing me), "Who?" I answered to describe her as the most vile American media creation of the Twentieth century, and I do not think I was far off. Her staying power legitimizes a sort of mad dash to insanity from which our country may not soon recover. The Daily Howler has a good series on Coulter's depravities. If the vitriol of those like her has the desired effect, an apocalyptic vision looms on the horizon.
Meeting Coulter had the exact opposite effect to my meeting in a similar vein with Lech Walesa on a street in Gdansk, Poland. They are the embodiments of opposite impulses in the modern world. I met Walesa after he had managed to pull a people out of a reign of terror that darkened his country, and I met Coulter while her stated aims, ironic or not, have yet to be realized. If her program has the desired effect, and believe me her mainstreaming is a huge step in that direction, will I, and so many I love, be "disappeared" in five to ten years? The benefit of straw men is that they're easy to burn. ¶ 11:52 PM
What reason could TIME and John Cloud possibly have for this piece of dissembling drivel? Ms. Coulter's project ends with pogroms eliminating Americans who have every right to behave and believe differently from her. Her media kindred spirits are the like of managers of Radio Mille Collines in Rwanda. If she is an "ironist," it could still end up being no less damaging than Vonnegut's Howard Campbell, Jr. When the next Coulter-inspired Tim McVeigh murders innocents for holding liberal values, you should proudly share a little of the credit for mainstreaming her.
Once in New York, I caught a glimpse of Ms. Coulter as she left the TimeWarner building, having just been on CNN. She cut an imposing figure, her eyes darting about, perhaps for liberal miscreants. When I whispered with awe, "There's Ann Coulter." My wife asked (not hearing me), "Who?" I answered to describe her as the most vile American media creation of the Twentieth century, and I do not think I was far off. Her staying power legitimizes a sort of mad dash to insanity from which our country may not soon recover. The Daily Howler has a good series on Coulter's depravities. If the vitriol of those like her has the desired effect, an apocalyptic vision looms on the horizon.
Meeting Coulter had the exact opposite effect to my meeting in a similar vein with Lech Walesa on a street in Gdansk, Poland. They are the embodiments of opposite impulses in the modern world. I met Walesa after he had managed to pull a people out of a reign of terror that darkened his country, and I met Coulter while her stated aims, ironic or not, have yet to be realized. If her program has the desired effect, and believe me her mainstreaming is a huge step in that direction, will I, and so many I love, be "disappeared" in five to ten years? The benefit of straw men is that they're easy to burn. ¶ 11:52 PM
