Aquarian Weekly 7/2/03
REALITY CHECK

ALL HAIL ANN COULTER - CHAMPION OF THE DUMB

For those who merely get their junk food media jones from Reality TV or Eminem or video game violence, you are missing one of the great purveyors of grandiose stupidity on the market today; Ann Coulter. Noted author, and celebrated carnival barker; Coulter is the living embodiment of modern pop culture genius, well-dressed freak show merchants masquerading their commentary with bombastic rhetoric, mixed daringly with a waft of jingoistic perfume.

I worship her beatific vision.

Coulter's efforts are noble and sound. She knows well the avenue of history has long been open for armchair revisionists to sidle up to the microphone and trump hyperbolic issues and hot-button names in an ostentatious peddling of merchandise. Having pitched a book for the past few months, I bow to her prescient supremacy.

Mostly, Coulter is a wonderful siren for our greatest attributes, the inability to understand rudimentary ideas beyond our own prejudiced hallucinations. No other social or political essayist possesses more of a keen eye for P.T. Barnum's vast audience of ravenous lap dogs in the American heart.

This is a sorely needed talent in today's politically correct world of pusillanimous frauds. She is a maverick among sheep, but Coulter is often vilified for this, while she should be lauded as a hero for our most precious national resource: The Dumb.

In the grand tradition of Jerry Springer, Colonel Tom Parker and Joseph Goebbels, Coulter is merrily plugging her new cantankerous volume entitled, "Treason: Liberal Treachery From the Cold War To The War On Terrorism" with the subtlety of a sledgehammer. And from recent quotes, the book appears to brilliantly reveal how Americans understand history and its effects on today's social fabric.

For instance, last night on MSNBC, Coulter wildly defended Senator Joseph McCarthy as "a misunderstood American hero whose sacrifices preserved America's sovereignty for thirty-plus years."

This is the very same McCarthy whose incredible ride to infamy included an historic monopoly of world-class fear mongering this democracy has ever had the displeasure to endure.

Understand Coulter's genius here. Aside from Hitler or Manson or Nixon or Liberace, the very name McCarthy, attached as it is to a period of madness called McCarthyism, is notable for its enviable shock quotient. A monument to hate bating and paranoia run amok, McCarthy's legacy is nothing if not noteworthy. He was a tremendous brute of his times, clinically insane and furiously malevolent, a true celebrity monster. But apparently in Coulter's luminous tome we relearn that McCarthy's savagely clumsy attack on basic democratic liberties was "bravery" and that "The myth of 'McCarthyism' is the greatest Orwellian fraud of our times."

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On the heels of Hillary Clinton's fantastically successful, "Living History" - an embarrassingly potent political manifesto wrapped neatly in a package of scrumptiously infantile musings - Coulter's grandstanding is sublime, painfully striking, and a clear roadmap to 21st century thought. Clinton's book aimed to put distance between her and her ass of a husband. Coulter's work puts a loving stamp on what her president's dissenters have dubbed "fear-mongering" in the guise of patriotism. But Clinton is a politician, and nothing politicians have written has really meant anything binding since "Mein Kampf".

Coulter is different. She is a pro, in every brutal sense of the word. Coulter writes: "Liberals are fanatical liars, then as now. Everything you think you know about McCarthy is a hegemonic lie."

This is excellent hyperbole, with just the right amount of stern recognition, but having not read the entire thing, I can only assume she gets to the bottom of these lies about McCarthy; lies which are a matter of overly analyzed public record for half a century. But the book, or the childish assumption that only Liberals held, or hold, McCarthy contemptible, is not the issue here. It is the use of McCarthy as a notorious figure, and an effigy of politics gone frightfully awry, as a weapon against Coulter's enemy, The Left.

Trashing The Left, like Senator Rodham's subtle forms of trashing The Right in her book tour, allow both to employ an important ingredient to mass appeal, consistency. No one wants their Bruce Springsteens jamming funk or Bill Bennetts strung out on cheap wine and loading up on seven-figure Vegas bets.

Some may find championing terrible goons as political martyrs for the benefit of ideology wrong.

Hardly.

Getting massive digs in on the enemy, while refiguring the legacy of a national embarrassment for personal profit has merit. This is what many books have done for decades, rediscovering the Kennedy assassination or the Vietnam War or the Nixon Tapes. It's good press, even in the face of complete and utter contempt for common sense and truth.

Another fine example from Coulter: "McCarthy was not tilting at windmills. Soviet spies in the government were not a figment of right-wing imaginations. He was tilting at an authentic Communist conspiracy that had been laughed off by the Democratic Party."

Beautiful craziness.

Did the overall manic dismantling of McCarthy's crusade have a tinge of backlash fanaticism? Of course. Were there Communists in the government? Sure. In the pall of a Cold War, was it a threat to national security? Correct. Was this why McCarthy was finally harangued by his contemporaries or forever noted as a criminally insane lunatic? No. It was McCarthy's methods of sidestepping laws, using media outcry and troubled times to promote a sick obsession to shamelessly self-promote his career.

Even Coulter sheepishly admits to McCarthy's famous lie about a list of 57 names in the US government with Communist ties. But you won't find that as a headline on the day I write this. You see, in a way, what Coulter is doing is a metaphor for McCarthy's greatest legacy: Say something completely shocking and outlandish, and make someone deny or address it.

Artistic grace.

And finally the second most successful slant on truth used by Coulter here is her assessment that the Democratic Party was more or less run by a radical anti-American Communist regime since McCarthy's public demise. This scoffs in the face of horrific mistakes made by Democratic administrations, not the least of which would be the Korean and Viet Nam Wars, instigated, by the way, by Democratic presidents, or the Bay of Pigs disaster, or blah, blah blah.

Coulter is silly, surely, but I, for one, salute her moxy, her guts, her complete disregard for clear thought and simple research to bolster her debate. She is a hero to our trade, and a great patriot, pointing us to the core of our being; not letting facts get in the way of making a buck.

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