Chardonnay and Cigarettes Have Gone to Her Head
So I bought the issue of Time with Ann Coulter on the cover. She's a sloppy researcher and an even worse writer, but I thought that I might find out how an ordinary female became the media monolith known as Ann Coulter.
I will warn all Ann Coulter haters of the following: This article does not discuss Ann's appearance. The blogosphere has gone to town regarding Ann's cover photo. If you want to see how people link Ann Coulter to a towel rack and more, read the brilliant captions over at Rox Populi.
Instead of stopping at the cover, I held my nose and read the whole dang article. No one is going to say that the Daily Pepper doesn't try to understand the other side.
I read that article looking for genuine insight. What made Ann so conservative? What was the crystallizing, transformative moment that made her start thinking libs were sending this nation to hell in a handbasket? What turned a woman into a mouthpiece for an ideology that would put men on the cover of Time and Coulter back in the kitchen?
John Cloud, who Eric Alterman rightfully savages for "lazy and credulous" reporting, teaches us very little about Coulter except for the following:
1. Some feel that she lives on chardonnay and cigarettes, and Cloud can vouch that she lives on Nicorette as well.
2. She thinks she's absolutely hilarious and that we libs just aren't "getting" her sense of humor. (As for that, I will always say that I read Lileks and giggle. I read the late Lewis Grizzard, who is one of the funniest men alive but who sure as heck wasn't a lib. I don't think that Lileks or the late Lewis would have thought "You Are Now Free to Move About the Cabin - Not So Fast, Mohammed!" was funny. That ain't funny. Is that funny? You talking to me?)
3. She tried to hide her age. She's 44, but she refers to herself as a "girl" in the article.
4. She made two feminist arguments in her life. Wow.
As to how Coulter became so conservative, the article is coy. She had two older brothers and engaged in dinner-table "argy-bargy." At Cornell, she began to "explore conservatism," but she doesn't really say what motivated her, other than the fact that she didn't like liberals and moderates. She wrote one of her feminist arguments at the same time, but then the author drops the subject and continues to wax rhapsodic about the "spindle-shanked blonde."
After reading that hayride of an article, I now have a new project, which is figuring out what makes women like Ann Coulter, Michelle Malkin, Karen Hughes, and the whole lot of 'em act against their own interests. Why are they setting out to undo all the good that feminism has done for women? It's one thing to be a conservative female, it's even one thing to be a conservative female voting Bush, but it's quite another matter to go out and spread such violently anti-woman beliefs.
I was just browsing the Coulter archive over at Townhall, and she kicks off one article with the line
"How many people have to die before the country stops humoring feminists?"
Well, your readers are humoring you. So maybe you shouldn't stop asking. Maybe you should thank feminists 'cause they're why you're being read at all. Unless you don't want your fans to read you, and that would cut down on all the money you make off those quickie books.
Anybody have any ideas what makes her tick?
Comments
First, I really enjoy the "I'm a stand-up comic" rebranding efforts we've seen of late. It sounds for all the world as if her people told her, "Ann, your demo skews a little, uh, short of disposable income."
As for why she's ticking, I suggest we look at her age bracket. And yes, I suggest this with a straight face. Where the Cheneys of the world faced a counterculture that prevented them from getting laid in their formative years, for Ann--presumably high school in the mid-70s, undergrad in the late-70s to early Reagan--the counterculture, or a third-generation mimeograph of it, was the culture: 8 Tracks, smokin' doobies and going to concerts, but the anti-Sixties backlash was now railing against the established order instead of vice-versa. It's probably still about getting laid, but the strategem now is "If I can't be cool I'll pretend to be smarter than everybody else."
Aside from those who were indoctrinated from an early age, if you look at this stuff as a lifelong mission to even old scores from high school it begins to make perfect sense.
Posted by: doghouse riley | April 25, 2005 08:54 AM
DP, i know our political ideologies don't always jive, but i still love what you have to say, and even better, the way you say it! and i would never say that you don't try to understand the other side. :)
keep it up, Pepper. i'll be back...
Posted by: grackyfrogg | April 25, 2005 10:56 AM
Thanks for stopping by, ya'll! I'm getting a big kick out of this conversation. Doghouse, I love what you have to say that Ann was reacting against the counterculture. Much of her lines are flat-out anti-hippie hysteria. Perhaps she was mortified by her parents and her older brothers - who are mentioned in the article but not described in much detail, and she felt that she had to act out to get attention. Maybe all of this is just acting out ...
But now I'm trying to get my mitts on some of what she wrote at Cornell because at some point in her career, there was a feminist inside that body screaming to get out.
Posted by: Pepper | April 25, 2005 09:56 PM