Thursday, October 13, 2005

Is This Love in My Heart for Ann Coulter?

Today Sharon Cobb highlights Ann Coulter's column, which is brilliant, incisive, witty, and completely right. Every word of it. Yes, I know. I did, in fact, say that Vanderbilt inviting her to come and speak was akin to asking Matt Hale over to dinner. I did call her "Hate-Filled Barbie" (which I still think is funny as shit and mostly accurate). And yet, here I am liberal blogging genius*, agreeing with her. Is it the drugs? Is Kat's prediction finally coming true--did I wake up this morning more conservative than I could have ever feared? What's going on? To answer your question, let's go back to the summer I lived with the Libertarian and the soccer team. Living with the soccer team was easy--"Hey, B., are you up?/Home from work?/Not yet passed out? We're going to get some beer. Should we bring you some?" Living with the Libertarian was nice, because I could sit in at his computer, listen to Hole, play Civilization II, and drink said beer, as long as I was willing to put up with him sitting on his bed with his one-hitter telling me all of the ways I was wrong about life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness and how one day I'd surely wise up. So, I've known him since I was twenty. And for the Clinton administration, the dynamic of our friendship was him bitching about me selling myself short by, in part, not embracing the genius of Libertarianism, and bitching about how cruel all my friends he was trying to sleep with were. And I would smoke his cigars and drink his strange lime concoctions and disagree. It was good fun. Like the best professional wrestling matches, two equally matched opponents with mutual admiration, each trying to outwit the other. Things dramatically changed under Bush. I kind of knew it on the phone. He would call to say "I'm getting married and, oh, by the way, this George Bush dude is a moron." and I would say, "Wow, congratulations, and, yes, you're right" and he would say, "did you just agree with me?" and I would say, "oh, look at how late it's getting. I have to go." But the change was really apparent when I sat in his dining room watching his kid play on the floor, struggling to remember enough Russian to speak to his wife, and trying to argue with him about politics, just like the old days. Except, we just didn't have that much to argue about. Bush had clearly warped the political geography in such a way that the two of us, obviously on opposite sides of every argument, found ourselves standing on a landscape that used to be flat and round like a pancake, but now was twisted and bent like a fortune cookie, with me still in the same spot, him still in the same spot, but our two points brought closely together by circumstance. And so, in the end, I'm not surprised to find that Bush would continue to act like a giant black hole, strong enough to warp space, time, and politics so that we could reach a point where I was finding myself in agreement with Ann Coulter. But what really bothers me about it is this nagging question I have in the back of my head--what if she's always been funny and I've just missed it because I have always thought she was an insane, hate-filled shrew? Ah, well, I'm not going to worry about it that much. A stopped clock is right twice a day. I suppose Hate-Filled Barbie is going to occasionally be right as well. *Obviously, America, I am not actually a genius. I just play one on the internet.

27 Comments:

Blogger tls said...

It is a little frightening to find yourself agreeing with Ann Coulter.

Also, re: The Libertarian, I thought LE had renamed him The Contrarian?

10/13/2005 11:53:00 AM  
Blogger Aunt B said...

Ah, I totally forgot! The LE did rename him--and accurately, I might add--and it slipped my mind.

I get distracted when I think of those Cuban cigars he brought to your wedding...

My god. I'm so easy.

10/13/2005 12:03:00 PM  
Blogger Peggasus said...

Ah, but you are a genius, as evidenced by the fortune cookie analogy and visual.

10/13/2005 12:13:00 PM  
Blogger Sharon Cobb said...

Aunt B--
We are in the same boat, and it feels like a sinking ship to be agreeing with Ann. But here we are, two liberal grrls agreeing with our #1 nemesis.

How much further are we going to sink? You have my permission to put me to sleep if I ever agree with Rush L.

10/13/2005 12:57:00 PM  
Blogger John H said...

hey, even Peggy Noonan is starting to make sense, and she is far more subversive than Coulter, because Noonan is not a raving attention-seeking hate-filled barbie..she's an intelligient, literate nice-sounding but iron-fisted Barbie

10/13/2005 01:47:00 PM  
Blogger Aunt B said...

My god, Sharon, if we start agreeing with Rush... Shoot, I'd pack up Tiny Cat Pants and recast it as one of those pink things describing all of the "exciting" things I've recently bought and all the cute boys I fuck after picking them up at bars and how kewl Laguna Beach is. I just couldn't go on after that.

10/13/2005 02:47:00 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

I swear if you ever use the word kewl again I will come down there and we will have a come to Jesus/the deity(ies) of your choice meeting. And it won't be all fun and games. The dog whisperer knows how I feel about that word.

It is scary to agree with the woman, but I have found it very insulting that this is supposedly the most highly qualified woman for the job. Please.

-SuperGenius

10/13/2005 04:03:00 PM  
Blogger Lee said...

Here's one person on the right who always kinda believed Coulter an "insane, hate-filled shrew." Just one who unfortunately happened to agree with me. She's right about Miers, except one thing that gets to me.

Why bitch about her schooling at SMU, when the woman is 60! Complaining about the woman's qualifications is not elitism, but complaining about where she went to school 30+ years ago is, especially when Coulter herself went to Cornell.

Miers is easily not qualified, but not because she went to SMU.

10/13/2005 04:11:00 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

I seem to remember from that exchange over the summer that you wanted her dead (Coulter, not Miers, although you may have wanted her dead as well) or at least muzzled. And yet, just a few months later you are forced to eat a bit of crow, shocked by the true brilliance she embodies. I would gloat, but that isn't in my nature, I was gonna just sit here in bemused silence, but that, apparently, isn't in my nature either...

In response to Lee, it matters where she went to school because of the symbolism of the court. The supremes are or were held out to be the shining example, the best and brightest legal minds available. If there is any position in our gov't where we should be elitist, this is precisely that place. If she (Miers) were otherwise qualified and had done something after lawschool to justify the nomination then it would matter less where she happened to be educated. (this is the principle point of Coulter's piece) But because she is so stunningly unqualified, the fact that she was educated at a school not even ranked in the top 50 and did not even graduate at the top of her class sticks out like a sore thumb. (Coulter, by the by, did her law school at Michigan, not Cornell, top 10 and top 25 lawschools, respectively. She did her undergrad at Cornell). We are educations snobs in this country (or maybe its just me and I am projecting) and people believe that Harvard is better than the University of East Bumblefuck. Because this is as much a symbolic position as it is an intellectual one, we want people who are the best educated, best prepared, instead we got a middling spinster less qualified than Coulter herself.

LE

10/13/2005 04:42:00 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Yeah, the Ivy League/"top ten" schools have done a bang-up job job transforming this country from an industrial/technological/economic powerhouse into a service-based economy populated by mouth-breathers and sub-retards mewling for their next government cheese handout in order to feed their unending supply of entitlement babies or a spot on the latest reality show humilation fest. All hail our superiorly educated masters!

And explain to me, just for the curiousity factor, why having a top ten anything is important. And to whom is it important? To follow that "top ten" line of reasoning, Shania Twain consistently releases music that goes to the top of the charts, Liz Phair's music does not. By your logic Ms. Twain is more qualified to be a musical artist than Ms. Phair.

For a real world application, Dwight D. Eisenhower evidently wasn't qualified to be in charge of the invasion of Europe or, gasp, be elected President, as he graduated at the bottom of his class at West Point.

Gosh, tell us more about this "best and the brightest". I understand they came up with an excellent strategy in Vietnam, but my crappy state college education didn't allow me to read up on how the whole thing turned out.

10/13/2005 05:15:00 PM  
Blogger Aunt B said...

Why, god, why is it today, when I am on the verge of death, that my conservative readers finally turn on each other? Why, when I'm too sick to enjoy it?

10/13/2005 05:44:00 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

This is why I'm witholding NyQuil from you.

10/13/2005 06:17:00 PM  
Blogger Aunt B said...

You're heartless, old man. I was miserable and desperate (and braless, so your loss). If I die, I'm totally haunting your ass. Well, obviously, not just your ass, because that would be pretty boring. I'll haunt all of you, drunkard.

Anyway, I'm all drugged up now, thanks to the Professor. And enjoying watching y'all circle suspiciously around each other. Fight on, boys.

LE, Sarcastro's calling you an elitest snob. Sarcastro, such an accusation is going to have little effect on him, though he might say that he, too, went to a state school. LE, will you get into why you think Libertarianism is stupid? Sarcastro, will you counter with accusations of LE not being committed enough to true reformation?

I can't wait.

10/13/2005 06:41:00 PM  
Blogger Vol Abroad said...

Yep, I feel myself losing my grip on reality, but I agreed with that Ann Coulter column.

Wow.

10/14/2005 07:58:00 AM  
Blogger Kat Coble said...

I, of course, side completely with Sarcastro on this point.

Apparently we've made affordable, attainable college education such a reality in this country that we still have to find a way to shoehorn elitism into the equation. "Oh. You have a college degree! Good for you! But is it the right kind of college degree?"

They used to want to make the world a better place. Now they call graduates from the Ivy Leagues "world beaters." As if the rest of us were the enemy, needing to be vanquished and asking to be conquered.

Pass that NyQuil

10/14/2005 12:07:00 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

The only thing worth a shit to come out of Hahhvahhhd in the last twenty years is The Simpson's writing staff.

10/14/2005 12:58:00 PM  
Blogger Aunt B said...

Okay, yes but don't we want the "best" people we can get for jobs? How do we judge whether they're the best if we don't use some kind of semi-arbitrary criteria?

10/14/2005 01:06:00 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Go on and believe that some sort of meritocracy is involved in going to the "top schools".

Just look at your employer. Is that big school on West End full of the brightest young people the South has to offer, or is it full of trust fund babies who have parents that don't choke while writing a tuition check?

For that matter, yeah, G.W. Bush got into Yale and Harvard due to hard work, good grades and high test scores.

The idea that going to a particular school makes you more or less "qualified" than someone else, is as idiotic as the idea that going to a particular church makes you a better Christian than the next (sorry Kat) gullible sap.

10/14/2005 01:16:00 PM  
Blogger Aunt B said...

Come now.

You know I don't believe in any such nonsense as "meritocracy" so don't be trying to school me on the folly of it.

I'm just trying to understand how you think these decisions should be made. How should we pick a supreme court nominee?

I think the problem with Miers is that there's very little to go on. We know she likes Bush and he likes her. We know she's an okay lawyer. Does that make her the "best" choice for the Court?

I don't think so. But I like her because she's giving Republicans fits and I think that's more than I could have ever hoped for.

10/14/2005 01:23:00 PM  
Blogger Kat Coble said...

If legacies and tuition weren't such a big part of who gets into the Ivies these days I'd feel less animosity toward them.

My dad went to an Ivy League grad school and one his good friends and a man I highly respect is the Chair for Harvard's department of environmental health or some such. My husband turned down a Harvard scholarship. Two of my closest friends went to Yale. So I'm not without exposure to the Ivies. For every hardworking, brain-busting meritocrat in any Ivy there are 15 Logan Huntsbergers. "I'm bored. Let's steal a yacht." Sure, the "best" may climb out of the Ivy. But how do you, on the basis of alma mater alone tell the difference between Best and Big Enough Checkbook?

You have to have some other quantifiers as well. And since you do...why not just go with those other quantifiers and leave the "my school was founded by stricter Puritans than yours" on the table?

10/14/2005 01:29:00 PM  
Blogger Kat Coble said...

But I like her because she's giving Republicans fits

Trust me. This is not the basis for choosing a SCJ.

10/14/2005 01:30:00 PM  
Blogger Aunt B said...

Well, obviously, there's nothing I can do about her either way, except snipe from the sidelines--as is the way of the blogger--my method for picking a supreme court nominee really doesn't matter.

I honestly think she'll be fine. Not outstanding, but fine.

If I were a Republican, though, and wanted a Justice I thought was loyal to my agenda, she'd scare the heck out of me, because her loyalties seem to be to Bush, not some political party.

10/14/2005 01:35:00 PM  
Blogger Kat Coble said...

I still confess that I know diddlycrap about her and honestly can't bring myself to care.

That may make me the worst woman in the world, but I just really don't know what getting upset will do for me other than make me miserable.

You may be bad for agreeing with Coulter. I think I'm worse for not caring about Miers either way.

10/14/2005 02:25:00 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Oooh, I detest that Logan Huntsberger. Money or not, he isn't good enough for my step-daughter. Er, I mean...that fictional character is ill-suited for the other fictional character whose fictional mother I have a thing for.

10/15/2005 05:53:00 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

To get back on topic, "WE" don't pick a Supreme Court nominee. The President of The United States does. So, if people want to get all pissy about SCOTUS picks, they should pay more attention to whom they elect president.

10/15/2005 06:43:00 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

With a 38% approval rating less a year into the Bush second term, I think a lot of people are wishing they had paid more attention to whom they elected president.

10/15/2005 09:24:00 PM  
Blogger ***n said...

Don't worry. If a Supreme Court nominee isn't right for the job, doesn't the senate commitee figure it out and warn everyone? Right???

10/15/2005 10:45:00 PM  

Post a Comment

<< Home