Hi, Kirby and the Interested, from Joe Bonelli
I just saw on the internet that the unpleasant Ms. Coulter and George Carlin will both be guests on Wednesday night's TONIGHT SHOW on NBC in the USA.
Could possibly be some fireworks and Carlin might actually utter some of those famous Words You Can't Say on TV.
Could be fun.
Joe
Kirby McDaniel <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
Kirby McDaniel <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
Continuing an OFF TOPIC topic that has interested some on the list,
here is an
article in today's NY Times by David Carr which discusses Miss
Coulter and her charms. Quite
topical if I do say so. It is dead-on accurate.
Kirby
June 12, 2006
David Carr
Deadly Intent: Ann Coulter, Word Warrior
ONCE again, Ann Coulter has a book in need of flogging, and once
again, people are stunned by what a "vicious," "mean-spirited,"
"despicable" "hate-monger" they say she is.
Ms. Coulter, who seems afflicted by a kind of rhetorical compulsion,
most recently labeled the widows of 9/11 "harpies." It is just one in
a series from a spoken-word hit parade that seems to fly out of her
mouth uninterrupted by conscience, rectitude or logic.
But Ann Coulter knows precisely what she is saying. Her current book,
"Godless: The Church of Liberalism," is heading to the best-seller
lists in part because she has a significant constituency and in part
because no other author in American publishing is better at
weaponizing words. With five books and more than a million copies in
hardcover sales, she plays to win and is happy to take hostages along
the way, including the women she calls "The Witches of East Brunswick."
"These broads are millionaires, lionized on TV and in articles about
them, reveling in their status as celebrities and stalked by grief-
arazzis. I have never seen people enjoying their husband's death so
much." That typical Coulter sortie was hardly a misstep on some
overamped talk show. That doozy of a sentence was written, edited,
lawyered and then published. By now, she, along with Crown
Publishing, have come up with a dexterous formula for kicking up the
kind of fuss that sells books. It looks something like this:
She did not come out of the gate with such ruthless aplomb. As
published at the height of the Clinton-Lewinsky scandal in 1998,
"High Crimes and Misdemeanors" reflected her background as a lawyer
and was fairly scholarly, considering what came after it. But once
her lethally blond franchise became part of public consciousness, or
at least the lower stem of it that feeds off cable talk, she quickly
learned that hyperbole is best sold by the ton.
She has since suggested wistfully that Timothy McVeigh should have
parked his truck in front of The New York Times, joked that a Supreme
Court justice should be poisoned, and said that America should invade
Muslim countries and kill their leaders. And she recently admitted
that she is "no big fan" of the First Amendment that allowed her to
say all of that.
"She is so smart that none of it is by accident," said Adrian
Zackheim, the publisher of Portfolio, a business imprint, and of
Sentinel, a conservative political imprint. "She knows that a few
things she says are bound to get attention. She just probably doesn't
know which one."
But once attention, negative or otherwise, turns toward her, she is
all knuckles and know-how. When Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton
suggested that her attack on the widows was "vicious," Ms. Coulter
went casually nuclear, saying that the senator "should talk to her
husband, who was accused of rape by Juanita Broaddrick."
The second-stage rollout picking a fight with Senator Clinton is a
way, as they say in politics, to "activate the base." Only the
returns will be financial, not political.
"Every single book she has done has become an instant best-seller,"
said Bob Wietrak, a vice president for merchandising at Barnes &
Noble. "Her fan base is phenomenal and she is in the media
constantly. When she is in the media, it creates more media coverage.
And every single day, the book sells more."
You get the idea. Wagging tongue, wagging fingers and before you know
it, soon enough you have hundreds of hits on Google News for days to
come (this column among them).
And just when things threaten to slow down, Ms. Coulter will saw into
Cindy Sheehan, who lost her son in Iraq, describing her as "a C-list
celebrity trolling for a book deal or a reality show," or accuse a
disabled Vietnam vet she was arguing with on a talk show of being
part of the reason the United States lost the war there. Her attacks
on the maimed or the bereft engage the thermodynamics of the media
marketplace to send her to even loftier heights.
An explosive device is now baked into every book. For "Slander:
Liberal Lies About the American Right (333,000 in hardcover sales,
according to Nielsen Bookscan), she called Katie Couric "the affable
Eva Braun of morning TV." We all tuned in for the ensuing cage match,
in which Ms. Couric maintained both the higher ground and the upper
hand. (That interview came to mind last week when Ms. Coulter, back
on a Couric-less "Today" program, treated Matt Lauer like a cat toy.)
When she was pushing "Treason: Liberal Treachery From the Cold War to
the War on Terrorism," (almost 400,000 in sales), it was all about
the misunderstood genius and patriotism of Senator Joseph R.
McCarthy. In "How to Talk to a Liberal (If You Must)", she let
readers in on the playbook: "You must outrage the enemy. If you don't
leave liberals in a sputtering impotent rage, you're not doing it
right." And her sales of 301,000 for what was basically a collection
of columns seem to indicate that she has mastered the form.
"Godless," which is already doing gangbuster business according to
the folks at Barnes & Noble, suggests that liberalism "is the
doctrine that prompts otherwise seemingly sane people to propose
teaching children how to masturbate, allowing gays to marry,
releasing murderers from prison, and teaching children that they
share a common ancestor with the earthworm."
Does she believe any of this stuff? I doubt she even knows. When I
profiled Ms. Coulter a few years ago, I never figured out the line
between her art and her artifice. She picked at her plate of lobster
ravioli before serving up Fred Flintstone-size slabs of red meat. For
the duration of the media opportunity, she was playful and on point,
other than fibbing about her age, because she cares deeply about the
franchise.
Her sincerity is beside the point as long as people keep taking the
bait. Mrs. Clinton, who is the perfect foil for Ms. Coulter
ambitious, allergic to irony, loathed by the people who will line up
for "Godless" simply added fuel to a fire that she was presumably
trying to douse. All manner of televised talkfests, including
"Today," welcome Ms. Coulter's pirate sensibilities back aboard
whenever she has something to peddle, in part because seeing hate-
speech pop out of a blonde who knows her way around a black cocktail
dress makes for compelling viewing.
Without the total package, Ms. Coulter would be just one more nut
living in Mom's basement. You can accuse her of cynicism all you
want, but the fact that she is one of the leading political writers
of our age says something about the rest of us.
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