http://ruthlessreviews.com/books/treason.html
I think the best word to describe Coulter, her work and the fact that she seems to be taken seriously is, 'bizarre.' There's a radio show here in LA, syndicated in some other parts of North America, called "The Phil Hendrie Show." Hendrie interviews himself, playing the roles of crazy guests - lunatics who masturbate to videos of atomic blasts, parents of Texas high school football players who allow the coach molest their son until the end of the season, doctors who recommend locking retarded children up in cages like chimps, Demi Moore and so on. Part of the fun of the show is that people who don't know it is actually Phil doing all the wacky voices call in to argue with the "guests." When I sat down to read and review Coulter's book seriously, I couldn't help but feel like I was one of those callers. Maybe Coulter's real-life appearance on "The Phil Hendrie Show" was a hint that she's pulling a fast one on everybody. This book has to be a joke, and here I am taking it seriously, sort of. Coulter claims to believe that it's patriotic to murder Communist Americans and that the state should be able to prohibit contraception. If I say "you're fucking crazy!" maybe I just become part of the joke. That's why I was originally going to parody this book with a review claiming it was too liberal. "Oh, sure, you defend McCarthy. That's easy. What about a defender of Christianity who has literally been demonized by liberals like Bram Stoker? What about Vlad the Impaler? Or Mengele?"
But then I read the reviews on Amazon and saw that people take this shit seriously, including the Amazon editorial writer, who calls Coulter an "intellectual." Moreover, there are positive quotes about Slander, Coulter's previous book, from publications like The New York Times and the LA Times on the back of Treason. Coulter is on TV all the time and, instead of making her wrestle pigs or balance beach balls on her nose, hosts ask her questions about politics. It's bizarre. Imagine if they had a Math channel, and on "Math Crossfire" they brought in a numerologist and asked him what he thought about imaginary numbers or the topology of the universe. And he said, "well, I think the universe is triangular. There's the holy trinity, the Star Wars trilogy, tricycles. Famous people always die in threes. So the universe must be triangular." And imagine that instead of saying, "go away, you nut" the hosts of "Math Crossfire" took the guy seriously. Wouldn't that be bizarre? So why doesn't anyone think it's bizarre when something equivalent happens in politics? Coulter's reasons like a numerologist. She sounds like a "guest" on Phil Hendrie. Even David Horowitz knows she's off the deep end. He said he stopped liking Coulter's work when he asked "what if it's not satire?" But still, there's Coulter on CNN and in the New York Times. So, I guess I'll take Coulter seriously enough to point out how crazy the viewpoint she presents is, even compared to the views of ordinary lunatics.
Coulter's defense of Joe McCarthy is probably the most publicized aspect of this book. The low quality of her "research" on McCarthy as been exposed elsewhere, but I came across this little nugget, which I don't think anyone else has noticed.
First, here's what Coulter says in Treason:
It ['McCarthyism'] is the code word that must be uttered to gain acceptance into the halls of establishmentarian opinion. Crying "McCarthyism" is the coward's version of "fatwa."
Elsewhere in the book, Coulter says that McCarthyism, "never existed." However, waaaaayyyy back in July of 2002, an interviewer asked Coulter why her column appears on a nutty website. She said:
Um, ah! The famous guilt-by-association. This is um, in, in liberal's lurid nightmares, this is pretty much how McCarthyism works. I write for "Human Events", my flagship newspaper and Ronald Reagan's favorite newspaper. Um, I have a syndicated column that LOTS of people buy I'm proud to say including five to six sites on the internet. Um, uh, if people pay me for my column, um, that's all I'm really interested in. Why don't you find something I've said?
So, is Coulter selling out to get into the establishment by accusing liberals of McCarthyism, or is she issuing the coward's version of the fatwa? And, by the way, is she saying that the normal version of a fatwa isn't cowardly? That sounds like something Bill Maher would say! Traitor! But seriously, she actually whines to an interviewer she is a victim of McCarthyism. Seriously, this is a pretty serious slip up. You don't hear holocaust deniers claiming to have survived the holocaust. You don't hear people who think O.J. was framed expressing fear over the fact that a murderer was freed into their community. Even those crackpots can keep their stories straight.
In a later chapter, Coulter paraphrases one of McCarthy's sleaziest and most bizarre claims: that George Marshall was a commie traitor. On liberals, "As Joe McCarthy said of General George Marshall, if they were merely stupid, the laws of probability would have dictated that at least some of their decisions would have served this country's interest." This part reminds me of Slander in which Coulter writes a chapter claiming that the religious right is a myth dreamt up by the liberal media (which is sort of like saying that cows are a myth dreamt up by griffins) and a few chapters before says that all people who do not accept Christ "burn in hell." It's as if she really doesn't see the reasons for the perceptions of McCarthy or the religious right. The religious right are crazy and evil, specifically because they believe everybody different themselves deserves eternal torment. McCarthy is infamous and (mostly) hated, specifically because he falsely and irresponsibly branded people as traitors and ruined lives. Coulter grants and even embraces the facts, then denies them. It's like someone who both thinks the moon landing was a hoax and believes Neil Armstrong was the first man to walk on the moon. Welcome to Coulter Country.
Less widely discussed, but equally crazy is the chapter on North Korea. Coulter compares the Clinton/Democratic approach of diplomacy toward North Korea to the Bush approach of confrontation. Early on she throws out the old right wing jibe against Clinton: that he's a "pot-smoking, draft dodger." I know kooks like Limbaugh said the same thing throughout Clinton's campaign and tenure, making the phrase a tired cliché before Bubba even took office, but Coulter's use here sticks out nonetheless. First, the old news: Clinton didn't avoid the draft in any unusual or illegal way. He was in college and got a deferment. He also briefly joined the ROTC to avoid being drafted, which was perfectly legal and common. Here's something I've never seen anyone else point out, though. Isn't it kind of weird, almost to the point of craziness, to be so hung up on the fact that someone smoked pot in college? On the vice-meter that's right between buying a lottery ticket and watching Showgirls. I'd be more worried about someone who didn't smoke pot in college.
But here's what makes this use of the cliché special. Over the past three years or so, it's come out that GW was a real draft dodger. In order to avoid being drafted, Bush used his family's influence to get a post in the National Guard that rightfully belonged to someone else. Then he abandoned his post around the time the Guard started testing for drugs. He was also a cokehead and a drunk driver. As a result, most right-wingers have wisely lost their enthusiasm for the subjects of draft dodging and drug use by presidents. Only Coulter is oblivious enough to keep it up.
Do you see the distance between Coulter Country and reality here? Bush might be the only man in history to both successfully dodge the draft and go desert during the same war. Clinton, on the other hand, was a Rhodes Scholar studying abroad at Oxford. When comparing the two men, Coulter calls Clinton the draft dodger. Again, Coulter just isn't up to the usual standards of lunatics. Most loonies at least have enough awareness of reality to avoid criticizing adversaries for minor faults in the areas where they have major faults. Lynden Larouche supporters don't go around accusing Ralph Nader of being a nutty conspiracy theorist. "Oh sure Ralph, the big corporations all get together and influence the government. It's all a big conspiracy, sure. Come back down to earth, buddy. Maybe it's just a simple case of the British monarchy controlling the world's heroin supply through secret societies and heavy metal. Ever think of that, you paranoid buffoon?"
The overall approach of the North Korea chapter is just as nutty. Coulter presents sound criticisms of her view and then doesn't respond to them. For example she says that the US should have bombed North Korea when it began to develop a nuclear capacity. She says that liberals complained that the bombing would probably have lead to a new war in Korea that would have cost millions of lives--at least 100,000 of them American--and that we therefore ought to try negotiation first. Their evidence for the claim was a study by the Pentagon.
And that's it. That's all she says. She doesn't state that the "liberals'" claim is wrong. She doesn't even say that skipping a diplomatic approach to the problem would be worth a second Korean war. She just goes on to talking about how liberals moved from a stance of "appeasement" with respect to North Korea to saying that there was more reason to invade North Korea than Iraq. If we're going to invade Iraq on the basis of their WMDs, those crazy liberals said, we should invade North Korea first because they actually have some. Coulter doesn't really address this point either. She lays it out in such a way that we're supposed to see some kind of contradiction, although there obviously isn't one. The proposition would be something like, "we shouldn't go around invading every country with a weapons program, but if we're going to do so, it doesn't make sense to invade a country that has a pathetic program instead of one with weapons that might actually pose a threat." Right or wrong, there's no contradiction or tension there.
At least on the second point, however, by implying a contradiction, Coulter is using bad reasoning instead of no reasoning. This part of the chapter is just very stupid, as opposed to crazy. The first part is insane. We should have bombed Korea. Here is a great reason why we shouldn't (it would start another war), the end. This time I'll compare Coulter to loony leftists. I think the supporters of Stalin in the U.S. were acting mostly out of ignorance, perhaps willful ignorance. In order to get them into Coulter Country we must imagine that they weren't. We have to imagine a person who says, "Stalin has brought true Communism to Russia! True, the temporary dictatorship of the proletariat has turned into an authoritarian bloodbath that has murdered more people than the Nazis and violates every principle of Marxism," and then he just stops talking and looks at you as though you should be convinced.
The chapter dealing specifically with Iraq is arguably even crazier than the chapter dealing with North Korea. It's full of lies. Crazy lies. One of the most bizarre is the claim that Saddam "has gassed tens of thousands of his own people." The "Saddam gassed his own people" mantra is a distortion at best , but to say that he gassed tens of thousands is just a lie. Coulter knows it's a lie. The fact that she tells this lie when anybody who follows world events would instantly spot it might seem crazy at first, but it could have more to do with disdain for her readers. What's more clearly insane is that the lie is so unnecessary. Saddam has committed so many atrocities that there's really no need to make them up, unless you're a compulsive liar, or just plain nuts. I can't think of any other crazies to measure Coulter against on this one, but what she's doing is like trying to blacken the name of Jeffrey Dahmer by calling him a Nazi.
A bit earlier in the chapter Coulter gives her argument for an Al Quada/Iraq link, most importantly a link between Saddam and 9-11. She complains that liberals claim there is "no evidence" of such a link. This is a false and treasonous liberal mantra, Coulter says. No evidence, no evidence, no evidence. Of course, her book was published before the AP reported GW saying, "We've had no evidence that Saddam Hussein was involved with September the 11th." (He still says there's an Al Qaeda link. The bad guys had coffee together or something.) Anyway, Coulter goes on to point out that that the Czech intelligence agency claimed that an Iraqi operative met with a member of Al Qada. She concludes the paragraph by saying, "The CIA discounted that claim, but it's not 'no evidence.'" That is the actual quote from the book. I promise. I triple checked. She actually says that. I mean, technically Coulter is right. It's not "no evidence." It's discredited evidence, but still. You don't hear people who believe in the loch ness monster citing the Surgeon's Photo in support of their beliefs since the man who shot the photo has admitted it's a fake. "Oh sure, it's a fake picture. But it's not "no picture."
During the conclusion of Treason any veneer of sanity falls away. Coulter's final tirade boarders on "word salad." She says that liberals think they are gods, that they favor anarchy and at the same time, fundamentalist Islamic theocracy. Actually, she says they favor fundamentalist, Islamic theocracy because they favor anarchy. They hate America and civilization. They also like sex too much, which means they don't like sex at all. She implies that fathers of children born out of wedlock shouldn't have parental rights and that mothers of children born out of wedlock shouldn't get child support. She mentions social security. She says Arafat and Clinton are moral equivalents. Liberals will defend anyone as long as he's a liar. Anybody who values language will value truth and anyone who values truth will be a rightist. Ezra Pound was a traitor. The Junior Anti-Sex League in Orwell's 1984 actually satirizes promiscuity rather than sexual repression. The New York Times is immoral for celebrating "trophy wives." She says all of this and a bit more in two pages. Eight paragraphs. Here's a sample sentence, "They [liberals] adore pornography and the mechanization of sex because man is just an animal, and they are gods." Huh? Animals or gods, which is it? Here's another: "The Democratic Party formed a cordon around Bill Clinton [during the impeachment] as hysterical fascist banshees screamed that 'everybody does it.'" Fascists? OK. So liberals are fascist are communist are anarchist are supporters of Islamists who think they are gods who think they are animals. Because they don't value the precision of language. No wonder Chris Mathews can't shut up about what a good writer she is. No wonder the Washington Post published a review of Slander that said, "she can harness such language to subtle, syllogistic argument."
Included above is one final bit of nuttiness that I have to address specifically even though I was planning to wind things up at this point. Coulter loves to cite Orwell. This is so weird and crazy that it's one of the primary reasons I honestly suspect that her whole career has been a hoax and that the Orwell citations, like the Phil Hendrie radio appearance I mentioned in the first paragraph, are intended as hints. Here's a right wing fanatic who thinks that anybody who is critical of the right is a traitor and at the same time regularly cites Orwell in support of her view! Fantastic! And not Animal Farm, but always 1984, a cautionary tail written by a socialist about a right wing, totalitarian state where dissent is equated with treason. The Anti-Sex League reference is a prime example. Coulter feels that looking at our present political landscape, Orwell's depiction of a right-wing effort to repress sexuality pertains, not to right-wing efforts to repress sexuality, but to those who oppose such efforts. It's like Pat Robertson quoting Nietzsche, but worse because Coulter's use of Orwell is just so fucking Orwellian. War is peace. Anti-sex is pro-sex. Is it possible that she doesn't see this? I'm not so sure.
One Last Thing
Since the release of Treason, other right-wing pundits have been distancing themselves from Coulter, even though they loved her previous work, which was only incrementally saner and less self-satirizing. There was an article on slate.com theorizing that Coulter is being abandoned because she is too honest in her embrace of McCarthyism. Andrew Sullivan wants to equate dissent with treason, the article pointed out. He'd just prefer to do it more subtly with talk about a "5th column." But Coulter pointing out that the right's most recent "with us or against us" bullshit follows the model of McCarthyism is horrible PR.
I think the article touched on the truth. This is a topic for a rant or something, but Coulter and company represent a movement of right-wing apes who have nothing to do with conservatism. The real problem for those in charge of the apes is that Coulter exposes the idiocy of their rhetoric because she caries their views, on a wide range of subjects, to logical conclusions, effectively producing satire. I wonder if some of these rightists are beginning to suspect what I suspect. Maybe instead of asking himself "what if it's not satire?" Horowitz really asked himself "what if it's not the kind of satire I think it is?" But The New York Times and CNN still take her seriously and at face value, which is funny, I guess.
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p.s. my friend's neo-con roommate spent three hours defending ann coulter to me one night. she was also tripping on acid. no joke. this fucked up, acid tripping, drum and bass neo con girl talked about how fucking "brilliant" and "right on" ann coulter is for three gd hours. it was like being trapped in a coen brothers movie.
Linear Mode
