Lies & the Lying Liars Who Tell Them_ A Fair & Balanced Look at the Right - Al Franken [9]
Let’s look at some of the arguments this grown-up makes.
Christie Whitman is a “birdbrain.”
Katie Couric is “an airhead.”
Adlai Stevenson was “a boob.”
Gerald Ford was “a little dumb.”
New Mexico Governor Gary Johnson is “truly stupid.”
Oh, in addition to being a “birdbrain,” Christie Whitman is also a “dim-wit.”
Maine Senator Susan Collins is a “half-wit.”
And so is “half-wit” Jim Jeffords, the Vermont senator who defected from the Republican party. He’s also “D-U-M-M.”
And what really burns Coulter is that, in the fawning liberal media,
Jim Jeffords’s degree from Yale cannot be cited often enough. (And consider that Jeffords got into Yale long before the terrorizing regime of the SATs, back when admission to the Ivy Leagues turned on social class rather than standardized tests.)
Quick. Yale, low SATs, social class? You thinking about who I’m thinking about?
Yet, on page 33, how does Coulter answer people who think our president may not be the brightest star in the firmament? Why, he “graduated from Yale College and Harvard Business School.”
So consistency is not the woman’s strong point. Take, for example, Chapter Two, “The Gucci Position on Domestic Policy,” where we’re told that “liberals thrive on the attractions of snobbery” and that “Democrats actually hate working-class people”!
Later Coulter calls the phrase “working families” “a euphemism for families in which no one works.”
Does that seem maybe the tiniest bit elitist to you? And can you imagine just how hard Ann Coulter works! It takes time and effort to find stuff to take out of context, to make up or distort things that The New York Times did or did not print, to devise overloaded Nexis searches, to . . . wait a minute. No, that’s wrong. I’ve been doing a lot of fact-checking and such (or at least TeamFranken has), and by God, it’s a lot more work than just making shit up. No, come to think of it, Coulter is just plain lazy.
But then again, like any movement conservative, Coulter is a firm believer in the free market. By definition, anything that succeeds in “the marketplace of ideas,” like her books, must inherently be of value. And, therefore, unlike members of working families, she really does work for a living.
Here’s something to think about, though. A friend of mine works in the hotel industry. About 65 percent of the movies that are ordered in hotels are “adult movies.” Clearly, two blondes going down on each other is a real winner in the marketplace of ideas. My all-time favorite stat: The average length of time those movies are on is . . . twelve minutes. That is my favorite statistic in life.
What Coulter writes is political pornography. She aims directly at her readers’ basest instincts. Pornography may serve as a welcome release for Republican businessmen on the road, and as a profit center for Marriott, Hyatt, Sheraton, Radisson, and other big GOP donors, but it doesn’t pretend to be something it’s not. That’s why the titles don’t appear on your bill.
Though it may surprise you, I have a great deal of respect for many conservatives in the media. Terry Bradshaw, for example. And what shocked me most following the publication of Slander was the silence from those conservatives who complain about the ugliness of political discourse in this country.
Liberals don’t hate America. We love America more than Ann Coulter does. I love it enough to engage my readers honestly.
As I was putting this book to bed, Coulter’s new book, Treason: Liberal Treachery from the Cold War to the War on Terrorism, slithered onto the shelves. All indications are that it will be a best-seller. Based on TeamFranken’s preliminary analysis, I can tell you she’s done it again. But in lieu of a full-blown dissection, for now, I will dispense with Treason with a limerick.
A woman named Coulter cried “Treason.”
She did it without any reason.
Though we know that she lied,
’Twas perhaps justified:
On her brain, I’m afraid, there’s a lesion.