Never trust a lawyer

[fpb]

It was once possible to believe that Ann Coulter was, if not either couth or convincing, at least convinced; that what she said, she believed. I even once had an argument with someone on the issue. Well, as far as I am concerned that was disproved to the hilt by her behaviour in the last election, where that supposed maenad of the movement right aimed all her slings and arrows at John McCain - even going on the record as saying that he was more liberal than HIlary Clinton! - while promoting, as the hero of the conservative conscience, none other than the sleazy, conscienceless, thousand-faced deal-maker Mitt Romney!

For anyone who wanted to see, that should have been the sign that this posturing professional of aggression and insult was in the pocket of the party establishment, the RINOs and Rowes, and that her game was to keep conservative anger stoked while herding it along safe, establishment-friendly ways. Anyone who supports Romney - or Giuliani, for that matter - cannot possibly be a serious conservative. Even the poor excuse that his shameless performance as Governor of Massachusetts was dictated by the complexion of that state holds no water: Romney had no need to look for the governorship of Massachusetts, of all the States of the Union. How about Utah, for instance, the Mormon homeland, whose winter Olympics he was reputed to have saved? And this was the man Coulter promoted to her readers as the champion of conservative causes.

Now, however, it has to be impossible to hold any illusion about her genuineness. Anyone who does not agree that she is a party hack eagerly in the service of party management must be wilfully blind. Some of us still remember one of her low points, when she made a nasty joke about John Edwards, with the clear implication that, one, Edwards was homosexual, and, two, that this made him contemptible (http://fpb.livejournal.com/231050.html). Well, now it seems that homosexuals are only contemptible if they are Democrats. Republican homosexuals are fine, upstanding members of the community, whose money she is glad to take as keynote speaker in a meeting. What a complete fake.

Comments

Even more than a fake

[theeditrix.livejournal.com]

To me she seems to be more than just a fake. She is intentionally cruel and out to deliberately hurt people. Now you can say I am doing that as well, but that is not the case. (That I am read by a few hundred -- if that -- and she by millions doesn't make any difference because it's a matter of principle.) I attack the wilful destroyers of values and their enablers, the pompous, the smug, the hypocrites, the intellectual dishonest. I try to inform and, to a lesser extent, to amuse. I am not out for cheap shots, although I rarely resist if they are served to me on a silver platter. No doubt I make mistakes and suffer lapses of taste, but that woman THRIVES on it. She reminds me of the proverbial bloodthirsty hags who sat during the Reign of Terror in a front-row seat, knitting, and watching gleefully the guillotine making inroads into the French population.

Re: Even more than a fake

[fpb.livejournal.com]

I think this has something to do with her professional background. A few years ago, I clashed head-on with a female American lawyer, who, at the time, was a big shot in Harry Potter fandom. What eventually struck me about this person is that she had no notion of moral superiority or inferiority at all. She seemed genuinely convinced that getting a favourable decision any old how was in and of itself a moral victory. Some American law schools turn out some pretty funny products; I don't know whether they deform their students as they teach, or whether they attract students already deformed, but Coulter's attitude seems to me typical, and that is why I mentioned her former profession in the title.

Re: Even more than a fake

[theeditrix.livejournal.com]

That is interesting. It goes together with what I've heard from Americans I respect. I don't know America well enough to form an idependent opinion. My guess would be that it's the systen that corrupts its members. Law is not a field like, say, psychology that is bound to attract already deformed personalities. I may be wrong.

Re: Even more than a fake

[fpb.livejournal.com]

Of course, you can find it elsewhere, such as in the criminal motto that's gone around in American sports in the last few decades: "Winning is not everything, it's the only thing". The obvious answer is that one would rather be Roland at Roncesvalles than Frederick II of Prussia at any one of his stunning victories, or indeed Socrates losing his suit for his life rather than whoever it was who won the Dred Scott decision. But the poisonous results of this mentality can be seen in the fact that, after the end of the DDR, American universities and sports institutions went on a buying spree of former East German coaches, exactly for their expertise in cheating and in poisoning their charges. The result is that American athletics has been revealed as a swamp of corruption whose depth may never be sounded, and that at least one supposed world record holder died at 37 - like so many unhappy East German girls - of unclear causes. The obsession with success at all costs is poisonous, and, among other things, it breeds the partisan crush-the-enemy attitude in which Coulter revels.