LAT: Coulter's anti-Semitic comment too dangerous to ignore

[rodeodance]

Tim Rutten:
Regarding Media
Coulter's anti-Semitic comment too dangerous to ignore

http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/news/la-et-rutten13oct13,0,1859447.column?coll=la-home-center

October 13, 2007

Ann Coulter is buzzing from one talk show to another these days, peddling her new book. Our era values mindless contention as a kind of entertainment, and we don't just reward relentless self-promotion -- we admire it. Thus, Coulter's phenomenal success at marketing distasteful, mean-spirited books -- poorly written and spottily researched -- that otherwise would go all but unremarked upon by everyone except the rhetorical ghouls who haunt the political fringes.

Now, no Coulter promotional campaign would be complete without a calculated outrage -- a call for the forcible conversion of all Muslims, for example, or a demand for revocation of women's suffrage, an insult hurled at gays or the grieving widows of Sept. 11 victims. As more than one political consultant has remarked, the American far right is a carnivorous constituency, and it needs to be regularly thrown red meat. Coulter's singular genius has been to ignite tightly focused and timely controversies, thereby getting her ideological opponents to toss the scraps to her fans.

So if you know what's coming, why play ball and deliver the denunciation that validates the Coulter strategy?

In part, it's because this time Coulter didn't intend to ignite the firestorm that's currently raging around her; in part, it's because the implications of these latest remarks simply are too threatening to be allowed to stand.

[iamjoy]

1. It's Certainly Harder To Defend

I mean, lots of other things, some of her supporters could say she was joking. I would call it kidding on the square, but some people think she's being funny, or just (trying to get attention by) being (deliberately) provocative (as the article points out).

I don't see how you could say this was a joke. In many ways, this is as bad as Imus' crude sexist and racist remarks. Imus was just commenting when he made his insult. Behind them were hundreds of years of white oppression of African Americans. Coulter's words may have been more mild, but the meaning behind them is worse. If you are not Christian, there is no place for you in her vision of America. Behind that idea is millenia of persecution.

What's scarier is I think many evangelicals privately agree. They just have the sense not to admit it.


disclosure: I was raised Jewish and feel it as a part of my heritage. However, my "religion" now is more secular humanist.

[pretzel4gore]

2. 'father rick' neuhause says the same

Anus Kkkoulter might be crude, in the rush limbah(humbug) way, but fr. neuhause, who converted to catholicism from the holy rollers, and is the youngster bush's white house 'spiritual' adviser, or some goddamned thing, says it thus: he says unless you're a 'christian,' you cannot really be a patriot, because only a 'christian' is imbued with the essential goodness/wisdom to see and understand what it is that makes america great. A lack of faith (in the blonde jesus, apparently) means an inability to reason as a true patriot reasons, and support the war against the drug fiends, etc. And neuhause sounded rather sad, fulla pity for fools, moved in gentle concern, for us while telling CBC interviewer Michael Enright this.
And Enright strokes his chin, thinking about the leg o mutton he'll be having for supper
http://www.mediatransparency.org/storyprinterfriendly.php?storyID=142

[Red Zelda]

3. "singular genius" ????

NO. Please understand the difference between genius and a packaged insanity given avenues of attention/credibility by media that are complete whores for anything outrageous.