Why we can't afford to ignore Ann Coulter (nor will it have any effect on her ontological status)
This morning in my inbox was the latest "Shortlist" missive from Borders, which has a new program called "Rewards" which lets you get a few pence off your purchase each time you remember to show them your handy-dandy keychain barcode, for no signup cost at all unlike B&N's, which is great if you're not paranoid enough to worry over the fact that now they'll be keeping track of all the skiffy, murder mysteries, theology books and art-books-off-the-discount-table that you buy. I'm not; if it ever ends up where the fact that I drove to Nashua/Concord on the Xth of Whatember to buy the new C.J. Cherryh in hardback, or my sixth [recorded] purchase of the Pocket Tao Teh Ching (what does she do with them all?) is evidence at my show trial as an Enemy of the People, it's not gonna matter anyway; and the things that they think are worth telling their customers about - pushing, rather than passively selling - are interesting to me. Plus, free coffee coupons.
Anyway, I opened it up this a.m. to see if there was anything interesting, and the first item, under the bold heading terrorist plots was a tandem set, with John Updike and someone I'm not even glancingly familiar with named Yasmina Khadra both having new books on terrorism (it's all one big nice graphically-designed graphic which I'm not going to type in because I'm lazy; here's the link to the Updike and the Khadra.)
And the number 2 book on the Shortlist, under the bold heading liberal bias, was Ann Coulter's Godless.
Here's their blurb: When it comes to Ann Coulter, there's just no sitting on the fence-and that goes both for the views of this political firebrand and people's reactions to them. In her latest book, Godless, she outlines her argument that liberalism is a bona fide religion, with its own saints, martyrs, sacred texts, high priests, and belief in the supernatural. It's another pointed Coulter attack that's straight out of Right field, and the only thing liberal about it is the scorn. Also available as an audiobook on CD.
Audio Excerpt from Godless
"AMERICA NEEDS FEWER LIBERALS":
Interview with Ann Coulter
Can't We All Just Get Along?
More New Books
So long as Borders - which makes no political contributions to anyone, according to Buy Blue - is willing to peddle this eliminationist rhetoric for a quick buck, to push it with a dramatic 40% discount (the only reason that Borders can make any money at all doing this is that they are so big that they can buy in bulk enough to get an even better price from publishers than the usual 40% reseller discount, but they're not making a whole lot of money unless Regnery Random House is selling them at a loss) then the fact that it's illogical, factually-incorrect, histrionic drivel is irrelevant. What is going on is (as Orcinus has so often and eloquently pointed out) the mainstreaming of certain memes, the constant dinning of accusations and specious linkages over and over and over again out in the agora of the bookstore and the TV and the radio, until people take them for granted and don't even question them, just assume that it's true unless disproven, "Have you stopped beating your wife Mr. Smith?" - how many people know the truth of the "McDonald's Coffee case" and how many people think they do, largely due to the activities of Limbutt?
The legitimizing of such hate speech is represented not just by Borders' pimping of the book, but by the fact that it wasn't Regnery who published her this time, nor any dedicated partisan line, but Random House under their Crown Books imprint. Random House (!!!) has decided that the Coulter bandwagon is worth jumping on. Probably all that seeing her on CNN helped do the trick. No, here we also see legitimizing of the sort conveyed by talk shows like CNN and magazines like Time when they have her on and talk to her seriously and let her make her insane accusations and treat them as if, at worst, they're a little outrageously naughty in an eccentric sort of way, like Tom Cruise jumping on the sofa, not as if here is a college-educated, highly-paid public speaker with a law degree, advocating bashing in the skulls of political opponents with blunt objects, and the rest of the conservatives on their "he said/she said" list have called the other authors and their allies untermenschen as well as traitors.
Though the strong-willed, super-charged, highly opinionated people on this list might find it distasteful, we've made a point below of alternating liberal and conservative viewpoints at our table. Maybe they can mix and mingle some, share pictures of their children. Break bread. Maybe even smile.
Oh, the coy, cutesy, faux-naive (or mebbe not) "can't we all be friends?" shtik of the Borders copywriter! Yes, let's have "kill them all, let God (ours, the only) sort 'em out" crew of O'Reilly and Hannity and bully-boy "Savage" Weiner make nice with liberal authors who, no matter how cruelly, cuttingly sarcastic* they may get at times, have never called for the mass executions or deportations or imprisonment of political rivals. In the wake of the mild remonstration that one talk show host finally put up this past weekend, to Coulter reiterating and defending her ad hom attacks on the 9/11 widows for daring to engage in the lese majeste of demanding an investigation, World o'Crap put up a much better retort. But they're one, moderately-famous, private blog. Against CNN/Rupert Murdoch/Random House. Who's got better odds?
This is the problem with trusting in the Invisible Hand of the Marketplace to Do The Right Thing when it comes to enforcing the kind of shunning which takes care of hatemongering without need of recourse to laws: since the Invisible Hand is simply the personified agglomeration of all the people out there selling stuff, with more weight given to those with more money to advertise their wares, it only works when twisted up as far behind its back as possible. The Mammon-worshippers just argue that they're not doing anything wrong, they're just giving the audience what they want, even if it's deadly poison - if people wanted the alternatives, they'd peddle them just as hard too, but nobody asks for them (they say, innocently - having given all the shelfspace/airtime to the hatemongers with the deep pockets.)
I know people still say "Ignore her, she just craves attention, and ignoring her will be the worst thing you can do to her." Well, it doesn't work that way. People she'll never meet, probably doesn't read online, and wouldn't care about any more than gunk on her shoe if she did run into us in the flesh, choosing not to address her hatemongering is not going to make any more of a dent on her self-esteem than us choosing not to discuss the doings of Tony Blair or Vlad Putin or anyone else in the corridors of power. She's an infection vector: it's that which we have to address. The fact that the infections of the mind which she (and the rest of her pals) are spreading are irrational doesn't matter a jot. They're still being spread, and taking or not taking depending on how receptive the soil is to them. Pretending it's not happening, pretending that it doesn't matter and just ignoring it all, won't make it go away. Refusing to engage it directly hasn't worked so far - why should we expect it to start working any better now?
(Apparently Al Franken once told Henry Kissinger off when the latter was trying to pull his privileged status to get studio tickets to Saturday Night Live, which makes me like him even more than I did as the co-author of "Supply Side Jesus".)
Anyway, I opened it up this a.m. to see if there was anything interesting, and the first item, under the bold heading terrorist plots was a tandem set, with John Updike and someone I'm not even glancingly familiar with named Yasmina Khadra both having new books on terrorism (it's all one big nice graphically-designed graphic which I'm not going to type in because I'm lazy; here's the link to the Updike and the Khadra.)
And the number 2 book on the Shortlist, under the bold heading liberal bias, was Ann Coulter's Godless.
Here's their blurb: When it comes to Ann Coulter, there's just no sitting on the fence-and that goes both for the views of this political firebrand and people's reactions to them. In her latest book, Godless, she outlines her argument that liberalism is a bona fide religion, with its own saints, martyrs, sacred texts, high priests, and belief in the supernatural. It's another pointed Coulter attack that's straight out of Right field, and the only thing liberal about it is the scorn. Also available as an audiobook on CD.
Audio Excerpt from Godless
"AMERICA NEEDS FEWER LIBERALS":
Interview with Ann Coulter
Can't We All Just Get Along?
More New Books
So long as Borders - which makes no political contributions to anyone, according to Buy Blue - is willing to peddle this eliminationist rhetoric for a quick buck, to push it with a dramatic 40% discount (the only reason that Borders can make any money at all doing this is that they are so big that they can buy in bulk enough to get an even better price from publishers than the usual 40% reseller discount, but they're not making a whole lot of money unless Regnery Random House is selling them at a loss) then the fact that it's illogical, factually-incorrect, histrionic drivel is irrelevant. What is going on is (as Orcinus has so often and eloquently pointed out) the mainstreaming of certain memes, the constant dinning of accusations and specious linkages over and over and over again out in the agora of the bookstore and the TV and the radio, until people take them for granted and don't even question them, just assume that it's true unless disproven, "Have you stopped beating your wife Mr. Smith?" - how many people know the truth of the "McDonald's Coffee case" and how many people think they do, largely due to the activities of Limbutt?
The legitimizing of such hate speech is represented not just by Borders' pimping of the book, but by the fact that it wasn't Regnery who published her this time, nor any dedicated partisan line, but Random House under their Crown Books imprint. Random House (!!!) has decided that the Coulter bandwagon is worth jumping on. Probably all that seeing her on CNN helped do the trick. No, here we also see legitimizing of the sort conveyed by talk shows like CNN and magazines like Time when they have her on and talk to her seriously and let her make her insane accusations and treat them as if, at worst, they're a little outrageously naughty in an eccentric sort of way, like Tom Cruise jumping on the sofa, not as if here is a college-educated, highly-paid public speaker with a law degree, advocating bashing in the skulls of political opponents with blunt objects, and the rest of the conservatives on their "he said/she said" list have called the other authors and their allies untermenschen as well as traitors.
Though the strong-willed, super-charged, highly opinionated people on this list might find it distasteful, we've made a point below of alternating liberal and conservative viewpoints at our table. Maybe they can mix and mingle some, share pictures of their children. Break bread. Maybe even smile.
Oh, the coy, cutesy, faux-naive (or mebbe not) "can't we all be friends?" shtik of the Borders copywriter! Yes, let's have "kill them all, let God (ours, the only) sort 'em out" crew of O'Reilly and Hannity and bully-boy "Savage" Weiner make nice with liberal authors who, no matter how cruelly, cuttingly sarcastic* they may get at times, have never called for the mass executions or deportations or imprisonment of political rivals. In the wake of the mild remonstration that one talk show host finally put up this past weekend, to Coulter reiterating and defending her ad hom attacks on the 9/11 widows for daring to engage in the lese majeste of demanding an investigation, World o'Crap put up a much better retort. But they're one, moderately-famous, private blog. Against CNN/Rupert Murdoch/Random House. Who's got better odds?
This is the problem with trusting in the Invisible Hand of the Marketplace to Do The Right Thing when it comes to enforcing the kind of shunning which takes care of hatemongering without need of recourse to laws: since the Invisible Hand is simply the personified agglomeration of all the people out there selling stuff, with more weight given to those with more money to advertise their wares, it only works when twisted up as far behind its back as possible. The Mammon-worshippers just argue that they're not doing anything wrong, they're just giving the audience what they want, even if it's deadly poison - if people wanted the alternatives, they'd peddle them just as hard too, but nobody asks for them (they say, innocently - having given all the shelfspace/airtime to the hatemongers with the deep pockets.)
I know people still say "Ignore her, she just craves attention, and ignoring her will be the worst thing you can do to her." Well, it doesn't work that way. People she'll never meet, probably doesn't read online, and wouldn't care about any more than gunk on her shoe if she did run into us in the flesh, choosing not to address her hatemongering is not going to make any more of a dent on her self-esteem than us choosing not to discuss the doings of Tony Blair or Vlad Putin or anyone else in the corridors of power. She's an infection vector: it's that which we have to address. The fact that the infections of the mind which she (and the rest of her pals) are spreading are irrational doesn't matter a jot. They're still being spread, and taking or not taking depending on how receptive the soil is to them. Pretending it's not happening, pretending that it doesn't matter and just ignoring it all, won't make it go away. Refusing to engage it directly hasn't worked so far - why should we expect it to start working any better now?
(Apparently Al Franken once told Henry Kissinger off when the latter was trying to pull his privileged status to get studio tickets to Saturday Night Live, which makes me like him even more than I did as the co-author of "Supply Side Jesus".)