As per yesterday’s discussion of the crazed, armed wingnut in Tennessee and how he got that way, the talk turned - naturally - to Ann Coulter.
If there’s one figure on the American right who personifies the bare-knuckled vitriol that has pervaded and sometimes overshadowed the discourse of the past 15 years, it’s Coulter. She - and others like her - have set a certain tone.
And let’s be honest about it - there’s a certain genius to what she does. Mix intelligence and wit and not a little sex appeal with obnoxiousness, a willingness to go right up to the line and dance over it, and it sells; it’s sold millions. People dig it. And in an academic study (yes, of Ann Coulter) published in an Australian journal, Johns Hopkins professor Samuel A. Chambers and Alan Finlayson of Swansea University argue that Coulter’s provacativeness - her nastiness - is the key to her success:
Furthermore, while Coulter may be on the edge of the American political spectrum this is simply indicative of how far the centre has been pulled to the right. And it has been pulled there by people such as Coulter, who herself must be understood as part of a much more general and highly successful political style that has achieved national prominence thanks to channels such as Fox News, talk radio and, latterly, internet conservative town-halls and blog fora.
The rest of it’s a lot of dense academic hand-wringing about how the liberal political tradition might respond to “Coulterism” while not selling out it’s principles, etc.
But again: Why has Coulter’s political style been so successful? Because she “tells the truth?” Well, perhaps there’s a grain of truth to her polemics; but it’s not that. It’s that she gets in people’s faces and tells them, to steal a phrase from the Brits, to bugger off.
People - especially conservatives - like that. Strength. Conservatism is all about strength, or the perception of it.
But as always with this sort of political behavior, it creates a backlash - and those who most fervently embraced “Coulterism” in all its manifestations (and I’d argue the war in Iraq was one of them) often seem least-prepared to deal with the backlash. As if they thought a backlash couldn’t occur; that the belligerence of Coulter and the movement she represents would settle the matter.
It hasn’t. And so you get situations where, as in the last thread, people like me are taken to task for what I’ve written, as if the past 15 years simply never occurred; as if my diatribes are somehow uniquely offensive.
And that simply is not the case.
I don’t know why conservatives don’t seem to have considered that Coulter, et al, were going to spark a backlash. I don’t know how they can be so offended by that backlash. What did they think was going to happen - “liberals” or anyone who thinks the Coulter approach is vicious garbage were just going to lie down whimpering? That’s what Coulter and Limbaugh and the others would have them believe, of course - liberals are wimpy hand-wringers. And when some liberals at least decided to give as good as they get, these conservatives are affronted. How dare you! There is no precedent for this! But there is.
What has sort of galled me most over the past few years in particular isn’t that movement conservatives should react this way; it’s that “regular” conservatives should, only now, decide that the discourse has become too nasty, too suggestive that the next step - which really is violence - isn’t too far away. And now they try to pour some water on the whole thing; can’t we stop fighting and try to get along?
It’s a noble sentiment - but where was it in the late ’90s as Coulter began wallowing in this muck in earnest? It’s only when liberals hit back that the behavior is beyond the pale; when movement conservatives were the ones engaging in it, it was just fine. Or maybe it’s only now that these “regular” conservatives also realize that for each political action, there is an equal and opposite reaction; maybe it’s only now that they, too, realize Coulter was always going to beget an Olbermann, Hannity was always going to beget a Daily Kos. The in-your-face style of the right was always, always going to beget an in-your-face from the left.
And so conservatives who are now so offended by the fact that the left is indeed “in their face” need to understand that their tacit or wholehearted approval of these tactics as employed by Coulter created this situation you now so abhor. And if it’s to be ratcheted back, then both sides need to do it; there will be no unilateral disarmament.
