Coulter Ann H. - Soulless: Ann Coulter and the right-wing church of hate

I NTRODUCTION

1. G ODLESSNESS

2. W HO I S A NN C OULTER?

3. T HE C OULTER C ULTURE

4. T HE I NTERVIEW

5. T HE A FTERMATH : T HE M AKING OF A M OMENT

6. T HE W ILLIE H ORTON S TORY AND R ACE P OLITICS

7. T HE M ORAL M AJORITY I S U S

8. S EX

9. P UBLIC S CHOOLS : T HE N EXT B ATTLEGROUND

10. I F I T W ERE T HAT E ASY TO D ESTROY H ER , W HY W OULD I H AVE W RITTEN A W HOLE B OOK ? O R F UN W ITH F OOTNOTES AND P LAGIARISM

11. T HE N EXT A NN

12. S OULLESS

N OTES

A CKNOWLEDGMENTS

A BOUT THE A UTHOR

O THER B OOKS BY S USAN E STRICH

C REDITS

C OVER

C OPYRIGHT

A BOUT THE P UBLISHER

Youre writing a book about WHO ?

WHY GIVE HER ANY MORE ATTENTION?

Because shes already gotten the attention.

The question is no longer attention.

Its time to take her on. And take on those who give her a forum.

We can have fun with it. We dont have to be mean. Meanness is what people hate. Parody, humor, witit all works. But to an end.

Its important to take her on.

She is not just a harmless entertainer, just another blowhard on the scene. Shes been around for ten years. She is part of something larger. She provides the ideological muscle and the intellectual cover for a movement that is aiming for your local ballot box, and even your childs school.

I know what youre thinking. Why stoop so low? Youll pretend she isnt there. Well, then you can be certain of one thing: Youll lose. Well lose. Not just our shirts, but our souls. Been there, done that. I worked for that candidate. If youre my age, you can remember

I dont believe in ignoring the Ann Coulters. Not when they get powerful enough to command the best time spot on Today and the top spot on the New York Times bestseller lists; not when my hero Jay Leno not only invites her on, but plays softball with her.

No, when someone who trades on hate for the fun of it is doing that well you dont put your head in the sand and wait for her to go away.

There are no problems, only opportunities, we always say in politics.

Ann Coulter is a giant opportunity. She is an opportunity to ask fundamental questions about how we do politics, how we address issues, how we communicate in this culture.

The only choice in dealing with an Ann Coulter is to figure out what shes selling, and then engage and win.

I have nothing against Ann Coulter personally. Quite the contrary, we get along just fine. I respect her intelligence and ambition, which is part of the reason I am writing this book. But I believe she and others who share her tactics are doing tremendous damage to our public discourse and our way of doing politics. Its an overused expression but its true: Were fighting for our political soul.

I used to have this idea for a television show where a bunch of people start all over the political spectrum and the challenge is to see if they can agree on something; seeing people actually try to agree might ultimately be more interesting than the cheap thrills of televised food fights, or so I thought, apparently wrongly. But one thing is clear: The person in the group who would not want the consensus, who would see it as her job to stop it, is Ann. That is her role in the discourse.

You look at every poll and what you find is a decent, moderate, tolerant nation, being torn apart by the divisive, polarizing, mean-spirited politics of a selfish few. You find that on the fundamental issues that are supposed to be tearing us apart, were far more united than you think, and were being divided for sport.

Ann Coulter and those who mimic her are part of that divisiveness. She doesnt just pull the whole curve to the right, as if that werent bad enough; she pulls us down, into the sewer, into the dark side. She feeds on the worst in people, and then nurtures it. Her specialty these days is Muslim jokes. That takes courage.

Time portrays her as the laughable, lovable Ms. Right.

Wrong. But its not just about her.

Shes not just building a personal following. Shes trying to inspire a political movement. Its only the next generation. Thats all.

Where are you headed?

The worst thing is not to be engaged at all.

Godless, she says.

How dare she?

Let it be an inspiration to us.

Welcome to Anns world. And what a mean and nasty world it is. Here she is taking all the decent impulses that make Americans compassionate, hopeful, and generousreal Liberalismand, with a total disregard for history and humanity, twisting them into the opposite of what they are.

How does she do it? An ounce of sophistry, a touch of misrepresentation, lit up with invective and some sly wit.

But she doesnt do it alone. Not even close.

She does it by using a media thats obsessed with entertainment. For them, long, blond, svelte Ann is the cutely packaged girl next door (if next door is Darien, Connecticut) who can impress the college boys by being able to talk dirty and nasty with the best of them. Venom is what she spills.

And why does she do it?

To amuse herself? So she claims: Most of what I say I say to amuse myself and amuse my friends. I dont spend a lot of time thinking about anything beyond that.

It goes beyond amusement, of course. Well beyond.

Ann is not harmless, an amusing conversationalist. Far from it. What she succeeds in doing is dividing us against each other, polarizing us whether we want to be polarized or not (and often we do not), playing to the lowest common denominator, and not only moving the ideological line to the right, but moving it downward in the process.

Social scientists argue, using polling data, that there is no culture war. Ann needs to create one in order to destroy the possibility that a decent progressive majority might ever triumph over the forces of hate.

The book Godless is Anns latest call to arms for her hordes of true believers. What makes it different than the rest of her rants is that it plays the religion card.

In politics, thats a big card to play.

Welcome to Anns new worldview: A politicization of God.

Look at the opposition. They have no God.

Look at us. We do. God is on our side.

Its classic stuff. When all else fails, they bring in God. Remember what Lincoln said: Sir, my concern is not whether God is on our side; my greatest concern is to be on Gods side, for God is always right.

Anns view is not Lincolns. Whats clear to everyone except Ann is that the president has failed. The war in Iraq has failed. So what do we have in Anns world? We have God taking sides, with certain religions preferred over others. Want to guess which ones? You might not be right. And it was just Republicans and Democrats in politics last time I checked; now you have Ann putting God in the mix.

Ironic, wouldnt you say? Here we are, facing religious zealots in the Middle East, and what is the answer? Were arguing about who has God on their sidethe Right or Liberals? Do we learn nothing?