- This morning, I nearly choked on my coffee when I followed
a link to Ann Coulter's website and read what at first glance appeared
to her final valedictory from public life. In her article, An Open Letter
to Readers (http://www.anncoulter.com/cgi-local/article.cgi?article=214)
she writes: "I've been participating in a charade for nearly eleven
years, now. Quite frankly, I'm sick of it. You have all been a part of
a sick joke that I began considering shortly after first getting on the
air. At first, it was quite interesting to see how people would react when
I would use twisted logic and poorly masked bigotry.
-
- "But eleven years is a long time to be living a
fake life, and I can no longer tolerate this falsity. Even someone as fake
as I tires out eventually."
-
- After a bit of rambling rhetoric on the ideal of spiritual
unity amongst Americans, Coulter signs off with a promise that seems too
good to be true: "And with that, my precious viewers, I bid you adieu.
My career as a media figurehead is over."
-
- A few moments after waking, my intellectual discernment
was not at its sharpest, and I briefly wondered if Ann's statement might
not be entirely sarcastic. Perhaps her whole public life really had been
a misguided social experiment intended to gauge public reaction to asininity
and bigotry. I could see how such an experiment might be useful to the
fine folks at the Tavistock Institute; to know the reliable triggers of
racial, religious, and ideological hatred in human beings is invaluable
information for those who would incite civil unrest and violence for their
own nefarious purposes.
-
- But alas, Ann is not yet owning up to such a role in
America's deliberate destruction. She postscripts her Open Letter to Readers:
"Haha, did it again. Oh, those silly web admins...they just embarrass
themselves."
-
- It's not surprising for Coulter to use witless, unimaginative
sarcasm as a means of jabbing at her enemies, real and imaginary. But it
is surprising (to me, anyway) that her sarcasm reads as such a frank admission.
This lame, unfunny, faux valediction may well offer a rare insight into
the purgatorial realm of Ann Coulter's soul.
-
- The purpose of sarcastic humor is to parrot ideas in
a manner that exposes them as totally untenable. Therefore, to include
in a sarcastic narrative statements that no sane could person could disagree
with is to risk confusing and thus alienating one's audience. So either
Ann does not understand the guiding principle behind sarcastic humor, or
one MUST interpret every word of her "open letter" as unmitigated
sarcasm.
-
- Consider her weird, pretend lip-service to religious
harmony amongst Americans:
-
- "Here's the truth, I don't care what people believe.
Jews don't need to be 'made perfect' as I so arrogantly proclaimed to Editor
& Publisher not a half week ago. I don't even care if people are Muslim.
Granted, I don't know much about the religion or the people, but they are
people. This is something that we cannot forget, they are in an abhorrent
situation. These people are in need of education. Perhaps if we did not
participate in causing them misery, they would not hate us so.
-
- "In fact, does it really matter whether we are Christian,
Jewish, Muslim, Atheist, or even Pagan? We are one nation. One. We should
not let petty differences separate us, we are all American, and should
act in that manner."
-
- How does one delineate Ann's sarcasm from her true beliefs
in the above statements? She concedes that Muslims are actually people,
and that many of them live in "an abhorrent situation." But then
she quips, "Perhaps if we did not participate in causing them misery,
they would not hate us so."
-
- In the past, Ann has made it abundantly clear she laughs
at the "liberal" notion that many Muslims justifiably hate America
due to the violence and death they've suffered at the hands of our government
("Not all Muslims may be terrorists, but all terrorists are Muslims,"
from Coulter's syndicated column September 28, 2001. "If only we could
get Muslims to boycott all airlines, we could dispense with airport security
altogether," from Coulter's website November 22, 2006). Therefore,
this comment can only be viewed as pure sarcasm. But what about her other
comments, that Muslims are actually "people," that we are "one
nation," and "We should not let petty differences separate us,
we are all American, and should act in that manner."
-
- As horrific as it may seem, one can only conclude that
every sentence, every word of Ann's "Open Letter" is intended
as sarcasm. She openly mocks the unending misery of Muslims everywhere,
denying (through her sarcasm) their very humanity, then she laughs at the
lofty ideal of an America undivided by religious, racial, or ideological
differences -- an ideal she has always bizarrely identified as "liberal."
We can tell that she's being wholly sarcastic because of her unerringly
consistent stance on all of the above issues. And if nothing else, Ann
IS consistent -- unlike most politicians, she has precisely one note and
one message in all company, in every situation.
-
- Ann Coulter has made clear she believes in ONE true religion,
ONE correct pathway to God, and it is the job of pious people everywhere
to ENFORCE it on the entire planet. Her perspective on how America should
treat Islamic nations suspected of harboring terrorists is: "We should
invade their countries, kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity."
(Source: http://www.nationalreview.com/coulter/coulter.shtml) Such a sentiment
is totally unsurprising from a woman who once proudly boasted that she
"always agreed" with the late Reverend Jerry Falwell. (Source:
http://mediamatters.org/items/200705180003)
-
- This is the same figurehead who infamously stated, "My
only regret with Timothy McVeigh is he did not go the New York Times Building."
(Source: http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/a/ann_coulter.html).
In a cultural climate that saw Don Imus lose a national radio show on the
basis of one asinine comment directed at black female athletes ("nappy-headed
hoes"), and in a climate where a young man gets tasered for loudly
asking a question at a John Kerry rally, Ann Coulter is permitted again
and again to step over every line of public decorum, even advocating religious
warfare and murder. (The Internet database is so replete with vile, violent,
murderous quotes from Ann Coulter that I see no need to enumerate them
at greater length here).
-
- The saddest element of Coulter's sarcasm is the violent
opposition she reveals against her own happiness. She mocks the notion
that "we are all American," and "We should not let petty
differences separate us." Since she has built an extremely lucrative
career on exploiting "petty differences" and inane ideological
disparities, it's not surprising that she prefers a nation at war with
itself, clearly demarcated along lines of "conservative" and
"liberal," the saved and the damned, the good and the evil. Like
all miserable people, she demands that the external world reflect the blood-soaked
battleground of her internal environment. This makes Ann right at home
in the intellectual climate of the media age, where polemical rage usurps
sound reasoning and the loudest and most grotesque command the most attention.
-
- Miss Coulter, you claim to be a God-fearing Christian
who seeks to embody the teachings of Jesus during your time on Earth. You
may think your sarcasm is a weapon against your "enemies," but
in fact, it is only a weapon against yourself.
-
- "Sarcasm I now see to be, in general, the language
of the devil; for which reason I have long since as good as renounced it."
- --Thomas Carlyle
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