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vsp · 10-07-2002, 08:46 AM

The thing with Coulter is that she knows _exactly_ what she's doing -- being a Morton Downey Jr. with hooters for the new generation. A trained vaudeville artist, if you will. She knows her audience perfectly (closed-minded Christian conservatives), and feeds them exactly what they want to hear (liberals are evil cartoon characters responsible for everything that's wrong in the world, and fine upstanding Christian folk like us need to squash them like cockroaches). Bipartisanism and give-and-take and compromise may work for some politicians, but if you're trying to make a fast buck selling books and selling your image on TV, best to go the deliberately-outrageous route and pander -- she makes Limbaugh and Liddy seem subtle.

How much of her offerings she truly believes and how much is knowingly exaggerated to make a buck is open to debate. Like a poorly-motivated student writing an 11th-hour research paper, she throws in lots of footnotes to "prove" that her arguments are factual, forgetting (or ignoring) that footnoting only works when the QUOTED SOURCES are accurate and/or relevant to the text in which they're included. She preens on television and in interviews at every opportunity, knowing that it doesn't matter if what she says is ridiculous or easily refuted -- the fact that she said it in the first place will make her flock take it as gospel. What startles me is that many who should know better give her the slightest bit of credibility.

She's also a creature of a most peculiar species -- prominent, successful, enterprising women who go out and preach that a woman's place is exclusively in the home (supporting her Christian husband), and that any legislation protecting or reinforcing women's rights in any way should be overthrown. (See also: Phyllis Schlafly, Beverly LaHaye.) It's an entertaining contradiction. If the basic premise was accurate (that women are inherently inferior, and should just shut up and marry Christian men who'll do all the breadwinning, governing, policy-setting and fighting)... then why should anyone give a rat's ass what the "inferior" Coulter has to say? Why do Schlafly and LaHaye head multi-million-dollar organizations whose purpose is to convince America that women shouldn't aspire to be the heads of multi-million-dollar organizations? Shouldn't they be writing and ranting their way out of a job, so to speak?

Nah. They're trained monkeys for the Christian Right, paid well to stand there and convince the rest of their gender to Shut Up and Pray, Shut Up and Shop, Shut Up and Breed, Shut Up and Vote Republican, and not think too hard about the consequences of those actions. And whenever someone calls them on being fifth-columnists to their gender, so to speak, they perk up like the peasant from Holy Grail - "See? That's what I'm ON about!" (Then again, maybe not. The peasant from Holy Grail wanted to CHANGE and IMPROVE things.)

10-07-2002, 08:46 AM	#21
vsp Syndrome of a Down Join Date: Jun 2001 Location: West Chester Posts: 1,367	The thing with Coulter is that she knows _exactly_ what she's doing -- being a Morton Downey Jr. with hooters for the new generation. A trained vaudeville artist, if you will. She knows her audience perfectly (closed-minded Christian conservatives), and feeds them exactly what they want to hear (liberals are evil cartoon characters responsible for everything that's wrong in the world, and fine upstanding Christian folk like us need to squash them like cockroaches). Bipartisanism and give-and-take and compromise may work for some politicians, but if you're trying to make a fast buck selling books and selling your image on TV, best to go the deliberately-outrageous route and pander -- she makes Limbaugh and Liddy seem subtle. How much of her offerings she truly believes and how much is knowingly exaggerated to make a buck is open to debate. Like a poorly-motivated student writing an 11th-hour research paper, she throws in lots of footnotes to "prove" that her arguments are factual, forgetting (or ignoring) that footnoting only works when the QUOTED SOURCES are accurate and/or relevant to the text in which they're included. She preens on television and in interviews at every opportunity, knowing that it doesn't matter if what she says is ridiculous or easily refuted -- the fact that she said it in the first place will make her flock take it as gospel. What startles me is that many who should know better give her the slightest bit of credibility. She's also a creature of a most peculiar species -- prominent, successful, enterprising women who go out and preach that a woman's place is exclusively in the home (supporting her Christian husband), and that any legislation protecting or reinforcing women's rights in any way should be overthrown. (See also: Phyllis Schlafly, Beverly LaHaye.) It's an entertaining contradiction. If the basic premise was accurate (that women are inherently inferior, and should just shut up and marry Christian men who'll do all the breadwinning, governing, policy-setting and fighting)... then why should anyone give a rat's ass what the "inferior" Coulter has to say? Why do Schlafly and LaHaye head multi-million-dollar organizations whose purpose is to convince America that women shouldn't aspire to be the heads of multi-million-dollar organizations? Shouldn't they be writing and ranting their way out of a job, so to speak? Nah. They're trained monkeys for the Christian Right, paid well to stand there and convince the rest of their gender to Shut Up and Pray, Shut Up and Shop, Shut Up and Breed, Shut Up and Vote Republican, and not think too hard about the consequences of those actions. And whenever someone calls them on being fifth-columnists to their gender, so to speak, they perk up like the peasant from Holy Grail - "See? That's what I'm ON about!" (Then again, maybe not. The peasant from Holy Grail wanted to CHANGE and IMPROVE things.)