Evil minds

The question of the week has been, Does Ann Coulter believe all the crazy, hateful, lying, vituperative, vile, nasty, and just plain weird things she writes and says?

Or, to put it in a way Time Magazine would approve, is her playful, witty, satirical eloquence all for show?

Matt Lauer asked her if she believed herself.

She said yes, and I'm inclined to take her word for it.

I think she believes all of it...and none of it.

Ann Coulter believes in Ann Coulter and in the worship and adoration of Ann Coulter. 

Back during the Impeachment Crisis she learned that she could inspire worship and adoration just by saying whatever nasty thought popped into her head.

She didn't have to be right, she didn't have to have any facts to back up her opinions, she didn't have to think.  She just had to say something and a crowd cheered, the cameras swung around to focus on her, and money rained down upon her from the skies.

In Neil Gaiman's American Gods, the gods of every culture are dying out.  Gods exist in Gaiman's world only as long as people believe in them.  Their power and their force diminish as the numbers of their worshippers shrink.  Jesus is at this point just some guy wandering the back roads of America, lonely and ignored.  Amazingly, Odin still has enough adherents for him to be a main character.

But people who are gods and goddesses in their own minds also only exist as long they have worhippers.

As long as the faithful flock to their altars, people like Coulter are justified to themselves.

The proof of their rightness is in the intensity of their followers' devotion.

Knowing that she's adored proves to her she's right before she says a word.  After she finishes saying something and sits back basking in the applause she can tell herself that she was right to think she was right.  This saves her the trouble of having to listen to herself, think about what she's saying, or care about what her words mean or the pain and damage they might cause.

You can say she's just in it for the money.  And you'd be right.  Of course she is.  The money is proof of her divinity.  It's the slaughtered goat, the burnt hecatomb, the virgin tossed into the volcano.  It's the sacrifice of her devotees showing their love.

You can say she must know how awful she is.

But evil people don't have to "know" they are evil.

Nevermind evil people.  People don't have to know they're doing evil to do it.

To know if you're doing right or doing wrong, you have to think.

Most people don't think.  They react.  Mostly what they react to are their own needs, appetites, and desires.

They react to the demands of their egos, vanity, and pride.

Their "thinking" on most everything is mostly cover.  The words they use are chosen to justify their reactions not guide their behavior.

The artist who declares she will never sell out.

The athlete who promises he will never use drugs.

The business owner who vows never to cheat a customer.

The politician who promises to get to the bottom of this.

All of these people are using words to flatter themselves at the moment.  They're not thinking, and they're certainly not tying themselves down.

When the time comes for the artist to sell out, she'll find a new set of words to describe selling out as her growing and as artist and dismiss old friends who point out her hypocrisy as jealous and small.

When the time comes when the athlete can't continue his career without chemical assistance, he'll find a way to explain it away---everybody does it, he needs to keep going to support his family, his teammates are counting on him, and what's the difference between steroids and vitamins and cortisone shots anyway?

The businessman will blame the cheated customer for being a sap or expecting too much or not reading the contract.

The politician will treat his high-minded words as if they were actions, as if saying he would challenge the Vice President to explain himself was the same as actually challenging the Vice President.

And for the most part people do not remember themselves.  What they said and did last week, last month, last year are not part of who they are today.

Remembering ourselves may be impossible anyway.  All our memories of our past selves are informed---tainted---by all that happened to us between then and now.

It may be that we don't remember anything in and of itself anyway.  We remember the last time we remembered it.

Making sense of ourselves to ourselves---making a sensible self---making a self---is a matter of reconciling memories with feelings, comparing now with then, correcting, learning lessons, consciously recognizing the need to change our minds and our behavior, forgiving or not forgiving mistakes, allowing for changes of heart, disallowing them, recognizing changes in circumstances, recognizing that we are changing, honestly facing up to all this, sternly and earnestly trying to put it all together into a consistent and decent whole.  Integrating.  Having integrity.

It's difficult, daunting, hard, and exhausting.  It's beyond most of us so most of us don't even try.  We just let ourselves be.

And we assume that's enough.

That's us.  That's who we are.

We assume a consistency, an integrity, that isn't there because we didn't force it upon ourselves.

As far as I can tell, Ann Coulter is no different than most people.  She has no integrity.

She isn't ashamed of anything she's said because it isn't real to her.  She exists only in the present.

Scrooge, begging for mercy from the Spirit of Christmas Yet to Come, vows to reform by remembering.

I will honour Christmas in my heart, and try to keep it all the year.  I will live in the Past, the Present, and the future.  The Spirits of all Three shall strive within me.  I will not shut away the lessons that they teach.

One of those lessons is that Scrooge has been a bad man.

Not something he knows about himself at the beginning of the story.

At the beginning he's quite pleased with himself.  He's the smartest, funniest character he knows.  The person with the most sense.  He's happy.  He thinks.

"Are there no prisons?  Are there no workhouses?"  he asks.  "If they had rather die than they had best do it and decrease the surplus population."

He's being funny.  It's a joke.  He cracks himself up.

Does he mean it?  Who knows?  Who cares?

He's been told that many people would rather die than go into the workhouse.  But right after his joke, his Coulter-esque joke, he says he doesn't know that it's true, that they'd rather die.  It's not his business to know.

Scrooge doesn't care if they live or die.  He says what he says about decreasing the surplus population because it deflects the demands upon his conscience, upon his time, and upon his wallet.

Does he mean what he says?  Does he believe it?  For all practical purposes it doesn't matter.  The effect is the same.  Children will go hungry.

Does Coulter believe what she says?  Does it matter?  The effect of what she says is the same.  Stupid, angry people grow stupider and angrier.

Scrooge is just being himself.  He's reacting to his feelings at that moment.

Scrooge believes in Scrooge's comfort.  He believes in Scrooge being left alone.  What he says to make himself comfortable, what he tells people to make them leave him alone are just words, words used as tools to get what he wants.

Coulter wants applause, she wants celebrity, she wants money, she wants power.

She wants Ann Coulter to be right.

The words she uses as tools to get what she wants work, so she believes in them.

Getting her to care about what words she uses, to think about them, to regret the ones that are wrong and hurtful, to correct herself, is impossible because once she uses them they're gone.  Did she mean the 9/11 widows are happy their husbands are dead?  Did she really mean those words?

She meant their effect.  She meant them to sell her book.  She meant them to outrage her opponents.  She meant them to excite and enthrall her worshippers.  They did the trick.

She exists!

Thanks to Susie Madrak, Avedon Carol, Kevin Wolf, Crooks and Liars, Red Tory, and the Heretik.

Thanks for reading.  Please help keep this blog up and running by donating to the Tip Jar in the upper right hand corner, using either PayPal or Amazon or you can just click here to go straight to Amazon.  If you'd prefer to donate by snail mail the address is Lance Mannion, PO Box 263, New Paltz, NY 12561.  Make checks payable to E. Reilly.  Also be sure to visit our advertisers and consider buying an ad yourself through The Liberal Prose at BlogAds.

Comments

[Kevin Wolf]

Thanks for the link.

Making sense of ourselves to ourselves---making a sensible self---making a self...

As I read this I thought of literature. Next thing I know, you're quoting Dickens.

As you note, creating ourselves, if I can put it that way, is hard work. Literature may well be the best tool we've got to help us.

I read The Things They Carried and Dispatches. I didn't have to go to war. Not that they match the experience of war, but the books themselves are so powerful that they became part of my experience. Just an off the top of my head example.

I wonder if the people who buy what Coulter peddles have ever read a real book rather than pre-digested political tripe.

[denisdekat]

Ann's purpose is to create hate, feed intolerance, and encourage ignorace, and she does it well.

Our media helps her out also. I never seen Chris Mathews challenge her on any level the way he ripped Kucinich appart...

Never seen many folks challenge her really, just recently some folks in the big media companies had to say something as her venemous lies are getting more and more outrageous...

[blue girl]

Great post, Lance. You've really been on a roll lately.

In all the interviews I've seen with Coulter, she seems more rabid than usual. Eyes kind of wild. I think I may have seen a little drool...can't remember.

While this soooo turns me off, it must turn others on, cuz I just checked and she's #1 on Amazon.

Even with your great analysis above, I still find myself saying....God, I just don't get it.

[blue girl]

Kevin,

I wonder if the people who buy what Coulter peddles have ever read a real book rather than pre-digested political tripe.

My mother-in-law asked me awhile back if I knew who Coulter was because her grandson -- my nephew -- who's a freshman in college told her he wanted one of Coulter's books as a gift.

I tried to explain who Ann Coulter was, but I think I failed because I kind of got a look from her that said, Typical you would say that. You liberal heathen!

I didn't press it. I've always wondered if he got that book and if he's been permanently damaged by it. His dad is huge Rush Limbaugh fan. Spewing hateful Rush Limbaugh sayings at me every time we get together. So, my nephew probably never had a chance to begin with.

[evolvedreason]

The fact that an Ann Coulter can exist and her reasons why are not surprising. The real knowledge to be gained about America today is when you ask, and then answer, the question "Why can an Ann Coulter actually exist outside of a comedy club?".

The answer to this question goes way beyond Ann Coulter. It reveals a part of America that has been deliberately cultivated for its rage by enablers in search of purpose, power, and profit. The mere fact that this female Andrew Dice Clay can be taken seriously by a very large media and political community shows the paralysis that this rage has created in our country.

[silas216]

So Her Equiness is Scrooge.

You know, suddenly, it all makes sense.

[Mudge]

Ann Coulter reminds me of Tony Clifton.

[Campaspe]

Oh sure, she believes it all right. One thing I do not doubt about Coulter is the absolute sincerity of her profound racism and contempt for the lower orders. I believe she may be Col. Esterhazy come back to haunt us. I have avoided reading about her since the piece in the UK Independent that quoted her as saying (in these precise words) that she was glad we didn't intervene in Rwanda "to save a bunch of savages." But she keeps making the news, over and over, and then we all lament the fact that she's news. She is a political Paris Hilton--no one knows how she got so famous or how to get her un-famous.

Far more nauseating than Coulter, the Father Coughlin des nos jours, is the right-wind trope used to defend her. For god's sakes, why do we let them get away with comparing her to Michael Moore? Moore is an egomaniac, all right, but he has never called for, just as a for-instance, poisoning a sitting Supreme Court justice.

[harry near indy]

evolvedreason, i've been doing stand-up comedy around the indianapolis area for about a year. i've seen several stand-ups comedians, amateur and pro, do their routines. none -- i repeat, none -- of those routines have been as filled with as much hatred as a typical coulter columns.

there is anger in some of their routines, just like there was in the routines of george carlin and richard pryor, but not hatred.

coulter and people with that attitude are very, very, very unlikely in the united states to get into positions of real power and put their hates into policy.

and you are right when you compare her to andrew dice clay, who once played a sold-out madison square garden but now ... obscurity.

coulter, i'm afraid, will have a bad end -- probably death by suicide or alcoholism.

[Kate Marie]

Campaspe, I share your contempt for Coulter, but are you suggesting that somehow Coulter has *no* counterpart on the left? I could rattle off a few candidates (George Galloway, Ted Rall, even Julianne Malveaux, who said she hoped Clarence Thomas would eat a lot of heart-clogging food and die early). In other words, I suppose I understand the inclination to believe that the "evil ideas" and "evil minds" are all bunched together on one side of the political spectrum, but that's just not the case.

[Jennifer]

Ann Coulter is a hate-filled woman, end of story. Would having a counterpart on the left somehow make her less of a hate-filled woman??? I don't care what party she's with, she is full of hate and ill will.

[Kate Marie]

"Ann Coulter is a hate-filled woman, end of story. Would having a counterpart on the left somehow make her less of a hate-filled woman???"

-- No. Did I suggest it would?

[Jennifer]

To be perfectly honest, I think your comment deflects. Yes, Galloway, for example, has said plenty of questionable things, but I believe for this moment in time, Ann Coulter's new depths of disgust are the topic of conversation and mentioning any *equal* on the left only makes it sound like two wrongs make a right. At least Galloway can defend his stance without bringing looks into play. I don't recall him defending an argument by pointing out the diminishing shelf-life of a person in question or their thick ankles... but, please, feel free to correct. I won't rebut... this woman is hateful and I try really hard not to hate.

[Kate Marie]

Jennifer, my comment wasn't meant to deflect -- only to respond to what I perceived -- perhaps wrongly -- as a suggestion that Coulter *has* no counterparts on the left.

As for bringing looks into play, I hope Silas 216 above takes your comment to heart.

[alex]

Does Ann Coulter know how stupid she sounds to normal people? Of course she does. All demagogues do. They don't care. They're fabulously rich and influential precisely because they know their audience so well: the bottom of the heap of society — uneducated, poor and embittered about it — who desperately seek validation for their condition by making bogeymen of others. If prostitution is the second oldest profession, La Coulter's is the first.

[KC45s]

Lance--God and Ann Coulter in one short week. Truly you do not fear that which is holy or unholy. After this psychological investigation of Ms. Coulter, I feel we should rename you Lancet Mannion for your contribution to science.

You've articulated a lot of what I've wondered myself. She is a grotesque but, like all freaks and train wrecks, fascinating. It's hard to even come to grips with her. I mean, here we have someone unconcerned with historial facts, lacking shame or the desire to be actually right or the willingness to reflect. It's like fighting a big bag of porridge. You punch and you punch, yet she always returns to her original shape.

If it's any consolation, my wife saw her on the Today Show last week. We had this exchange:

Wife: "So I saw this Ann Coulter woman talking to Matt Lauer. I'd never seen her before."

Me (after a moment of shock): "What'd you think?"

Wife: "She looked terrible."

And you know, with Coulter that's probably the only criticism that could draw blood.

[Campaspe]

Kate Marie: A counterpart on the left? I assume she has. The relevant question is whether this counterpart has the constant media spotlight and bestselling status of Ann Coulter. The answer is a loud and unequivocal no, which is why the unsustainable Moore comparison rankles. In order to get as far left as Coulter is right, you have to go way underground. There is no comparably celebrated American left-wing figure with a similar line in vile rhetoric.

[joanr16]

In Philip Pullman's Dark Materials fantasy trilogy, the cruel, scheming villainess is named Mrs. Coulter. Lovely coincidence.

I think the real-life Coulter is one of those "cases suggestive of reincarnation," to borrow a phrase, since she is slightly more spiritually evolved than her previous incarnation as Hermann Goering.

[R.Porrofatto]

Just to note, there are some, as this infamous piece demonstrates, for whom Scrooge is a moral role model.

Coulter has discovered that in this country hate not only sells, it sells big. Hate is simple, it's easy, it allows you to feel superior and righteous, it defines and identifies enemies responsible for all your fears and alienation, it explains pretty much everything, and to top it all off, it's fun. Of course, it's also dangerous. While Coulter exploits the lust for the outrageous in her fans, she also knows how to appeal to their inner Heydrich, and before you know it, one day they might be only an armband away from making it official.

[Jack spratt]

Actually Gaiman's Jesus is doing fine in America in American Gods. It"s Afghanistan that he's been spotted hitchhiking and nobody picks him up.

[c u n d gulag]

Please don't insult Scrooge by comparing him to Coulter. He, at least, apparently had a soul...

Even Dicken's didn't have the imagination to create someone like her.

There is no amount of $ that would make me write or say what she did. I dare say that this would apply to you, who are reading this, as well.

I have only one question: What the $u(# is going on in this country?

Don't answer... I know.

It's a new day in AMERIKA!!!
Middle Age's Theocracy funded by Corporatism powered by the Corporate MSM .
Women, you have no right to your bodies. Everyone is subject to searches.

A little poem (with apologies to the great Harlan Ellison):
We have sucked on the 'Glass Teat,'
We have tuned to the radio spectrum,
We have thumbed the blood of newspaper ink,
We have qwerty'd our keyboards,
We've smelled the stale stink of our cigarette's while doing so...
We have let them all nourish us.
We have let them all inform us.
We have let them all guide us.
Suddenly, they all want to control us.
And now, when we need our own voice?
We have no medium and we must scream...

I stink as a poet, but I needed to get that off my chest.

[Worst. President. Ever.]

I for one don't recall Michael Moore ever saying anything hateful as the Hateful Lying Bitch. He gets badmouthed by the right mostly because he dares to spotlight Bu**sh**'s lies and innanities: "Watch this drive!"

Those who assert that Moore has been spewing hatred should provide some actual, you know, evidence.

Stop trying to change the subject: the Hateful Lying Bitch is a national disgrace.

[Maria]

Thank you for this.

You writing is a pleasure to read.

[Matt]

Even Dicken's didn't have the imagination to create someone like her.

I think he probably did, but was smart enough to know that a character like Coulter simply wouldn't be believable in fiction.

Mudge's Tony Clifton comment is right on target.

[Chris Vosburg]

I think you'd need to go back quite a few years to find a lefty equivalent of Coulter: I'd suggest Abbie Hoffman.

Full of shit, always happy to blab on and on about stuff like blowing up cop cars with cops inside 'em, whatever he could say to drive up the blood pressure of law 'n' order republicans and make them dream of locking up all the damn college kids.

Like Ann, ultimately Abbie was about Abbie, and when he turned stockbroker, joining the "establishment" he devoted so much time and energy to hollering about, surprised no one.

Be nice if Coulter'd duplicate the feat in reverse, say, by retiring to write children's books about non-violent conflict resolution.

[ljg]

Chris --

I think you may be confusing Abbie Hoffmann with Jerry Rubin.

I'm not sure if Rubin became a stockbroker but he definitely became more reactionary as he grew older.

Abbie was still pretty much on the left until the day he committed suicide.

[Tilli (Mojave Desert)]

I have a terrible confession to make. I laffed once at something she said:

"somewhat fragrant hippie chick pie wagons they call "women""

pie wagons! Ha ha.

I'm going to hell, aren't I?

[Anya]

"In Neil Gaiman's American Gods, the gods of every culture are dying out."

Every culture? Allah seems to be going pretty strong.

You liberals really have your heads up your tailpipes.

[Campaspe]

Anya: We liberals do, however, recognize that the Neil Gaiman book to which Lance refers is a novel.

[Chris Vosburg]

LJG writes: "I think you may be confusing Abbie Hoffmann with Jerry Rubin."

Ooooooooooops, how embarrassing. I'm gonna go hide in the basement for a few days until the blush fades. Apologies to all, and especially Abbie Hoffman.

[Chris Vosburg]

And by way of apology, here's a reworked version of an old bar joke, in keeping with Lance's linked post on Ann, Al Franken, and jokes:

Well-dressed Guy walks into a bar with Ann Coulter. He immediately buys a round for everyone in the bar and tells the barman that everyone's drinking on him for the remainder of the evening. Ann Coulter says, "Sure, give the lazy liberal assholes something for nothing."

After doing the honors, the barman sidles over and asks, "you win the lottery or something, pal?"

Guy says, "I was walking on the beach one day and found a lamp lying in the sand. Rubbed the lamp and out comes a genie who offers me three wishes. So first I wished for a beautiful blond and a million bucks."

"Huh," says the Barman, "but I don't think I'd call her beautiful, and besides, she got kind of a mouth on her, if you know what I mean."

Guy says, "Naw, man, the girlfriend's at home. My third wish was for the world's biggest prick."

[John Emerson]

Ann Coulter isn't a mystery, and she's not very interesting about her. She's a huckster or entertainer with a conservative mean streak.

Why she gets on national TV so often is the interesting question. She's provocative and entertaining, but lots of people are, including many liberals and many better and more accurate writers of various sorts.

For some reason the people making the decisions want someone like her out there.

[JT]

I still can't see Coulter without hearing, in my head, "Yap yarf woof arf arf arf arf!"

But really, I have to ask what would she know about divorcing harpies? She's an unmarried conservative - she's never had an orgasm or had sex, right?

Until she comes clean on her sex life - or at least her values and practices - she can't comment on the marital relationships of anyone at all.

Harpies indeed. If I ran wikipedia, "harpy" would have a picture of her face and tits on the body of a large predatory bird.

[GSDAVIS]

Wow. It's pretty obvious from the posts on this site that not one of the posters have actually read any of Ann Coulter's books. It looks like I've found the flat earth society?

[Fred Green]

Murder Ann Coulter Now! Slice off her head and mount it on a post!

Oh, wait, I didn't actually MEAN that. That was me doing "satire." Just like Ann does! Where's my big paycheck?