why the focus on ann coulter?

people may be wondering why my blog has had such a focus on ann coulter lately. it is very simple. i went to cornell university. at cornell, political discourse is a very complicated and pervasive thing. politics is everywhere at cornell. before i went there, i had much less exposure to politics. i had volunteered for congressman maurice hinchey’s campaign in 1998. i had obsessively read every single word in every single issue of time magazine, throughout the latter half of the 1990s when i was a teenager in high school. but, i didn’t really feel any sense that politics affected me. at the end of the day, i felt politics was a debate about whether to help out the poor and minority groups, or help out wealthy businessmen and christian fundamentalists who don’t need any help. to me, the democrats were the party of tolerance, diversity, and charity towards the poor, while the republicans were the party of greed, intolerance, bigotry, and ridiculous stupidity. it baffled me why anyone would possibly support republicans, even though back in 1988, when bush was running against dukakis, and i was 5 or 6 years old, i supported bush, because i couldn’t pronounce the name dukakis and didn’t know what it meant, which made me suspicious. by 1992, of course, i had become a staunch democrat, and i thought bill clinton was the greatest president ever, supporting him in 1992 and 1996. see, in 1991, we started a war with iraq, which made no sense to me, so i opposed it. iraq had started a war with kuwait, and invaded it, and been mean and evil and killed people. but now that was over with. so then we wanted to do the same thing to iraq, start a war with them and invade them, to teach them the lesson that they can’t go around invading countries. see i was 8 or 9 around that time. so i was a little kid who hated being bossed around by adults and i thought it was unfair. adults and bullies always seemed the same to me, except bullies were evil and adults were good, but they behaved the same mostly. so the united states was acting like the adult who would punish the bully iraq for picking on the defenseless nerd kuwait. my thinking was, i hate adults, so why the hell should our country act like one? we should act like kids! that was the very beginning of my political awakening, but it took years for my ideas to get more sophisticated.

anyway, throughout junior high and high school, i gradually became more politically aware and eventually became a liberal democrat, reasonably partisan, but i was not really innately hostile to republicans or anything. i just thought they were pure evil. but i was not really that hostile to the idea of evil, since i was pretty evil myself. but i figured, even if i am an asshole who hates other people, i should still try to vote and take positions in politics based on helping other people and making the world a better place, even if i don’t feel like it. see, it was a moral obligation. as a social outcast with no friends, i felt a visceral hatred for most people that i kept inside and never talked about, and i was incredibly shy and could not talk to anyone, so there was quite a temptation for me to just go “fuck them all, i will support the republicans because i hate everyone.” but, in the end, i knew that would be wrong, so i supported the democrats instead. really the people i hated were my fellow high school students, not all of humanity, but i suspected my fellow students reflected human nature and that all people are just like them and therefore bad and evil. eventually i outgrew my hateful evil thoughts towards other people, but i still feel the moral obligation to support democrats. but the real reason i developed into a liberal democrat was, i needed to find some way to justify myself, to tell myself i am a good person deep inside, and not really evil after all. if i had become a republican, there is no way i could have ever lived with myself; i would have felt horrible about it. also, the impeachment scandal with bill clinton really touched off a nerve in me. i thought, how dare these republican bastards tar and slime bill clinton, who did nothing wrong except cheat on his wife with a young woman he was not married to? what the hell is so wrong about that? i saw nothing wrong with what bill clinton did in his personal life, and i still see nothing wrong with it. i mean, hillary and chelsea seem fine, right? but the impeachment really convinced me that republicans were uniformly a bunch of crazy ultra-right-wing religious fanatics who were totally out of touch with reality. that is still what i think about most of them. i mean, what did bill clinton really do that they charged him with, that was impeachable? lying about sex? nothing wrong with that. i hate anti-sex prudes! to me, sex is obviously a good thing, so anti-sex republicans should not have been bitching about bill clinton getting some on the side, especially when they are all hypocrites who do the same thing (newt gingrich, henry hyde, etc.)

so that is about where things were when i went off to cornell. and once i got there i found that cornell was mostly quite liberal, but there was quite a nasty infestation of ultra-right-wing republican crazies. you see, at cornell, the vast majority of people are sensible, tolerant, open-minded liberals, who can actually do critical thinking. but occasionally you come across crazy right-wingers. and the cornell review has a long history of being a crazy right-wing student newspaper. i read pretty much every word of every issue when i was there. and i was always struck by how crazy it all was. the people who wrote it were real psychopaths. i wondered, why can’t we have these people committed to an insane asylum? that is how nutty the cornell review was, at least when i was there. the cornell review always tried to alienate and offend as many people as possible (except christian fundamentalist white males with lots of money). they would write about the “drunken debauchery” of slope day, and there was always a segment at the end called the “clocktower sniper”. they threatened to tear down ujamaa, the dorm for black people, because they didn’t think black people should get to have their own dorm since there wasn’t a whites only dorm. so basically they came off sounding like a bunch of white supremacists. their editor joe sabia routinely criticized anyone who did not agree with his fundamentalist christianity. they pretty much always came off as a bunch of arrogant, elitist, wealthy white male preppy snobs, who had nothing better to do than go around insulting everyone who was different from them. and who founded the cornell review and had pioneered its style of offensive, provocative bullshit? ann coulter. that’s right, when ann coulter was a cornell undergrad, she was a sorority bitch, but she was also founder and editor of the cornell review. she was the one who really pioneered all of its shenanigans. back in the early years, they even wrote editorials praising south africa’s apartheid system! real nutcases. anyway, by the time i was at cornell, ann coulter was already a famous author of the book slander, i think, and she was also ubiquitous on all the talk shows and all over cable news. i had seen her on tv a bunch of times, and read about her books, and she seemed like the biggest nutcase of them all. and she was the real proof that republicans are all loony nutcases: they all supported her, all along! and the cornell review was still acting just the same way as she did, rather than repudiating her views. so throughout all those years of going to cornell and reading the cornell review, always, it was in the back of my mind, ann coulter is behind this, she is the one who started the cornell review.

i have always wondered, are there sane republicans? republicans who do not abandon common sense and logic and reason, ones who actually have valid moral principles they believe in, who are not wacky theocratic religious fundamentalists, or hateful bigots? and, while i do think there have to be at least some, there are not really any that i know of. i cannot name any names of republicans who would fit this description, or for that matter, conservatives who fit that description. at cornell there was this guy i knew in my freshman philosophy class. he was a fundamentalist and believed in biblical creationism, rejecting darwinian evolution completely. it was kind of hard to talk to him. i never really told him i disagreed with him, actually. i was too put off by what he said and too afraid of what would happen if i disagreed, so i pretended to agree with him, although deep inside i felt totally creeped out and was thinking what the hell is wrong with this guy? and i knew this other guy who actually wrote for the cornell review and was a big republican, except he was from canada and jewish, and not really a united states person so being republican wasn’t quite as meaningful given canada’s completely different political parties. but anyway, this guy who wrote for the review, i never really talked with him about politics cuz i thought, what is the point. he just seemed really nutty about the whole thing. he was a very pro-israel zionist and i was always wondering, ok, so does he support it when the israeli army kills innocent civilians in cold blood? i never asked him that, of course, because i am quite a non-confrontational person, or at least i was at the time. he was studying in industrial labor relations, or in other words, the cornellian version of pre-law. he wanted to go off and become a lawyer and make lots of money and not pay taxes on any of it... greed personified, i thought to myself. there was also a very pretty girl i knew at cornell who was quite liberal and she was also very anti-israel. she majored in near eastern studies. she ended up learning arabic in her classes, and doing study abroad in egypt, and when she came back in senior year, she had become a muslim. back before she learned arabic and became muslim, though, she was more of a party girl, i think (not really sure). like i heard she had sex with lots of guys but i wasn’t sure if i believed it, since she never had sex with me. anyway, she was very influential in my views on the israeli-palestinian conflict. you see, it was like: i could agree with the hot girl, and get along with her better, or disagree, and have conflict. it was pretty much a no-brainer, plus i was already leaning in the anti-israeli direction anyway. so anyway, when she came back from egypt and was muslim, i was pretty shocked (although i kept that to myself and i acted like i was totally cool with it and supported it). she was not really a close friend in the first place; she was someone i talked to or hung out with occasionally throughout college, but pretty rarely on average. so i was kinda stunned, like i said, since she had been an atheist before, and i clearly remembered her saying she didn’t believe in god. i had felt a sense of atheist solidarity with her before, but now she had abandoned her atheism and i felt lost. why would somebody who knows the truth abandon it for falsehood? i knew i was being judgemental, but i am also judgemental with republicans, and i feel the same way about muslims. luckily she was not a fundamentalist or anything, she was a very moderate muslim. but i was still like... what the fuck?

so anyway, back to ann coulter. i remember soon after 9/11, finding out about her controversial remarks that got her fired from the national review. the national review is sort of like the national version of the cornell review, except much more civilized and less ridiculous, but still... it was kind of surprising that they would actually fire someone for being too radical of a right-winger. you see, ann coulter had said we should invade their countries, kill their leaders, and convert them to christianity. a little later, after john walker lindh was found in afghanistan, she said we should execute john walker lindh to indimidate liberals and show them we can kill them too. and i read up on her online, and i found out she had said her only regret with timothy mcveigh was that he did not attack the new york times building. now, after 9/11, i was pretty frightened, and pretty pissed. i actually would watch don rumsfeld’s briefings on c-span, and i thought rumsfeld was the greatest guy ever. i still didn’t like bush, but rumsfeld seemed like he might be the proverbial sentient republican, one who is actually logical and sensible. then again, i also read something noam chomsky wrote right before we invaded afghanistan, and i also thought noam chomsky was a wonderful guy and agreed with most of what he said. it was kind of confusing for me, supporting noam chomsky and don rumsfeld at the same time. anyway, i still thought bush was a dumbass after 9/11, but for a few months, i thought, maybe he’s not so bad, maybe i can live with this guy being president, since didn’t bill clinton have his problems too but i supported clinton anyway? but this usa patriot act and the words homeland security started to scare me, pretty soon. i started worrying the united states would become a fascist dictatorship, and we would abandon democracy completely. what really worried me was how the democrats in washington suddenly became bush’s lapdogs after 9/11, and went along with the republicans on everything. the democrats were just one disappointment after another, and for quite awhile, i had given up on the democratic party, especially after they lost so bad in the 2002 congressional election. i was thinking of maybe joining the green party or something because the democrats totally sucked ass.

then howard dean came. in early 2003 i was watching debates between potential democratic candiates for president. most of them were complete disappointments. a few months earlier, bush started this psychotic drive to start a war in iraq, and that is when he really lost me for good and convinced me that there is no way i can live with having bush as president. bush had just started this stupid war on false pretenses, and it was obvious to me that he was a psycho liar who had to be stopped. most of the democratic candidates for president were complete losers, whose lame-ass messages did not resonate with me at all, instead pissing me off. there were only 3 candidates who actually made some fucking sense, the same 3 who opposed the war: howard dean, dennis kucinich, and al sharpton. dennis kucinich, the more i watched him, came off as a real ideologue, extremely passionate, but he kind of scared me sometimes and i thought maybe he was a little too left-wing. al sharpton did great in debates and speeches, but since he had never held elected office, was a religious leader, and was black, i felt he could never get elected, plus he kind of seemed like he didn’t take things seriously enough to me, showing up late and stuff like that. and of course he had scandal in his past. but howard dean... howard dean... this was the man who told the truth, who made sense, who said exactly what i was thinking, who seemed to have the same positions as me on every issue. i could not get enough of him, i thought he was perfect in every way. he is the one who kept me in the democratic party, who kept me from going off into some third party because my voice wasn’t being heard. because my voice was being heard, and it was his voice, because he always said what i thought. it was like, finally some sanity had been restored to the world, after everyone had gone crazy after 9/11 and decided to attack iraq. it was a great disappointment to me when howard dean lost in the iowa caucus and the new hampshire primary, and then pulled out of the race and endorsed john kerry. to me, john kerry was a complete dick, because he had trashed howard dean when dean was #1, even though he could not make up his mind on iraq despite it being obvious that the war was wrong. so i voted for dennis kucinich in the new york primary, since he had not yet withdrawn from the race, and i wanted to show my dissatisfaction with john kerry. eventually i gave in and became a reluctant john kerry supporter, but mainly, i wanted anyone but bush. i never really liked john kerry, although he would have made a much better president than george w. bush. nowhere near as good as howard dean, but still, better than nothing.

so now... now we are climbing our way out of the black hole our nation has fallen into. the black hole of republicanism, of george w. bush, of fighting wars in iraq, of anti-sex government policy, of helping out rich bastards while the poor people starve or die from lack of medical care. bush was still going strong until hurricane katrina struck. it is good that people have finally woken up to all the cronyism and corruption and incompetence of the republicans who control all 3 branches of government. these republican misleaders of ours are completely indefensible. but i feel a serene sense of confidence that things will be fine, that the republicans will be defeated in the elections and we democrats will hold them accountable. yes, i said we democrats, because i am a democrat. in 2001 or 2002 or 2003, democrat would be a shameful thing, since the democratic leaders of that era were cowardly collaborators of the republicans. i was still a democrat then, but i was not proud of it. but i stood by the democratic party, through thick and thin, even when our leaders were complete dopes who had no clue, who did whatever the republicans said. because it is my party and not theirs. we the people own this country, and we the people own our political parties because we vote in primaries. whatever my party leadership does, i can at least remain loyal to the party base, because we of the base are not sellouts. we are activists. we make phone calls on the party’s behalf, or pass out pamphlets door-to-door, or take part in voter registration drives. this is not out of loyalty to what the party is, but what it should be. because each of us activists has an idea of how things should be done, and at some level, some of the high-ranking activists are actually becoming policy advisors or politicians themselves. we activists are the source of new politicians. and since the politicians depend on us, and since each of us activists know other activists, and talk with them about stuff, we know how we all think. and there is no way the politicians can rely on our support if they do not carry out their responsibilities, and do their jobs, and represent the views of their supporters and constituents. so while i do not know if the democratic party would be beholden to corporate special interests if it came into power in congress, i do know that the activists are beholden to nobody. if the party stops representing our views, we will become activists for another party, or another organization, or perhaps even give up in disgust. so our party leaders are absolutely required to fight the good fight, because if they stopped, there would be nobody left to make phone calls or hand out pamphlets or run voter registration drives. all those people would find something else to do. john kerry got lucky, because he was in the right place at the right time. but all of us who were trying to get him elected, we only supported him as the lesser of 2 evils, because the other evil was so much worse. in the future, we can’t count on the other side always being so much worse. so we have to be better. but ann coulter... she brings down the republican party. she pulls down her republican allies to her level of bullshit and mudslinging. she makes them all look bad. and anyone who likes her views or her books is obviously someone who agreed with her in the first place. because she does not allow any dissenting viewpoint. to her, anyone who is not a supporter of the bush administration is evil. she said that the jersey girls, the 4 9/11 widows who were outspoken supporters of kerry, that nobody should listen to them because the grief of a widow does not give someone some kind of license to infallibility or whatever. ok. nobody is infallible, duh. but then why is bush infallible, or why does ann coulter think she is infallible? is there any way whatsoever that ann coulter is superior to any of the 4 widows? if we shouldn’t listen to the widows, is there a single reason anyone should listen to ann coulter, a single redeeming quality or virtue about ms. coulter? no. but what is remarkable about her is how spectacularly bad it is to listen to her, how everything she says is full of lies, half-truths, logical fallacies, bigotry, offensive insults, bullshit, grossly dishonest historical revisionism, and mindlesss party-line propaganda. and how, despite all of that, she still has so many fans and supporters. this really unmasks the true nature of republicans, in my view. it shows them to be the crazy fanatics that i knew they were, all along.

so i suppose i am a liberal. i suppose anyone who dares to question the conservative republican bullshit is a liberal. i admit, i am a democrat. yes, there is a two-party system, and if you hate one party enough, you are morally obligated to join the other party to fight the one that you know is wrong. the democratic party does not stand for anything. we have no common beliefs. republicans say this to bash us. but, we democrats are remarkable for our diversity of opinion. democratic activists like me, on the other hand, have much more uniform views on most things, opposing pretty much everything the republicans have to offer. that is what unites us, the strong opposition to everything the republicans believe in, everything the republicans stand for. we may differ as to what the best positive alternative would be, how to best run things if we come to power; there is hardly any agreement on that, to be honest. but we will take things as they come. for now, we democrats believe in balanced budgets, in ending the war, in raising taxes on the wealthiest 1%, in investigating the bush administration with oversight hearings and perhaps special prosecutors or impeachment, in universal health care. some of us might be pacifists and some might just disagree with the war in iraq or how it was waged. and some of us share the republican fascination with tax cuts and want to make some of our own, whereas some other democrats are pretty much socialists. some of us are internationalists, some of us are nationalists, and some of us are isolationists. some of us want to bring back tariffs and others want free trade. some of us want amnesty for illegal immigrants, while others want to deport them all, or at least severely punish anyone who gives them jobs. but our tradition of tolerance for minorities, our tradition of liberalism that goes back to franklin delano roosevelt, and our current collective hatred of all bush policies, these things unite us democrats. but for me, ann coulter has played a central role in it all. she founded the cornell review, which was very influential on me in college, persuading me to be as liberal as possible. and her public statements have made me ashamed to be a cornellian, to be from the same university as her. and that is why i write about her.