En Whatever

Ann Coulter Continues Trying to Rationalize Her Irrationality

Some people hate blacks and some hate whites. Some hate men; some, women. Apparently, Ann Coulter only likes those who would have fit in the 2004 Republican National Convention. Lord knows, that probably includes a few non-whites and non-Christians - that's what tolerance is, after all: putting up with a small amount of what you don't like builds character. As I mentioned last week, Coulter had a ... revealing moment on CNBC's The Big Idea. And now Media Matters for America reports that on Bill O'Reilly's show, Coulter claimed that Orthodox Jews agreed with her and that it's a conflict between the religious and the non-religious. She's attempting to frame this as a matter of being Christian - and in a peculiar way, if it were someone else who less often spouted venom, I might understand the rationale. If you are a serious follower of a religion that claims its way is the only way to live, then I would pretty much expect you to think that a non-believer was worse off than a believer.

The problem is that from her long-documented readiness to attack, to lie about facts, to twist words, to denigrate people, and, in general, heartily and regularly engage in behaviors that would be considered non-Christian, the argument doesn't hold up. This isn't about being religious versus being non-religious. Her statements were clearly about wanting to feel superior or, even worse, being ready to use hateful language to create controversy to further her own career and book sales. To claim that the incident was about the religious versus the non-religious leaves us with a distasteful choice. Either she meant her statement was to that end, meaning that she'd have to consider Jews to be non-religious - which, for all I know, she might. Or she'd mean specifically the conversation between her and Donny Deutsch - in which case, she's passing judgment on whether or not he's religious, and by his assertion, he is practicing. Or should could mean that the outcry - largely from Jewish groups - was the non-religious against the religious, in which case we're back to saying that Jews aren't religious. Such use of language is beyond cynicism, actually reaching sociopathic heights, as nothing and no one matters so long as the speaker gets what she, in this case, wants.

Labels: Ann Coulter, anti-semitism, Donny Deutsch, Media Matters

posted by Erik Sherman @ 7:20 AM