Ann Coulter

Source: NY Times Business Day Section P.C1 6/12/06 :"Deadly Intent: Ann Coulter, Word Warrior" by David Carr

FM-FM Comment:
It is astonishing that Ann Coulter attracts as much attention as she does. She may be an archetypal figure arriving at a time when there is much ambiguity and deception in our culture. Ambiguity and deception opens the way for someone to make extreme statements. When the media, especially television and radio, becomes infested with viperous tongues, it is to be expected that a propagandist/writer could also garner an audience as well. This audience should concern us since propaganda feeds on the twisted truth about our lives and beliefs. Not all readers will take it seriously. It is propaganda. A nation that will listen to and read this hyperbole and take it seriously is a nation at risk. Ms. Coulter has written five books and sold more than a million hard cover copies. Each book has become a best seller. She appears on the electronic media and offers her boiling fury to viewers again, and her book sales grow with each encounter with a well-intentioned interviewer who still remembers civil society. What is more worrisome is the machinery in our culture and in the media that promotes these following virulent views: "...most recently labeled the widows of 9/11 "harpies"...a book title: "Godless: The Church of Liberalism"..." that Tomothy McVeigh should have parked his truck in front ot the New York Times"..."joked that a Supreme Court Justice should be poisoned"..."that America should invade Muslim countries and kill their leaders"..."she recently admitted that she is "no big fan" of the First Ammendment that allowed her to say all of that." Ms. Coulter is a lawyer. Does she truly believe all that she writes and speaks? It matters less what she believes than the fact that she has the attention of a millions of Americans through newspapers, radio, televison and book publishers. These tools of mass persuasion are used by propagandists. Who is behind this poisonous campaign? Is Ms. Coulter motivated by money or an ideology or both? If she is nothing more than a stand up comic whose black humor earns her a paycheck, well, she lives in a democracy where her right to say and write what she wishes is protected no matter how bad a taste it leaves in our national psyche.