Category Archives: Ilana Mercer

Updated: Make Friends with Your 'Fast'

Today a mysterious package arrived from Volkswagen. In it was a gloriously ugly onyx gargoyle with the following instructions for the driver of that devil, the GTI:

Dear Ms. Ilana Mercer,

This is your fast. Make sure it gets plenty of exercise.

All the best,

Volkswagen

Here you can view some ads with “fast” in the background. Lefty magazines have crowed about the anti-fem angle of the commercials. The emphasis on speed has displeased the same habitual joy killers: “irresponsible” they call it.

Volkswagen has tapped into something. “Fast” sounds a lot like my alter ego when I drive Turbo-Toad (that’s my GTI). My husband will attest to the fact that, as welcome as “Fast” is on the dashboard—ears pinned back by the wind (“they channel air away from fast’s face and off his back,” says the instruction pamphlet “Fast” came with)—I didn’t need him to remind me of my mission when driving the GTI.

Update: Pursuant to the comments hereunder, I have to ask, Why is the love of fast, fabulous cars equated with youth and folly? This country worships youth and thinks of looking good, having fun, or driving a fast car as the prerogatives of youth. Rubbish. Besides which mature drivers who’ve been on the road for a while are the real good drivers. By the way, as this great article makes clear, the GTI is just a magnificent car. Not only does it have a tremendously powerful, brilliantly engineered engine, it is accoutered with safety features and luxuries absent in many a sports car. As for my being a bit childish; big deal. So where was I? Fast comes with 4 tails. He has the devilish badboy tail on today; I may change it soon.

(Be sure to rev up with the preceding blog post, Glorious GTI)

Updated: Barely a Blog Back

Barely A Blog, Ilana Mercer

Barely a Blog crashed a few weeks back. The hundreds of comments readers contributed (and my responses to those) were lost. Thankfully, all blog entries written by me were retrieved and the archives remain intact, so do delve into those. My gratitude goes to Crystal, the very skilled and sympathetic class act behind the VDARE blog.

Updated: Glorious GTI

Ilana Mercer, Political Correctness, Sport, Technology

He’s black, he’s beautiful, and he’s mine. He’s a 2006 Volkswagen GTI, with a high-tech 200-horsepower, 2.0-liter turbocharged engine.

My favorite features are the spectacularly smooth six-speed manual transmission (I won’t drive an automatic, never have; never will.), the 18-inch alloy wheels, and the six CD changer. But it also sports leather seats with heating, along with electronic lumbar control, power sunroof that can tilt up or slide open horizontally, satellite radio, heavy-duty mats for floor and trunk, and dual zone climate control.

Carey Russ and Wayne Cunningham of CNET write that, “The Volkswagen GTI has been a performance icon since its debut on American shores in 1983, when it offered a high degree of fun and performance nearly matching those of much more expensive German sports sedans for a very reasonable price. ‘A pocket rocket,’ they call this thing. Consumer Reports name the fifth-generation Volkswagen GTI the top sporty car in its price range.”

You can say that again. A one-time race driver in South Africa, my brother-in-law is a fan of the GTI and is responsible for piquing our interest in the “pocket rocket.” Sean told him, “We had both planned to test drive it. Ilana started out driving and that was it; she liked it so much that I never got to try it! It goes like a bat out of hell.”

Oh, you’ll laugh at this one. I thought I was driving suspiciously fast. Yet Sean kept tut-tutting, “You’re not going fast enough. Well, he was looking at the Rev counter not the speedometer. So it turns out I must have been going about 40 miles per-hour in the zones designated for “our children.” A pox on them!

We immigrants from the Third World are not spoilt. This is the first new car we’ve ever owned; I’ve been driving my second-hand, 1986 two-seater, Toyota MR2 for quite a while. I loved “Mr. Two” (other than some rust, it looks just like this; still a classic beauty).

What’s more, the engine is fantastic. It goes just splendidly. I have to confess, though, that once I was speeding down the highway in the GTI, I fecklessly forgot my old chariot.

Update: I am now able to report that zero to 60 takes 7.0 seconds. The stick-shift GTI–mine–is apparently an imperceptible one tenth of a second slower than the automatic and a great deal more fun. (Related, and equally revved reading: “Make Friends With Your Fast“)

Coulter Correspondence

Ann Coulter, Ilana Mercer

As you can imagine, many of Ms. Coulter’s more maniacal followers responded to my rather tame and measured, “Coughing Up Some Coulter Fur Balls.”

As unpleasant as some got, they were never as racist, stupid, statist, and plain loathsome as the prototype, frothing-at-the-mouth left-liberal, epitomized by this character (now permanently blocked).

The left is worse than the right—about that Coulter is right.

There were, however, some lovely notes. I’ll share them with you.

Here’s one from Billy V.:

Dear Miss Mercer:

“I can’t tell you how wonderful it is to read your wonderful columns.

Miss Coulter in a confused, unprincipled woman. But Republocrats and Demopublicans are all just unprincipled rotters. And your writing on this matter is so right on. I can’t believe it but I do, and I thank you for it.

Thank you for the life saver and the rope to pull me to shore.”

Writes Rick from Florida:

“Mrs. Mercer: By pure accident, I ran into some of your comments while reading an article about fathers on the net. Your eloquence, excellent writing, precise and to-the-point observations, are quite refreshing. I tend to agree with your assessment of Anne Coulter. Absolutely no talent [i think she has talent–ILANA], very insipid [far from it–ILANA], and way off on her portrait of the 9/11 widows. My opinion? Vulgar and low. By being number one on the Best Sellers lists, she shows us how far down our country has fallen.
Keep up you great work. You now have another admirer.”

And this from R. R.:

“Ann Coulter has a tendency to incite.

You educate.

Thanks”

Thanks to all for taking the time to write; you made my day.–ILANA