King Cuts Coulter Down

Ann Coulter, Homosexuality, Media, The Zeitgeist

Florence King leaves most pipsqueak contemporary “writers” standing (they’re syndicated, however, she’s not). The famous misanthrope and recluse saw fit to emerge from hibernation to kick Ann coulter around in a column for National Review. Some other conservatives crawled from under dank rocks and attempted to respond to King’s studied contempt. Here’s a taste of why they failed so miserably:

Coulter’s sexual remarks are at once grim and flippant. Commenting on a psychologist’s plan to teach children about gay sex in a loving way, she said: ‘How can you teach children about anal sex in a loving way? Or any sodomy, for that matter?”
I am not saying that everyone has to be witty and original and overflowing with dazzling bons mots — after all, Coulter is a lawyer and I wouldn’t want to see her let down the side. I am just curious to know why she was content to call Katie Couric “the affable Eva Braun of morning TV.” Couldn’t she come up with something better? How about Simper Fidelis?…
At her best, Coulter writes well, but the chief source of her success is that she is a perfect match for the American ideal: smart as a whip but dumb as a post, educated but not learned, sexy but not sensuous, all at the same time. She would not hesitate to choose a sledgehammer over a stiletto because her instincts would pull her back from what the 18th century called ‘demolishing your enemies without raising your voice.’ She would know that if a writer uses a stiletto, a lot of people might not get the point, but they would definitely get the loftiness that accompanies irony and understatement. And so, knowing that being called an elitist spells ruin, she opted for a sledgehammer and raised the roof instead.
Her timing was perfect, putting her before the television cameras just in time to take advantage of the whoosh. That’s the sound cable news uses to signal each new 15-second segment in a roundup. They report the latest border debacle, then they go whoosh! and start talking about midwestern floods. When they finish the floods there’s another whoosh! and the subject changes to the stock market. Gone are the days when a break was signaled by a soft rattle of the host’s fake papers and a murmured ‘We’ll be back in a moment.’ Now, if a revered philosopher came on a show, the host would say, ‘Hold your thought, Plato,’ and cut to whoosh.
CNN has the loudest whoosh, a harsh wheezing sound so labored that at first I thought it was me. After all, I made my NR debut 16 years ago with a cover story called ‘I’d Rather Smoke Than Kiss.’ But no. The whoosh is television’s way of telling us that we are being swept up and borne aloft on gusty torrents of swirling excitement. To train us to gasp, they walk us through it by gasping for us.
The whoosh needs a blowhard and it has gotten Ann Coulter, a one-woman Hyde Park Corner who, love her or hate her, is saving television from itself by never uttering Guestisms — those gummy little nothings that guests keep saying over and over without thinking until everybody thinks they have said something thoughtful.”

King’s complete column, “Watch Ann Go Whoosh!,” is here. And here is my “Coughing Up Some Coulter Fur Balls.”

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.

The Hebraic Bond

America, Israel, The West

“If lily-livered Europeans want to understand the ties between the US and Israel, they’d be better off reading Russell Kirk than the Economist. In The Roots of American Order, Kirk traced the profound influence the Hebraic faith and traditions had on the New England Puritans, who drew for sustenance and guidance on Exodus, just as they did on Kings and Romans…”
“In the prophets, in particular—from Amos to the second Isaiah—John Adams saw exemplars for American order, political and private. ‘The great prophets restrained the kings’ ambitions and constantly rebuked the king and the people for their transgressions (at great personal risk)…”

Read the complete column, “The Hebraic Bond,” here.

Lebanon & The Partisan Punditocracy

Islam, Israel, Lebanon, Terrorism, War

Once again, American pundits have fallen into camps on the matter of Israel’s leveling of Lebanon. With few exceptions (mostly in the silenced libertarian camp), the issues remain unexamined; everyone is a hack, rooting for a party to the conflict, and ignoring the principles being sacrificed in the process.

The “argument” I most detest—a holdover from that theater of triumphs, Iraq—is the false dichotomy set-up: “What would you have done in Israel’s position?” the custodians of intellectual debate ask plaintively (and deceptively).

How about not destroy an entire (rather modern and open) society, for starters?

Facetiousness aside, whereas in the US it has taken a couple of years for media malpractitioners to catch up with libertarian prescients vis-Ã -vis Iraq, Israelis are already saying exactly what I said in “Call Off the Israeli Air Force!“: precise, limited and delimited, ongoing strikes.

Writes Yoel Marcus in Ha’aretz, “Israel was right to launch Operation Change of Direction. The big mistake was in not limiting it to a reprisal raid with a time frame and specific dimensions.” A far cry from the crazed recommendations the “sofa samurais” in the US have been issuing.

As I’ve said, develop a different kind of warfare. Big, bloated armies of conscripts are no match for lean mean voluntary militia. Also fascinating about the robustness of debate in Israel is this: I wishfully wrote that the Israeli Air Force ought to have refused when it “was told to carry out air raids on Lebanese roads and residential real estate.” And sure enough, some magnificent men have shown such independent-minded judgment. Read about it in this Observer article, “Israeli Pilots Deliberately Miss Targets.”

Commentators often evince an astute ideological understanding of the conflict—one I may even share. But the notion, for instance, that Hezbollah is a Jihadist organization that would like to see Israel destroyed does nothing to address whether there is utility or justification in destroying Lebanon. (And by that I imply the need to use western precepts such as Just-War ethics and reason. We are fighting for the West, aren’t we? Or is that just a hollow slogan!?)

From believing Hezbollah is spearheading jihad, it does not follow that one ought to pummel Lebanon and kill many more innocents than guilty. Hezbollah, moreover, represents a small segment of the Lebanese population and government, contrary to the Palestinian Authority, where the jihad agenda is widely shared on the street and by the state apparatus.

The gains from the Israeli assault have been minute and probably temporary, as is evident from the steady stream of Hezbollah-powered rockets (140 just today) launched into Northern Israel. To claim Israel is effectively dealing with the guilty in Lebanon is pie-in-the-sky.

Again, it’s interesting that quite a few military men in Israel as opposed the armchair ideologues abroad, agree with the above propositions. In Israel’s defense, and in deference to that country’s people, the debate over this war there is already in full swing.

Here in the US, it’s still safer to shut up about the “miracle” in Mesopotamia and the Leader who led us there, Peace Be Upon Him.