Some thoughts:
1 Why is Ann Coulter so wildly popular with conservatives? Easy. She doesn't shrink from making the strongest possible case for her point - generally, for conservative values. That's rare. Conservative politicians, including President Bush, often shy away from defending the rightness of their positions. Ann doesn't. As an example, I give you the last sentence of her 1st chapter:
"Liberals can believe what they want to believe, but let us not flinch from indentifying liberalism as the opposition party to God"
2. Is she mean? Yes. Too mean? Probably. I thought that the comment about the Jersey Girls "enjoying" their husbands death went too far. I would have preferred, what others have suggested, "exploited", which would have been accurate. Sometimes when I read her columns I think that her sarcasm was so deep that it obscured her point.
But that's generally quibbling. Her main point is accurate and well reasoned.
As she said to Jay Leno when he was quizzing her about the Jersey Girls quote being too mean: "Is that all liberals are offended by? I called them Godless, for goodness sakes. That they're cool with."
3. Is the Jersey Girls quote all they they found to be offended by? You'd think so, because every interviewer focused on that. I found stuff on almost every page that liberals would be offended by. How about these gems:
- on liberal's sacrament (abortion), and it's affect:
"This leads us to the astonishing spectacle of Teddy Kennedy, in full-dress sanctimony, getting all high and might with Supreme Court candidates as if the nominee had done something heinous like drown a girl and walk away from it because he had diplomatic immunity in the state of Massachusetts."
- on liberal's priesthood (teachers - indoctrinating students in the state religion of liberalism). A whole chapter gauranteed to offend. Ann makes a point about 59% of new teacher applicants in Massachusetts in 1998 failing a test designed for eight graders. Teacher's advocates objected, stating that the test failed to demonstrate a relationshep between test scores and initial teacher competence. Ann's retort:
"Genuine teacher competency is measured by how capable a teacher is at taking away a fourth-grader's Bible and passing out condoms".
4. In all of the TV interviews that I saw with Ann on her publicity tour for the book, none of them conducted a decent interview with her about her thesis: that although liberals demand a separation between state and religion, liberalism is in fact the state religion.
"It has its own cosmology, its own miracles, it's own beliefs in the supernatural, its own churches, its own high priests, its own saints, its own total worldview, and its own explanation for the existence of the universe. In other words, liberalism contains all of the attributes of what is generally known as 'religion.'"
Awesome. A thesis that conservatives agree with, but that no one else has had the gumption to put forward as Ann has.
The book is entertaining and well argued. Yes, and gauranteed to make you wince every now and then. You should read it.
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