Thursday, January 08, 2009
Harry meets Ann: A question of categories
Harry Smith of CBS News interviews Ann Coulter about her new book
(which is, by the way, hilarious):
Harry actually gets to the core of the problem of categorizing Ann Coulter: Is she a satirist, pundit, public intellectual, or comedian? Ann neither writes nor says anything more extreme or offensive than many a left-wing comedian, and she is very often as funny. Her problem -- apart from the rank double standard that the press applies to the controversy in her humor compared to, say, Bill Maher, Al Franken, or Michael Moore -- is that she wades into serious territory more often than most humorists and often within the same work. To some that makes Ann an "irresponsible" pundit, not a humorist, and it is that categorical confusion that drives the chatterers crazy.
5 Comments:
By 
Georg Felis, at
Thu Jan 08, 09:41:00 AM:
"Is she a satirist, pundit, public intellectual, or comedian? "
Yes.
The key point is to recognize which approach she is taking as you are reading, or you will come away with some wildly weird ideas about what she is saying. That's not to say she doesn't have some wildly weird thoughts sometimes...
By SR, at
Thu Jan 08, 10:57:00 AM:
And I bet Harry thought he had a second Palin impaling coming. Sorry H.
By 
, at
Thu Jan 08, 12:59:00 PM:
I like Ann. First and foremost, she is a warrior, and they are a rare breed on the Right. I have a couple of her books, and one of the things I like about them is that she always sources her facts with footnotes,citing them chapter and verse.
By , at
Fri Jan 09, 08:19:00 AM:
One of the reasons I was drawn to the Conservative movement of the Regan years was that in many respects fact based. That the prevailing, or conventional, wisdom that had driven our country's policies for the previous fifty years (The New Deal, The Great Society even how the Cold War was fought)was not driven by sound data but rather by feel good assumptions. As we learn more from people like Amity Shlaes in the "Forgotten Man" and how bad the The New Deal was for America; or the work the Heritage Foundation and other think tanks have done around some of the Great Society legislation and its deleterious effects on the people it was supposed to help; all of this is fact based and it removes emotion.
What I love about Ann Coulter is that her arguments are so fact based and almost irrefutable. However, all the other elements of the "Ann package" help her sell books, but I dont think it helps the cause? I get her weekly column and every week I want to send it out to about ten people I have an on-going right/left debate, because it is so damn good. However, the source has become so far out there, and her presence creates such a visceral reaction, that she can no longer be taken serious. Which is a shame because she is a brilliant mind.
By , at
Fri Jan 09, 03:57:00 PM:
Well said, Quaker Cat. However, her “cause” now is to primarily sell books. So she provides the MSM with a tasty sound bite, and let games begin. That said, do you think that she would actually reach more people with the William F. Buckley approach? She’s doing what she loves to do, something that she believes in and is getting paid handsomely for it. We should all be so lucky. If she stuck to the university lecture circuit, would she be treated with dignity and respect, or a pie on the face and threats of physical violence. Unfortunately, the days of civil discourse have long passed. Television “debates” on the MSN are about as meaningful as pro wrestling matches – designed to entertain the lowest common denominator and not to educate or inform.
a. moral
