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Authors try to land punches on Ann Coulter |
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Written by Carlin Romano, MCT
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Friday, 12 January 2007 |
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• “I Hate Ann Coulter!” by Unanimous, Simon Spotlight, $9.95
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• “Soulless: Ann Coulter and the Right-Wing Church of Hate” by Susan Estrich, Regan Books, $24.95
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• “Brainless: The Lies and Lunacy of Ann Coulter” by Joe Maguire, William Morrow, $21.95
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Call it endless, a regular hatefest. But for Republican pundit Ann Coulter, 2007 couldn’t start any better or hotter. In the wake of “Godless,” her best-selling attack on “the Church of Liberalism,” no fewer than three Coulter-bashing books confront us.
Coulter, 46 or 48 depending on which of two driver’s licenses you trust (just one of many controversies that swirl about her), has a synergy between her punchy TV performances, column writing, and take-no-prisoners wordslinging ignited as she published quick best-sellers.
Her biggest move, one that lost her wide support, was to attack four activist Sept. 11 widows from New Jersey in “Godless.” She wrote that she’d “never seen people enjoying their husbands’ deaths so much.”
How, if you hate Coulter, do you counter her in a book-length critique? The authors of these new anti-Ann screeds appear to have come to the same lame conclusion — play her game.
Susan Estrich, a liberal Democratic law professor, is one-line-paragraph and chatty in “Soulless.”
She cranks out all the appropriate criticisms of Coulter — sloppiness, excessive borrowing, reckless calls to kill people, derivative sloganizing of positions argued better by more thoughtful conservatives — but in a humorless style.
Joe Maguire — a Reuters business editor until the wire service fired him for publishing this book — doesn’t do much better. He, too, apes the pop-hysteria attitude Coulter likes to fuel.
The third, “I Hate Ann Coulter!,” turns out to be a “gimmick” item that emulates her bad taste. It’s the funniest of the three, sold as “the first step toward ridding ourselves — as a country — of Ann Coulter.”
What none of these books does, alas, is explain where a sloganizer of extreme opinion fits in our messy, exhilarating, free political culture. | Only registered users can write comments.
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