In Defense of Ann Coulter (and her ilk…)

A question posted by an old friend got me to thinking today about Ann Coulter and pundits of her kind. The question was about her sanity, or lack thereof, and what caused her to be that way.

I would posit that she’s no different from Keith Olbermann in the sense that she’s a “shock-pundit”—she, like Olbermann, preaches to the choir daily. The only thing about the choir is that, unlike religious choirs that know exactly why they are saying “amen,” the choirs of Coulter and Olbermann would never admit that they are simply hollering “amen” to a person spouting what they already believe. The Coulter/Olbermann choirs like to think that they are intellectual and savvy to information that the great unwashed doesn’t have (in this way, they are exactly like religious choirs.)

The reason Coulter and Olbermann are “shock-pundits” is simple—that’s how you get noticed. There are a million morning DJ’s; why does everyone know Howard Stern’s name? There are a million political pundits and professors of political science/sociology/theology/economics and scads of other people eminently more qualified to speak on matters of societal importance (I have no idea what Coulter did before this and Olbermann was a sportscaster, fer chrissakes.) Of course they are going to be shocking! Nobody is going to sit through countless treatises about the relative worth of this program or that policy; political philosophy is boring, and has already been commented on by greater minds than any we have produced recently (who would want their work to be compared to, say, John Locke’s writing?) So, we get incendiary comments about Bush being a Nazi and Barack Obama’s middle name. Liberals are “godless” and conservatives are “fascists.” Neo-cons control the world and neo-libs are the forefront of a glorious Socialist revolution. The tripe is as predictable as it is exciting, in its own way—provocation breeds interest. No one wants to walk away from a challenge, now do they?

Coulter and Olbermann are victims of breathing their own exhaust fumes. They really, honestly believe the stuff they say, because they have choirs large enough to insulate them; if you were to have 1,000 people a day writing or calling to tell you that you’re right, you’d start to believe it to-- you couldn’t help it, because it’s a closed loop!

I separate Coulter and Olbermann from Rush Limbaugh and Michael Moore. Don’t get me wrong—Moore and Limbaugh use the same methods to attract an audience and are arguably (by sheer numbers alone) even better at it—but it is my humble opinion that, at the end of the day, they know exactly why they do it. In Moore’s case, it’s to sell movies and move books. In Limbaugh’s case, it’s to increase listenership and charge more for ad time. Moore and Limbaugh concentrate on conveniently manipulated “facts” or non-manipulated facts taken completely out of context; this lends them an air of gravitas and even elevates them to a position of “information source.” This forces them to keep the rants somewhat sane and at least in the realm of actual ideas, because this expands the size of the choir—the bigger the choir, the more money you make and Moore and Limbaugh are both very good at making money, if nothing else.

And then, there is We, the People. Face it, folks, we’re all biased. Every single person has an opinion, and we tend to hang around people that share those opinions. And none of us likes to admit it. Ann Coulter isn’t an opinion maker; she’s an opinion parroter, a megaphone for a bunch of ideas, some good, some bad and some just plain odd. Olbermann isn’t a deep thinker or a man speaking truth to power—he’s a pundit speaking what you already say to your friends at the water cooler, an amplifier of some good ideas, some bad ideas and some odd ideas. We pick and choose from these amplified idiots the things we hear that we agree with and conveniently dispose of the rest. We label them, and add them to our dichotomous lists “good” and “bad,” “conservative” and “liberal,” “fascist” and “socialist.” We can’t help that either; our brains are hard-wired for it.

Plato said “Know thyself.” It is only by understanding who we are that we can understand why we got here. There may be nothing we can do about it, mind you, but understanding motivations is paramount to every human interaction that you can think of. We are not “victims” of Ann Coulter or Keith Olbermann (or Rush Limbaugh and Michael Moore), we created them, and they are in our image, dark and terrifying as that may be.

In fact, we inflate them (no Michael Moore or Rush Limbaugh pun intended)—in this world of hyper-celebrity we elevate town criers and court jesters to the position of bestselling author or media darling. Ann Coulter is famous for the same reason Paris Hilton is—we buy her shit. Period. Seriously, how many people do you know that will admit to being a big Paris Hilton fan? I bet you know of none, and yet this flaccid, vacant, nubile bimbo graces the cover of at least one magazine a week and somehow gets TV deals and endorsement contracts; the people that pay her are not the types that throw money away; they are investing, and wisely, it seems.

So, the short answer to the original question of why Ann Coulter (and I add Keith Olbermann) is unhinged is—we pay her to be.