Politics as Unusual

kw: book reviews, essays, politics

Do you remember who said, "We should invade their countries, kill their leaders, and convert their children to Christianity."? Ann Coulter still says, so, and backs it up with reasons. Nobody yet—and it has been four years—has, in print, offered anything remotely resembling a reasoned contrary argument. I've looked and looked, and found emotionalism at best, but usually personal attacks of the vilest kind.

Ms Coulter would respond that her opponents' only weapon is character assassination. So she offers up her own brand of political polemic in her new book, How to Talk to a Liberal (if you must).

She presses her point in the title chapter. Thereafter, she offers up just over 100 essays expressing her conservative views with considerable wit and erudition. You may not like what she says, but you must admit she does her homework.

It took reading them all, then pondering, for me to realize that she refrains from going after those the media in general is attacking. She specializes in recounting the ignored stories, the underreported angles, the "elephants in the corner" that "the media" bypasses.

The author skewers the liberal and famous right and left. As she says, "They are such easy targets." For example, in the essay, "Checks and Balances, but Mostly Checks," she notes late in the essay that every major newspaper and news program reported how "Bush outspent Gore 4 to 1 on Florida recount." However, not one of them reported that 7/8 of Gore's fund was donated by just 84 persons, and that 2/3 came from 38 individual contributions averaging $55,000, and ranging from $25,000 to $500,000. By contrast, no donation to G.W. Bush exceeded $5,000, so that he raised his $13+ million from several thousand persons. So, which party caters to the rich???

As Bernard Baruch stated, "Every man has the right to an opinion, but no man has a right to be wrong in his facts." That goes for women, too. And I must here paraphrase Mark Twain, "Someone who will not think, has no advantage over someone who cannot think." Ann Coulter knows how to think, so put on your thinking cap before you enter the lists against her.