As usual, I enjoyed Jon Stewart’s interview with right-wing nut (and best-selling author) Ann Coulter tonight. But in trying to expose her wacky ideas using his trademark low-key snarkiness, Stewart missed the golden opportunity to ask a relaxed and non-defensive Coulter some eminently fair questions, like:
-You say all liberals hate America. Does Jimmy Carter hate America? Did Martin Luther King hate America? Isn’t that the sort of slanderous generalization you accuse liberals of in your book?
-Why is it OK to criticize a Democratic president and not a Republican one?
-You’re upset that liberals are questioning the war on terror. But wasn’t this country founded on a tradition of criticism and skepticism of governmental power?
-How do you feel now about your own quote, “We should invade their countries, kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity”?
I sort of want to read her book now, just to marvel at it. Maybe someone will loan it to me.
I have a problem with the very first line of that article and I couldn’t get passed it. Religious Holy War? I don’t really remember that ever being mentioned.
Coulter is more or less psychotic. That’s the only way I can make sense of her bullshit, unless she’s just being outrageous for publicity. I mean she makes Pat Buchanan seem almost cuddly by comparison.
I suspect that Coulter is really Kang (or Kodos) from the Simpsons in a (semi-)human disguise.
The sad thing is, her views are not that uncommon. Try listening to Christian radio once. (Or don’t. I have heroically volunteered to take the bullet on that one, while you’re enjoying American Idol. No sense in more than one of becoming hopelessly enraged and disgusted at the same time.)
Anyway, Coulter’s views wouldn’t make people look twice in the religious right Christian radio subculture. The only difference is that she has a mainstream platform, rather than one relagated to the sidelines. We can only hope she gets banished to the fringe where she belongs by the collective indifference of the masses.