Not to get too deep into the weeds on this, but I'm going to break with Duncan here and defend TNR's defense of Ann Coulter (which is, surely, the TNRiest article of all time). Coulter is less a political force nowadays than some sort of bizarre rorschach atop which we dump our worst impulses and greatest rages. I don't know a single person who believes she's anything less than a talk show vaudeville act, yet she remains prominent in the conversation. How her trolling retains its effectiveness is worth mining a bit, and it's to TNR's credit that, after publishing some killer takedowns of her last week, they're willing to let Elspeth Reed explore the other end.
Reed argues is that a certain fraction of what emerges when liberals face down Ann Coulter has a sexist tinge to it and that, as a woman who enjoys bare knuckle political debate, she thrills to Coulter's decidedly un-lady like willingness to tear apart her assailants. That the response to Coulter so often focuses on her looks also deserves some examination. It's not clear why the venom from a blond, leggy snake should be treated any different than the bile Hugh Hewitt spits out, yet rare is the soliloquy on how desperate the writer would have to become to hit the Hewitt. It's a fair point, and I'd extend it by wondering why liberals seem to have so few aggressive female flacks.
That said, Reed's article veers into a few less interesting places, underplaying the odiousness of Coulter's remarks (folks were not offended at her characterization of the 9/11 Widows as "broads" but as grief merchants) and allowing comedic value to trump untruth. Were Coulter an admitted satirist, we could all relax and chuckle at her outrageous slurs. Unfortunately, she's a "serious" pundit with a troubling ubiquity on the cable news shows and a Time cover to her name. At one point, Reed frets that the liberal response to the widows thing makes us look like "weenies" -- I think we're far more weenified when we chuckle at Coulter's attacks, like the high school nerd who tries to laugh along when the joke's on him. Indeed, a good example of how to handle Coulter came from Reed's editor Peter Beinart who, rather than chuckling at Coulter's latest attacks on gays and Bill Clinton, dismembered her on Larry Kudlow's show, even getting Kudlow to disavow her comments. I'm all for the occasional defense of Ann Coulter, but only when the norm is no-holds barred attack.
Crossposted at Tapped
