To: Ann Coulter, syndicated columnist
Re: Where's the carnage?
Dear Ann,
I must confess that my heart sank when I read your latest column, "Mineta's Bataan death march," in which you criticize Secretary of Transportation Norman Mineta for opposing the racial profiling of Arabs in U.S. airports.
It's not so much that I have problems with your argument (though I do personally disagree with it). What I don't get is why you tip-toed, quite un-Coulterlike, around your most striking point: That you'd like to see Mineta dead.
Here's what you wrote at the opening of the column:
According to initial buoyant reports in early February, enraged travelers rose up in a savage attack on the secretary of transportation. Hope was dashed when later reports indicated that the irritated travelers were actually rival warlords, the airport was the Kabul Airport, and Norman Mineta was still with us.
Frankly, Ann, I've come to expect better from you. Why use a rhetorical trick that depends on confusing Mineta with the recently killed Afghan secretary of transportation? Why not just come out and say what you really mean?
I know columnists aren't usually in the business of inciting violence. But you've always been the exception in this regard. There was, after all, the time you called for the U.S. to attack France. And need I mention what you said about those poor misguided people in the Muslim world who were caught on the air celebrating the September 11 attacks?
Ann, let's face it. If writing columns is like playing a sport, then by your very nature you're an extreme athlete. You've always been much more over the top than your closest rivals, Michelle Malkin and National Review's John Derbyshire; and even he had the guts to suggest that we ought to execute Chelsea Clinton (arguing that "the vile genetic inheritance of Bill and Hillary Clinton may live on to plague us in the future").
Seriously, Ann, do I have to remind you that you got fired from the National Review Online for your extreme rhetoric? That's your persona now. It's what distinguishes you, what sets you apart. You don't hem and haw. You don't take prisoners. The website Spinsanity.com has even labeled you "the jargon vanguard."
After 9/11, I was convinced that you had really started to come into your own. I even wrote a column making the assertion -- an outrage for my liberal readers -- that you had actually been right about something.
But for a gal who celebrates toughness, this latest piece is an un-manly display indeed. I never thought I'd see the day that Ann Coulter was afraid to call for the death of the only Democratic cabinet member.
What is opinion journalism coming to?
Dismayed,
Chris Mooney