Stolen Lines #1

"I tried to think of the right answer. Unable to think of that, I spoke anyway."

This is a line that Grace from Law With Grace has chosen for her blogger friends to write about. It's part of an experiment, so to speak, in which Grace chooses a line from a book and everyone else begins their post with that line and then writes about it. The above line that Grace has chosen comes from Night of the Avenging Blowfish, by John Welter.

I think it is a wonderfully appropriate line. It describes what many people do on the internet and in the media every day. Some people, in fact, are living breathing embodiments of this quote.

Ann Coulter, for instance.

Apparently, she has a new liberal-bashing book out. Included in this book are lines like "We have a term for youngsters involved in children of divorces, or as I call them, future strippers" and "Single motherhood is like a farm team for future criminals and social outcasts." Coulter keeps it klassy by also accusing the Democratic primaries of being a contest of "Who's the Biggest Pussy?" and by calling White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan "retarded."

Her gross simplifications of social phenomena into black/white, liberal/conservative, smart/retarded, strong/pussified dichotomies indicates that Coulter is rarely able to ever think of the right answer when it comes to social ills facing our nation. Yet due to her various book-selling succe$$es she is nonetheless likely aware of the fact that Hate $ells. It may not actually be the "right answer" to blame every conceivable social ill on liberals or to hate liberals and everything they stand for.

But, "right answers" rarely matter when money is to be made.

Even though those of us in the reality-based world live in shades of gray and know that addressing problems in a meaningful way requires us to think about things in a more grown-up manner, in Coulter's world we're all divided into easily definable groups of good and evil. Her simplistic demagoguery and divisive rhetoric that distorts more than it informs sells. It sells even though speaking with, perhaps pussified, love in her heart would have contributed so much more good to the world and would have made Ms. Coulter more worthy of the Christian cross she wears around her neck while promoting her hateful tomes.

"I tried to think of the right answer. Unable to think of that, I spoke anyway."

Money, power, hate.

Despite the fact that a media watchdog organization has found numerous falsehoods and misrepresentations in her latest book, Ann Coulter speaks anyway.