Surely you are going to allow me to respond to this since you were gracious enough (well brave enough) to take up the thrown gauntlet.
old europe wrote:What I don't understand is your (Tico's and Foxy's, specifically) endorsement of Ann Coulter. You post articles that you find funny and witty, and you call them an amusement.
I think reading through these old Coulter columns, I am beginning to better appreciate why I am probably so annoying to so many and attract the flak that I attract. I (and I think most conservatives) do read Coulter for the entertainment factor. I sure don't hunt up an Ann Coulter column expecting to get basic information that isn't available anywhere else. But after reading the generally biased slant in the newspaper, putting up with the sneering sanctimoniousness (is that a word?) of the Leftwing talking heads on TV and reading the unkind criticism in most mainstream newspaper columns, and even perusing some of the excessively scholarly and sometime self-important opinions from the Right, Ann is the relief valve.
She actually says the kind of stuff I would like to say and she generally does it with more good humor than spite and with more wit than rancor.
I like to use humor, satire, and exaggeration to make my point too and that is as poorly understood and accepted by those on the Left as Coulter is. So in a wierd, warped, sort of way, she's almost a soul sister. Does that make sense?
Quote:Here's the introduction from one of Coulter's articles you posted, Tico:
Quote:Ann Coulter wrote:You know, the war where the U.S. military is killing thousands upon thousands of terrorists (described in the media as "Iraqi civilians," even if they are from Jordan, like the now-dead leader of al-Qaida in Iraq, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi). That war.
The introduction, the first four sentences. I've bolded the part I take issue with. She's saying that the US military is "killing thousands upon thousands of terrorists". Thousands. She implies that the thousands of dead Iraqi civilians the media reports about are really all just terrorists.
I think you are looking at it through the prism of pacifism or an anti-war stance and buy into the Leftwing spin put on it. So you read something very differently than I read there.
I read that she is using exaggeration and humorous sarcasm to demonstrate her contempt for that very media who implies that U.S. soldiers are targeting civilians rather than terrorists and that it is mostly civilians we are killing rather than terrorists. She is quite accurately illustrating that we are targeting terrorists, not civilians. She knows, as some of the rest of us know, that the vast majority of the civilians are being killed by those very terrorists, not U.S. soldiers.
And I can't tell you how MUCH I resent any implication that the civilian deaths are by our intent and how dishonest it is to blame the U.S. military and/or George Bush) rather than the terrorists themselves. So you see her words as insensitivity. I see them as reality and feel 'right on sister' when I read them. I oppose terrorists who kill civilians and think those who are unable to focus on the terrorists as the bad guys are the ones who are on the wrong side.
Quote:Oh yeah, and she gives one example - Zarqawi - as reference that all the dead Iraqis are really just terrorists.
That's what I take issue with.
That one example though was a biggie. And one that the media largely ignores as they emphasize the negatives in Iraq and none of the progress being made. You see it as her comparing civilians to Zarqawi. As I have already said, I see it that she puts terrorist murderers and Zarqawi in the same sack.
Quote:Imagine posters on this board posting articles that claim that all the victims of 9/11 were really just imperial capitalists and criminals, and that they were successfully killed. But that the media still chooses to call them "civilians".
Then imagine a number of posters concratulating the author of that article for his quality as a "comedian" (as Tico did, introducing that AC article) and other posters agreeing about the "wit" and the "amusement" the article offers.
I can't see a correlation between your illustration and what Coulter is communicating here.
But imagine posters on this board (or the media or the Leftwing columnists and talking heads) claiming that all or most of the deaths in Iraq are civilians that the U.S. military has intentionally targeted by the order of their Commander in Chief who advocates that the soldiers torture them first. That's the kind of crap we get all the time and it is particularly what Coulter is noting with biting sarcasm.
Quote:That's how I perceive Coulter's articles and your praise.
Now carry on.
Noted and understood. And I hope by this little exercise you can see how Coulter nor my praise or, more precisely, my appreciation is not so insensitive and callous or mean or advocacy for evil as some try to make it. Coulter zeroes in on the hypocrisy, misrepresentations, and disingenuities of the Left and yes, perhaps too stridently and sometimes with too much emphasis, exposes it. She is also an unashamed conservative who will take that side of an issue. It's her stock in trade and in my opinion, she can be brilliant in the execution.
Without casting any aspersions on you as you have been one of those Lefties I really do like
, I can appreciate why you don't like her.
