We come to pity Ann Coulter, not to damn her. We owe our magnanimity to Keith Olberman’s observations about our favorite junkie, Rush Limbaugh:
Understand this about Limbaugh. He doesn’t believe half the junk he spouts. I’ve met him, and had pleasant enough conversations with him, twice - at the 1980 World Series when he was still a mid-level baseball flunky with a funny name, and once in the mid ‘90s at ESPN when he was just beginning his campaign to get a toehold there. He is a quiet, almost colorless man who, if he could be guaranteed similar success in sportscasting, would sell out the sheep who follow his every word - and would do it before close of business today.
Much the same, we think, could be said about Ms. Coulter, whom Olberman skewered rather elegantly (and you can see how at Crooks and Liars), for suggesting that New Yorkers would surrender immediately to terrorists should they arrive in New York. We’re sure all the bereft family members of NYPD/FD officers who died running into the twin towers as they burned to save civilian lives will disagree with Coulter’s assessment of the courage or cowardice of New Yorkers.
How, you wonder, could she have said something so monumentally stupid? She appears to have been running the “fly-paper” line – which, given the stratospheric growth rate of al-Quaeda/jihadi bombings (London being the most recent) since il Ducetto started his excellent Iraqi venture, reveals the typical Red [Talking] Head capacity to be as wrong and as offensive as possible at the same time. There was a day when this ability was highly prized. Fake outrage and outrageousness drove radio and cable news ratings; the networks made money, the Red Heads made money. Everyone was happy.
But it’s a bit like Groundhog Day on acid for the Red Heads now. Every morning, every show, every column (even the plagiarized ones) they have to keep saying the same old stuff to entertain the base (which means “al-quaeda” in Arabic). It was easier in the old days, when Clinton was President, the economy was strong and Americans were fat, dumb and happy. There was no jarring backdrop of, what’s the word – reality? – against which the Red Head’s nonsense would immediately reveal itself to be, well nonsense.
But times have changed, Gentle Reader. Even if the media won’t show us the body bags, folks know that a lot of people are dying in this excellent Iraqi adventure and – as Chris Rock so sagely observed last night on Real Time, gas is getting more expensive every day.
But Ann and Rush and the rest of their Red Head ilk still have to spew the same old excrement every day. It’s not like they can change their tune. It’s not like they have any knowledge or credibility to fall back on. Their only moral authority they possess is that of the role popular culture allowed them back in the days when the cattle were fat. They’re the folks who spew bilious nonsense about politics for our entertainment. They don’t believe what they say and we know they don’t believe what they say – they’re paid to be outrageous – which in the days of fat cattle is funny. If Rush or Ann started saying that Rummy was the most incompetent Secretary of Defense in American history, which would happen to be true – no one would care. They’re not paid because people care about what they think. People just enjoyed the way they ranted when we could afford ranting as a substitute for reasoned political discourse.
We are in the years of want, now. The old reliable jokes about cowardly liberals in New York are, besides being tasteless, just dumb. They are not funny. But every morning the Red Heads have to get up and dish out the same old crap after the body and bomb count headlines are read and become increasingly irrelevant to our lives and our politics. They’re the tattered dime novels, the bare ruined choirs, the old painted whores, the relics of our days of plenty, which we squandered utterly. It is increasingly more difficult for everyone to look at them, and soon enough, no one will bother to listen to them.
You'd almost feel sorry for them.
