January 29th, 2009
Up until I was a junior in college, I had never heard of Ann Coulter until I saw her on CNN. I thought she was a breath of fresh air—she shattered my then libertarian conviction that conservatives are joyless and preachy. I was so intrigued that I picked up Slander, which in turn induced my fascination with conservatism. I don’t want to know what that says about me.
So I brought the book home in between semesters and told my mother, the Democrat, all about it. Mom isn’t belligerent, like Keith Olbermann, nor is she smug, like Rachel Maddow. She was just born a Democrat, and has remained loyal to her party. I respect that—she’s my mother! Being my mother and knowing I liked Slander so much, she insisted on picking up Treason the day it was released. It started a tradition where Mom buys me every new Ann Coulter book as a “surprise” gift. Just like every other program which depends on Democrats to provide for certain needs, this has proven to be inefficient.
Remember when Coulter released Godless and the media subtly suggested that she had attacked all 9-11 widows for two weeks? I couldn’t watch coverage of it or discuss it with my friends because I wanted to read the book first, and Mom didn’t get it to me until the following July (Godless was released on 6-6-06). Similarly, I had to sit out the hand-wringing over Coulter’s chapter on single mothers in Guilty because Mom was waiting for my last Christmas present to arrive before shipping all of them in bulk to me. That’s why I’m blogging about it today.
I’m only a chapter into Guilty, and it’s the most fun I’ve had reading an Ann Coulter hardcover since Treason. If it doesn’t come unraveled, it will be one of her three best books, alongside Treason and Slander. Coulter is at her best when she has the discipline to write around a coherent theme. Slander is about media bias; Treason is about the left’s bizarre sympathy for ideas and cultures antagonistic to traditional American values, such as communism and the societies which embrace it. Concordantly, Coulter is at her worst when she strings mostly unrelated one-liners around a very loose theme (as she did in Godless), or doesn’t even pretend to have an overarching subject. I’m in no place to criticize such an established conservative writer, but I worry that she’s been mailing it in for a few years.
I’m now cautiously optimistic about Ms. Coulter. Guilty seems to be a return to her best form. Not only has she produced a tome united around a clear theme, but that theme, the idealization of victimhood, is worth bringing attention to. Victimhood has been abused as a status symbol for a long time, and it’s nice to see Coulter drag that into the light. In Guilty, Coulter echoes Camille Paglia, who railed hard against feminist victim ideology right around the time Bill Clinton was first inaugurated. Although it must be noted that Ann’s far glibber than Camille.
From the introduction, Guilty promises to condemn the exploitation of victimhood, including exaggerated claims, fake hate crimes (which the right isn’t immune from), and linguistic gymnastics that would intimidate Natasha Liukin. Coulter even takes it step further by arguing that victim ideology creates real victims, such as those whose good will is being taken advantage of by fabricated claims of abuse. Give me a weekend and I’ll let you know if Coulter’s brand new (to me) book closes as strong as it opens.
Cross-posted at Modern Conservative