House of Eratosthenes

And I disagree. In fact, I’m struggling to figure out what exactly is the objection. I’ve heard Coulter has this reputation for being incendiary and sarcastic and I understand that is true.

Our blogger friend in New Mexico strongly prefers P.J. O’Rourke and has put up, as Exhibit A, an O’Rourke piece wishing for newspapers to save their own necks (possibly) by printing pre-obituaries on the left-wing luminaries who are still among us but could exit momentarily. This seems, to me, an exercise in simply getting away with more. Fantasies about living people dying? “What if Ann Coulter and Glenn Beck wished people dead?” is such an obvious rejoinder to make, I’m a little embarrassed to type in the words.

I have enjoyed many of O’Rourke’s works and admire the man greatly. Something must be flying over my head, because I don’t see this piece as his best. It is a single idea, nominally witty, with a whole lotta words burdening it. Besides of which it’s a little on the mean side. Like I said, who else can get away with wishing living liberals dead?

This so-often-deplored sarcasm — you don’t have to study the situation long, to figure out the sarcasm is deplored less or more depending on the identity of the person putting it out — is clearly receiving a bum rap. Sarcasm can be used to make some good points, points that cannot be made any other way. In moments when our collective attention span has been chiseled away, to such an extent it becomes a precious commodity, sarcasm can become indispensable.

Here‘s an example of what I’m talking about:

[I]t would be a little easier for the rest of us not to live in fear if the president’s entire national security strategy didn’t depend on average citizens happening to notice a smoldering SUV in Times Square or smoke coming from a fellow airline passenger’s crotch.

But after the car bomber and the diaper bomber, it has become increasingly clear that Obama’s only national defense strategy is: Let’s hope their bombs don’t work!

If only Dr. Hasan’s gun had jammed at Fort Hood, that could have been another huge foreign policy success for Obama.

Is the Obama administration’s counter-terrorism strategy really one of hoping the bombs don’t go off? It’s doubtful you can find a piece of paper lying around somewhere with those words appearing in sequence upon it. But it is what is put into practice, not what rolls off the printer, that really counts right?

And it really doesn’t matter how many people find this kind of writing to be abrasive and nasty. Not if the reason they’re finding it to be abrasive and nasty, is that it happens to be accurate.

As for whether it’s important to reflect on this, I’ll leave that to you to decide. Speaking for myself, I’m not coming up with many things that could be much more important than that. Our government is governing us the same way my son safeguards those toys of his that he outgrew awhile back; they’re “his,” but if someone came by and took one of them away, he’d never in a million years notice it. The protection, in fact the mere inventorying, is purely passive.

The current administration’s counter-terrorism strategy is to hope the bombs don’t go off, says Coulter. Don’t like that? Point out some bit of evidence that refutes this, or at least challenges it. Or if it’s worthy of our attention but you don’t like seeing Coulter raising the issue, point the way to someone else bringing it up.

Hoping that terrorist remain too stupid to kill people is part of a larger liberal mindset, which is that the liberal is too intelligent to defend himself.
As a school of fish is a thing itself, not so much a collection of fish–one for all, but not all for one–it is unaffected by losing a few at the perimeter. As long as the perimeter bleeds less than, say, daily auto accidents plus lightening strikes, the liberal school is happy they only have to fight conservatives.
And anyway, why fight when you can just take your turn over the barrel?
- jamzw | 06/01/2010 @ 08:46
Great point. Just this weekend we were watching this ST:TNG episode and it really offended both of us to sit through all that build-up for a conclusion that was so utterly nonsensical, limp-wristed and dovish.

Here I’ll bottom-line it: Captain Picard is stabbed through the chest as he sleeps for no reason whatsoever, by a boy who had already been the beneficiary of his ginormous niceness. After he recovers in sickbay he limps up to the bridge, with the boy side by side, and confesses all the terrible things he has done to the boy that must have made the boy want to do such a thing. Everyone lives happily ever after.

I’m leaving out some things but I don’t think they change the outcome, the overall plot, or what it reveals about the mentality. This is precisely what you’re talking about isn’t it?

How’d we ever survive those nineties.
- mkfreeberg | 06/01/2010 @ 09:02
To paraphrase Camus, those who lack courage will find many a philosophy ripe for justifying it. As you describe Picard, though, it is not a lack of courage that brings this particular behavior, but a screenwriters lack of conviction. Excessive sensibility is another name for morbid self-consciousness.

It is complicated being a liberal. Stacking cards is what they call nuance, and there are a lot of cards to stack.

Wincing in disgust is so right-wing. Laughter is better for the face, but more disrespectful. That’s Coulter. A girl’s got to take care of her face. I think you had a post on that.
- jamzw | 06/01/2010 @ 10:07
Like I said, who else can get away with wishing living liberals dead?

Swoosh! That sound you heard was the point flying over your head (two can play this “you totally missed it” game). P.J. didn’t wish those people dead, his whole point was “whack ’em now while we still can.” I’m thinking he subscribes to Mom’s Twelfth Dictum: “Don’t speak ill of the dead.” And no one generally does, except perhaps for Ann-of-Less-Than-Green-Gables. And other sarcastic, acerbic “wits” of her ilk.

But Hey! Taste, and all that. Coulter is very successful at what she does; so is Beck. They both have large audiences and make tons of money… Hell, I’d trade incomes with either of them for only a single month and then retire to that condo in Miami Beach. But I still think they’re asshats. I’d love to have a few beers with Mr. O’Rourke or WFB, Jr (if I could resurrect him). Not so much with Ms. Coulter; and that activity would be impossible with Beck, coz he don’t drink hisself no more beer. I’d rant a lot, too, if I had to bear that particular cross.

Thanks for the link, as ever.
- bpenni | 06/01/2010 @ 12:08
Okaaaay…

But what specifically is brought to harm, by the inclusion of the Beck/Coulter…uh…what do we call it. Invective? How is the discourse helped if the prose of Mr. O’Rourke is left in as a substitute? It certainly doesn’t seem to become more scrutinizing or enlightening.

I mean hey, I’ll go ahead and say it: I think all in all we’d be better off without Jimmy Carter. But with that predilection of mine, when I read O’Rourke’s piece it seems to be an epistle written of, by and for those among us who recognize the disadvantages of having this “distinguished-elder-statesman” around, and the advantages of not having him around. To the empty-heads who continue to wax lyrically about “Our Greatest Ex-President” as if there was some burning unanswered question regarding who that might be, O’Rourke’s piece really has no point to it whatsoever.

Coulter, on the other hand, at least speaks to the yet-to-be-converted. I’ll grant you the conversion is unlikely, on a spectacular scale, to take place at that point due to the fact that she’s about as tactful as a whack in the balls with a 4″x 4″ oak beam. But at least she lays down the foundation for what she’s saying, why she’s saying it — it’s at least there.

Methinks you are comparing writers who aren’t exactly in the same line of work.
- mkfreeberg | 06/01/2010 @ 12:46
Coulter, on the other hand, at least speaks to the yet-to-be-converted. …unlikely…

“Unlikely” is the understatement of the decade. There’s not a Lefty alive who would give Coulter the time o’ day, let alone actually listen to her. Coulter is preaching to the choir and ONLY to the choir. Do you really believe she speaks to the yet-to-be-converted? Really? C’mon, Morgan.

The writers aren’t in the same line of work, granted, nor do they have anything close to the same modus operandi. They do share a political point of view (mostly… O’Rourke is more libertarian), though. But O’Rourke is entertaining whereas Coulter irritates some of those who would agree with her politics, were she not so damned strident.

Taste, Morgan. Taste. And civility.
- bpenni | 06/02/2010 @ 08:04
Well if you just start from the premise that they’re wrong, without intellectually establishing why that is, it’s just “Hooray For Our Side” cheerleading. P.J.’s guilty of this, Coulter typically is not.

I didn’t see a single thing in the piece you linked…not one word…that would clue me in on why I’d be mistaken, if I were a lefty. So yes, Coulter does a better job of “reaching across the aisle.” Sure there are others who are more tactful, but generally they just appease and acquiesce.

Once the lefty is willing to embrace demonstrably wrong things just to maintain purity of his associations with “good” people, he’s very far gone. But O’Rourke isn’t even making the effort.
- mkfreeberg | 06/02/2010 @ 08:56
Taste and civility are capable of reaching conservatives, but the idea of actually reaching a lefty with those virtues is one that to my knowledge has never been established. It is more important and more practical to preach to the choir in any event, because if the choir is disorganized there is not much reason for hope. And it is very disorganized.

‘That one can convince one’s opponents with printed reasons, I have not believed since the year 1764. It is not for that purpose that I have taken up my pen, but rather merely to annoy them, and to give strength and courage to those on our side, and to make it known to others that they have not convinced us’–Georg Lichtenberg
- jamzw | 06/02/2010 @ 10:40
De gustibus non est disputandum would seem to be the real issue here, and I think Morgan’s got it with “Methinks you are comparing writers who aren’t exactly in the same line of work.” They’re not the same person, they’ve got different ideas of what’s funny, they’ve got different audiences. Why is that a problem? Getting into arguments about “Who’s the best?” sounds too much like “My dog’s better than your dog,” and belongs, ultimately, in grade school.

P.J. O’Rourke has been wonderful for years and years, and has decidedly punctured many richly-deserving balloons. Check out his characterization of the “humanitarian” work by Bianca Jagger, as an example. There’s no question he’s a mellower type than Ann Coulter, and so what? Me personally, I think she’s just funnier than hell, and I have no doubt it comes from her deep wells of anger at idiocy. Probably would wear over a long weekend, but maybe not. It’s like the classic distinction between a comic and a comedian. O’Rourke says funny things; Coulter says things funny. Real funny.

I’ve never been able to connect with those who find her strident; what I hear, rather, is her impatience with having to fend off the same old lame canards over and over – and what shines through is that she’s a lot smarter than the purveyors of that tired old crap. I’d lose patience too, but she’s funny while she’s doing it.

Ain’t no accountin’ for taste. She cracks me up, and the Lichtenberg quote (thanks, jamzw) characterizes her attitude perfectly. A writer “whose policy instincts are sound, whose wits are sharp, and whose moral vision is unclouded — who drives all the right people crazy, across party lines.”
- rob | 06/02/2010 @ 19:20
The whole thing with edgy, snarky humor kinda strikes me as a “Only Nixon Can Go To China” situation in reverse. Ann Coulter puts out a book called “How To Talk to a Liberal — If You Must” and there is weeping and wailing from people like Buck — liberals like Buck, conservatives like Buck. Both sides of the aisle. Oh, how uncivil. How can she do this. Time for her to go away, enough is enough, this doesn’t help things, etc. etc. etc. etc. etc……….

Meanwhile, the liberal ranks are swollen full of comedians and “comediennes” who haven’t even said anything all that funny for ten years or more…Garofalo, Maher, Silverman, DeGeneres, Fey. Just go through the list of Huffington Post contributors, ninety percent are liberals, eighty percent are “edgy” comedians, seventy percent have been on Bill Maher’s show, nearly all of them willing to swear to the “fact” that tea parties are inherently racist.

This is so much worse than anything Ann Coulter or Glenn Beck have ever done. You know, if I walk up to you sand say “two and two make three,” we can have a civil conversation about that. If I say “two and two make three and you belong in the Klan if you say any different,” then we cannot. Liberals, for the last four decades or more, have been the reason we cannot discuss anything without getting into fights, and since the Supreme Court had to intervene in the presidential election it’s gotten a whole lot worse.
- mkfreeberg | 06/03/2010 @ 05:39
Hmmm. This horse is dead, so we will cease the floggings. Until next time. Rinse, repeat.

All y’all can continue as you’ve begun, i.e., “Ya REALLY beat the livin’ dogshit out of ’em, Ann! Yays! Good job! Huzzah!”

Me and the spirit of WFB, Jr. shall retire to our corner.
- bpenni | 06/03/2010 @ 08:45

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Buck Doesn’t Like Ann CoulterTuesday, June 1st, 2010

Buck Doesn’t Like Ann Coulter
Tuesday, June 1st, 2010