We should certainly forget the times when "The New Republic" was considered (quite widely) as a "liberal" counterpart to the conservative "National Review". Why else would a "liberal journal" would consider prospects of Repub hopefuls (such as McCain or Newt Gingrich) just as serious as the burning topics of today?
But this takes the top of the cake:
A defense of Ann Coulter
by Elspeth Reeve
Seriously?! Yeah!
I just don't understand the author. If she were a guy, I could perhaps imagine personal complexities of finding it cool that
"Coulter shocks and offends" in her way of telling her
"grains of truth", all of this while feeling himself
"playing dirty" or
"killing political careers" when silencing conservatives pals with a talk of
"how Jesus was a liberal". You tend to admire in the opposite sex what you miss.
But the author being a woman, I am more than surprised of her lack of sense of fairness in admiring questionable "grains of truth" amidst loads of shit that really kill careers of honest and qualified people, while paving the way to power to unscrupulous thugs in sheep clothing.
No, the author is utterly wrong when she implies that "Coulter makes us [liberals!?] cringe" not because of "the terrible things she says", but because of some "grains of truth we wish weren't true". Of the examples the author gives, I just don't get any wisdom in her remarks on 9/11 widows and Gore (or similarly Bill Clinton) being a "total fag". Whatever questionable miniscule "truth" there is, it does not compensate the wickedness of Coulter's venom.
No. Coulter is irritating to us liberals because her kind of insulting talk is utter disgrace to our civilization of the 21st century. Not only it brutally pushes out any intelectual argument (since poor Ann Coulter does not have any other methods to counter that), her angry venom is morally unfair: she hurts people who do not deserve that, and pleases wicked minds that actually need to be chastised.
And the author is reading my male liberal mind way wrong when she says "Coulter is a pretty woman who holds up a mirror showing us the ugliest parts of ourselves." I do not remember my mind ever bothered with her looks. Even if she is suposed to be attractive, I am not surprised if she "does not pass the Chris Matthews [or whoever] test". And no, the ugliness I see in "her mirror" is all of her words and her crook pals.
I do not actually listen or read Coulter directly. It is "fun" enough to observe skewing acts of her apologists.