CINCINNATI (TDB) -- The Xavier newswire says the shoot-from-the-lip conservative columnist with Kalashnikovs where others have tonsils is due on the Jesuit school's Cincinnati campus in early September. Ann Coulter is being brought in by the college Republican chapter, and the booking has been portrayed as quite controversial. No kidding.
Andrew Chestnut, who sits on the student-run newswire's editorial board, is not enthusiastic about Coulter's coming, nor does he think much of her ability to engage in intellectual debate.
"For those of you who don't know, Coulter is like the Michael Moore of the other side. Every stance she takes on an issue is pro-Republican and anti-Democrat, without exception. You would think this would destroy her credibility -- knowing in advance what side she will take on an issue sort of removes the element of logic from the equation -- but then again, you would also think that no one would buy supermarket tabloids. And yet they're still there."
Coulter, of course, called Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards a "faggot" earlier this year, then tried to claim she was only joking and that the word is not an anti-gay slur. Many people recoiled, some including Republicans who saw Coulter's Kalishnikovs as firing wanton shots that damaged their conservative philosophy and cause. Final note: Xavier hosted Michael Moore in 2003.
sounds like a real stretch at false equivalence.
ReplyDeleteAnn Coulter's the conservative version of Michael Moore?
But even accounting for my own propensity to agree with Moore, I really don't think you can make a case they're equally shrill or divisive. I mean -- and this is a serious question -- can someone point me to some quotes of Moore that match Coulters' assertion that Edwards is a "faggot," or that the 9/11 victims' wives are media whores and money grubbers?
Hi Anon --
ReplyDeleteThanks for your comment. As for myself, I can't point to a single Michael Moore statement that matches the infamous Edwards remark, or the 9/11 remark. However, I do suspect that MM's effect on someone who is of the right is very akin to Coulter's effect on those of the left -- although maybe not exactly the same.
They both deal in bombast, though she, in my opinion, is quite a bit cruder. Coulter, from what can tell, is more slender. She seems to pay closer attention her wardrobe, although Moore may dress the way he does to stay in touch with the proletariat, or a proletariat image.
I'd like to hear from people on the right viz a viz Coulter as the direct opposite of Moore. I never really thought about it until I read the Newswire.