Comments Posted By shieldvulf at playful
Displaying 1 To 1 Of 1 Comments
ANN COULTER: CONSERVATIVE LOUT
Here's how all this pointless steam builds up so reliably. Mr. Coulter - like Mr. Limbaugh and that ilk, but especially Mr. Coulter - doesn't write a book or appear on television to express an opinion, or, at least, not very often. Instead, he talks about the one thing none of us can speak confidently about: the inner emotional lives and unspoken motives of other people.
Mr. Coulter tells us that those he opposes hate America, rejoice in atrocities, enjoy the deaths of their spouses, crave the media spotlight, and so on. He doesn't talk about their words or actions, but presumes to tell us what private impulses motivate them throughout, and to discredit them entirely on that unknowable basis.
It's no different from declaring how many feathers there are in an average angel's wing. It's an unknowable quantity, what someone else feels and what, at bottom, moves them to action. It's difficult to be certain of these things about ourselves!
So, when talking heads predictably throw these speculations up to Mr. Coulter, it's an open invitation to him to go on speculating and generally making things up. Such statements can't be evidenced either way, let alone reasoned from. So Mr. Coulter gets a pass on 1) offering an opinion, 2) evidencing that opinion, or 3) reasoning from that evidence to his opinion.
If the talking heads who host these book publicity appearances would instead keep their questions on real matters of opinion, forcing Mr. Coulter to reason his way to an approach to national security, or health care, or tax reform, or even handicapping Presidential candidates, we could observe the relative depth of his reasoning powers. As it is, all we know is he's clever enough to craft some baseless, incendiary language, and talking heads are feeble enough to leave him right there in his comfort zone.
In fact, I think that may explain the twitchy smirk he affects to restrain when his slanders are read back to him. He can't believe he gets to come on TeeVee and make things up about other people like a five year old. I'd be smirking, too!
The present point the lightweight Lauer - or SOMEone - should raise with Coulter is that no one in the Middle or on the Left has EVER forbidden him from speaking up about anything. Sure, many people routinely point out how worthless and repellent his remarks are and how unworthy of attention. But that's not even a gesture toward gagging him. His entire complaint about the widows came down to some such fantasy, and he should be called on it.
As for the moral authority of the widows, well, duh! They absolutely deserve to be heard. And, as President Bush has said several times, without consequences, about Mrs. Sheehan, some Americans disagree with her.
"Forbidden to respond?" "Doctrine of Infallibility?" Aren't you reminded of a seventh grader with a new dictionary?
Comment Posted By shieldvulf at playful On 8.06.2006 @ 15:29
