A couple of days ago, on the Day of the Beast (6/6/06), Ann Coulter took the opportunity to unleash yet another spray of spittle-drenched attacks on liberals (Godless: The Church of Liberalism) into bookstores across the nation. As is her schtick, she’s made quite the stir over the airwaves by making very inflammatory and offensive statements. This time, it was about the 9/11 widows during an interview with Matt Lauer Tuesday morning (video here) about what she wrote in her book:
These self-obsessed women seem genuinely unaware that 9-11 was an attack on our nation and acted like as if the terrorist attack only happened to them. They believe the entire country was required to marinate in their exquisite personal agony. Apparently, denouncing Bush was part of the closure process.
And:
These broads are millionaires, lionized on TV and in articles about them, reveling in their status as celebrities and stalked by griefparrazies. I have never seen people enjoying their husband’s death so much.
And a quote from her book that Matt Lauer didn’t mention:
And by the way, how do we know their husbands weren’t planning to divorce these harpies? Now that their shelf life is dwindling, they’d better hurry up and appear in Playboy. . .
I don’t want to rehash how despicable and mean-spirited Coulter’s remarks are too much. Some conservatives will excuse her by saying, “Oh, that’s just Ann’s schtick,” implying that she’s not serious, that she’s just being a provocateur. (Of course, to me, her choice of topics and rhetoric to use to provoke tell me all I need to know about her.) Others, like Michelle Malkin, will lament that the controversy about Coulter’s remarks is supposedly drowning out her “substantive” points. Still others will defend her. Of course, Coulter has no one to blame for that but herself, given her choice of what to use as grist for her provocations. Indeed, she revels in the controversy; she seeks it out; her very position in the media requires it as much as you or I require oxygen. Like a shock rocker, Coulter must keep constantly increasing the shock value of her schtick as her novelty wears off and the audience is less and less provoked by her act. Idiotic pundits like Coulter are one of the factors that have driven my politics to be less conservative over the last several years.
No, I’m not suprised at Coulter’s moronic and vicious attacks on “liberals” and certain 9/11 widows to whom she refers as the “witches of East Brunswick” (they live in East Brunswick, NJ). What I wonder about is Coulter’s creationism. Apparently she devotes 80 pages of her book to bashing evolution. Check this out:
Then, of course, there’s the liberal creation myth: Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution.
For liberals, evolution is the touchstone that separates the enlightened from the benighted. But Coulter neatly refutes the lie that liberals are rationalists guided by the ideals of free inquiry and the scientific method. She exposes the essential truth about Darwinian evolution that liberals refuse to confront: It is bogus science.Writing with a keen appreciation for genuine science, Coulter reveals that the so-called “gaps” in the theory of evolution are all there is — Darwinism is nothing but a gap.
After 150 years of dedicated searching into the fossil record, evolution’s proponents have failed utterly to substantiate its claims. And a long line of supposed evidence, from the infamous Piltdown Man to the “evolving” peppered moths of England, has been exposed as one hoax after another. Still, liberals treat those who question evolution as religious nuts and prohibit students from hearing about real science when it contradicts Darwinism. And these are the people who say they want to keep faith out of the classroom.
Liberals’ absolute devotion to Darwinism, Coulter shows, has nothing to do with evolution’s scientific validity and everything to do with their refusal to admit the possibility of God as a guiding force. They will brook no challenges to the official religion.
You know, I think I’m with PZ on this one to some extent. I think it would be enormously entertaining to read the section of Coulter’s book on evolution if I could get my hand on a copy of the book without Coulter profiting from my purchase of it. I bet I’d have a hard time finishing it because I’d be laughing so hard; such comedy is hard to come by. A used copy somewhere perhaps? I don’t think I could tolerate reading the rest of her diatribes, though. Slumming among vicious political provacateurs is only amusing for a little while, and, besides, even reading just the chapters on evolution would put me in danger of blowing a fuse thinking about all the logical fallacies, distortions, and outright lies likely contained therein.
Given Coulter’s performance–well–being Ann Coulter and causing a firestorm of condemnation of her nasty attacks, even from her conservative fans and bloggers and secular conservatives–now seems as good a time as any to recall something that John informed us of a couple of months ago: that William Dembski had a big hand in helping Ann Coulter write her attacks on evolution. Indeed, Dembski even bragged:
I’m happy to report that I was in constant correspondence with Ann regarding her chapters on Darwinism — indeed, I take all responsibility for any errors in those chapters.
I wonder if Dembski’s quite so happy and proud to be affiliated with Coulter’s book now that he (and everyone else) knows what’s in the rest of it.
ADDENDUM: Scoobie Davis takes on Godless in a continuing series, wondering about a statement Coulter makes regarding how liberals supposedly consider chastity not to be a virtue: “…it raises a question with me: what is Coulter’s view on chastity? Does she think chastity is a virtue? If so, is the 44-year-old never-married woman still saving herself?”
