Thursday, June 08, 2006

Sullivan on Coulter

Andrew Sullivan | The Daily Dish: Coulter Kampf: "Coulter Kampf

08 Jun 2006 11:54 am

The Anchoress, whom I fondly remember from years back when we were just email friends, unloads on Pajama Media's big current advertizer. So does Rick Moran. Their comments are fair, it seems to me, and a good sign of how lively and internecine conservative debate now is. (Check out the Ramesh-Derb-Jonah cluster-cluck for another leading indicator.) But the problem with Coulter is that she is a form of camp, is she not? The minute you take her seriously, you lose grip on her reality. She's not a social or political commentator. She's a drag queen impersonating a fascist. I don't even begin to believe she actually believes this stuff. It's post-modern performance-art. I think of Coulter in that sense as more at home on the pomo-left than the Christianist right (which is why the joke, ultimately, is on the Republicans who like her). Devoid of sincerity, detached from any value but performance, juggling rhetoric for its own sake, she is Stanley Fish's model student. Half the time, I tend to think that a Hannity or O'Reilly or Malkin actually believes their own rhetoric. With Coulter, I don't believe it for a second. And so her vileness cannot be taken seriously. She is worse than vile. She is just empty."

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