If This Entry Were Titled Like an Ann Coulter Book, It Would Be Titled, "Somebody Give Ann Coulter a Sandwich"

Wow. Yeah. Sorry. It's been way too long. A lot of factors have kept me from the blog, and I apologize. A possible move and my 30th birthday kept me pretty busy for the last couple weeks. Mostly, though, the problem has been a lack of material from the opinions pages. I'm not about to hold Syracuse up as some sort of national barometer of public opinion, and I’m well aware there still exists a sizeable contingent of ranting Bushphiles in the area, as some of them keep an eye on this blog. (Yes, I can see you guys. Your internet anonymizer doesn’t work very well.) It does, however, seem like fewer and fewer people are buying the bullshit, which is great, but makes my stated mission here more difficult, obviously.

Yesterday was a particularly nasty day. It was bone-chillingly cold as I drove in to work, and it seemed like a heavy cloud hung over the entire day. Everyone at the office seemed a little punchy and less jovial than usual, and nothing quite seemed to work right. I wrote it off as one of those cosmically bad days. Then, this morning, I discovered what could simply be a coincidence: Ann Coulter was at Syracuse University yesterday.

I'm surprised I didn't hear about this ahead of time. Well, no, that's not exactly correct. I'm not really surprised. It stands to reason that the people involved didn't make a lot of noise about it. When Michael Moore came to the University a couple years ago, it was announced publicly, and plenty of people showed up to protest. By keeping her visit relatively quiet, the College Republicans were able to minimize the protestors, creating the illusion that Coulter was welcomed by most of the community. Sure, it probably has more to do with the fact that Ann is losing relevancy and, of course, not many people in the community knew it was happening. That doesn't matter though. The conservative movement has become addicted to disinformation and illusion, and Ann Coulter is their ghoulish crack-dealer queen.

So yeah, I didn't get to go. I really wish I had; not to protest, but to listen to her. I guess in some way that would be validating her presence, but I'm sure it would have given me a lot of material to work with. Ann is great at tossing out insults and mean-spirited one-liners, and doesn't let herself get bogged down with things like "facts" and "accurate information." She'd be a laugh riot if, you know, she wasn't being paid to give supposedly academic lectures at universities.

So what did she say? The newspaper printed a few choice quotes. The article in the paper definitely had something of a pro-Ann slant, but the quotes presented are perfect examples of Ann at her truthiest. (Yes, I used a form of "truthy". It's a useful word.)

"So our troops are being shot at. We're not liberating Ohio."

If you claim to support the troops, and this statement doesn't piss you off, you are a liar. I don't care if you support the war or not. American troops being killed is not something you shrug off, and certainly not something you joke about.

The war in Iraq is "a magnificent success. It's going just swimmingly. The Iraqis are taking to democracy like fish to water."

Is it possible this woman doesn't understand why she's becoming irrelevant? Four years ago, you could have made a large number of Americans believe this statement. Not anymore. Anyone who ever changes the channel from Fox News knows that the Iraqis are taking to democracy more like pit bulls in a dog-fighting arena. You almost never see fish leaving vans full of executed Sunnis parked on neighborhood streets.

This one is my favorite. It's a response to a member of the audience asking Ann if supporting democracy in Iraq might be dangerous in light of the election of Hamas in Palestine.

"Sometimes democracy doesn't work. That's how Bill Clinton was elected."

She doesn't even answer the question. She can't answer the question. She's not smart enough to even address the question. She resorts to neocon-twitch-response Clinton bashing. Nevermind that Clinton actually won the popular vote in both of his elections. Better to throw out inane insults than address any issues. The kind of people who find this moron entertaining are exactly the people who make me ashamed to be a registered Republican.

Greg Proseus, speaking for the College Republicans, felt vindicated by Ann's visit.

"I'm a little upset that my student fee has been used to bring in Michael Moore. Coulter is probably one of the only conservative voices students will hear here."

Of course, Proseus's student fees never paid for Michael Moore, as the newspaper accurately points out, because he was invited to the campus by the College of Arts and Sciences, not a student group. I guess if Greg were interested in reality, though, his group might have brought in a speaker with similar concerns. Instead, they brought in a vapid ideologue who does little more than make neoconservatives feel entitled to act like selfish assholes and defend their rights to be poor citizens. It is a shame that Ann is "one of the only conservative voices" to visit the school, because there are conservative speakers who are rational and knowledgeable and whom one can respect even if one disagrees with them. Ann Coulter is none of these things, and the College Republicans should be embarrassed for supporting her brand of self-righteous ignorance.