We Love You, Ann

Hear all the shouts of outrage? The suspended breaths of horror? The gasps and thuds as bodies swoon to the floor? That's just the Left and a few limp-wristed moderates overreacting to Ann Coulter's new book, Godless. It's ultimate destination for bestseller-dom--in an ever-growing line of bestsellers--has weenies everywhere working themselves into a tizzy.

As I said over at Voxy's blog, this is much ado about nothing. A question for the frothers: have you read any of Ann's books? No? How 'bout her columns? Nope? What a surprise. Guess what: the current kerfuffle is nothing new for Ann. She's been raking liberals all over their lawns for years now, with biting wit, scathing satire, and dagger-pointed sarcasm. Where have you idiots been hiding, under a statue of Lenin? What an amazing coincidence that your most strident criticism manifests itself just as she's touring the country and promoting her book--you know, the one that reveals the fanaticism behind your atheistic religion and the dogma that makes the most benighted Mohammadan seem open-minded. That's the one, and I suppose it causes all manner of discomfort in your narrow minds, without surcease, as you go about your days, caught up in the attempted propagandizing of the American people to your cause.

Part of the ruckus is that Ann challenges the notion that certain members of the Left are sacrosanct, unassailable and immune to challenge. Implied is the idea that when they spew the rhetorical equivalent of sewage, we should bow to it as if it were the wisdom of Solomon; and when they break wind, it is the exotic exhalation of a rare flower that caresses our nostrils.

I have some bad news for you: that you lost spouses or other relatives in terrorist attacks, though awful, in no wise makes you sound commentators on political and social policies. Nor does fracturing my pinky toe gift me with rare insights into orthopedic medicine.

I don't always agree with Ann; her loyalty to the Republican Party puzzles me. And yes, she sometimes makes statements that seem over the top, at first listen or glance. But I see her as one who is far more dedicated to the truth than she is to niceties; and in an era of touchy-feely political correctness run amok, where the truth is tiptoed around but rarely ushered out into the light, her blunt directness is a beautiful thing.

A final point worth mentioning is that--unlike drive-by character assassins on the Left, such as Moore, and not-so Franken--Ann supports her sometimes outrageous words with many, many tiny foot-noted inconveniences: those pesky little entities called FACTS.

Whenever O'Reilly et. al. get their blood-pressures back down to a more manageable level, they'd do well to remember that.