Actually his post makes a couple of points that are worthwhile....
First he talks about Michelle Malkin's appearance on Bill O'Reilly's show last night where the Coulter atrocity was discussed. And MM told two awful truths, which are:
MM: She's very popular among conservatives. And let me say this. I have been a long-time admirer of much of Ann's work. She has done yeomen's work for conservatism. But I think, lately, over the last couple of years, that there has been this penchant for hurling these kinds of bombs.
And there is a divided opinion among grass-roots conservatives about what she did. I was one of the people who condemned the raghead comment last year . . . . If going into 2008, that is what the Republican Party is trying to do and win back the Congress and take the Congress and win the White House, having her there is not going to be a help.
Did you catch that?
Ann Coulter is not an abberation in Conservative circles....she's mainstream...and then, it's not that conservatives find her comments objectionable that they don't want her around, it's that she may drive off more moderate, centrist voters which the Conservatives (Republicans) need to take back Congress.
The second point that Greenwald makes is how Coulter seems to fit into the conservative, or neoconservative scheme of writing the narrative about us liberals.....She's key to it because her bomb-throwing can be "tsk-tsk'ed" by Conservatives for large scale public consumption but among the conservative base, they are accepting her words as "the truth nobody (else) dares speak"
The narrative is always the same, as Greenwald so accurately describes it:
And that is where Ann Coulter comes in and plays such a vital -- really indispensible -- role. As a woman who purposely exudes the most exaggerated American feminine stereotypes (the long blond hair, the make-up, the emaciated body), her obsession with emasculating Democratic males -- which, at bottom, is really what she does more than anything else -- energizes and stimulates the right-wing "base" like nothing else can. Just witness the fervor with which they greet her, buy her books, mob her on college campuses. Can anyone deny that she is unleashing what lurks at the very depths of the right-wing psyche? What else explains not just her popularity, but the intense embrace of her by the "base"?
And even our friend, Digby, gets his props in this article too.
Coulter plays a vital and irreplaceable role in this movement. The reason I linked to that Bob Somerby post on Maureen Dowd yesterday is because he makes the critical point -- one which Digby, among others, has been making for a long time, including in a great post last night -- concerning how the right-wing movement conducts itself and the rhetorical tool they use not only to keep themselves in power, but more importantly, to keep their needy, confused, and scared base feeling strong and protected. As Digby put it:
The underlying premise of the modern conservative movement is that the
entire Democratic party consists of a bunch of fags and dykes who are both too
effeminate and too masculine to properly lead the nation. Coulter says it out
loud. Dowd hints at it broadly. And the entire press corps giggles and swoons at
this shallow, sophomoric concept like a bunch of junior high pom pom girls.
I think he hit the proverbial nail right on the head...click on the link and read the whole article, there's much more in it than I've described .
