Shameless: Ann Coulter’s cult of shock punditry

Steve Landfield’s column appears twice a month in NJ Jewish News.

Leona Helmsley has been called “The Queen of Mean.” The truth is, she has nothing on Ann Coulter, who is simply one mean-spirited conservative. A real bottom feeder in the world of media, willing to say anything to get attention and to sell her books. I say that because it would be sad to think she actually believed the things she said or wrote.

In her most recent book, Godless: The Church of Liberalism, released just last week, she levels a vile, distasteful, and unimaginable attack on four of the New Jersey widows of the 9/11 attacks who have been politically active since their husbands’ deaths. They pushed for the establishment of the 9/11 Commission and they were critical of U.S. policies. Even greater a sin to Coulter was the fact that one of them made an ad for John Kerry (although she failed to mention that one of the widows also made an ad for George Bush. But mentioning that doesn’t suit Coulter’s needs, so she’ll just pretend that fact doesn’t exist).

These women, known as “The Jersey Girls,” were described by Coulter thusly: “These broads are millionaires, lionized on TV and in articles about them, revealing their status as celebrities and stalked by griefarazzis. I’ve never seen people enjoying their husbands’ deaths so much.”

She goes on: “And by the way, how do we know their husbands weren’t planning to divorce these harpies?” Her coup de grace: “Now that their shelf life is dwindling, they’d better hurry up and appear in Playboy.”

Pretty inexcusable and revolting stuff, by anyone’s standards. Still, it gets headlines and it sells books. And that’s what Coulter is all about: grabbing attention.

I suppose it is no different from the sight I see every day, working in lower Manhattan. My commute requires me to pass Ground Zero, the former World Trade Center site, where smiling tourists pose for pictures in front of a gaping hole where more than 2,000 people lost their lives in the worst act of terrorism in our nation’s history. That doesn’t stop them in the least from taking smiling family portraits to show their friends and neighbors, and buying picture postcards.

In response to Coulter’s attack, one of the widows came forward to state the obvious, that she took no pleasure in watching her husband and the father of her children die in a burning hell on live TV, and then to see it repeated on television again and again.

But that didn’t phase Coulter, who was invited on NBC’s Today show to defend her statements, which she did, repeating and embellishing them yet again. In fact, at the end of the interview, Matt Lauer told an unapologetic Coulter, “It’s always fun to have you.” That’s right: “fun.” Wisely, ABC and NBC had the good sense to skip similar “fun” interviews, with the woman who is the attack dog for the Right.

We can call her mean-spirited, vile, and despicable, all of which she is, but she is also a metaphor for getting negative attention. And once she gets that attention, she knows how to capitalize on it.

Controversy is nothing new to the lawyer, commentator, and author who used to purposely wear fur to classes in college in any weather, just to annoy the PETA types.

Some of her other well-known statements include the one that got her fired as a commentator on MSNBC: She told the head of an antiwar Vietnam veteran’s group that “people like you caused us to lose that war.”

Or there was her statement that “My only regret with Timothy McVeigh is that he did not go to the New York Times building.”

On Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens: “We need someone to put rat poisoning in [his] creme brulee.”

On our responsibility to the environment: “God gave us the earth. We have dominion over the plants, the animals, the trees. God says, ‘the earth is yours. Take it. Rape it. It’s yours.’”

She saves her choicest comments for Bill Clinton and the Democratic Party. “The backbone of the Democratic Party,” she wrote, “is a typical fat, implacable welfare recipient.” Or the memorable, “If you don’t hate Clinton and the people who labored to keep him in office, you don’t love your country.”

But you get the idea. The problem, however, is not with Coulter; it is with us. As long as the Matt Lauers of the world find her as good interview material, and as long as her form of vicious ad hominem diatribe sells books, we will all watch. And then we rush out to buy her books.

Which is why I regret giving her attention. It only encourages her and helps sell her books. Still, as she well knows, this stuff is just too attractive to pass up. I guess, like every other commentator ranting and raving about Coulter, I’ll just leave it some one else to say “no.”