Some time ago, when she only had three books out, I read all of Ann Coulter's books just for the fun of it because I wanted to see what she was all about. I half read them out of a sense of humor, trying to insert it whenever possible, and half to see what was her deal. Then she just kept coming out with more and more garbage that essentially states: "Liberals are morons, I'm really smart, and I'm going to insult a bunch of liberals who will hate me because they're morons." Her latest book, which I saw at Costco today, is nothing but that kind of diatribe.
Which brings me to Costco. This is a place where it can be fun to shop for popular books because they're cheap, but something kind of dawned on me today. Almost EVERY nonfiction book they had was either so immensely popular (that they couldn't NOT carry it) or it was a diatribe from some outcast conservative against the left. The Laura books, the Coulter books, and a bunch of others from authors that no one has ever heard of because they're essentially nutcases with one thought in mind that is easily discerned from the book flap, if not the actual cover itself.
So, when did Costco turn into a clearing house for the radical right? I don't mean moderate conservative books, or books on political economics from a Reaganist perspective, but books that are nothing but "liberals are bad and must be sent to retraining camps" rhetoric.
And this brought me back to the subject of Coulter. Who is reading her books these days? Is her audience conservatives who feel she's representing them? If so, I worry for the conservative right, even the far right ones. Are they reading her for humor? Didn't that kind of insulting humor stop being funny around the 6th grade? Sarcasm is one thing, but nonstop insults would be like reading a book from Andrew Dice Clay (yeah, older reference...Google is your friend). Do her fans read her because they find her absurd? Then why not read the absurd leftist literature that's out there? I mean it's just as bad and much easier to find. Maybe that's it? The conservative outrageous stuff is harder to find so it's fun to read something that's more on a conservative's side, even if the conservative realizes it's ridiculous, ludicrous and just wrong? Could it be as simple as something like that?
So what does this say about Coulter and others of her ilk? Is she just clueless in believing that people believe in her, or is she a freaking marketing genius who has figured out how to sell books by pissing people off rather than actually writing good books? I think of Michelle Malkin who is often erroneously compared to Coulter because she is ALSO a conservative. Malkin writes brilliant pieces of work that she defends with scholarly facts (rather than the usual "it's in Lexis-Nexis...look it up" responses that Coulter gives, which indicates that she believes that because a newspaper carried an article that it must be true), but she's often dismissed and practically unknown by most people unless they are complaining about her because they think she's another wannabe Ann Coulter.
There seems to be a question begging to be asked here, which is: Why do women find me so attractive? Um, no, I don't think that's the question actually begging to be asked here, but I really do think it still needs work.
Labels: Politics, Publishing
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