INFALLIBLY FALLIBLE
(In?)human bilge pump, cooler, heater, collector, regurgitator, pipe, broom and conductor Ann Coulter and her bilgette supporters claim that her (typically) anowretchtic recent remarks (in which she called four 9/11 widows who had the nerve to disagree with George Bush about something "enjoyers of their husbands' deaths, "griefparazzis," (what does that make her? A Nazirazzi?), and harpies who "may have been dumped by their husbands anyway), while crude, rude and as loose as Ann's stool (which consists of Karl Rove's refried beans), bear out a point (most people are able to make salient points in arguments not containing 99% ad hominem tripe and speculation, especially attorneys like Ann, but never mind. Hate means never having to say "I'm thinking!").
The point these people think they have is that certain people (libruls and libruls alone, because, by definition, librulism is a mental disorder, even though conservatives don't believe in mental disorders) have created a climate giving rise to a phenomenon known as the "infallibility of grief" (or as Ann calls it, "liberal infallibility." Ann's new book is about 400 pages long. Skip each usage of the word "liberal" and you'd have a pamphlet, not a book).
As one blogger who has come to Ann's defense describes it, "the infallibility of grief" is a tactic used by individuals who have experienced a tragedy in their lives to "silence" opposition by exploiting basic human decency.
An alleged example of the phenomenon at work, as related by Coulter: four widows of firefighters who were burned alive on Sept. 11th as they tried to rescue people voted for George Bush in 2000. These widows then became outspoken critics of the failure of our intelligence agencies to take whatever cautions might have prevented the attack. Actually, I'm not even sure what the widows spoke up about, and I don't want to open up another web page. What they spoke up about doesn't matter. The widows were instrumental in creating the "9/11" Commission, whose recommendations have been either ignored or not implented (despite promises to do same) by the Bush Administration.
So, what's Coulter's problem with these widows? To Coulter, Bush is infallible. To question the war and Bush's patriotism is "treason." The 9/11 Commission itself was an act of treason. Given her views, one should not be surprised that she claims, "as fact," that "she has never seen women enjoying their husbands' deaths so much." (This from a woman who cracked a truly tasteless joke about a man who had just died to his widow within seconds after the death. Ann is a big enough projector to seat the entire city of Los Angeles for a restored "Gone With the Wind" screening).
Let's say that Coulter didn't have these beliefs, though. Let's say, as she (sort of) claims, that she merely BELIEVES that Bush acted appropriately in that he took all necessary steps to prevent an attack on American soil. Ann, as someone with no job, has no other job than to convince people that her view is correct. So, what does she do when she encounters someone who disagrees with her? She simply calls them a "librul." A good day's work. But what does she - or anyone who believes the President acted appropriately - do when someone - i.e. one of the four widows - gets on the air and states, based on the information they've gathered from Congress and their own research (which, as far as anyone knows, is at least as qualitatively strong as Ann's is) that the President should have taken additional steps? She instinctively wants to smear such people as "libruls" as she does everyone else. But she is no fool. She knows that her usual smear job will not work on women who voted for Bush in 2000 and who come off credibly as national security hawks.
She has to do something to attack these women - it's in her nature. After all, an attack upon Bush is an attack upon her patriotism, which is in itself axiomatically infallible. She so believes in this infallibility that if by some miracle any challenge to it seeped into her brain, the brain would go Stepford-haywire. Annie can't go haywire. Too much hate left to monger. So, she says to all of the world, "Look at these women, exploiting their grief. We can't attack them." (Notice how she does not indicate who "we" is, but how all the same, the use of the word "we" implies that Ann is automatically in the right and that the natural order of things is to attack, as opposed to breathe, clean, cook, or work.) "They're exploiting this tragedy by attacking President Bush, and we can't respond to their arguments because we'll look callous if we do so. They have effectively silenced us. Thus, they have used their grief to render themselves infallible." Hence, the "infallibility of grief" doctrine is born.
Coulter's logic itself is an attack upon the widows and their substantive comments. The logic also presumes that silence is a rather easy thing to achieve: just griefarazzi it up, and a few talking heads will not respond to you, and hence all legitimate criticism will be silenced. This is bullshit. To be TRULY silenced involves those who have real power in this world taking actions that render the would-be legitimate criticizers' arguments simultaneously moot, publicly unattractive, and politically untenable, and then some. Put another way, Bush, by not giving a shit about the fact that his own CIA and FBI couldn't have cared less about the threat of terrorism, effectively made sure that the Ann Coulters of the world were anything BUT silenced. If anyone came close to being ACTUALLY "silenced," it was the widows, who advocated for change not out of the desire to win an argument or blind partisanship. "Silencing" someone means depriving him of a voice in our national discourse, of a say in our public policy - it does NOT mean making him "fearful" of displaying his "patriotism" toward a Sept. 11th widow out of losing an argument. Not only did Bush not listen to the Commission's advice, he and the Ann Coulter types directly attacked the Commission's recommendations and thus directly attacked the widows. Coulter directly attacked the widows before making the "death fellating" arguments by suggesting their ideas were preposterous. So, again, who is the "we" that is being silenced, and how are they being silenced? If you claim the truth is on your side, then if you do not speak it, YOU are silencing yourself, regardless of who your claimed adversary is. The widows have not restricted anyone's speech (nor can they); they have not cut off interviews or walked away from them.
Perhaps Coulter thinks "we" are being silenced because the widows, when they speak about Sept. 11th and its aftermath, make reference to their own husands' death. So what. Republicans who think Bush made all the right moves before Sept. 11th make gratuitous references to how he is a hero. In even the most honest debate, points extraneous to the main point can be expected to be made by both sides. Such points do not "silence" the opposition unless the opposition CLAIMS they do as a feeble attempt to disguise the fact that he is losing an argument.
And I agree with Matt Lauer. When Coulter told him, "The libruls never give us someone we can respond to," he said, "Well, you're responding, aren't you?" She didn't answer, nor could she. She simply said, "Are you getting testy with me?" (As if the right to engage in rough-and-tumble debate is hers alone; she already holds the patent on verbal battery and brutalization. Some would say she has "silenced" liberals by essentially declaring that they are non-human and thus non-debatable, but one must be consistent and reject this argument. In a society where the government (not yet, anyway) does not restrict what the punditocracy can say, one silences only oneself).
I think it's pretty clear what Ann is getting at by being "silenced": she is upset about the fact that some people (not her, of course) are reluctant to spew puke piles of hate at the 9/11 widows, hate that has nothing to do with the merits of any argument. This reluctancy, Coulter believes, stems from these people's simple respect for other fellow human beings. To Ann, FAILURE to spew pea soup vomit hate is disrespectful. She has done it already to the 9/11 widows, and would be glad to do it to their face. When she says others are being silenced, all she means is that she's steamend that others who make the same pro-Bush arguments as she does would not engage in the same acts of spewing.
Ann, as someone who is no fan of the First Amendment, and as someone who says libruls should be silenced, surely you should know that retstraining from spewing hate and being ACTUALLY silenced is akin to the difference between eating like a healthy human being and following the Annorexia diet.
The point these people think they have is that certain people (libruls and libruls alone, because, by definition, librulism is a mental disorder, even though conservatives don't believe in mental disorders) have created a climate giving rise to a phenomenon known as the "infallibility of grief" (or as Ann calls it, "liberal infallibility." Ann's new book is about 400 pages long. Skip each usage of the word "liberal" and you'd have a pamphlet, not a book).
As one blogger who has come to Ann's defense describes it, "the infallibility of grief" is a tactic used by individuals who have experienced a tragedy in their lives to "silence" opposition by exploiting basic human decency.
An alleged example of the phenomenon at work, as related by Coulter: four widows of firefighters who were burned alive on Sept. 11th as they tried to rescue people voted for George Bush in 2000. These widows then became outspoken critics of the failure of our intelligence agencies to take whatever cautions might have prevented the attack. Actually, I'm not even sure what the widows spoke up about, and I don't want to open up another web page. What they spoke up about doesn't matter. The widows were instrumental in creating the "9/11" Commission, whose recommendations have been either ignored or not implented (despite promises to do same) by the Bush Administration.
So, what's Coulter's problem with these widows? To Coulter, Bush is infallible. To question the war and Bush's patriotism is "treason." The 9/11 Commission itself was an act of treason. Given her views, one should not be surprised that she claims, "as fact," that "she has never seen women enjoying their husbands' deaths so much." (This from a woman who cracked a truly tasteless joke about a man who had just died to his widow within seconds after the death. Ann is a big enough projector to seat the entire city of Los Angeles for a restored "Gone With the Wind" screening).
Let's say that Coulter didn't have these beliefs, though. Let's say, as she (sort of) claims, that she merely BELIEVES that Bush acted appropriately in that he took all necessary steps to prevent an attack on American soil. Ann, as someone with no job, has no other job than to convince people that her view is correct. So, what does she do when she encounters someone who disagrees with her? She simply calls them a "librul." A good day's work. But what does she - or anyone who believes the President acted appropriately - do when someone - i.e. one of the four widows - gets on the air and states, based on the information they've gathered from Congress and their own research (which, as far as anyone knows, is at least as qualitatively strong as Ann's is) that the President should have taken additional steps? She instinctively wants to smear such people as "libruls" as she does everyone else. But she is no fool. She knows that her usual smear job will not work on women who voted for Bush in 2000 and who come off credibly as national security hawks.
She has to do something to attack these women - it's in her nature. After all, an attack upon Bush is an attack upon her patriotism, which is in itself axiomatically infallible. She so believes in this infallibility that if by some miracle any challenge to it seeped into her brain, the brain would go Stepford-haywire. Annie can't go haywire. Too much hate left to monger. So, she says to all of the world, "Look at these women, exploiting their grief. We can't attack them." (Notice how she does not indicate who "we" is, but how all the same, the use of the word "we" implies that Ann is automatically in the right and that the natural order of things is to attack, as opposed to breathe, clean, cook, or work.) "They're exploiting this tragedy by attacking President Bush, and we can't respond to their arguments because we'll look callous if we do so. They have effectively silenced us. Thus, they have used their grief to render themselves infallible." Hence, the "infallibility of grief" doctrine is born.
Coulter's logic itself is an attack upon the widows and their substantive comments. The logic also presumes that silence is a rather easy thing to achieve: just griefarazzi it up, and a few talking heads will not respond to you, and hence all legitimate criticism will be silenced. This is bullshit. To be TRULY silenced involves those who have real power in this world taking actions that render the would-be legitimate criticizers' arguments simultaneously moot, publicly unattractive, and politically untenable, and then some. Put another way, Bush, by not giving a shit about the fact that his own CIA and FBI couldn't have cared less about the threat of terrorism, effectively made sure that the Ann Coulters of the world were anything BUT silenced. If anyone came close to being ACTUALLY "silenced," it was the widows, who advocated for change not out of the desire to win an argument or blind partisanship. "Silencing" someone means depriving him of a voice in our national discourse, of a say in our public policy - it does NOT mean making him "fearful" of displaying his "patriotism" toward a Sept. 11th widow out of losing an argument. Not only did Bush not listen to the Commission's advice, he and the Ann Coulter types directly attacked the Commission's recommendations and thus directly attacked the widows. Coulter directly attacked the widows before making the "death fellating" arguments by suggesting their ideas were preposterous. So, again, who is the "we" that is being silenced, and how are they being silenced? If you claim the truth is on your side, then if you do not speak it, YOU are silencing yourself, regardless of who your claimed adversary is. The widows have not restricted anyone's speech (nor can they); they have not cut off interviews or walked away from them.
Perhaps Coulter thinks "we" are being silenced because the widows, when they speak about Sept. 11th and its aftermath, make reference to their own husands' death. So what. Republicans who think Bush made all the right moves before Sept. 11th make gratuitous references to how he is a hero. In even the most honest debate, points extraneous to the main point can be expected to be made by both sides. Such points do not "silence" the opposition unless the opposition CLAIMS they do as a feeble attempt to disguise the fact that he is losing an argument.
And I agree with Matt Lauer. When Coulter told him, "The libruls never give us someone we can respond to," he said, "Well, you're responding, aren't you?" She didn't answer, nor could she. She simply said, "Are you getting testy with me?" (As if the right to engage in rough-and-tumble debate is hers alone; she already holds the patent on verbal battery and brutalization. Some would say she has "silenced" liberals by essentially declaring that they are non-human and thus non-debatable, but one must be consistent and reject this argument. In a society where the government (not yet, anyway) does not restrict what the punditocracy can say, one silences only oneself).
I think it's pretty clear what Ann is getting at by being "silenced": she is upset about the fact that some people (not her, of course) are reluctant to spew puke piles of hate at the 9/11 widows, hate that has nothing to do with the merits of any argument. This reluctancy, Coulter believes, stems from these people's simple respect for other fellow human beings. To Ann, FAILURE to spew pea soup vomit hate is disrespectful. She has done it already to the 9/11 widows, and would be glad to do it to their face. When she says others are being silenced, all she means is that she's steamend that others who make the same pro-Bush arguments as she does would not engage in the same acts of spewing.
Ann, as someone who is no fan of the First Amendment, and as someone who says libruls should be silenced, surely you should know that retstraining from spewing hate and being ACTUALLY silenced is akin to the difference between eating like a healthy human being and following the Annorexia diet.
posted by EnterCenter at 2:33 PM
2 Comments:
Very funny. I love the part about pea soup vomit hate! ;-)
To be fair, there are some who have constructed a whole industry as "griefparazzis," namely, Michael Berg and Cindy Sheehan.
Yes, but who have they silenced? If anything, these people have caused the right to dispense more copious amounts of foam than usual!
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