Two recently published books, Of Thee I Zing by Laura Ingraham and Demonic by Ann Coulter, remind us of how much their lively and intelligent authors have brought to news comment and the spirit of public-policy discussion in America. They are certainly not interchangeable in their personalities or their opinions, and I fuse them here only because they are recent authors already high on the New York Times bestseller list, though that is not a newspaper that reviews their books or often has a cordial word to say about them. (The Times did run a relatively civil feature piece some months ago about Ms. Coulter after she was well received as a paid speaker to a gay group and effectively debunked the theory that she is a gay-basher.)
What they have in common is that they are both attractive, blonde, witty, never-married, heterosexual, practicing Christian, conservative women commentators who have hugely enlivened political discourse. Laura Ingraham is a radio-talk-show host, frequent fill-in host for O’Reilly and others, and frequent guest on various conservative news-comment programs. She has adopted three children, two from Russia and one from Central America, and is a convert to Roman Catholicism.
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Ann Coulter is a more frequent author, produces a lively weekly column, and uses frequent television guest appearances with Hannity and other conservative commentators to promote her books. Where Ms. Ingraham is a day-in, day-out radio and TV host, and takes all comers among radio callers, always with great vivacity of wit, Ms. Coulter is less constantly before the public but is a specialist in shocking the heavy-footed liberal lumpenbourgeoisie.
Coulter attracts greater leftish opprobrium because of her more frequent recourse to reflections that she well knows will, as she says, “stir the pot.” Thus, John Edwards was a “faggot,” by which, she explained, she only meant a “wuss,” and Christians were “perfected Jews” because the New Testament was “like Federal Express.” When an airline was boycotted for yielding to passenger concerns and disembarking six Muslim imams before takeoff, she said that if the Muslims would boycott all the airlines, there would be no need for any airport security. And when a Muslim questioner objected to this comment at one of her speeches, in Canada, she replied, “Take a camel.” More of a jolt to conventional sensibilities was her lamentation that Timothy McVeigh did not bomb the New York Times building instead of a federal building in Oklahoma, after, she explained as the intended controversy erupted, “everyone had left the building except the editors and reporters.” The mindless reflexiveness with which the soft Left responds to Coulter, especially, is premeditated by her and is a vastly entertaining send-up of the boring, high-minded liberals that she can turn on like a spigot at will, to her own amusement and profit.
Despite the constant grumbling of detractors, both are formidable in debate and are very well-informed and forensically capable. Both are well-educated lawyers (Dartmouth and Virginia for Ingraham, Cornell and Michigan Law for Coulter) and clerked for senior judges, and both are accomplished showmen, including in their book covers: On Ingraham’s latest, her face is on George Washington crossing the Delaware. Coulter has been, among other guises, a leather-vested, authoritarian school teacher on one of hers. Despite the shrill efforts of Rachel Maddow and others on the left, these two, in particular, have cornered the market in vigorous female political opinion for the Right and have been un-dislodgeable for a decade.
Ann is exactly right about both FDR, and Joe McCarthy, but dead wrong about Chris Christie. Ingraham isn't as firmly grounded in conservatism as Coulter. She's not associated with Bill O'Reilly, certainly no true conservative, by accident.
Credit to the author for not referring to Limbaugh as a blowhard but only to O'Reilly, Hannity, and Savage, HOWEVER... I wouldn't even equate Savage and Hannity with each other - let alone with O'Reilly.
O'Reilly simply isn't that bright. He's credentialed, but he's certainly not "educated" in the sense of Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, or even Hannity or Savage.
O'Reilly describes himself as a "Traditionalist" and he's right to do so!
Is O'Reilly "conservative?" Yes... in the sense of broad political shorthand labels. But in the sense of a firm, well-thought-out intellectually consistent worldview...
(*LAUGHING*)
O'Reilly often self-deprecatingly refers to himself on-air and in writing as "a simple man."
Well... I'd say "simpleton" would be far more accurate.
O'Reilly clearly doesn't read economic/political/social conservative non-fiction philosophy for fun or self-improvement; indeed, my guess is that he simply doesn't read much "serious" research/analysis.
O'Reilly's staff? Well... com'on... just think about his "producer" whom he send to do "man on the street" interviews and ambushes on occasion; this is the guy O'Reilly considers the best of the best!
Both of the ladies are wicked smart and articulate happy warriors. I always turn the volume up when their faces appear on the tv screen, prepared for a bracer of truth delivered with humor and snap.
You go, girls!
Regardless of each one's minor flaws, their wit, wisdom and understanding of what wrong road this nation is traveled, they are a refreshing tonic to most of the other tiresome talking heads.
I admire both of these ladies. It is ironic that the most conservative voices today are Coulter, Ingraham and Bachman. I have NEVER seen Coulter bested in a debate. Just wish they were men. It is ironic how wimpy the men are and how tough the women.
Or rather, we should be wishing all the conservative men were women. The conservative genes for toughness and fearlessness seem to exclusively located in the X chromosone.
I have said for years that if we drafted Ann to be chair of the Republican National Committee, we would not be sitting here sucking air now. The libs would be trying to play catch up with us. God bless her and Laura.
In World War One opposing forces fired artillery shells at each other. This conflict is different. They are hurling "canned" phrases at each other. The major damage that is being inflicted is upon the English language. In the beginning was the word and the word was good.
Both of these women are not only well-educated, intelligent, pretty, and articulate, they have bigger "cahoona's" than any politician on the Left OR the Right. They call it not only like they see it, but as it IS. Why do you think they are so hated by the Left? The truth sets us free, and the Left doesn't really want us to be free!
Al-Horseman, regarding your very accurate observation that these ladies have bigger cajones than most Republican male politicians, I wonder, is the cover of Ingrahah
m's book "Of Thee I Zing"--with the sword handle in her hand at pubic level and the look on the face of the man holding the flag behind her--a deliberate tease along these lines?
If not, the visuals editor at Threshold Publications needs to be replaced.
I was intrigued by the comment that “There is nothing like Ann Coulter and Laura Ingraham in other countries, nor much like them in this one."
There WAS somebody like that a couple of decades back in Canada.
In the early 1980s I read Confessions, a terrific book by a brilliant and beautiful (although not blonde) Canadian journalist who, among other "confessions," described eloquently her passage from liberal-left to right as she questioned the conventional wisdom of the "right thinking" soft leftists of the Canadian political establishment, and documented her own skirmishes with the abominable human rights commissions that have since gained international notoriety among conservative thinkers for their persecution of Mark Steyn.
The author's well-reasoned and well-written arguments, seldom heard in the squishy left-liberal political culture of Canada, especially before the founding of the National Post, significantly influenced my own political thinking as a young Canadian.
I suggest, therefore, that it wouldn't be a stretch at all to place Barbara Amiel, aka Lady Black, in the same conservative pantheon of brilliant beauties as Coulter and Ingraham.
I doubt that the writer of the column would dispute my notion.
Very good drained brain, you are right, Barbara Amiel was cast in the same mould as Ingraham and Coulter. To add to her street creds she has also been thoroughly mocked and vilified by the peevish left, who can't stand it when someone has the effrontery to state that the emperor is indeed, naked.
Excellent piece, with one reservation. As much as I admire Mr. Black, he errs when he denies that FDR was a socialist. The only thing about socialism that FDR didn't adopt was the label. He sprang from the same Progressive Movement that was in turned inspired by 19th century socialism, and was set in his ways by the end of the Wilson administration.
It is worth remembering that FDR was admired in public by such luminaries as Mussolini (socialist turned fascist), the Fabian Society (U.K. socialists), H.G. Wells (admirer of fascism), and that paper-hanging SOB in pre-WWII Germany.
The tagline of this article is "They're calling us back to essential principles."
Yet, reading Mr. Black's piece he failed to identify even one 'conservative' principle. God, Christ, learning and country could just as easily be a roadmap of principles of someone who is not a conservative.
This is what ails conservatism. Those that labor under its 'ideals' cannot define those ideals. When Hayek states that, "...conservatives have no principles.", he was speaking in that they cannot define those principles for they are not their own.
It's why conservatism fails to govern, and perpetually disappoints those that follow it.
Mr. Black has so eloquently proven Hayek correct in his piece, "Why I Am Not A Conservative".
Only in the parallel universe of the right wing is an unmarried woman with three children called a "conservative." If she were black and unmarried or a gay woman with three children, she would be criticized as immoral. I love the way Republicans conveniently define "conservative." Rush Limbaugh has been married four times and is a conservative. Bill Clinton has been married once and he's a liberal. Huh?!?
Ray Giles, if Laura "were black and unmarried or a gay woman with three children" she would be a black, single female conservative or a gay female conservative--or, given that skin color, marital status and sexuality are liberal victim groupings and not relevant to actual political thought, she'd simply be a conservative.
I'm single with four children, one of them Asian; I'm simply a conservative.
Please dont' play the race/gender/sexuality card with every breath. It only obscures the true political issues, like out of control budgets and porous borders.
Seriously? Intelligent people distinguish between political views and lifestyle. You are also confusing religious views on marriage with conservative political views. They are not the same thing, but the left likes to mash them together to try and vilify religion and conservatives as much as possible.
I don't agree with some of Coulter's views, and I don't agree with some of the connections she makes with religion, but to dismiss either of these women because they are women and conservative and therefore must be crazy is the real crime.
