The Lonely Goatherd Blog And before him shall be gathered all nations: and he shall separate them one from another, as a shepherd divideth his sheep from the goats - Matthew 25:32
Up to the minute notes on the current state of free thinking and free living: Kentucky moonshine - original analysis and reporting from MoreThings, and all round pop culture museum of sight and sound - photo galleries, mp3 and video downloads.
Al Barger and MoreThings - getting people's goats since 1998.
Live free or die!
----
I wouldn't want to ask people to just give me money cause they like my website, but do please take a quick look at Barger's Boutique. You might find yourself a little something-something for 2 or 3 bucks that you just can't resist! Any of the round images you find around MoreThings will get you to an Amazon page to buy my stuff and help ol' Al keep the lights on.
Links
To explicitly state the obvious, these external links go to interesting and provocative websites, but they speak for themselves. I don't necessarily agree with anything they say - especially that no-goodnik Richard Marcus.
*************
All original content on MoreThings.com copyright 2008 Albert Barger or the respective authors
June 16, 2006
I Hate to Love Ann Coulter
I hate in order to prove my everlasting love for Ann Coulter. Reckon wonder who a fellow would have to shoot to get a date with Ann? All the worth-shootin' Kennedys are long dead... No wait, that's not what I mean to say, let me reload and take another shot at it.
I hate to love Ann Coulter. She's a bad, bad person. It's a horrible vice that speaks to the moral rot at my soul. It proves I'm heartless. But I can't help myself. I love Ann Coulter.
I suspect that Miss Ann would not approve of the likes of me. For starters, her new book is called Godless. Us vs them here makes it that athiests are liberals and conservatives are believers. I'd fall on the wrong side of that divide, I'm afraid.
But her whole PR run on the book has been built on these now famous and publicly repeated statements from the book about the New Jersey widows "enjoying" their husbands deaths. "I've never seen people enjoying their husbands' deaths so much." Predictably, there have been a bunch of people of all political stripes clucking their tongues in exquisitely sensitive outrage.
This whole public theater of Coulter's has a beautiful Andy Kaufman thing going. She's the national political wrestling villain, an evil heel. Oh god, I think it's going to be a gusher! I'm just saying.
Let's pause to note for a moment that she's got a perfectly legitimate point about professional widows and victims. Left wing types have gotten to be pretty clever about sending out widows, grieving mothers and victims to do their dirty work, to a significant extent shielded by our compassion, taking foul advantage of our social niceties.
I object strongly to this emotional fascism, and the specifically depraved, life-energy draining vampirism of this whole setup of pushing the victims out as spokesman. Yes, it's dishonest and intellectually corrupt- but that's not the worst of it.
The worst thing is how this whole strategy depends on playing up to people's senses of pity- and that's just as wrong as can be. I'm sure the author of Godless would appreciate me invoking Nietzche, and specifically his Anti-Christ in her defense. Then again, some folks do seem to think that SHE is the Anti-Christ. But I digress.
"Christianity is called the religion of pity. Pity stands in antithesis to the tonic emotions which enhance the energy of the feeling of life: it has a depressive effect. One loses force when one pities. The loss of force which life has already sustained through suffering is increased and multiplied even further by pity." -Friedrich Nietzche The Anti-Christ section 7
Nietzche was arguing against Christianity specifically with this argument, and he certainly had a good point. But it's not all inclusive. Coulter has her better and lesser points, but she does not play to pity. Her idea of Christianity is something else.
But the cheesiest Christians have nothing on the modern church of liberalism. Take it as it applies, but the poopie-lickin' pity parties make me nauseous like Nietzche. Coulter looks at them that way, too. That's the main real reason I love Ann Coulter.
The New Jersey widows and Cindy Sheehan are the absolute epitomes of the genre. These women and their backers are doing damage to our life force by their tactics, regardless of the specific policies they advocate. They pour in pity to corrupt the purity of the essence of our precious bodily fluids.
Coulter gleefully leaps overboard with her gratuitous pokes, of course. Maybe their husbands were getting ready to divorce them? Now damn it, that's just being a bitch. I'm calling a five yard penalty on the field for unnecessary roughness. Bad Ann!
But that's nothing compared to the ridiculous presumptions of moral outrage from every grief pimp in the land. Coulter might be given to sweeping with an extremely broad brush, of overreaching, guilty of pig stealing and goat humpin.' But that's a moral misdemeanor at worst- far less than the felonious offenses against Geometry and Theology of her opponents.
Let's start with Hillary, who reacted to the NJ widows remarks by attacking Coulter as "heartless." First off, that's a COMPLIMENT to a pirate like Ann. It's a pretty wussy attack. You're HEARTLESS. Eeew! Of course "heartless" would be the perfect antithesis of the grotesquery of pity as Nietzche describes it- so thank you.
Plus Ann gets extra points for being willing to point out the obvious: If Hillary Clinton wants to be concerned over poor women being victimized and treated badly, she might ought to start closer to home with, among others, Juanita Broderick.
Nearly every pundit in the land it seems has rushed to defend the honor of these poor women being treated so badly by Ann. Of course, you'd expect the Democrats and pinkos to jump on this.
For example, the sanctimony of David Carr tut-tutting her "Deadly Intent" and her audience in the New York Times was pretty funny as a response. In the church of liberalism, Monsieur Carr is trying out for the role of Church Lady, demonstrating his little superior dance. "Without the total package, Ms. Coulter would be just one more nut living in Mom's basement. You can accuse her of cynicism all you want, but the fact that she is one of the leading political writers of our age says something about the rest of us." Well, isn't that special?
Our Blogcritics are falling all over themselves to get in the front of the I-hate-Coulter parade. Candy Kayne leads a special two-minute hate called, "Why I Hate Ann Coulter, and You Should Too." Here's the money quote:
It's disgusting that Ann Coulter uses the misery of someone else to sell her vitriolic venom in book form. Her book continues to sell at a rapid pace, but at what cost? She reaps the benefits of the deaths of innocent men and women in 9/11 at the same time she tramples on the tears of their children and loved ones left behind.
That's your emotional fascism, right there. In the first place, it's all ass-backwards: It's Kerry putting these women in his commercials that was trying to benefit from the deaths of their husbands, not Ann criticizing them. But beside that, you can't smack these women down in the public arena, cause you'll hurt their poor orphaned kids' feelings.
Oh, HELL no. You do NOT get to shut off debate by beating down opponents with your pity stick like that. By the time you get to making Kerry campaign commercials, you're WAY past any claims like that.
Steve Huff is reduced to a legal investigation wanting to discredit Ann and perhaps have her jailed as a "felon" for apparently listing a business address as her legal residence on her public Florida voter registration files.
Huff's story itself is a FAR more grievous offense, arguably an actual victimization (whatever the exact legal parameters of publishing such private info on obvious high risk targets), not just a couple of catty remarks as Coulter made of "The Witches of East Brunswick." For the sake of making his dumb point about her voter registration, he absolutely lists what he believes to be her actual street address of residence. Avoiding making such info public would of course be exactly the legitimate reason for Coulter to fudge public records like voting registration.
Thankfully, Ann Coulter is not about playing victim- but she certainly could. She's certainly had a lot more public disruptions and half-assed attacks trying to actually prevent her from speaking her piece than any of the Film Actors Guild crowd has ever suffered, despite their exquisite fantasies of repression. She's just not carrying on about it.
More specifically though, I'd bet you dollars to Homer Simpson's donuts that Ann Coulter has gotten more, worse, and more credible death threats than any Dixie Chicks ever thought about. What kind of schmuck would I be considered if I published Natalie Maines' secret residential address on a public web page out of spite like that? I'd actually DESERVE the scorn.
But considerably cheesier are some of the numerous compassionate conservatives denouncing Ann to prove their great gushin' mother humpin' compassion. Brother Blogcritic Pete Blackwell insists that "Coulter Victimizes the Victims." Here's the finale:
Even if you violently disagree with the political views of the terror widows and Cindy Sheehans of the world, you can at least understand that they are motivated by their pain and grief. Coulter, on the other hand, is motivated by nothing other than greed and vindictiveness. And she's cashing in big-time.
See, ol' Pete's not like those heartless bastards who don't focus enough on the pitiful sufferings of others. But other than grasping for a cheap feeling of moral superiority or the fear of the whip of being called heartless, there's no rational reason to assume that pain and grief are their motivations rather than other obvious common forms of human venality. Cindy Sheehan sure seems to be a lot more concerned with talking about her dead son on television than she apparently was in actually raising him as a boy. Why should I think anything but the worst about her at this point?
"I wear their contempt as a badge of honor" Ann Coulter is prone to quoting. [Note my anti-Ann Coulter pictures.] As Charles Manson was being led off to prison at the end of his trial in the Helter Skelter movie, he says to the prosecutor "You know, if you beat a man with the whip, and he LIKES the whip- you're just making a fool of yourself." Then again, if it was Ann wielding the whip... But I digress.
I just know that I'd rather be considered a big meanie than to waste my precious life energies on cheap pity to appease the misguided moral demands of weenies. I would ten times rather be "heartless" than once a grief pimp.
I'd MUCH rather play pirate, helping Ann Coulter make the pinkos walk the plank, rather than being an insufferable prig enforcing an arbitrary and selective public deference to pain.
