Coulter is Crazy

Ann Coulter made the headlines Saturday when she called John Edwards a “faggot.”

Let me be the first to say that I was as shocked as anyone to find out that people still care about what Ann Coulter has to say—and not just any people, major players. The New York Times had a story on the event, and the Human Rights Campaign (HRC) and the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD) both denounced Coulter. Insulting the intelligence of bullies everywhere, the HRC pictures former NBA star John Amaechi telling us that Coulter’s use of the “f-Word…emboldens bullies in the school yard, in the workplace, and on the streets, and it tells them that this kind of hate speech is ok.”

Coulter, like Fred Phelps and a handful of other extremist, be-cardiganed Evangelical ministers, has the potential to be of real use to the cause of LGBT rights, but the HRC, GLAAD and other pro-lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) rights organizations have to play their cards better. We did an excellent job internalizing the elementary school lessons about the importance of discourse, but we seem to have been sidetracked before we learned what to do about it.

Edwards knew exactly how to react; his campaign had an e-mail out in no time encouraging people to…donate money to him (surprise!): “If we can raise $100,000 in ‘Coulter Cash’ this week, we can show that bigotry will only backfire on those who use it.” The e-mail is nothing short of farcical, and, in that respect, is precisely what the doctor ordered. How else do you retain your dignity while stooping to acknowledge the content of a speech by Coulter?

More importantly, however, Coulter (and her faithful minions) gave LGBT organizations a golden opportunity, and they squandered it. There are few occasions when homophobic speech comes from a source that is indisputably further from the mainstream than these organizations themselves. This “incident” (if you can even call it that) had all the makings of one of those occasions. Yet the HRC and GLAAD, in taking Coulter seriously, only diminished their own respectability.

Three of the Republican presidential candidates, numerous major conservative blogs, and apparently the entirety of the vast Right Wing Conspiracy denounced Coulter’s statements, not to mention every liberal with a microphone. Do the HRC and GLAAD really need to tell us where they stand?

Instead of reverting back to the same, tired rhetoric that conservatives can shove aside with the mere mention of the word “PC”—a most economical of epithets—why not call it like it is? Say Coulter is crazy. Say that no one thought her comments were appropriate, that no one takes her seriously, and, most importantly, that we don’t take her seriously.

The complaints of an injured minority with a reputation for hypochondria are not as effective as the reprimand of unanmious condemnation. In order to adopt a more powerful rhetorical position, the HRC and its peers have to be willing to resist the temptation for didactic speeches about the power of words and school yard bullies.

Back when LGBT rights were on shakier ground, mainstream organizations had a good reason for working within the discourse that homophobic conservatives handed them.

But that is no longer the case. The playground dynamics have changed, and Ann Coulter is about as popular as Typhoid Mary. If LGBT organizations criticize her from the margins, it’s our own fault. Sure she has her following, and even some clout in the fever ward, but that’s beside the point. The point is that whining about the psychological scars that Coulter gave us from the confines of the losers’ table is just not effective. It’s time to sit back down with the cool kids, cross our arms, and smugly wish Ann a speedy recovery from the typhoid.


Michael A. Feldstein ’07, a Crimson editorial editor, is a social studies concentrator in Mather House. He was Co-Chair of the BGLTSA ’05-’06.