An Open Letter to Ann Coulter

Dear Ms. Coulter, it was nice to have had a chance to see you last Friday in Washington. I wondered, though, if perhaps you’re running out of material. For example, when you said that Barack Obama’s “first big accomplishment” was having been “born half-black,” I was not sure I was sitting close enough to hear you correctly. I was reminded of your previous remarks about institutions of mental health that you made in connection to John Edwards a year ago at CPAC. I must confess—I didn’t think it was possible to display irrational, medieval attitudes, to undermine your own party and to do violence to our nation’s history and principles and call it conservatism, all at the same time. Your speech proved me wrong.

You laid out a list of all the shortcomings of John McCain, the apparent Republican nominee. These, too, were tired and predictable: he opposes torture, he did not vote for Bush’s tax cuts and he supports “amnesty” for illegal immigrants. This led you to assert that Republicans may be better off voting for Clinton in the same way that Churchill was forced to ally himself with Stalin in order to fight Hitler.

“I’m not comparing McCain to Hitler,” you added. “Hitler had a coherent tax policy.”

I do not know about you, Ms. Coulter, but those of us who have spoken with Second World War survivors tend to prefer freedom to oppression, regardless of the prevailing tax policy. If Osama bin Laden supported lower tax rates than any U.S. presidential candidate, would you be willing to endorse him? Anything for a headline, right? (If so, I would encourage you to reconsider your enthusiastic defense of torture, considering that at present, such conspicuous sympathy with terrorists oftentimes leads to some less-than-friendly interrogation).

You deride a centrist Republican and veteran for his rejection of your outlandish brand of conservatism but in the same breath you trivialize and mock the heroes who bravely fought against the tide of Nazism, something the “true conservative” you seek would never do. Of course, every argument can be reduced to comparisons with Hitler; most people just have the integrity and good sense not to do so. I would imagine that the Nazis enjoyed hunting, but I have not yet heard even the most dyed-in-the-wool liberals use this fact as an argument against the Second Amendment. When you decide to employ a logical fallacy, please try not to pick one that even economics students can identify.

You poked fun at McCain’s experiences in the Vietnam War (“couldn’t we pick a POW who doesn’t want to shut down Guantanamo?”) and quipped that the Arizona senator is running for President because he wants to improve his New York Times obituary. Rest assured, Ms. Coulter, that McCain will be around for a while and that your morbid desire to the contrary, fed by your frustrated ego after the rejection of your favorite conservative sweetheart Mitt Romney, is as appalling as your belief that the empty venom you spit is somehow humorous or interesting.

Why did I not vacate my seat, you may ask, if I take issue with your style, substance and mission to fracture the Republican Party? The reason is simple: leaving the talk would have meant giving up a rare opportunity to peer into the bottom of the American political barrel and the outright perversion of dialogue and the English language. Note that I didn’t stay because I was outraged or secretly thrilled by your audacious accusations and asides; the experience was more like staring at a car wreck. I don’t know, Ms. Coulter, if you thought you had given your audience something to think about, or that your “dirt” on John McCain would lead us to reconsider the upcoming election, but I write to inform you that you failed at both.

Jan Zilinsky ’09, a Crimson editorial editor, is an economics concentrator in Mather House.