Thursday, May 25, 2006

Ann Coulter Bashes Rohe. I bash Ann Coulter

Regarding Ann Coulter's screed on the Rohe speech:

To say that Rohe's speech did not take courage is ignorant. Sure, you may take some comfort that the masses agree with you. But in the end you're up there in front, in front of figures of authority, sticking your finger in their eye. It's hard, and it's scary.

Aside from Coulter's anile dismissal of Rohe's all-to-real fear, she also disses the student's real-life learning experience, somehow insinuating that a summer spent in Cuba makes her a Communist.

Another distinction Coulter fails to make is the difference between disagreeing with someone and hating them. Coulter claims that "Literally every person Rohe talked to the day before the ceremony opposed the war in Iraq and hated McCain with blind fury." The students may or may not have hated McCain 'with blind fury,' but their objections were with his policies, opinions and his track record. But in the dank recesses of Coulter's twisted mind to disagree with somone is to hate them. Thus she assumes that the spitefulness, ignorance and ugly hate she continutally exhibits in her writings and lectures also festers in the souls of those she opposes.

Oh, and more inane name-calling. "Illiterate speech." "Gutless to suck up to the audience." "Toadying." "Brown-Noser." "Spineless Suck ups." Thanks for elevating the discourse. This of course takes no courage on Coulter's part.

More fact checking: Rohe didn't "attack McCain's speech before he delivered it." It had been delivered several times before, like, oh, I dunno, a STUMP SPEECH, which, by the way, was another reason so many students protested. This wasn't some address to the students, it was just another campaign stop for McCain.

The closest Coulter comes to making a fair point is in contesting Rohe's statement that "we have nothing to fear from anyone on this living planet." True, there are people out there who want to kill us. Not, as the racist Coulter would have you believe, because of who we are, but because of what we've done. Perhaps if this nation had done things differently we wouldn't have so many peoples in the world hating us. An ounce of prevention -- in the form of treating other nations and peoples with fairness, respect and consideration -- is far preferable to the pound of dubious "cures" represented by the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, NSA phone monitoring, etc. etc. that we find ourselves paying for now to the tune of a trillion dollars. Naive? Possibly. But it's the only solution that will really work in the long run.

In concluding, Coulter says "don't insult my intelligence by telling me they're brave." Once she starts showing some intelligence, then we can debate whether or not we are insulting it. In the meantime it's obvious to this writer that Coulter has forgotten what it's like to be brave. She makes her living by offending people with racist rants, slanderous utterances and outright defamatory lying. The more outrageous she is, the more money and attention she gets. Coulter has long lost that impulse that tells us to be kind and considerate to the feelings and opinions of others. Thus the kind of courage that Rohe displayed is utterly incomprehensible to Coulter.

3 comments:

Robert Rufa said...

Enjoy your thoughtful comments at HuffPo. Thanks for the Blog address too. Always nice to have more good stuff to read.

Bimplebean said...

Dang. Now that I actually have readers -- er, reader -- I'll have to update this thing more often. [g]

Anonymous said...

I agree with the previous writer; this was a very articulate and incisive blog. Coulter is the late 1980s Madonna of the far right. Her 15 minutes have lasted too long, I can't wait until she recedes into nothingness.

Good job Bimplebean!