So Gruesome You Can't Help But Look

In light of the current controversy over Ann Coulter's insistence that four 9/11 widows have "enjoyed" the deaths of their husbands, I looked up the only previous post in which I wrote about her here. It appeared on April 23, 2005:

I read the TIME magazine cover story on pundit Ann Coulter yesterday. To tell the truth, my only exposure to her previous to that was seeing a few guest appearances she made on Hardball, in which Chris Matthews rightly raked her over the coals for suggesting that liberals are, by definition, unpatriotic.

What I got from the TIME article is that this is a woman who has found a profitable gig. She's a professional provocateur who would rather make people laugh than think. That's fine except that lots of people, whether supporters or detractors, take her schtick more seriously than she apparently does.

She also appears to me to be trapped by the persona she has created and fearful that as she continues to play her part, someone could physically attack her. That must be an awful feeling. Like the moth attracted to and willfully staying in the flame in spite of the risk, Coulter appears to be both lured and repulsed by the fame she has created for herself.

It's sad that we live in a culture that often loves heat more than light and that someone like Coulter is so desperate for prominence that, in spite of her undeniable intellectual gifts and quick wit, she feels compelled to throw in with the purveyors of heat rather than the throwers of light.

Her current prominence probably says something [both] about her and about our country.

In spite of that seemingly negative assessment, I came away from reading the piece liking Coulter...and feeling sorry for her, genuinely sorry for her.

Today I have to say that I still feel sorry for her. But her increasingly shrill and nasty statements make her less than likable. Many conservatives tell me that she's an embarrassment and they wish that she would just be quiet and go away.

Politics is a full-body-contact sport, to be sure. But Coulter has crossed a line with her new assertions about the 9/11 widows.

But give Coulter credit: Like Morgana the Kissing Bandit, she's getting precisely what she wants from her outrageous statements: attention. That, in turn, will no doubt lead to book sales.

By now, Ann Coulter is like the three-car crack-up on the Interstate: You don't want to look, but what's before you is so gruesome, so outrageous, you can't help but look.

UPDATE: Michelle Malkin is trying to legitimize Coulter's 9/11 comments saying that the author is "antagonizing the Left with her comments about the liberal 9/11 widows." It isn't just the left who is likely to be antagonized by Coulter's comments. People on the right, evangelical Christians, and people who believe in civility are all likely to be antagonized by them. I know because I'm on the right politically, I'm an evangelical Christian, and I believe in civility in our public discourse and I think that Coulter's statements are indefensible!

It's perfectly legitimate for people to disagree with the four widows that Coulter attacks. But to say that the women are enjoying their widowhood or to suggest, as she did today, that their four husbands may well have been contemplating divorcing them, is savage and insulting.

[Thank you to Andy Jackson of Smart Christian for linking to this post.]