Great American Hypocrites: Toppling the Big Myths of Republican Politics (14 page)

C
entral to the right-wing mythmaking machine is the depiction of their male leaders as swaggering tough guys in the iconic mold of an American cowboy and brave, steadfast warrior. Above all else, Republican leaders are invariably held up as exuding the virtues of traditional American masculinity—courage, physical strength, “regular guy”ness, and most of all, a willingness and ability to stare down America’s various and numerous enemies—in war, if necessary—and defeat them through superior strength.

Vital to this masculinity marketing campaign is the demonization of Democrats and liberal males as weak, sniveling, effeminate, effete cowards—spineless little creatures whose cowardice and lack of manliness make them laughingstocks. While right-wing leaders are the football players and swaggering tough guys, liberal males are the glasses-wearing nerds, the woman-controlled, gender-confused, always-vaguely-gay losers who are as feminine and weak as their women are masculine and threatening.

The reality, in virtually every case, is the opposite. Those who end up as leaders of the right-wing movement in America have nothing in their lives to demonstrate any actual courage, physical strength, or any of the warrior virtues they desperately strive to exude. They are, with extremely rare exceptions, draft dodgers, combat avoiders, pencil pushers, career government lawyers, coddled corporate lobbyists, bloated pill addicts. Their only “toughness” or masculine “tough guy” credentials are from cheerleading as they send others off to fight wars, never to fight in any themselves. Just like John Wayne, their masculine toughness comes from the costumes they wear, the scripts they read, the roles they play—never from the reality of their own lives.

Few events illustrate the central importance to the right-wing movement of these twisted themes more than the March 2007 speech by Ann Coulter to the Conservative Political Action Conference, when she famously called John Edwards a “faggot.” What matters is not Ann Coulter but the role she plays in the right-wing movement and its full-scale embrace of her as its bestselling author and, by far, most popular speaker.

The CPAC is one of the most prestigious events held by the conservative movement, attracting the highest-level Republican political officials and most influential pundits. Coulter’s 2007 appearance was not the first time she created controversy at the CPAC event. In 2006, the event was attended by virtually the entire leadership of the Republican Party: Vice President Dick Cheney, Republican National Committee chairman Ken Mehlman, then–2008 presidential hopeful Senator George Allen, then–Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, and Newt Gingrich.

In addition to those luminaries, Ann Coulter was invited to be a featured speaker despite (or because of) her history of repeatedly urging the murder of her domestic political opponents and government officials by methods ranging from terrorist attacks (“My only regret with Timothy McVeigh is he did not go to the New York Times Building”) to assassinating Supreme Court Justices (“We need somebody to put rat poison in Justice Stevens’s crème brûlée”) to skull-bashing (“I think a baseball bat is the most effective way these days to talk to liberals”). None of those violence-advocating comments ever prevent the most prominent Republican groups from inviting her to speak, nor do they prevent the most prominent Republican politicians from appearing next to her without ever condemning her remarks.

To the contrary, with that repugnant history well known, Coulter—in 2006—was invited to share top billing at the most prestigious right-wing event of the year, and she did not disappoint. Her 2006 speech included unsurprising gems such as: “I think our motto should be, post-9/11, ‘Raghead talks tough, raghead faces consequences’” and “If we find out someone [referring to a terrorist] is going to attack the Supreme Court next week, can’t we tell Roberts, Alito, Thomas, and Scalia?”

According to one of her blogging fans in attendance, five thousand conservatives reverently sat there and listened to her and did nothing to indicate disapproval. To the contrary—as reported by The Huffington Post’s Max Blumenthal—her urging of violence against “ragheads” specifically “prompted a boisterous ovation.” The blogger Rick Moran, brother of ABC News reporter Terry Moran, observed that Coulter’s speech was “well received by the audience.”

So it was owing to that 2006 CPAC appearance, along with her history of similar remarks, that Coulter was again invited in 2007. Prior to her speech, Mitt Romney addressed the conference and excitedly announced: “I am happy to hear that after you hear from me, you will hear from Ann Coulter. That is a good thing. Oh yeah!” The CPAC attendees screamed and cheered with approval.

And it was then that she referred to John Edwards as a “faggot.” As the Center for American Progress described, with an accompanying video confirming its description, “Audience members said ‘ohhh’ and then cheered.” Andrew Sullivan, who was in attendance for the Coulter speech, reported:

When you see her in such a context, you realize that she truly represents the heart and soul of contemporary conservative activism, especially among the young. The standing ovation for Romney was nothing like the eruption of enthusiasm that greeted her….

Her endorsement of Romney today—“probably the best candidate”—is a big deal, it seems to me. McCain is a nonstarter. He is as loathed as Clinton in these parts. Giuliani is, in her words, “very, very liberal.” One of his sins? He opposed the impeachment of Bill Clinton. That’s the new standard. She is the new Republicanism. The sooner people recognize this, the better.

Coulter’s “faggot” comment was far from the first time Coulter had explicitly suggested that leading Democrats were gay. Previously, Coulter has placed what she called “even money” on Hillary Clinton’s “[c]oming out of the closet.” She said that Bill Clinton shows “some level of latent homosexuality,” and—on MSNBC’s
Hardball
with Chris Matthews—she labeled Al Gore a “total fag.” During her speeches on college campuses and elsewhere, Coulter routinely accuses male liberals of being gay or effeminate.

And her remarks fit in comfortably at the CPAC event, which year after year embraces and promotes her. In addition to Coulter’s tawdry hatemongering, the conference was graced with such dignified and honorable sentiments as these: T-shirts proclaiming “Straight Pride” appearances by members of “Exodus International,” encouraging gay people to become “ex-gays” and bumper stickers declaring “Happiness is Hillary’s face on a milk carton.”

Ann Coulter
is
the face of what the hard-core Republican Party has become, particularly during the Bush presidency. That is why she holds such a central position in that movement. It is why Mitt Romney was giddy with glee when her name passed his lips. He knows that her endorsement is valuable precisely because she holds great sway within the party, and she holds great sway because the hard-core party faithful consider her a heroine for expressing the thoughts that they themselves believe but that other, less courageous Republican figures are afraid to express.

This is not about a single comment or isolated remark. The more Ann Coulter says these things, the
more popular
she becomes in this movement. She reflects exactly what sort of political movement this is, its true impulses and core beliefs. If that were not the case, why would she continue to receive top billing at their most prestigious events, and why would she continue to be lavished with rock-star adoration by the party faithful?

In a very vivid way, the Ann Coulter “faggot” episode shone a light on the right-wing movement that is so bright, even our establishment press would have been able to recognize some important truths if they just looked even casually. Although some conservatives politely distanced themselves from Coulter’s specific “faggot” remark, most refused to do so, and—as always—she suffered no loss of standing of any kind, either in the movement or in the attention and admiration lavished on her by our national journalists (as but one example, Chris Matthews, months later, had her on his show for an entire hour to commemorate the publication of her new book).

Coulter cannot be repudiated precisely because she embodies the soul of the current incarnation of the Republican Party. To repudiate her is to repudiate all of the hypocrisies.

The day following Coulter’s “Edwards is a faggot” speech, Bill O’Reilly devoted a segment of his show to discussing the controversy. Kirsten Powers, a so-called Democratic strategist, was on the show along with right-wing blogger Michelle Malkin. Powers managed to ask the key question—the only one that was actually significant with regard to the entire affair—thereby forcing Malkin to make the critical concession, the one that right-wing pundits were desperate to avoid:

KIRSTEN POWERS:
[Coulter] has said a lot of horrible things…she’s done all these things. And I don’t understand why if this is the preeminent conservative movement place to be speaking, why she is chosen as a person to speak…

BILL O’REILLY: Why do you think they invited her, Michelle?

MICHELLE MALKIN: She’s very popular among conservatives.
And let me say this. I have been a longtime admirer of much of Ann’s work. She has done yeomen’s work for conservatism.

This
is why—the only reason—Coulter’s remarks and Coulter herself are so significant. And the significance lies not just in this specific outburst at the 2007 CPAC event but in the whole array of hatemongering, violence-inciting remarks over all these years. Their significance lies in the critical fact that Malkin expressly acknowledged: “She’s very popular among conservatives.”

And Coulter herself knows quite well how indispensable she is, how impossible it is for Republicans to repudiate her. The day following her Edwards “faggot” speech, she appeared on Fox News alongside her good friend Sean Hannity, and she repeatedly made clear—when Hannity asked her about the “consequences” of the controversy—that nothing will change as a result of these comments. As she correctly observed: “This is my seventeenth allegedly career-ending moment.”

Coulter plays a vital and irreplaceable role in the right-wing movement that dominates the Republican Party, but she is hardly unique. She is but the most overt provider of the rhetorical tools they use not only to keep themselves in power but, more important, to keep their needy, confused, and scared base feeling strong and protected. As the blogger Digby put it the day following Coulter’s CPAC speech:

The underlying premise of the modern conservative movement is that the entire Democratic party consists of a bunch of fags and dykes who are both too effeminate and too masculine to properly lead the nation. Coulter says it out loud. [The
New York Times
’s Maureen] Dowd hints at it broadly. And the entire press corps giggles and swoons at this shallow, sophomoric concept like a bunch of junior high pom pom girls.

The online journalist Bob Somerby of
The Daily Howler
has spent years vigilantly documenting the constant use by our most prestigious establishment journalists of exactly the same attack themes that are Coulter’s signature. As he wrote in the aftermath of the Coulter “faggot” speech—in a post titled “When you read Dowd, you’re riding with Coulter”:

But then, why should pundits criticize
Coulter
when she describes Dem males as big “f*ggots”? It’s very similar to the gender-based “analysis” their dauphine, the Comptesse Maureen Dowd, has long offered. In Dowd’s work, John Edwards is routinely “the Breck Girl” (five times so far—and counting), and Gore is “so feminized that he’s practically lactating.”

Indeed, two days before we voted in November 2000, Dowd devoted her entire column,
for the sixth time,
to an imaginary conversation between Gore and his bald spot. “I feel pretty,” her headline said (pretending to quote Gore’s inner thoughts). That was the image this idiot wanted you carrying off to the voting booth with you! Such is the state of Maureen Dowd’s broken soul. And such is the state of her cohort.

And as Somerby documents, the junior-high press corps, led by Dowd, its “Queen Bee,” made great strides in 2007 in applying Coulter’s themes to the emerging field of Democratic candidates:

[I]n the spirit of fair play and brotherhood, [Dowd] is extending this type of “analysis” to Barack Obama. In the past few weeks, she has described Obama as “legally blonde” (in her headline); as “Scarlett O’Hara” (in her next column); as a “Dreamboy,” as “Obambi,” and now, in her latest absurd piece, as a “schoolboy.”…

But as we’ve noted, Dowd
persistently
mocks Dem males as a race of big girlie-men. They feel pretty—and they’re the Breck Girl. Now, Obama is constantly some sort of “boy”—or an iconic white woman.

Big Dem men are constantly girls. And big Dem women? Keep reading:

DOWD:
“I’m just not certain, having watched the fresh-faced senator shy away from fighting with
the feral Hillary
over her Hollywood turf, that he understands that a campaign is inherently a conflict.”

Big Dem women are “feral”! Indeed, when we get to paragraphs 4 through 6, Dowd spells it out just as clear as a belle at a ball. Added warning! When Dowd refers to Obama as “Barry,” it’s one more snide diminution.

After David Geffen made critical comments about Hillary, she seized the chance to play
Godzilla stomping on Obambi.

DOWD:
“As a woman, [Hillary] clearly feels she must be aggressive in showing she can ‘deck’ opponents, as she put it—whether it’s Saddam with her war resolution vote or Senator Obama when he encroaches on areas that she and Bill had presumed were wrapped up, like Hollywood and now the black vote.

If Hillary is in touch with her masculine side, Barry is in touch with his feminine side.
”

Leave aside the persistent infantilism involved in images like “Godzilla” and “Bambi.” Here, Dowd states her endless—and vacuous—theme: Big Dem males (like “Barry”) are girls. And big Dem women are men.