Bob Wright Kicks Kaus Around on Issue of Ann Coulter’s Unbelievably Vile Statements About the Relatives of Terror Victims
When someone says: “I love so-and-so to death,” you can bet that “so-and-so” is about to be slammed — hard.
You know that the speaker’s next sentence is bound to begin with the word “but.”
So:
I love Mickey Kaus to death.
But . . .
His lefty pal Robert Wright just kicks Kaus around the room in this Blogging Heads TV segment on evolution basher Ann Coulter and her hateful statements about some 9/11 widows.
It’s just devastating. I was cackling out loud.
Here is a transcription of one small excerpt:
Kaus: She says what she thinks. She thinks they’re harpies, she says they’re harpies. There is something — there is something . . .
Wright: Well, let’s get back to them enjoying the deaths of their husbands. Do you think she’s right about that?
Kaus: Well, it’s weird. I thought that was a very offensive thing to say, in that, in that, uh, you know, she was implying that they, overall, they were happy their husbands were dead. And she doesn’t really say that. She just, uh –
Wright: So, “enjoying their husbands’ deaths” . . .
Kaus: She doesn’t say that. She says she’s never seen grieving widows enjoy the deaths of their husband more. It doesn’t mean that overall, they’re not, like, wildly unhappy. It just means that, uh –
Wright: That they’re literally enjoying the deaths of their husbands? So, I mean, let’s take an example. I mean, this happens across the political spectrum, OK, that people acquire a platform by virtue of tragedy, like this right-wing writer David Gelertner. . . . [I]f he hadn’t opened a bomb sent by the Unabomber, we probably never would have become familiar with his political writings, because they wouldn’t have existed. . . . I would never say, as much as I dislike his writing, I would never say: “I’ve never seen someone so enjoy being maimed.” That would be a stupid thing to say. If I said it in a fit of rage, it would mean I had lost control of my senses briefly. If I said it in a book, it would mean that it was calculated to antagonize people; it was calculatedly outrageous — and I’m sure you’ll agree at least this much, Mickey, this was a classic calculatedly outrageous Ann Coulter sentence. I mean, it’s even hard for me to get outraged about it, the calculation is so obvious. You’ll agree to that, surely — right?
. . . .
Kaus: . . . [I]f you read the remarks in context, they do not seem that bad. In fact, there are things –
Wright: They don’t seem that bad? Wouldn’t you call me stupid if I said about Gelertner, that I’ve never seen somebody so enjoy being maimed? Wouldn’t that be stupid?
Kaus: It would be very stupid — but I think that’s worse –
Wright: Oh, but that’s not analogous to this?
Kaus: I actually think that’s worse than this.
Wright: That’s worse?
Kaus: Yeah, because you’re playing on someone’s physical deformity.
Wright: Oh, as opposed to somebody’s mere death.
There’s lots more like that. If I had time, I’d transcribe it all. As it stands, you’ll just have to watch it. Wright gets in some awesome zingers.
Sorry, Mickey. You know I love you to death!
Robert Wright says the entire right wing has deserted Ann Coulter. I guess he hasn’t visited this blog lately, has he?
Comment by sharon — 6/15/2006 @ 8:01 am
I haven’t seen so much self-conscious moral preening since O’Reilly took on the supposedly segregated high school prom.
Comment by eddie haskell — 6/15/2006 @ 8:38 am
Yeah, “I love so-and-so to death” is a sibling to “Bless her little heart…”
Comment by Anwyn — 6/15/2006 @ 8:42 am
The kernel of truth is there … that the wives are using their loss as a platform. If they weren’t comfortable or fulfilled in speaking out, they wouldn’t do it. Without the deaths, there would be no platform.
Nancy Grace became a prosecutor because of her fiancee’s murder. So it’s true that these women are benefiting from the situation. A more accurate assessment might be that they’re strong enough to share their pain and try to make the world a better place.
Ann Coulter is a well-known product and maybe more of a caricature than even Michael Moore. When I go to a Michael Moore movie, I know what to expect. Also, with the media landscape so competitive we’re going to see more and more of these over the top, P.T. Barnum type of comments. That’s Ann’s style and what she said is just a reflection of her act.
Comment by Vermont Neighbor — 6/15/2006 @ 10:47 am
If there wasn’t some truth to what Ann Coulter said, it would have been treated as another of her over-top-statements and it would already be forgotten.
She gored a liberal sacred cow (grief = absolute moral authority) and they are still reeling from it.
Comment by Tom — 6/15/2006 @ 2:54 pm
Write didn’t score any points in that section you quoted. His analogy was ludicrous because Gelertner doesn’t tade on his experience the way the Jersey Widows do. It may have been an initial impetus to his fame, but after that, he made it by his own talent. By contrast, the Jersey Widows have nothing but the deaths of their husbands. If not for that, no one would care about them.
Comment by Doc Rampage — 6/15/2006 @ 5:44 pm
Early on Patterico alluded to a potential, and I think correct, substitute for Coulter’s comment “…the Jersey Girls are enjoying the notoriety resulting from their husbands’ deaths…” [emphasis added].
It’s pretty clear that’s what Coulter meant - - and that a certain very few, very public, 9-11 witches weild their widow status as both club and shield in a vile kind of sheer political advocacy. Though I agree, Coulter didn’t communicate this point carefully enough.
Comment by Trained Auditor — 6/15/2006 @ 7:53 pm
TA - Coulter represents a problem for those of us who may support some tenets of the VRWC - she says out loud, or in this case puts to print, what some of us may think from time to time.
The response has been a collective “You Can’t Say That!” from much of the dextropunditocracy, met with a collective ‘eh’ from the rank and file - AC’s just doing what AC does.
The best example I can come up with is that you don’t kick a dog for pissing on a fire hydrant, because that’s just what dogs do.
Remember, folks: Exposure to Coulter requires an affirmative choice on your part. If the means by which she explains herself is so reprehensible, then the best thing to do is to turn elsewhere for comment and opinion. If her method of writing is so gross and distasteful, then the results will reveal themselves in the sales figures, and she may have to check herself a little bit.
She wrote this book to sell copies of the book, not to appease those who would wish upon her a little more genteel approach to political discourse.
Comment by JD — 6/15/2006 @ 11:18 pm
It’s pretty clear that’s what Coulter meant - - and that a certain very few, very public, 9-11 witches weild their widow status as both club and shield in a vile kind of sheer political advocacy. Though I agree, Coulter didn’t communicate this point carefully enough.
Now that’s a defensible argument.
Comment by Patterico — 6/15/2006 @ 11:23 pm
Patterico:
Wright’s attack was ineffectual, except insofar as Kaus was unable to think of the correct response. That doesn’t mean there wasn’t one; just that the venue of live television doesn’t suit some folks as well as others.
Depending on the circumstances, I absolutely might write that getting maimed may have been the best thing that ever happened to David Gelertner… and I don’t even mean that as a slam on him. I might even phrase it as Wright does in his analogy: “I’ve never seen someone so enjoy being maimed.”
Gelertner seems to have found a special joy in doing something he might never have thought of doing (or at least hadn’t so far) prior to receiving that special delivery from Ted Kaczynski. I cannot inhabit his mind, obviously; but if I had extensive dealings with him, I might well come to the conclusion that he is far happier now, after the maiming, that he was before.
I can’t say that for sure about Gelertner; but I have absolutely known people who were horribly maimed (losing limbs), and who themselves said it was the best thing that ever happened to them.
I have never met Charles Krauthammer, and if I did I might not ask him this question (then again I might; I may not be safe for polite company): but he is a good candidate for another such. Had he not dived into a pool without water (or whatever his diving accident was), he almost certainly would simply have ended up a practicing psychiatrist.
Perhaps Krauthammer would have been perfectly happy. But it’s just as likely he would have lived a life of “quiet desperation,” as so many do.
Would he ever have become a political columnist? Would he have abandoned the MD and used his undergraduate degree instead, as he does now? Once you have an advanced degree in a profession, there is momentous pressure to use it.
He might have overcome it. Maybe he would even be happier just being a psychiatrist… but I doubt both propositions. To the extent that he is spiritually and intellectually more fulfilled by doing what he does, he may well say that being paralyzed was the best thing that ever happened to him.
And someone who knew that about him could legitimately say, “I never knew anyone who so enjoyed being paralyzed” — and not even mean it as an attack.
Now Coulter obviously meant what she said as an attack, and of course she meant it exactly the way it came out. It was written, for heaven’s sake; if she didn’t mean it that way, she would have corrected it before turning in the manuscript, or at least in page proofs.
But I will not follow you down the road of saying that it can never be accurate to say that certain people are “enjoying” the deaths of family members.
I don’t know enough about the Jersey Girls themselves; I know more about “Mother” Sheehan… I would neither be offended nor would I disagree if someone said that he had never seen anyone enjoying the death of her son so much.
Sheehan is so satisfied with her new life, made possible only because of the death of Casey Sheehan, that she has completely abandoned her family — including Casey Sheehan’s brother Andy and her two other children.
That sounds like a choice.
She is Mother Sheehan now, high priestess of the anti-war faction that permanently lives at Camp Casey (not that the eponymous Casey Sheehan would necessarily appreciate the “honor”). If her children were more important to her than fame and godhead, she would be with them. She is not.
You have not persuaded me, Patterico, that what Coulter said should not have been said about anyone; you could still perhaps persuade me that it was unjust to say it specifically about the Jersey Girls… but you have not yet tried.
Comment by Dafydd — 6/16/2006 @ 1:26 am
It’s more than defensible; it’s correct. What’s not defensible is your insistence on equating Coulter with Ted Rall over it. Rall is a completely different beast.
Comment by Xrlq — 6/16/2006 @ 7:15 am
Patterico, since it appears Kaus and Coulter have a personal relationship isn’t it unreasonable to expect Kaus to do anything other than defend her in public?
[I have asked him about this. At the very least I suppose you can’t really expect him to harshly criticize her. — P]
Comment by James B. Shearer — 6/19/2006 @ 7:17 pm
Good site I found … Plan on coming back later.
Comment by Pueraria Mirifica — 10/19/2006 @ 2:40 am