March 09, 2007
Andrew Sullivan on Ann Coulter
Andrew Sullivan in his Atlantic Monthly blog, The Daily Dish:
I watched Ann Coulter last night in the gayest way I could. I was on a stairmaster at a gym, slack-jawed at her proud defense of calling someone a "faggot" on the same stage as presidential candidates and as an icon of today's conservative movement. The way in which Fox News and Sean Hannity and, even more repulsively, Pat Cadell, shilled for her was a new low for Fox, I think - and for what remains of decent conservatism. "We're all friends here," Hannity chuckled at the end. Yes, they were. And no faggots were on the show to defend themselves. That's fair and balanced.
I'm not going to breathe more oxygen into this story except to say a couple of things that need saying. Coulter has an actual argument in self-defense and it's worth addressing. Her argument is that it was a joke and that since it was directed at a straight man, it wasn't homophobic. It was, in her words, a "school-yard taunt," directed at a straight man, meaning a "wuss" and a "sissy". Why would gays care? She is "pro-gay," after all. Apart from backing a party that wants to strip gay couples of all legal rights by amending the federal constitution, kick them out of the military where they are putting their lives on the line, put them into "reparative therapy" to "cure" them, keep it legal to fire them in many states, and refusing to include them in hate crime laws, Coulter is very pro-gay. As evidence of how pro-gay she is, check out all the gay men and women in America now defending her.
Her defense, however, is that she was making a joke, not speaking a slur. Her logic suggests that the two are mutually exclusive. They're not...
More here. [Thanks to Asad Raza.]
Posted by Abbas Raza at 07:52 PM | Permalink
Comments
Andrew Sullivan has put his finger on it -- the Coulter method is to act and speak like a bully boy in drag. Only by carefully mounting an image so full of contradictions as to make people think on that account alone has she been able to keep herself in front of the public eye, there being something strangely compelling about a fashion X-ray yelling schoolyard insults. The actual things she says are merely bigoted, false and banal, the real enemy the vast peanut gallery she pitches her wares to. Why do we concentrate on her, and not on them?
Posted by: Elatia Harris | Mar 10, 2007 12:15:29 AM
Funny how nearly everyone who has spoken out against Coulter's remarks includes a statement of the kind, "I'm not going to breathe more oxygen into this story, except..." Why not just not breathe more oxygen into it? What is it with the urge to show your readers how above the muck you would have been? Isn't this inability to not write about something like this, while acknowledging that you don't want to write about something like this, just an arrogance of the weirdest kind? Isn't it just Andrew Sullivan, or whoever, saying "I wouldn't talk about this, it's below me, it's not worth it, except damn I have an insight so deep and valuable that I owe it to you to share it with you."
That said, I don't necessarily think this is one of those stories that we should ignore, or even worse, write about while saying we should ignore it. And the reason I think we should talk about it is not because I think the term is offensive - I honestly don't care - but because of what it says about the modern conservative movement. This is a golden philosophical moment for Democrats, an opportunity to explain to the country just who Coulter Conservatives really are. Glenn Greenwald explains.
One final thought: Andrew Sullivan writes that the word 'faggot' might not be offensive to gays because it wasn't directed at a homosexual. I'm not saying they should find it offensive, but this is interesting. I admit I didn't follow the 'more' link and read the full article, and perhaps it's shown to be the case that Mr. Sullivan doesn't agree with this statement himself, but it makes me wonder about other derogatory words: for example, is it offensive to blacks if I call my white friend 'nigger', perhaps in response to my friend possessing a similarity to a characteristic black trait or stereotype? Because it isn't as if the word 'faggot', like the word 'nigger', can ever really exist in a void. Ann Coulter used it precisely as it's always been used - that is, to call a man a sissy, a girl, and to imply, whether he is or not, that he's gay, and that being gay is a thing to be ridiculed. And all this is leaving aside the fact that Coulter's comment was not a tree falling in some vacant forest: the event was televised. I'm sure every politically-minded homosexual in this country is well-aware of her comment.
Posted by: ghostman | Mar 10, 2007 12:44:15 AM
Sorry, it was Coulter who claimed that her comment was not offensive to gays because it wasn't directed at gays, not Sullivan. But my point still stands: it's a worthless defense, and probably adds further insight into how ingrained her...phobias(?)...are.
Posted by: ghostman | Mar 10, 2007 12:54:49 AM
Ann: To paraphrase our beloved (19%) VP, "Go fist yourself."
Posted by: mr.ed | Mar 10, 2007 9:32:29 AM
just to do the same thing and use her excuse, Coulter is a dyke cunt
Posted by: nate zuckerman | Mar 10, 2007 11:13:58 AM
Ghostman, I suggest you do read Sullivan's whole post; it's quite interesting.
Is it OK to use these words in an "inoffensive" way? No, it seems to me. Sorry, but there is no inoffensive use of them, except perhaps when they are used among the offended group themselves. And this doesn't happen among the powerful groups in society. You don't hear white people use "offensive terms" such as, perhaps, "honky" among themselves much. I used to hear the expression, "that's mighty white of you" used ironically from time to time, but thankfully it seems to have fallen into disuse.
Your friend has a similarity to a "characteristic black trait or stereotype"? It's just this habit of thinking in stereotypes that is the problem. We humans have an emotional life that positively thrives on hatred and fear of people we suppose threaten us. We need to learn how to deal with these emotions in a positive way. Stereotypes are the conceptual expression of this hatred and fear. Anyone who is fond of using them needs to reflect seriously on how their mind works.
Posted by: JonJ | Mar 10, 2007 12:51:02 PM
JonJ,
I would agree that some stereotypes are expressions of hatred or fear, but I really don't think that that is generally the case.
The idea that children like sweets is a stereotype.
The idea that Italian mothers (or Italian-American mothers, anyway) love to cook and love to feed people is a stereotype.
The idea that Jewish boys are more likely to be studious and well-behaved than the average American boy is a stereotype.
The idea that gay men are more likely to care about, and be competent at, fashion is a stereotype.
The idea that African-Americans are better at sports is a stereotype.
These stereotypes may all be untrue, and they may all be harmful, but I think it is just not correct to say that they are expressions of fear and hatred.
The fact is that stereotypes are the way that almost all human beings think about the world. When we meet someone new, we look for any clues that will give us a shortcut to understanding that person. We consider the person's age, sex, nationality, race, political party, etc.
Once we get to know the person, we start to realize where the stereotypes fit and where they don't.
I think this process: start with a stereotype, and then make adjustments, is the way humans approach every situation.
Posted by: Daryl McCullough | Mar 11, 2007 1:25:48 PM
I have grandparents who live in the country who think blacks are crooks, because long ago my grandfather was robbed at gunpoint by a black man, and now they regularly watch the show Cops. On the other hand, I'm an urbanite and automatically assume that black American males under a certain age like rap music, because it's been my extensive experience that they do.
In the first case, we are dealing with obvious stereotyping, even racism, based on fear, which in this case is based on a single negative experience and continually reinforced through selective imagery in the form of 'reality' television. The second case is quite different, as we are dealing with an abundance of experience that has nothing to do with hatred or fear.
This leads me to ask (and I'm getting further and further from the original topic here): When does something cease to be a stereotype and become a group affinity, trait, characteristic, etc.? It's obvious to me that my experience is not universal, that not all black males under a certain age like rap music, but it appears to me that enough do to render this phenomenon statistically significant.
Along these same lines: how often do we call real group characteristics stereotypes just because they are uncomfortable on some level? How often do we say 'stereotype' because we perceive the group characteristic in question as negative, and because we are scared that in discussing it as a characteristic we will hurt or offend? What if a group does indeed possess a negative characteristic? Putting aside the matter of who decides what is and what is not negative, is it helpful to anyone to dismiss perhaps genuine groupwide dysfunction as simply the negative perceptions of outsiders who either don't or won't understand?
Where does stereotype (Jews are funny) end, and where does statistically significant group identity (registrants of Daily Kos are politically liberal) begin? Where does fact (all babies are born to women) fit in? And what are we to do with assumptions like my own, that black males of a certain age like rap music - assumptions which are based on a large sample of experience but which do not hold universally? I agree with Daryl that we start with assumptions and work from there, but what happens when the assumption holds up every time, or very nearly every time, either in our personal experience or on a vaster scale? Does this assumption ever become something more than a stereotype?
All this has little to do with Coulter's comment, as the word 'faggot' is a derogatory term, not a stereotype. On second thought, I take that back: for to bring it full circle, she does appear to be trying to create the stereotype (or further it, you might say, as plenty already believe it) that Democrats are homosexuals, too feminine, too butch, etc. She seems to understand very clearly what you wrote, JonJ, that hatred and fear lead to stereotypes, and that to use a word like 'faggot' is to excite the hatred and/or fear and strengthen the associated stereotype - in her case, for personal fame and political gain.
Posted by: ghostman | Mar 12, 2007 2:36:34 PM
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