It's Morning in America with Ann Coulter
By Brian Lambert
As these phone interviews go, the producer had Coulter on hold as we came back out of a break, and I set up the guest. Since I regard Coulter as a throbbing icon of naked cynicism and am not sympathetic to anything she has ever said (including "hello" and "goodbye"), my "introduction," which guests can hear prior to going live, was salted with references to her intellectual recklessness and her most recent professional scandal, a pesky plagiarism charge. About as I finished my set-up, I saw the little red light for her line go dark. A second later, the producer was in my headphones, "She hung up."
I suppose it's possible she suddenly remembered a thank-you note she hadn't written to Matt Lauer, but since she's almost never confronted in anything like the tone she spews on FoxNews or the network morning chat shows, I've happily told the tale of, "The day Ann Coulter couldn't dare go head-to-head with little old me in Minneapolis."
This week's silliness with her, as it now appears, concocting the story that she was "banned from NBC" (hyped by Matt Drudge) then agreeing to an "exclusive" with Harry Smith on CBS's The Early Show before getting re-invited back on The Today Show is one of those Mobius-like episodes that challenges any kind of methodical deconstruction. (Here's a link with both the Today and CBS interviews.)
As Lauer points out in his . . . nine-minute-fort-five-second interview with Coulter . . . (that's the Today Show interview segment equivalent of Lawrence of Arabia), NBC has had Coulter on countless times, including every time she's had a book she's wanted to plug. I don't have immediate access to Today Show guest logs, but I'm making a wild guess here that that is significantly more often than they've had, um, David Wroblewski (The Story of Edgar Sawtelle), Malcolm Gladwell (The Outliers), Dexter Filkins (The Forever War), and Joseph O'Neill (Netherland) . . . combined. And that, of course, says a lot about who the networks think they're talking to at the crack of day and what it takes to keep them listening. (Does anyone actually watch The Today Show?)
In his usual chummy, collegial, we're-all-stars-here way, Lauer posed a couple "edgy"
questions for Coulter to filibuster over. Harry Smith took a more pervasively confrontational tack. But given what Coulter is—a marketing gimmick with less intellectual credibility than most Poli Sci undergraduates—the fact she is on national TV at all is the point of any purposeful discussion. The kabuki business of the network chat show hosts "getting tough" with this liberal-hating, media-hating, media-exploiting media creation is transparent cynicism on their part as well. Coulter obviously needs them—and needs them as enemies out to "censor" and "ban" her—and they need her because she's so reliably adroit at concocting some kind of fleeting "buzz" over some new episode of Tourette's she's committed to print.
But who is the audience? Primarily, women. Mothers, working women, working mothers. Women busy getting themselves and their clan out the door. (I'll correct this if I'm off by more than 5 percent, but I believe the gender breakdown of the three morning talk shows is 60 to 35, female to male.)
Coulter's "female-ness," the co-ed straight blonde hair, the short miniskirts, and . . . her glee in sticking it to "the boys" (Lauer, Smith, whomever) . . . makes her a good product for women no matter how reckless and unhinged it is she is actually saying. She looks ready for her close-up. (She'd never get the airtime if she looked like Betty Friedan). But by turning to Coulter over and over again . . . ad nauseum . . . instead of someone else who might make a more coherent, factual case for conservatism, the networks—Matt, Harry, Diane , etc.—are long past the point of "merely entertaining" their heavily female audience with a "hot" guest. They're actively, and consistently, debasing them.
In the "comments" section to my previous post, ("2009, If I Were King"), there's a lot of back and forth about my harebrained dream of some kind of regular face-to-face confrontation between hyper-partisans. Lord almighty, if the network morning shows can't do the 12 Step and take the cold turkey Coulter Cure, at least tell her the next time she's on she has to spend an hour--Ladies at home, you'd like that, right?--going head-to-head with, say, The Nation's Katrina vanden Heuvel. Or, hell, pick a grad student off the U of M campus.
© 2008 MSP Communications, Inc. All rights reserved
Am I the only one that thinks it odd that you are always picking on female conservatives? What's behind this, Brian? Fantasies about Ann Coulter being scared of you? I'm not a professional, but something seems a bit off.
Sure, you make the odd slam at Hannity, but nothing like these long manifestos against Kersten and Coulter.
Sharpening your pen for your next attack against Michelle Malkin?
LAMBERT: You apparently missed my previous career which was nothing but siege against Limbaugh. It's just nice to have fresh targets. Or ... really, other than Michael Savage, give me a male playing the "unhinged" game as shamelessly as Coulter? There are, as I say in the post, reasons she's on network TV over and over again.
Posted by: JB Saunders on January 7, 2009 at 11:56 PM
Shouldn't you just be tickled that she's out there spouting her "reckless and unhinged" rhetoric and making conservatives look stupid? If that's how you feel, you shouldn't be afraid of it but encouraging it.
By the way, if your for reinstituting the "Fairness" doctrine, shouldn't there be a conservative blogger on this site?
LAMBERT: If you read the comments section there are. And I'm happy to interact with them.
Posted by: Tami on January 8, 2009 at 7:54 AM
..yet her tactics get her a 544 word blog posting which in the PR game of "as long as they spell my name right" is a victory for her.
LAMBERT: Clearly and understanding of the media game shaped by a long apprenticeship at the foot of a master.
Posted by: Jed Leyland on January 8, 2009 at 8:46 AM
Dude, Joe the Plumber is covering the Mideast for PJTV. The far-right media carnival knows no bottom. Its depths have yet to be, well, plumbed.
Meanwhile, as Joe packs his khakis, ABC cuts back and relies on the BBC for Mideast coverage and CBS all but closes their Tel Aviv bureau.
Ann Coulter very cheaply fills time and reliably draws slack-jawed viewers. Cue Mencken...
LAMBERT: Imagine the spawn of Joe the Plumber and Ann Coulter ...
Posted by: Jim Leinfelder on January 8, 2009 at 10:47 AM
(King) Brian's call for the reestablishment of the Fairness doctrine refers to the "public" airwaves, those regulated by the FCC on behalf of the American people. It's not always a clean execution, but that's the intent, anyway.
This website is run by a privately-held company, and while blog postings may not always reflect the views of its owner, it's under no obligation to present a conservative voice.
LAMBERT: I can't improve on that.
Posted by: Lauri on January 8, 2009 at 12:51 PM
"Unhinged" has a nice ring to it, Bri, but where do you take on her positions?
Where's the thoughtful counter argument /position you so wist for?
I see nothing.
She'll be #1 NYT next week.
Try to keep up.
I know it's tough on you libs when a WOMAN speaks her mind (and is correct), but - really.
You tights are showing some strain.
LAMBERT: She had her chance to debate me.
Posted by: bertram jr. on January 8, 2009 at 4:45 PM
Here's your "equal time":
After NBC canceled me "for life" on Monday -- until seven or eight hours later when the ban was splashed across the top of The Drudge Report, forcing a red-faced NBC to withdraw the ban -- an NBC insider told The Drudge Report: "We are just not interested in anyone so highly critical of President-elect Obama, right now," explaining that "it's such a downer. It's just not the time, and it's not what our audience wants, either."
LAMBERT: bertram cut and pasted an entire Coulter "explanation" of the NBC incident. Those of you interested enough can use the Googles and find it ...
Posted by: bertram jr. on January 8, 2009 at 4:52 PM
Back in my more Republican days, I bought a Coulter book and made it through exactly one chapter. I've never read anyone so negative and brutal.
But -- she is very smart in how she markets herself as Mr. Lambert (der Burger King) suggests. Look at the breadth of the reaction she got, her book is now #8 on Amazon.
LAMBERT: She's like Rod Blagojevich, a creature of unrestrained cynical brilliance.
Posted by: Dave on January 8, 2009 at 7:15 PM
Savage proves the case that simply being "unhinged" (which he is) won't get you a morning show spot.
(I do think your use of this term is a Michelle Malkin-related Freudian slip--that was her book title.)
C'mon, Ann's not unhinged, she's the classic angry satirist, a concept which liberals may have a hard time recognizing as anything other than psychosis, but which is quite a natural thing to a conservative.
From Alex Massie--
The angry - or sorrowful - satirist [differs] from a publication such as The Onion. The Onion, marvellous though it be, is essentially about humour, not satire. It aims to amuse, not to draw blood. It doesn't believe, the way the angry satirists do, that we live in uncommonly stupid times. This belief, of course, sits more comfortably with a conservative disposition. The left, after all, still remains more likely to believe in the possibility of progress, even of perfection, than the right. Raging satire tends to take the view that the people are fools, governed by knaves, that, in Mencken's famous phrase, "Democracy is the theory that the people know what they want and deserve to get it good and hard." In other words, the satirist occupies the middle ground - kicking the ankles of those who govern and the heads of those who are (mis)-governed.
LAMBERT: I tend to believe that tone is everything in just about every relationship -- marriages, business associations and performers with their audience. Coulter's tone is not merely "angry" (which it clearly is) but also recklessly cruel to anyone even vaguely associated with "the other side" -- take the 9/11 widows' campaign for a proper investigation of how the attacks happened ... against the resistance by the Bush administration. Coulter can rip away at the Clintons, liberals, etc. all she wants. That's political theater. But a satirist such as you are suggesting, with this Mencken like view, doesn't draw an implausible line between "us" and "them". If she was on network TV to say we're all idiots, I might laugh.
Posted by: JB Saunders on January 8, 2009 at 10:07 PM
I have never found her compelling.
As well, I have always been at odds with this notion that shes good looking. She's not. Shes garish.
I understand she dated Bill Maher during the Politically Incorrect show days. Makes me wonder how they aproached that, ie, if one of them had to wear a paper sack over their head during sex, or if they both did, sort of for extra protection.
LAMBERT: Now THERE is a troubling image.
Posted by: 108 on January 9, 2009 at 8:59 AM
Why do liberals so happily reveal their illness by attacking someone's looks?
The woman accurately nails the vainglorious malfeasance of the mainstream media HARD in her new book.
And the irony of BL sounding the Strib's death knell while adjacently frothing over same is, well, quite delicious.
LAMBERT: My intent is a tasty confection.
Posted by: bertram jr on January 9, 2009 at 11:58 AM
From Michelle Malkin, and spot on:
"syndicated column today looks at the MSM sneering over Joe Wurzelbacher’s trip to Israel sponsored by PJTV, recounts how The Fraternal Order of the Professional Journalist has squandered its own credibility, and exposes how liberal media elites have attempted to shut out conservatives from membership in the journalism club by redefining their craft based on ideological content.
Soon after I filed the column, yet another example of damaged MSM credibility surfaced in the blogosphere. LGF and Bob Owens broke the story of CNN’s broadcast of suspicious Gaza footage featured two pro-Hamas doctors engaging in medical theater of jihad — by faking a bizarre form of CPR on a Palestinian boy who “died.” CNN, which heaped derision on JTP for taking on the role of reporter, has yanked the video. More on one of the jihadi apologist zealots, Dr. Mads Gilbert, at FNC."
And, you, BL still just don't get it!
LAMBERT: Coulter and Malkin. Have you considered a dating service?
Posted by: bertram jr. on January 9, 2009 at 2:43 PM
She should be ignored. She might not go away but she would be out of the public eye and ear, at least. No one is less deserving of media attention than Ann Coulter.
LAMBERT: Sarah Palin?
Posted by: Sarah on January 19, 2009 at 7:36 AM