When Is A Joke Not A Joke? When It's A Coultergeist!
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So should we declare a "Disown Ann Coulter Day"?
The Coultergeist has struck again with a tweet most people are dismissing as a
joke in poor taste. The directive by Coulter, however, may be taken seriously
by some of her addle-brained but adoring fans.
The ego-laden Coulter has, in the past, shown contempt for liberals by stating
how "stupid" they are. If, however, we were to look at the origins of
her close-minded culture, there would be nary a brain cell to be had.* And some
of Coulter's readers take whatever she says as "gospel." Recognizing
any use of metaphor, sarcasm or nuance is not their strong point. In other
words, some of them are as dumb as the bricks Ann Coulter lays in creating a
wall between them and reality.
From The
New Civil Rights Movement:
"There are 2.9 million children in
America living with no parents --
and 1.6 million American children are homeless. 2.9 million is almost 1 percent
of the entire U.S. population -- and that figure is eight years old. Half
a million U.S. children live
with foster parents.
Those half a million foster kids? Only half will graduate high school, only 2%
will earn a Bachelor's degree. The day they turn 18, 30% will have no health
insurance and will be on public assistance.
LGBTQ kids and teens are four times as likely to be homeless and up to eight
times more likely to attempt suicide as their heterosexual peers."
Seriously, though
The use of humor as a weapon is one which is both constructive and deadly:
"Against the assault of laughter, nothing can stand," said Mark
Twain, and the laugh-laden skits of Saturday Night Live have proven that parody
puts people into perspective ("I can see Russia from my house!"). The
proper use of humor, however, is always proffered to the reasonably
intelligent. Put to the unreasonable, it can be taken as "truth" and
acted upon with knee-jerk precision.
During our country's "Age of AIDS" people were kicked out of their
homes while they were sick and dying because of ignorance: uncommonly ignorant
people acted on the word of their pastors and politicians as "gospel"
instead of seeing them for the righteously arrogant proselytizers they really
were. The likes of Jerry Falwell and Jesse Helms saw to it that PWAs were
presumed to have a "gay plague" and thus should be cast out. The
practice of disowning still exists because of the ease of hatred, the
difficulty of love and acceptance. The practice of proselytizing harm to LGBT
youth is still with those pastors who tell their congregations to "crack
those wrists" of children perceived to be gay.
Forgive The Rant
This rant on Coulter's "joke" may be just a rant, but it's one which
has a lot of company: the blogosphere is reacting with unabashed candor:
- Why doesn't Ann Coulter come out ? I'm pretty sure she used to be a guy.....
- Just remember folks, life could be worse. You could be Ann Coulter. Or one of
her parents.
- If I were her son, that would be the best gift she could give me.
- Its parents must be so proud. Does it even have parents?
* Yahoo News: There's no gentle way to put it: People who give in to racism and prejudice may simply be dumb, according to a new study that is bound to stir public controversy.
The research finds that children with low intelligence are more likely to hold prejudiced attitudes as adults. These findings point to a vicious cycle, according to lead researcher Gordon Hodson, a psychologist at Brock University in Ontario. Low-intelligence adults tend to gravitate toward socially conservative ideologies, the study found. Those ideologies, in turn, stress hierarchy and resistance to change, attitudes that can contribute to prejudice.
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