Today, I did something I couldn't bring myself to do for three years.
I picked up a copy of Ann Coulter's book, Godless: The Church of Liberalism. And I held it in my hands. And I resisted the urge to seize it from the corners of the opposing pages and rip until it fell apart in a flurry of pages tainted with hatred, hypocrisy, and poor fact-checking.
Furthermore, I actually took it to my table at Barnes and Noble and allowed myself to be seen reading it. I suppose I could have done that three years ago, when it was published, but come on! People know me at my local bookstore; I was much too embarrassed to be seen reading such unadulterated nonsense.
Finally, after three whole years of itching to write a scathing blog post about the garbage that is contained within the covers of this book, I decided to risk possible humiliation and association with Coulter's nauseating conservative views and managed to get through about fourteen pages of Godless.
To begin my series of incredulous musings, I had to look no further than the front cover of the book, which proudly identified it as "the incendiary New York Times #1 Best-Seller!" This begs the question: if you are one of the many who exchanged your hard-earned money for this steaming block of shit, what does it feel like to be a walking, talking, brain-less Droid? And what's it like to be so blind to hypocrisy that you can't see the disgusting hatred being promoted by this alleged "Christian"? Or did you just not care? (For the record, I didn't buy the book. I skimmed through it while seated at the cafe, trying desperately to refrain from vomiting. Please! Why would I drop $14.95 on this poorly-researched carton of nonsense when there's a perfectly good collection of essays by Noam Chomsky right next to it, waiting to be purchased?)
Needless to say, this front-cover proclamation stopped me in my tracks and demolished all my good intentions of writing a review of this book. Plus, the sight of Coulter's smug, hate-filled face incited such a powerful rage in me that I knew I didn't stand a chance of reading this book cover-to-cover. There's a lot to be said for knowing the arguments of those who have opposing beliefs, but clearly, the premise of this book is so vastly absurd and counter-productive that it doesn't even merit attention.
However, there are a few things that I simply cannot resist pointing out.
First, Coulter proudly identifies herself as a Christian, and even goes so far as to assert that she thinks everyone should be a Christian as well. In 2007, Coulter stated on CNBC's The Big Idea that Christians consider themselves to be "perfected Jews", and that it would be better if everyone was a Christian. She also takes issue with anyone who thinks it's important to protect the environment, believes in a woman's right to choose what happens in her own body, disagrees with abstinence-only sex education, and gives a damn about poor people. Okay. Correct me if I'm wrong, for I'm just a heathen, pagan-lovin' Hindu, but isn't charity and social justice a central principle of Christianity? Doesn't Christianity advocate "loving thy neighbor"? Yes, I do believe it does. Coulter is clearly doing an excellent job of loving her neighbor when she describes her eloquent and well-researched views on foreign policy: "We should invade their countries, kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity." (This comes from her own disgusting column, written a few days after 9/11.) Oh, what's that you said? If they're not American, they're not really my "neighbor"? So Christianity says it's okay to kill, subjugate, and torture people who aren't American. Gotcha. Then I wonder what Jesus would have thought of Coulter's description of President Obama's book, Dreams From My Father as a "dime-store Mein Kampf" (really, Ann? You read Mein Kampf? Wait, did you read Dreams From My Father? In fact, are you even literate?), and I also wonder what Jesus would have thought of Coulter's statement, "Here's a little inside scoop about white people: We're not thinking about you (black people). Especially WASPs. We think everybody is inferior, and we are perfectly charming about it."
If Ann Coulter thinks that racist, white WASPs are charming, I guess she's never been to a Tea Party rally, where toothless rednecks with mullets and grease-stained pot-bellies dominate. But that's not really the point; the point is, Coulter truly believes that she and other white, American Christians are inherently superior. Can somebody please indicate what principles of Christianity support such an ignorant, hateful belief? In fact, there's only one ideology that I've identified that holds any similarity to Coulter's belief system and that's...Islamic fundamentalism.
Gasp! But Coulter hates Islam! She has openly shown her support for the airlines that performed some of the most egregious acts of racial profiling against Muslims, and has made several public statements that contained extremely ignorant and hateful epithets about Muslims. She even suggested "flying carpets" as a possible mode of transportation for Muslims denied permission to travel on commercial airlines. (Hilarious, Ann--did you develop that razor-sharp sense of humor while pursuing your degree in Basket-Weaving or Women-Hating or whatever it was you studied at Cornell?) With such unabashed hatred of Islam, it's really ironic that Coulter shares some profound ideological similarities with the Islamic fundamentalists who were behind the terrorist attacks of 9/11. Belief in moral and religious superiority? Check. Mindless indoctrination into a belief system? Check. Advocating the use of violence to convert others to one's own religion? Check. Disdain and hatred for anyone who follows a different religion? Check. An astonishing hatred of women? Check. In fact, I don't know if Coulter is aware, but she would make a great suicide bomber. No one would even miss her.
The point is, if Coulter truly believes that she is a good Christian, she clearly missed some crucial lessons in Bible-study. Love, acceptance, and morality are obviously irrelevant to her, while self-promotion, hatred, and racism are the principles she chooses to practice in the name of Christianity.
The second abomination that I have to point out is Coulter's disbelief in Darwinism. This is the real reason why I couldn't get through more than fourteen pages of Godless. Having studied evolutionary principles as a student of Physiology/Neurobiology for much of my adult life, I simply couldn't stomach the shrill proclamations of a woman whose education is in history and law and who currently earns a living as a public nuisance that evolution is "bogus science" and has never really been proven. Excuse me? You're telling me that people who have devoted their entire lives to researching and proving natural selection--people who hold advanced degrees from top universities and have published literature in the most reputable scientific publications, people who hold more scientific knowledge in their pinkie fingers than you hold in your entire emaciated body--are wrong, and you're right? Yeah, okay. Thankfully, I have an academic background that enables me to dismiss Coulter's diatribes as nothing more than arrant nonsense. When was the last time Coulter engaged in a legitimate discussion with an actual scientist about evolution? I'm going to go ahead and say never, since this is a woman who wrote a book called, How to Talk to A Liberal (If You Must), and is thus presumably not a huge proponent of intellectual discourse with people of the opposing viewpoint. I'd like to make a suggestion to Coulter: leave the scientific topics to the real scientists. For that matter, leave all those other topics in your book to the people who know what they're talking about.
There is a third topic that I wish to point, one that bewildered and revolted me so much that I actually feel the tiniest bit sorry for Coulter and the obvious self-hatred and/or the distorted self-image that governs her beliefs, and that is her blatant disgust towards women. I suppose I should qualify this by saying that Coulter presumably doesn't hate all women, despite the fact that she has publicly stated that denying women the right to vote would be a good thing. However, the prevailing hatred that Coulter has towards women seems to be, as far as I can tell, directed towards a certain breed of militant, tree-hugging, PETA-affiliated, hippie-loving feminists. Evidently, Coulter feels disdainfully about women who are activists, and she chooses to demonstrate this disdain mostly by taking pot-shots at their physical appearance. In the mere fourteen pages of Godless that I read, Coulter made FOUR references to women of opposing viewpoints to her own and their apparent lack of physical beauty. Excuse me, but how exactly is the appearance of a pro-choice activist relevant to her differing opinion on abortion legislation? Besides, why would any intellectual use such a subjective characteristic as physical beauty as a means to discredit her critics or opposition? I think it's hilarious that Coulter, who has been parodied on many occasions for her own appearance, chooses to emphasize her perception of the women with whom she disagrees as being physically hideous. Beauty (which is irrelevant to the topics that Coulter is supposed to be describing in her book) is in the eye of the beholder. I suppose that there are men out there who find masculine-figured women with prominent noses attractive, but still, does Coulter really think that she has a leg to stand on when criticizing ugly, shrill women?
The bottom line is, the fear I described in my previous post is appreciably exacerbated by Christian fundamentalist "pundits" like Ann Coulter, who have a very public platform on which they are able to express their hatred, ignorance, and blatant disregard for progress, equality, and social conscientiousness. If you're going to read Godless as a reliable resource, I beg you to consider: Ann Coulter has no higher education or expertise in politics, international relations, history, sociology, or philosophy. She has repeatedly expressed racist, xenophobic views. She doesn't even properly cite her sources in Godless; in fact, she scarcely uses those pesky old footnotes that you so often see in real non-fiction books about politics, and the few sources that she does cite don't appear to be objective, non-partisan ones. Why would you take this woman, or her ideas, seriously?
The good news is, there are plenty of people who don't take her seriously, and have, in fact, dismissed her for the ignorant, greedy, callous, self-important, hateful excuse for a human being that she is. I would love for her to take a look at some of the blog posts, articles, cartoons, and videos that have made her into a punch-line, such as this one.
Hate hurts, doesn't it, Ann?
