Gagging Annie

If you've been following this Ann Coulter hoo-ha, you've probably spent a fair amount of the time with your mouth agape. Coulter is considered even by Canadian conservatives to be uber-right wing. She is also a rather gifted trash-talker, liberally sprinkling racial and social stereotypes into many of her most outrageous statements (don't you love how I managed to slip liberal in there?)

Coulter is not the only American conservative talking-head known for spewing vitriol at anything not on the republican agenda. She is in good company with right-wing political commentators like Rush Limbaugh, Pat Robertson and virtually everyone employed by Fox News. Debaters and detractors should take note that Coulter is a truly gifted and fierce opponent to anyone who should decide to confront her in public. She is well-educated, knowledgeable and exceptionally savvy at manipulating an issue to support her views.

I also happen to think most of what comes out of her mouth is garbage. Now, by no means would I consider myself her intellectual equal, nor do I have the kind of knowledge and insight into the machinations of the American system of politics or the finer points of U.S. conservatism. Coulter walks a fine line between right-wing political propaganda and flat out racial and social discrimination. Her statements, if taken seriously, can be extremely offensive. She has insisted that her comments are not designed to incite hatred, but perhaps, in the same vein as the 70s TV character Archie Bunker, reflect the attitudes of a disturbingly large portion of the population, and that alone is worthy of discussion.

What is easy for most of us to recognize is that she has parlayed virtually all of her intellect and talents into an act that gets her lots of attention. In the grand galactic scheme of things, there's not much difference between her and the kid in the schoolyard who has mastered the skill of sucking spaghetti up his nose to the delight of his peers. You can hang her photo next to Howard Stern, Marilyn Manson et al. in the 'audacity over substance' hall of fame.

Regardless, the University of Ottawa's decision to caution Ms. Coulter steers dangerously close to censorship. The subsequent decision to cancel her appearance also reflects very poorly on the university and our country. Many people may rightly be offended by what she describes as political satire, but I'm not convinced that her goal was to incite hatred, except perhaps of her. To make matters worse, this is really an issue of free speech causing people like me, who would much rather be writing about sports or proper public urinal etiquette, to come to her defence.

If anything, the U of O has given her exactly the ammunition she needs to demean our country and attack our national values. Of course, most of what she has said, and will say, in response to this rebuke, is laced with the predictable, sardonic hyperbole that undermines the legitimacy of every opinion she has ever expressed. What cannot be avoided is the amount of face-time she will get, particularly in the U.S. media, over this fiasco, driving us all into an interminable cringe. It seems only yesterday that our neighbours to the south were beginning to get an enlightened view of Canada, post-Vancouver Olympics. So much for that.

That said, let me reiterate I don't like Coulter's chosen methodology. I don't believe that employing tasteless, nasty jokes about another culture or a particular segment of society is an effective means to generate constructive dialogue. Sadly, there's enough violence and hardship in the world to achieve this. At the same time, I'm not willing to lump her in the same category as James Keegstra. Nobody was being forced to attend her speech in Ottawa, just as no one is forced to watch a Michael Moore movie. The best thing to do with an attention-starved narcissist, who exploits the right of free speech to bark out dumb-ass things as a means to satiate their appetite for the spotlight, is to simply ignore them.

What do you figure that kid who sucked spaghetti up his nose is doing these days?

Tomorrow's blog: public urinal etiquette.