Coulter and Rhetoric

Finally, a reaction to the Ann Coulter hoo-hah that's not an overreaction. Jeff Goldstein uses lots of big words that I may not understand, but I think we're basically on the same page:

Let me put this bluntly: having now seen the comments in context (including Coulter’s earlier commments in the same speech that staked a claim, from a conservative legal perspective, as pro-gay), I not only don't feel the need NOT to condemn Coulter, but I support what she said in principle.

I just think her execution was sub par. There were less loaded terms she might have chosen, but that doesn’t make her remark homophobic—nor is there any need, given the context, to distance oneself from them (unless, of course, one wishes to see certain words completely stricken from the lexicon—a gambit that never works, as the intent behind them is, like oil, fungible).

In the past, I've criticized this kind of policing of words on any number of occasions, from efforts to demonize "illegal alien" to "oriental" to the PC nonsense that is working its way through textbooks.

There is, not to put too fine a point on it, something remarkably arrogant about homosexual advocates (and their active and tacit defenders) thinking it is their "right" to take ownership of a word that has, with usage, taken on different valences.

And the answer to them should be, "no, you can't have it 'back,' because it was never really 'yours' to begin with."

A lot of people on the right felt the need to strongly denounce Coulter because they were afraid her words would be used as a bludgeon against the rest of us. They're right, of course, but I don't think that's a good enough reason to give her the whole torch-and-pitchfork treatment.

Nowadays, Politician X can't say "I like sunshine" without his opponents blast-faxing a press release that says, "Politician X doesn't care about the millions of hard-working Americans on the night shift!" So, the political landscape is lousy with people who avoid saying anything that might possibly be construed as offensive, by anyone, in this or any conceivable parallel universe.

Ann Coulter (quite intentionally) flies in the face of that mindset. I don't care how offensive people think she is; she is some welcome seasoning in a bland political gruel.