I've been struggling the last couple of days with how to deal with Xtreme-conservative pundit Ann Coulter calling certain widows of 9/11 victims happy that their husbands are dead, and that they've been having a great time exploiting their widowhood the last couple of years.
The one thing that bothers me more than anything else is how people are calling Coulter one of varying degrees of "insane."
Ann Coulter is not insane.
I've known insane people. Most of them cannot hold down jobs, and many of them have about a mile of traffic violations on their driving records. (We're not talking one or two incidents. More like nine. Over a very brief stretch of time. Maybe Ann speeds a little bit, but I think we'd know about it if she did it to unreasonable excess.)
Ann has held down a job her entire life. She has sold millions of copies of her books. If Ann Coulter was crazy, she would not be able to articulate herself as directly as she has. If she was crazy, many of her sentences would probably be run-ons, without a potent resolution (what we call a "zinger"). If she was crazy, she would not have the wherewithal to obtain an agent or a lucrative publishing contract. If she was nuts, she'd write an entire book on stacks of Post-Its.
Ann Coulter is not crazy, because she's very effective at presenting her viewpoint. She does not coddle buffered sensibilities, which is admirable, if you must know. We lose communicative potency when we attempt too much of a frame around our feelings or words. Ann Coulter makes no such mistake: She is one of our most skilled communicators, especially in the area of point-making.
Sure, it's disappointing that public discourse has become shrill and distracting, particularly when I'm convinced more common ground exists between real Americans than the behaviors of our media pundits suggest. But that's the way it is.
We can put our heads down and charge ahead, and try to focus on our own relationships without paying too much heed to what the talking heads say. Or we can simply become unable to not hear these voices trying to pit ideologies against each other, calling the other side "Hitler," condemning the other half to divinely administered retribution and hellfire.
Occasionally we have to deal with those voices, whether or not we're trying to live our life the way we see fit, and right now Ann Coulter's the clearest one.
But don't call her crazy. Ann Coulter is not crazy. She has patiently explained, rather clearly and effectively, why she believes the 9/11 widows are "harpies" who are using their status to further a certain political agenda. She's explained herself sufficiently. She has done so with clarity and verbal rationality. If she was crazy she'd speak in riddles. If she was crazy the media wouldn't talk to her, unless they were doing a human interest story on a local asylum whose inmates spend their time reconstructing their lives using glue and dried macaroni.
It is demeaning, inaccurate, and counter-productive to call Ann Coulter psychotic, sociopathic, insane, one enchilada short of a combination plate, loony, or bonkers. It's insulting as well. She's perfectly sane. She is nowhere close to even the most liberal (pardon the pun) definition of clinical insanity.
So don't try and tell me than Ann Coulter is crazy. She's not a crazy person at all.
She is, rather, a gigantic fucking asshole.