In a recent commentary entitled "
Thou shalt not commit religion" on WorldNutDaily, blonde bloviator Ann Coulter wastes bandwidth listing an unrelated series of things loosely defined as "speech that has been funded in whole or in part by taxpayers" which she apparently finds offensive, then wraps it up with a brief diatribe about the Supreme Court's rulings on governmental displays of the Ten Commandments.
Her vaguely-presented thesis can only be inferred throughout much of the piece, as it is mostly a simple bulleted list of examples apparently selected for little more than shock value. Granted, I personally find some of them to be in extremely poor taste (or at least pointless) myself, but that's not the issue. I readily grant that she has the right to say whatever she pleases, but being a media commentator of some influence, I don't think it's too much to expect her to at least make a coherent argument.
Then again, it is Ann Coulter.
More below the fold.
She had her say; now it's my turn. I'm not going to quote the bullet points because you can
go see them for yourself.
- She starts off with "graphic videos demonstrating how to put a condom on, " apparently insinuating that Planned Parenthood is basically playing pr0n videos in "sex-education classes at public schools across the nation." Putting the prurient insinuation aside, I must point out that this is not speech per se; this is information about disease and pregnancy prevention so I cannot quite fathom what her real target is here. Somehow, I doubt that the public schools are playing Ron Jeremy flicks in class. Is it the old saw that teaching students the facts about sex will immediately and irresistably inspire them to become satyrs and nymphomaniacs? Is it an attack on Planned Parenthood itself, or is it an attack on the public school system's acknowledgment of human nature? It must be all three, because teaching kids how not to get diseased and pregnant when they do what they're going to do anyway would be A Very Bad Thing.
- Coulter then lists the military's distribution of Qu'rans to the inmates at Guantanamo, calling them "aspiring terrorists." There are several problems here. I fail to see how the simple humane gesture of providing a book of familiar and comforting religious scripture to a prison inmate is a problem. "Invade their countries, kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity" Coulter apparently believes that the Qu'ran is not sacred scripture to a huge segment of the Earth's population, but is instead a terrorist training manual. The word "aspiring" means that, while some of those people may actually wish to become terrorists, it is a goal -- not a current condition. Therefore, they're being held for thoughtcrime, rather than crimes actually committed. Then we have the question of whether these Star-Chambered people are indeed "terrorists," (aspiring or otherwise) when charges against them have not been brought, no significant convictions have been obtained, and people have been tortured while wrongly incarcerated.
- Next, she attacks two unnecessary and incredibly tasteless comments by a couple of college instructors who, in her mind, probably represent the "liberal intelligentsia." Never mind that most people have never even heard of these two -- Ward Churchill's and Nicholas DeGenova's comments represent nothing but their own views, regardless of whether one places any value in them or not. I don't agree with what either of them said, but again, I grant that they have the same right to speak their mind as Coulter does.
- Unable to resist a bit of guilt by association, Coulter immediately thereafter lists an editorial comment by Bill Moyers on his PBS program "Now" about the right wing agenda and Bush's supposed mandate. How dare he utter op-ed commentary on his program? What nerve!
- After impugning a respected journalist with a 30-year track record, the hacktacular n00b Coulter then supplies this contextless little gem: "'Kiss it.' - governor of Arkansas to state employee." Kiss what? Which governor of Arkansas? What state employee? What was being discussed? Clearly the insinuation is that this comment was made by Bill Clinton before his election as President, and is meant as a sly reference to The Mighty Clinton PenisTM. However, based solely on her text, we simply don't know if it was Clinton or not. If it was, Coulter would likely have said so -- she's certainly never been shy about attacking him before. Without context, the inclusion of this remark renders it utterly devoid of meaning, much like Coulter herself.
- Now that she's gotten the Clinton-bashing out of her system for the moment, she moves on to her next target...the Smithsonian? In a series of points, she apparently is complaining about the Smithsonian's factual acknowledgement of racism as a part of American history. Because, you know, it's just not polite to remind people about that sort of thing. Especially when you remind people that whites cheated nonwhites out of their land, Native Americans were displaced and massacred, and sugar planatations in the Americas were worked by slaves. I mean, really, who wants to hear about that sort of thing? It's totally depressing and blames white people for racist episodes in American history, and that's just totally not right.
- She then shoots the last half of the bullets in her clip at the NEA, listing numerous examples of sexually and/or religiously-oriented exhibits funded in part by the NEA. More than half of the NEA bullets are listed as "performances," and I will grant that many of them are in extremely poor taste (at best). Among the non-performances are Andres Serrano's infamous Piss Christ, and "a photo of a woman breastfeeding an infant, titled 'Jesus Sucks.'" Rather than seeing that as an affirmation of motherhood and the humanity of Jesus, Coulter clearly interprets the word "sucks" in its vulgar usage. Coulter's attack on the NEA is somewhat confusing to me, given President Bush's $18 Million Budget Increase for the NEA last year, its largest since 1984. The total amount of the NEA's 2004 budget was $139.4 million, or 0.007755% of the federal budget for that year. The NEA isn't all Christian-bashing and smut, much as the rabid right wing would like you to believe otherwise. If it were, Mr. Bush wouldn't have risked the wrath of the right wing with his action.
Now that all of that is out of the way, we get to the last three paragraphs. These represent the red meat of her screed, quoted here in full.
That's the America you live in! A country founded on a compact with God, forged from the idea that all men are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights is now a country where taxpayers can be forced to subsidize "artistic" exhibits of aborted fetuses. But don't start thinking about putting up a Ten Commandments display. That's offensive!
She is apparently referring to this sentence in the Declaration of Independence: "And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor." Clearly, Coulter has no understanding of the Deist conception of "divine Providence," and instead wants to shoehorn the Founding Fathers into today's more popular "revealed" fundamentalist brand of religion. That's what's offensive.
I don't want to hear any jabberwocky from the Court TV amateurs about "the establishment of religion." (1) A Ten Commandments monument does not establish a religion. (2) The First Amendment prohibits Congress from making any law "respecting" an establishment of religion - meaning Congress cannot make a law establishing a religion, nor can it make a law prohibiting the states from establishing a religion. We've been through this a million times.
And each time, Coulter has been wrong. If a given display of the Ten Commandments is paid for with tax money and/or installed on tax-funded government property, said government agency is de facto coercively imposing that religious expression upon those citizens who may follow a different religious tradition (or none at all). In the 1947 case Everson v. Board of Education of Ewing Tp., the Supreme Court quite correctly construed the Establishment Clause:
The establishment of religion clause means at least this: Neither a state nor the federal government may set up a church. Neither can pass laws that aid one religion, aid all religions, or prefer one religion over another.
Applying the "shoe on the other foot" principle, would Coulter be non-committal about this if, instead of the Ten Commandments, it were a taxpayer-funded display of Islamic Sharia, the Wiccan Rede, the Buddhist Law of Conditionality, Hindu Vedic law or selections from the Tao Te Ching? Somehow I doubt it. Viewed in that light, it can be seen how the issue is not about any given religious expression per se. It is instead about the use of taxes (which are "coercive" by definition due to the penalties for nonpayment) to directly or indirectly fund said religious expression. No less a person than Thomas Jefferson himself (the author of the selfsame Declaration that Coulter so casually misconstrues) had this to say on the matter:
The impious presumption of legislators and rulers, civil as well as ecclesiastical, who, being themselves but fallible and uninspired men, have assumed dominion over the faith of others, setting up their own opinions and modes of thinking as the only true and infallible, and as such endeavoring to impose them on others, hath established and maintained false religions over the greatest part of the world and through all time: That to compel a man to furnish contributions of money for the propagation of opinions which he disbelieves and abhors, is sinful and tyrannical...
Now that Coulter's preposterous interpretation of the Establishment Clause has been dispensed with, we return to her final paragraph.
Now the Supreme Court is itching to ban the Pledge of Allegiance because of its offensive reference to one nation "under God." (Perhaps that "God" stuff could be replaced with a vulgar sexual reference.) But with the court looking like a geriatric ward these days, they don't want to alarm Americans right before a battle over the next Supreme Court nominee. Be alarmed. This is what it's about.
Tell it to Michael Newdow. If the Court were indeed "itching to ban the Pledge of Allegiance," it would have done it last summer. She is, however, doing a fine job of keeping the GOP party faithful stirred up and feeling like they're informed while snowing them with half-truths, generalizations and outright lies which keep them as ignorant as before. I guess she earned her paycheck this week.
Now that Justice O'Connor has announced her retirement, I expect Coulter to get even more shrill, if that's possible. It won't be pretty.
(Crossposted from my blog)