Originally posted at
The Next Agenda. Posted here with an introduction.
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Americans like to think they lead the world, first in everything, the biggest and the best. The trouble is they just don't know that others may have actually blazed a trail before them.
Thus, as a public service I'd like to introduce the Kos community to the woman Ann Coulter only wishes she could be.
Barbara Amiel.
This is the woman who brewed a potent concoction of batshit craziness and round heeled exhibitionism, that the neo con crowd she plays to don't know if they are coming or going, but they have their little blue pills ready in case -- you know -- it's not going, into a life that included "wealth beyond avarice". Not that that stopped her from a display of such conspicuous consumption as to beggar the imagination.
This is a woman who warned a date (the chairman of The Spectator, by the bye) as she accepted,
"There's one thing I have to tell you: I won't be wearing any knickers."
If I could have, I would have lifted the entire excerpt linked below. I hope you will read it and realize just what a pale imitation Ann is. And have a good laugh.
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When I was a kid, my folks got Maclean's magazine. Every week I would read quite a few articles, probably not understand most of what I read, but picking up a bit about Canada and the world.
And then there was Barbara Amiel. I didn't realize it at the time, but long before Ann Coulter was doing more than making her school chums' lives miserable, there was Barbara Amiel.
I didn't really understand her when I read her, but I got the gist.
She snapped and scratched and bit, as she disparaged the stupid (and that would be pronounced stewpid) efforts of people whom my parents quite liked. She assigned them motivations that used to shock me.
She was a neocon before her time, but I never realized that.
All I knew was that she was listed in the dictionary under bitch.
As a kid who was still licking wounds from encounters with female bullies, I hoped I would never have the misfortune to meet her.
I knew she would flay me alive.
Luckily, fortune has smiled on me and I have never met her, although I have been in her house and met her Pulis. But that is a story for another day.
I read an excerpt today from Peter C. Newman's biography, Here Be Dragons about her and not only did I howl out loud, but I realized who Ann has been cribbing notes from.
It was Newman who gave the Maclean's gig, despite her rabid right wing views.
While I treasured her shock value, she left me with the impression that her opinions were swallowed whole, undigested, to be defended with unsheathed claws instead of mental effort. I could never escape the feeling that, despite her claims to be a champion of unfettered freedom, she stood mainly for the greater glory of Barbara Amiel. This was an impression I shared with nearly all those who watched her scratch-and-gouge climb up the journo-celebrity ladder.
So that's where Coulter got the philosophical style, I thought.
Like Ann, Babs knew she was (heck still is!) a looker. (And if you can't recognize snark, come on tell me how much she doesn't turn you on!)
But she was determined to be respected for her mind, full as it was with bits of undigested knowledge. Even if she was knickerless.
What I didn't count on was the extent to which Barbara would use her striking appearance to further her career. She was the sort of woman who kept spilling out of her dresses, then blamed the dresses. In her private life, she readily confessed that she had "run amok among many lives," but desperately wanted to be taken seriously for her professional attitude. She was often the enemy of her promise. You don't advertise your intellect by sashaying to work in thigh-high boots, a tight sweater tucked into tighter jeans held up by a heavy leather belt dripping with metal studs. She reportedly proclaimed that clothes were her "sexual armour," which didn't really justify her wardrobe, since it was a come-on instead of a deterrent.
The little people with whom she was forced to work with, contented themselves with debate over the nature and extent of her enhancement efforts.
A former suitor attested to knowing her before she had the "girls" or the British accent.
Unlike poor Ann however, we don't demand our sexy sirens stay virgins. Amiel has been married 4 times. She left her third husband for an aging and unattractive Lord. And I don't mean Conrad Black, Lord of Crossharbour.
His appeal?
Apparently he was reknowned among the smart set as a "Nijinsky of cunnilingus".
It's all so Jackie Collins, eh?
But it was with Black that Amiel was able to hit the proverbial jackpot.
Their 1992 wedding party was attended by the Duchess of York, Baroness Thatcher, Lord Rothschild, David Frost and all the usual suspects. At the time Amiel married Black, I was happy for them. It seemed a perfect match. Instead, their marriage detonated a frantic quest to amass luxury goods that extended beyond reason, even beyond compulsion. Their nouveau riche flamboyance, which was worthy of neither of them, reached an unimaginable scale, including the acquisition of a quartet of permanently staffed luxury homes worth about $100 million. There was nothing they were prepared to deny themselves to prove that they had arrived. Barbara's pathological spending habits were not learned or inherited, but instinctive: a defence mechanism against an inbred insecurity so profound that it took over her life. When she told Vogue that "I have an extravagance that knows no bounds," it was not a boast but a fact.
Everywhere Conrad and Barbara travelled, a butler and maid preceded them to assure their comfort. His salary was $130,000 plus board, and on top of that there were under-butlers, chefs, chauffeurs, housemen, footmen and guards at each of their residences. With his first wife, Conrad had lived in a relatively modest house in outlying Highgate, but when Barbara swept into his life, the newlyweds moved into London's most prestigious area, purchasing a mansion near Kensington Palace, the royal residence of British sovereigns until 1760 and the home of Diana, Princess of Wales. Gold and real estate magnate Peter Munk, who had once considered moving into what became Black's house, had inspected the premises and derisively dismissed the idea of ever living in what he called "the biggest house in London." But the Blacks bought the elegant, seven-bedroom mansion, now valued at $40 million. It featured an indoor pool and an elevator.
She allegedly made millions "working" for the Chicago Sun Times, though without actually needing to show up.
The irony is that her lavish spending habits may have been one of the red flags that tipped off the investigators for the shareholders of various companies that have since sued Black.
But Amiel does have her defence organized.
In a Sunday Times column published after she married Conrad, Barbara had written: "My husband is very rich, but I am not. I don't regard my husband's money as my own. Having married very wealthy men before my current husband, I can guarantee that I parted from them leaving both their fortunes and my opinions intact. I have been a bitch all my life and did not need the authority of money to be one. My detractors were calling me a 'fascist bitch' long before I had a penny. I am a north London Jew who has read a bit of history. That means I know this: in a century that has seen the collapse of the Austro-Hungarian, British and Soviet empires, reversal of fortune is this rich bitch's reality. One might as well keep working and have the family's Vuitton suitcases packed."
Emphasis mine.
I find myself wondering if people like this simply decide that somehow, this time, they will be the ones to beat the odds of history.
I also wonder if Ann Coulter's suitcases are also packed.