She's a perfect mock character, as if she picked up a persona and then lost control of it. "Man in the moon" comes to mind. Whatever the crap his name is. She somehow became this ranting caricature, playfully skewering all the idiotic innocence she'd ever experienced, and then the character took off, snowballed out of her control, and each time the stakes rose, she bluffed again, jumped up another level, until now she can't back out, she's stuck in it, she's become the character.
I'm not very good on song lyrics. I'm not sure why, but every now and then, I'll suddenly realize that a song I've been listening to for years, humming along to periodically, actually
has lyrics. Or has lyrics which are completely different from what I thought the song was about. Which is why I thought that for years that the chorus to that Aerosmith song was "Do me like a lady".
And sometimes I would wonder whether the singer was asking a lady, to do him in a ladylike manner, or whether he wanted to be done to, in the way that ladies were done. By a lady? Maybe. I knew the song was about sex. Just as an indication of how long I labored under this misconception, I think that the real lyrics of the song only came clear to me while watching "Mrs Doubtfire". Because the song was played during a (not particularly sexy) cross-dressing montage, a context inconsistent with my understanding of the song.
Similarly, I can't remember whether I started wondering whether Ann Coulter was a man subsequent to reading discussions about her possible transgendredness, or not. Admittedly, I'm similarly oblivious to celebrities. Comes from not watching enough tv. I recognize a lot of names, without actually being able to match them to faces. And vice versa. So every now and then I'll be watching a show or a movie with a friend, and I'll ask who someone is, and they'll be like, that's Susan Sarandon. And I'll be all excited because I suddenly have a match, after years of hearing about her, peripherally.
I think that the consistent thread is a sort of protective obliviousness. According to some anthropological anecdote that I have no idea where I picked up, Homo Sapiens has spent most of its existence as a species within communities of 30-50 other individuals. Only recently have our social realities expanded into the galaxies of stars and celebrities, politicians and characters from novels. To say nothing of the dizzying array of actual people we've met, starting in kindergarten.
So it's natural, not being able to keep up with everyone. In addition, I read about a study a few years back, evaluating emotional happiness based on social connectedness. Unsurprisingly, isolated people were usually less happy. But isolated people who faithfully watched television shows, and identified closely with the characters, were as happy as people who had a close group of actual people as friends.
Which explains the "Friends" phenomenon. I unscientifically extrapolated from the study, the theory that the more attention one pays to tv characters, the less attention-space one has for actual human beings. Which serves as consolation for my celebrity cluelessness.
So it's unsurprising that it took Ann Coulter a while to work her way into my awareness. Looking back, she popped into my cultural reality a few days after 9-11, with her little meme about invading terrorist countries, killing their leaders, and converting everyone to Xianity. Didn't know it was her at the time, it was just a line that floated up from somewhere. I was still naive enough at the time to assume that it was the hysterical overreaction of someone who would either be quickly isolated from the media, or would come to a more rational perspective, once the craziness wore off.
I sort of got immersed in leftist media after 9-11, which led me a few years later to rightist media. Unfair and unbalanced. Gotta admit, I still swing left. But there's interesting stuff coming from the right, as well. I got onto freerepublic.com with the initial intent of generating subversive satire. Then I learned about the Viking Kitties. So I just lurk. I'd run across references in discussion threads to Ann Coulter. Which were always accompanied by insistent demands for pictures. Ann Coulter is the only hot woman the far right has. Don't ask me about hot women on the far left. That's just not appropriate.
I watched Coulter get almost-pied, on the internet. She ducked adroitly. But she hadn't really registered for me until some recent kerfluffle about a speech she gave at a university, where she got drowned out by the chants of the students. I'm not sure why, but I ended up reading transcripts, watching videos, analyses from the left and right. Watching her performance at the university, she was excellent at skewering the liberal righteousness of the college kids who would ask her questions. But shredding the intellectual constructs of young 20-somethings isn't particularly hard. What was interesting is that she appeared genuinely shook-up, in the post-interviews, after she'd been booed and harassed offstage.
It was like a facade had been stripped, and she appeared strangely vulnerable, still trembling as she reconstructed herself (on-camera). Her rhetoric was vicious, effortlessly so. And she clearly enjoyed hacking her way through the idealism of these kids. But the backlash, the outraged response, to some of her flippant, lazily provocateur lines about women and gays, had clearly shocked and startled her. "I was joking!" she yelled back at the angry crowd, and it seemed obvious that some core had been struck, in her. Like a stand-up comic, I thought, and then everything latched into place.
She's a perfect mock character, as if she picked up a persona and then lost control of it. "Man in the moon" comes to mind. Whatever the crap his name is. She somehow became this ranting caricature, playfully skewering all the idiotic innocence she'd ever experienced, and then the character took off, snowballed out of her control, and each time the stakes rose, she bluffed again, jumped up another level, until now she can't back out, she's stuck in it, she's become the character.
All of this is seperate from the discussion of whether she is now, or once was, a man. I googled on various aspects of the topic, found no credible references to her having Crossed Over. So my verdict is based on my perceptions - the structure of her face, her Adam's apple, the backs of her elbows, the frame of her body, the muscularity of her movements, her walk. The more I saw, the more man-like she looked.
And then I started to wonder, why does it matter, whether she is now, or once was, a man? Because she'd be living a lie, I'd answer, even though most of us are living any number of lies. Because it would so desecrate the masturbatory fantasies of so many rabid Freepers, I'd answer, even though why do I care so much, what Freepers masturbate to? Because goddamn it, anyone who poses as presenting some kind of credible political analysis of now, had f'ing better be doing it for real, not as some kind of weird deconstruction of Self and Identity, mingled in with gender confusion, be what you want, but be real about it, at least, and if you can't be real, at least be private...
But it's not for me to dictate. And who knows where/when/whether/if Ann Coulter's going anywheres interesting with this project of hers. And how foolish would I feel, if it turns out that she always ever has been a woman. But consider this my leftist olive branch, on the chance that she is transgendral. The best thing I got out of university was the Ru Paul line "We're born naked. Everything else is drag.".
Dance on, Ann Coulter! On behalf of Metro DC, I welcome you to your lecture at GWU on Friday 2/10/06. I have a strange feeling that something media-worthy will occur, thanks to your presence...