Ann Coulter captured by Jonathan Freedland

From the UK Guardian -- Fascinating and appalling.

She has succeeded in driving to fury US liberals, the people she baits for sport. Her enemies created an entire website in her honour - AntiCoulter.com - replete with transcripts, photographs and talking points such as Coulter: Evil Or Just Stupid? They have shaken the thesaurus for damning soubriquets: Bitch Goddess, Conservative Fembot, Right Wing Telebimbo, Ku Klux Coulter. Eric Alterman, one of the sharpest writers on the American left, has just published a book that is, in large part, a response to Slander. It's called What Liberal Media? and, on the website tied to the book, he devotes an entire appendix, "Fact-checking Ann Coulter", seeking to establish that her work is riddled with inaccuracies, distortions and, yes, outright lies. When one Wisconsin newspaper, the Oshkosh Northwestern, ran three trial columns of Coulter's, to see what readers made of her, she "generated more mail and calls than any other writer we've ever tested. People either love her or hate her. There is no middle Ann ground."

Coulter remains outrageously contemptuous of anyone to the left of Bush. The TV networks, the French, the liberal wing of the Republican party - she hates them all, and says so with a vitriol that shocks an American media still rather prim in its habits. "That girl sure has some mouth on her," says one Democrat strategist, shaking his head in quiet disbelief. "She's an oral copulator for the Republican party."

Recommended for the outrageousness of it all.

Maybe it's to compensate for the cautious style of US newspapers or the bland, neutered language of mainstream US politicians. A gap has opened in American political culture and motor-mouths like Ann Coulter are filling it.

But above all, Coulter is thriving because America itself is changing. The country is shifting rightward, the more so since September 11. The Bush administration is not a freak of nature; it enjoys wide public support. Its belief, put crudely, that the US is number one on the planet and that anyone who stands in its way is either a terrorist or an appeaser of terror, is not on the wacky fringes but commands broad endorsement. And Ann Coulter gives it a voice. We may not want to hear it, but if we are going to understand where the mightiest power on earth is heading, we may have to start listening.

'The rich are the ones who pay taxes, so of course an across-the-board tax cut helps them the most. As soon as the poor start paying their fair share of the tax burden, they'll get a tax cut too.'
From her column, Sigh Of The Crook

"I'm annoyed how broad the franchise is in America already. Extending it, what, to the French?"

Why does she think the franchise is too big already? Who exactly has the vote who shouldn't have? "Women," she says, laughing. "It's true. It would be a much better country if women did not vote. That is simply a fact. In fact, in every presidential election since 1950 - except Goldwater in '64 - the Republican would have won, if only the men had voted."

Comments from Metafilter

Ann Coulter is proof that you can never be too thin or too bitch.