CoulterPoint

Ann Coulter - Transexual Rumor Gains Prominence

2005-04-28T06:28:00.000-07:00

If there was any doubt about how much currency the notion (examined here a couple of days ago) that Ann Coulter is a transexual is currently gaining, just go to the google news page and enter the phrase "Ann Coulter".

Just a few lines down from the top of the page appears this story: Transsexual Ann Coulter, Fat Karl Rove & Bush.

Unsurprisingly there is little evidence given to bolster the claim that Ann is really, "transsexual drag queen*, a.k.a. Arthur Coltrane of Pickens County, Georgia, former scion, before his sex-change operation, of an old Southern hog-farming family." and the article also claims unconvincingly that President Bush is addicted to psychotropic drugs and has skin cancer, and even less credibly that Karl Rove is overweight. (TV cameras are habitually unkind to shorter gentlemen like Mr Rove. I doubt he weighs over 140 pounds.)

I get the feeling the author of this piece might be projecting his own drug addiction as it sounds like he's just writing the first thing that comes into his head.

*And I'm not an expert but if you are a male-to-female transexual, then doesn't that preclude you from being a "drag queen"? An m-t-f transexual wearing woman's clothes is no more a "drag queen" than is my own mother.

Ann Coulter : Subjectively Funny

2005-04-27T09:41:00.000-07:00

"My only regret with Timothy McVeigh is he did not go to the New York Times Building." -- Ann Coulter as quoted in the New York Observer, Aug. 20, 2002

RE: McVeigh quote: "Of course I regret it. I should have added, 'after everyone had left the building except the editors and reporters.'" --Ann Coulter, from an interview with Right Wing News

From the Political Humor website:

"We need to execute people like (John Walker Lindh) in order to physically intimidate liberals." -- Ann Coulter

Ann's own website:
We should invade their countries, kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity. -- Ann Coulter, Sept 12, 2001

Sixties Civil Rights activist, David Horowitz:

"As a Jew, I could be uneasy at Ann's suggestion that mass conversion to Christianity should be wielded as a tool of foreign policy were it not so obvious that her comment was hyperbolic, tongue firmly in cheek."

I think if you really analyze it, the problem a lot of people have with Ann Coulter is that there is no such thing as "objectively funny". A lot of what she says that some people find offensive, you could probably find other people - like Mr Horowitz here - who thought it was a really good joke.

Sure it may be a tasteless joke but who among us hasn't shared a tasteless joke? Perhaps not in the national press, granted. But then who among us even has a column in the national press?

I think it was Neil Simon who first said "comedy = tragedy + time", and if that's true, then some people might ask how come - if it was OK to make jokes about Ethiopians even in the thick of the famine in 1984 - then by 2002 it still wasn't funny to joke about all those kids that got killed by McVeigh way back in the mists of 1996?

On the other hand, even now, decades later, I don't recall ever hearing any really funny jokes about the Holocaust.

So far Ann hasn't tried to lend her biting wit to cracking jokes on that subject, but I'm sure it can be only a matter of time. And when she does, I hope she can count on true friend Mr Horowitz to say how "as a Jew" he would be "uneasy, were it not so obvious that her comment was tongue firmly in cheek."

I think what it probably comes down to is either you find the mass slaughter of innocent civilians comical, or you don't. Personally I'm a bit of a traditionalist and this kind of comedy isn't really for me. I even think sometimes when I'm reading an Ann Coulter column that it doesn't come across so much "funny" or "humorous" as "nasty" and "spite-filled"; but then I would be the first to admit I have something of a "tin ear" for comedy. I have sat through what seems like hundreds of episodes of the Dennis Miller Show without even once raising a smile!

Ultimately though I wouldn't want my comic sensibility (or lack thereof) to hold sway over anybody else. And if Ann's comment about using execution to physically threaten liberals is now appearing on a "political humor" website then that must mean that it's funny. And if you - like me - don't get the joke, maybe that means not that there's something wrong with Ann Coulter, but merely that there's something wrong with us!

Ann Coulter: Most likely Not a Man

2005-04-26T10:37:00.000-07:00

Probably the most persistent attacks aimed at Ann Coulter by her political opponents have contended that she is a post operative transexual who was born as a man. I intend in this piece to show that this contention is not supported by any firm evidence.

Here is an example of the attack from Liberal Site DailyKos:

there is a persistent rumor that Ms. Ann Coulter is a male drag queen or male to female transsexual. IMHO, the reason for the rumor is in the relatively rare pictures when one can see her neck at any level of detail, there is something on her neck that has a very suspicious resemblance to an Adam's apple. I have seen such pictures myself. I've heard that there are other things about her physical appearance that aren't quite consistent with that of a normal biological female.

Also from DailyKos:

I will always refer to her as "Ann-drew" or "Ann the Man," until someone convinces me that he/she is indeed a female who just happens to look like a skinny guy with a big Adam's Apple.

And another from Left-leaning blogger Steve Gilliard:

Hell, even Ann Coulter attacks people who can attack back. Sure, she can call Molly Ivins a traitor and Evan Thomas, the son of Norman Thomas, even though his name is Evan Thomas, Jr. But they can respond in kind and ask about her adams apple and the fact that there was no child named Ann Coulter born in Connecticut in 1962-63.

The 'Ann Coulter is a man' criticism seems to be based on the accumulation of a number of pieces of - mostly circumstantial - evidence:

AC is tall and skinny

So are most super-models. As far as I know only one supermodel (out of probably hundreds) has ever turned out to have been born a man.

AC's lack of marriage/serious relationships

Seriously, who would want to date her? And I don't just mean because of her looks and personality; but I think dating Ms Coulter would be extremely dangerous. I wouldn't be at all surprised if AC's name was high-up on a lot of seriously disturbed people's hitlists and if explosives were used by just one of the millions of Arabs she's insulted then her dating partner would be almost inevitable collateral damage.

Also I stumbled upon this interesting press item from a couple of months ago. It suggests there may be a romance blooming between AC and liberal actor Ron Silver. (More skeptical readers might believe this has less to do with romance and a little more to do with Mr Silver's agents desperately trawling for publicity have recognized that his career peaked over a decade ago with TimeCop.)

AC has an Adam's apple

None of the photos I've looked at can really be considered conclusive evidence of this. Anyway I found this agony aunt letter on the net:

writer: I am probably going to be the first to mention to you that I am female and I do have an obvious adam's apple.

response: The Adam's apple, is nothing more than cartilage and is a characteristic primarily associated with post pubescent men. But some women do have larger Adam's apples than other women, similar to how some women have facial hair or large feet, also characteristics that are more often associated with men.

So even if AC does have an outsized Adam's apple that doesn't prove anything.

AC looks like a drag queen

So do any number of middle-aged women trying to look twenty years younger by troweling on the make-up. They can't all be transexuals.

there was no child named Ann Coulter born in Connecticut in 1962-63.

Even if this claim is true - and it's not supported by any evidence - all it proves is either "Ann Coulter" isn't her real name, or she lies about her age. If these were crimes, most Hollywood actresses would be in prison.

***

Also I'd like to point out that the now openly homosexual David Brock of Media Matters used to be a good friend of Ann Coulter's, and an acquaintance of Matt Drudge's. He now has very little time for either. Yet while he outed Matt Drudge as a closeted homosexual in his book "Blinded by the Right", he has said nothing on the subject of Ann Coulter's masculinity. I find it hard to believe (a) Brock wouldn't have known if she was a man and (b) he wouldn't have outed her by now if she was.

So on the balance of probabilties I think there is still a very long way to go to prove that Ann Coulter is a man.

I'll conclude with the words of another web commentator who seems to know Ann Coulter very well and accords fully that she is and has always been 100% pure woman:

StormBrewing:
In high school Ann was a tramp, a real slut. She would have sex with any guy who could get beyond the smell of her unwashed body.

Scraping the Venereal Barrel

2005-04-26T10:31:00.000-07:00

One of the most striking passages of Eric Alterman's long initial criticism of Time's article was colored by a particular stand-out sentence which really deserves some further analysis, and - I'm afraid - rebuke.

Alterman:

It is as if Time [Magazine] had contracted a journalistic venereal disease from Rush Limbaugh and Bill OReilly and is now seeking to lower itself to their level in pursuit of their ideologically-obsessed audiences.

I suspect it will be quite some time after reading this before I am able to erase from my mind's eye the harrowing image of Rush Limbaugh and Bill O'Reilly double-penetrating a rolled up magazine from opposite ends, and for that I hold Mr Alterman and his crude sexual imagery entirely to blame.

Moreover the analogy is fundamentally flawed. The odds of contracting a venereal disease from either of these gentlemen must be astronomically small: even with "the ultimate aphrodisiac" - power - on his side, Mr O'Reilly was unable to seduce his own staff member, thus suggesting his frequency of extra-marital sexual activity must be extremely low, despite his base intentions. And as for Mr Limbaugh, I'm sure Alterman cannot be unaware of the havoc opiate addiction will wreak on a middle-aged man's libido.

And for anyone preparing to rebut that the line was not intended to be taken literally, I maintain that for an analogy to be justified - particularly such a crude analogy as that - it must have at least some grounding in reality. Something which that line plainly does not.

Introduction

2005-04-26T10:19:00.000-07:00

I will start this blog, with some kind of an explanation about what inspired me to write it, and what it is about, and - perhaps even more importantly - what it isn't about.

When Ann Coulter appeared on the April 25th cover of Time Magazine, to highlight a 6000 word profile of the darling of the slavering right by Time journalist John Cloud, a number of people from across the political spectrum became very animated. The critics, most notably Eric Alterman (an MSNBC blogger and published author of books), and David Brock (of monitoring group Media Matters) came mostly from the left attacking the content of the piece and by extension Mr Cloud and Ms Coulter. But there were also notable impassioned attacks from the right about one of the photos making Ms Coulter's head look too small.

There have been thousands, probably millions of words, spent discussing the merits and demerits, accuracies and inaccuracies, of Ms Coulter's oeuvre and so it might almost seem redundant to devote yet another website to her defense. But having read a lot of the left-leaning criticism, I feel there is certainly room for a right-leaning response without resort to the vituperative name-calling that has now come to pass for debate over Ms. Coulter. I happen to think that she is certainly not perfect, indeed most of what she writes is barely excusable, but that much of the criticism that comes her way tries to take advantage of what an easy target she is and yet frequently misses the mark.

I believe I have spotted a number of inaccuracies and exaggerations aimed - supposedly - at correcting those of Ms. Coulter. And I wish to address some examples of those on this site.

And having said that, I now want to lay out a few things that this site definitely is not intended, and will never try, to do.

CoulterPoint is not a site intended to:

1) Defend every word Ann Coulter has ever written or spoken as accurate

2) Defend every word Ann Coulter has ever written or spoken as inoffensive

3) Maintain that Ann Coulter is physically attractive

4) Maintain that Ann Coulter's books have any merit

5) Maintain that American society on balance benefits from Ann Coulter's existence.

I sadly predict if this site gets any visitors that these easily demolishable strawmen will be raised ad nauseum by Ann Coulter's detractors in an attempt to undermine what I'm trying to achieve here; which is simply the recognition that some of what is written about Ann Coulter's legendary academic incompetence and monstrously poisonous personality is occasionally less than 100% accurate.

I hope to be able to do this while always keeping a civil tone - probably a first for a site dedicated to Ann Coulter :) - and would hope that any visitors (either pro- or con- AC) will manage to do likewise.