Pandagon on Coulter

Amanda Marcotte reflects on the role Ann Coulter plays in red-blooded red-staters' fantasies as a fuckable WASP bitch.

While I abhor it when men who take cheap shots at her fuckability, one can safely state that Coulter does have this exaggerated femininity, and appears to cultivate it. But I wouldn’t characterize it as American so much as the exaggerated version of the stereotype of the bitchy WASP—not the girl you marry, of course, but the one you party with while listening to your yacht rock while your baby factory wife stays at home tending your heirs. Or, in the other fantasy of the yuppie good life, the fantasizing man is the confirmed bachelor banging the skinny, bitchy blondes in his abundant spare time. Think of Bill Maher’s own view of himself or maybe Chevy Chase’s character in Caddyshack.

Taken from that point of view, the conservative dude obsession with Coulter makes perfect sense. Most wingnuts aren’t going to be That Guy—leaving the wife home to tend the baby while you go out to fuck bitchy, skinny blondes tends to be out of the reach of your average wingnut. Anyway, even if you can get away, it’s unlikely that said bitchy, skinny blondes will give you the time of day. But then there’s Coulter on the TV and she wants you to know that she loves you and thinks you’re a hot manly man and totally like the Chevy Chase character and the only thing you have to do in order to get into her good graces is vote Republican and hate liberals, those fags. Framed that way, there’s no mystery to her appeal.

Meanwhile, the Huffington Post suggests that Coulter's recent shark-jumping (which has resulted in advertisers and newspapers dumping her left, right and centre--so to speak) has wrong-footed the Republicans, exposing their homophobia as the bigotry that dare not speak its name among "respectable" conservatives. ("No, Arthur, you have us all wrong. It's not bigotry: it's 'compassion.'")