Wait, wasn’t Chambers just a communist journalist who named names including Hiss. How is he such a hero? (Perhaps I don’t know enough about Chambers)
http://anncoulter.org/columns/2003/070203.htm
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Well, he also spied for the communists… and he became a scarily right-wing writer at the same time he turned in Hiss.
So Anne is trying to get attention again.
I suppose you could justifiably make a case for any of the above being a hero, but… McCarthy?
(and yes, I read the article)
You don’t know the half of it; she wrote a whole book about what a hero McCarthy was.
She’s a warped attention seeker. That’s all.
I did a little research a while back into L. Brent Bozell III, the chairman of the Parent’s Television Council, while debunking its crusade to get wrestling off the air…
Bozell’s father II was a speechwriter for McCarthy toward the end of his “career”, but even the book he wrote with William Buckley about McCarthy didn’t come close to calling him a hero…
I was really quite shocked to find Ms. Coulter’s view of him to be so, well… warped.
Just one word about that column.
Blecch.
Oh, yes. I can see how three men who used their positions to aggrandize themselves and plow under their personal enemies, a former Soviet spy who became a wildly exaggerated rightwinger, and the Great Obfuscator would be the men who did the most to preserve freedom in the 20th Century. Yes.
Haven’t they gotten this woman a prescription yet?
She also seems to convieniently forget that it was Eisenhower that took down McCarthy, not proto-hippies.
Ah, Apos, I’m sure she’s hand-in-talon with the Birchers of the past who considered Ike a little pink, anyway.
I’m having an okay day so far, so I’m not going to read this article. Based on the comments here, I’m assuming she’s not attempting to make a historical case for McCarthy’s heroism, but rather basing her assertion on the fact that she’s insane. I’d go see for myself, but like I said, I’m not in the mood to ruin my day.
What did Eisenhower have to do with his downfall? I thought he just overreached himself when the other Senator gave the “Have you no shame?” speech.
Regards,
Shodan
Speaking as a card-carrying member of the far right… what is she talking about? There are only two geuinely admirable character on that list: Ronald Reagan and Whittaker Chambers. Otherwise, I can’t see anyone else on that list any right-wing ideologue should respect.
I mean, start with Nixon. The man appointed Harry (Roe vs. Wade) Blackmun to the Supreme Court. He created the EPA. expanded the scope of the federal government. He imposed wage and price controls. He kowtowed to Brezhnev and Mao. What the heck did Richard Nixon ever do to earn the loyalty of conservatives?
Then there’s J. Edgar Hoover. The man spent years playing down (and sometimes even denying) the existence of the Mafia! His promary motivation seems to have been sefl-aggrandizement (he preferred going after bank robbers and kidnappers because solving those crimes brought him personal glory). What good law-and-order conservative would treat an idiot like that as a hero?
As for Joe McCarthy… look, I loathe American communists as much as anyone, and regard the likes of Dalton Trumbo as scum. But what significant Soviet spies did McCarthy ever catch? Unlike the lefties on these boards, I don’t doubt that the Soviet Union and its supporters were both real and evil. I just can’t think of anything Joe McCarthy ever did to inconvenience the Soviets or their supporters! In the end, all he ever managed to do was make anti-communists look ridiculous.
I understand (all too well) the temptation to defend anyone who’s detested by the Left. When your enemy hates anyone, you’re inclined to think “He can’t be ALL bad, if those jerks hate him this much.”
But Nixon, Hoover and McCarthy WERE that bad. They never cared about conservative principles and did nothing to advance them. There’s no reason anyone on the Right should make excuses for them.
Damn. Apos beat me to the Spinsanity piece.
cua, In her latest screed, Treason, she really does try to make a case that McCarthy was a hero. Not only that but that all liberals are guilty of treason. She’s not being facetious or hyperbolic. That’s really the thesis of her book. she’s absolutely serious.
I think that Coulter is a special kind of demagogue. People like Rush Limbaugh and Michael Moore know that they’re provocateurs. They might be annoying to the other side but you know that to some degree it’s just a put on. They know when they’re spewing bullshit and when they’re not.
Coulter is truly delusional. She sincerely believes her own bullshit. She’s a genuine zealot. She’s as crazy as a shithouse rat and it’s not an act. She scares me.
Ugh. I couldn’t help myself.
It’s awfully disjointed, isn’t it? It reads more like a blog entry than an actual article. She starts out by listing her five heroes, then goes on to rant in great detail, not about why these men were supposedly so great, but how “the Left” hates them and slanders their heroic legacy in the name of Evil, even though J. Edgar Hoover opposed the internment of Japanese-Americans. (By the way, is that even true? Or did she take one out-of-context statement of Hoover’s and hallucinate him heroically putting his career on the line to protect the Japanese from the Evil Roosevelt Administration?)
Next we’re in Aspen, CO, foaming at the mouth over Evil liberal celebrities. By this time, we’re miles from the original topic, so she slaps on one more sentence at the end about the great sacrifices the Five Greatest Heroes in History made, unlike writer/comedian Harry Shearer, who only knows how to commit treason. 
WTF?!? This is bad writing. And I’d say that even if the content weren’t as actively stupid as it is.
And so it’s different from Coulter’s usual screeds how?
Which is to say that you’re right… it’s disjointed, poorly-written, poorly-reasoned, reactionary, gossipy, and trashy. In short, another trip to the bank for skinny old Anne.
Apos, you beat me to the Spinsanity piece as well. Worth reading, though, for anyone.
That’s actually the point. In Coulterland, anyone the liberals hate is, by that very definition, a hero.
The woman’s seriously in need of stronger medication.
The mind boggles that a single person buys this woman’s books. I guess she’s the right’s equivalent of Michael Moore. Too bad both seem to be going beyond their alloted 15 minutes of fame.