Ann Coulter is my Hero

I've said it once and I'll say it again. Ann Coulter is an ingeniously created character. You LOVE to hate her. You can't wait to tune in to see what stupid thing she'll say next. You buy her book just to be able to rip apart her moronic statements and PROVE her wrong! Whoops! She got you. She's laughing all the way to the bank. Ann Coulter is the product of a marketing genius. Remember Madonna? Remember her Sex book? It shocked people world-wide and was banned, burned and bought up right and left. Now Madonna lives in a freakin' castle in England. Ann Coulter IS a Saturday Night Live skit. She grew up in a conservative Northeastern setting. She's actually MUCH smarter than she seems. She has a law degree and didn't just barely gradgiate with a D+, she was at the top of her class. She worked in Corporate law. She worked for a Congressman. So what is the common thread? Slick marketing. Lawyers, corporations and politicians thrive on slick marketing.

There are no quotes I can find attributed to Ann Coulter prior to 1997. That was nine years ago. She is forty-five years old. It took her nearly thirty-five years of her life to find out the hot buttons to push. She would have had plenty of intolerant, bigoted, nor'eastern women to study in her conservative Connecticut town. And, she would have had plenty of examples in the corporate and political world of how to pander to the masses. How to get Joe Everyman to buy your product or vote for you.

Apparently, she had leaned conservative all of her life, but a lot of upper middle class blond heiresses from the Eastern seaboard follow their daddy's opinion, so that's not really news. She was editor of her college newspaper. You'd think that if she always had a penchant for crazy, off the wall, foot-in-mouth statements, someone would have turned up one or two prior to 1997. She would have had the perfect opportunity as editor of a college newspaper to give her opinion about any and everything.

However, it took her until her mid thirties to really find her stride. And, she had a perfect role-model: President Clinton. Clinton had an approval rating somewhere around 60%, even during his impeachment hearings. The economy was booming. Things were good in the mid-1990's. However, ask ANYONE and they HATED Clinton. They LOVED to HATE Clinton. He was a smooth-talking, slick politician from the South--the worst kind. He'll shake your hand with one hand and pick your pocket with the other. There was an entire industry built on hating Clinton--the conservative radio talk-show host. Rush Limbaugh, in particular, but also Bill O'Reilly and others became superstars during the Clinton administration hating anything and everything Liberal. How far could you push the envelope? How nutso could you get and still get people to buy your book and pay you to write columns and be on TV? Ann Coulter would find out.

Ann Coulter got her debut on the public stage during the Paula Jones/Bill Clinton trial and saw how easy it was to manipulate people via the media. She wove a web of deceit and then sat back in the middle of her web and waited. It worked. She then invented the Ann Coulter we all know and love today, drawing on her knowledge of law, politics, and the "vain, empty-headed bigots with braces on their brains" [Auntie Mame] that she knew from her youth in Connecticut.

Needless to say, it has been wildly successful. She just launched a new book a couple of days ago, is all over the media, and bought nearly a $2 million dollar home last year. She is a Grand Dame straight out of LA Law, Boston Legal, The West Wing, Melrose Place, 90210, or any other show you can name with a character you LOVE to HATE. You tune in regularly to see what will happen next. And, in this case, Ann Coulter and her stock brokers can't thank you enough.

I always admire when someone so clearly manipulates the public and walks away with a buttload of money. I always thought Madonna was a genius in her own right for that. She always reinvented herself in a way that added a few million to her bank account while keeping her in the papers and on TV. Ann Coulter learned from the best. I haven't had a marketing class in quite a while, but they definitely need to study folks like Ann Coulter and Madonna who manipulate people like pieces on a chessboard and then sit back and reap the rewards.

Ann Coulter is my hero.

Biblical Marriage for Real

This is taken directly from the Atheism/Agnosticism page on About.com. As far as I know, it is the intellectual property of Austin Cline and Public Nuisance. The link to that page is provided below, but I couldn't improve upon it, so I quoted it directly.

Biblical Marriage
Much of the opposition to same-sex marriages is fundamentally religious in nature. Evangelical Christians argue that marriage between two members of the same sex is, from their perspective, simply invalid - and therefore civil marriage law should conform to their ideas on what marriage is. But what, exactly, would a real biblical marriage look like?

Public Nuisance offers us a good idea by creating a Constitutional Amendment on marriage that reflects what the Bible says:

1. Marriage in the United States shall consist of a union between one man and one or more women. Marriage shall not impede a man's right to take concubines in addition to his wife or wives.

2. A marriage shall be considered valid only if the wife is a virgin. If the wife is not a virgin, she shall be executed. Marriage of a believer and a non-believer shall be forbidden.

3. Since marriage is for life, neither this Constitution nor the constitution of any State, nor state or federal law, shall be construed to permit divorce.

4. If a married man dies without children, his brother shall marry the widow. If he refuses to marry his brother's widow or deliberately does not give her children, he shall pay a fine of one shoe and be otherwise punished in a manner to be determined by law.

Do you suppose that anyone will go for it? No, I don't think so either... people are certainly free to believe in the validity of requirements like the above, but almost no one believes that such requirements should be imposed by the government and become a part of civil law. They are, quite simply, religious laws which citizens must be free to ignore if they wish.

http://atheism.about.com/b/a/020019.htm?nl=1

JFC wristbands

Ok, so it's been over two months since I've posted an update. I've been working on an online training manual for my department at work, and that has taken up most of my time. I don't update my blog from home, so it's has just sat by and waited. Good old Beekman Place.

I read the frickin' news every day and I can't believe the people and politicians in this country keep letting the administration get by with what they do. Especially with the recent charges of mass-murder by the marines in Iraq. AArgh. And today I read this quote:

"It [gay marriage] [is] the one issue I have seen that eclipses even the abortion issue among Southern Baptists," says Richard Land, president of the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention.

Ok, how about war? How about corruption? How about global warming? How about civil liberties? How about the poor? How about HIV/AIDS?

Jesus Fucking Christ. I'm going to get a bracelet that says just that. Jesus Fucking Christ.

So, apparently hacking the heads off of heathens and playing soccer with them is not such a big deal, but if those same two heathens hold hands, then Armageddon will begin and the beast will rise from the sea.

I think the BIG GAY GOP FEAR FACTOR says it all.

It scares the hell out of me how intent these religious assholes are in making sure they are the only ones with any rights left in America.

It seems as though all sorts of groups are talking, talking, talking about the administration and whether Bush is doing illegal things, but no one seems to be doing anything about it. I can only hope that the negativity goes through the November elections and the Democrats sweep Congress with a 75% majority or more. That's the only way anything is going to happen, because apparently the Democrats have become so spineless that many of them (Clinton, Lieberman) are still supporting the President.

I guess until then, we will just have to settle for tossing Bush around.