Interesting how Coulter now says the comment was to mean an attack on Edwards "manliness". It shows a deep pattern of the new movement conservitives motives with these "wussy" claims.
I think if may be important to recognize that we are dealing with two concepts, admittedly intertwined in the persona of Ann Coulter .
1)Coulter as a symbol for, and manifestation of, all manner of psycho-sexual issues;
2)Coulter as a lightning rod for hatred and bigotry.
The first speaks to Coulter as pin-up girl, the tough, trash-talkin' babe who puts liberals and other enemies in their place as only a woman can (and, yes, probably serves to reinforce her admirer's sense of manliness).
The second speaks to Coulter's vital role in channelling private hatred into public support.
The challenge for Coulter is to strike the proper balance - to push the envelope with regards to (2), but not so far as to leave no choice but to cut her loose.
Her aim was not to suggest that Edwards is actually gay, but simply to feminize him like they do with all male Democratic or liberal political leaders.
As critical as it is to them to feminize Democrat males (and to masculinize the women), even more important is to create false images of masculine power and strength around their authority figures. The reality of this masculine power is almost always non-existent. The imagery is what counts.
It is a cult of contrived masculinity whereby people dress up as male archtypes like cowboys, ranchers, and tough guys even though they are nothing of the kind. Or prance around as Churchillian warriors because they write from a safe and protected distance about how great war is, and in the process become triumphant heroes and masculine powerful icons and strong leaders. They and their followers triumph over the weak, effete, humiliated Enemy, and thereby become powerful and exceptional and safe.
Gays asserting their rights, is also intolerable to some men because gays are not considered ?manly-men.? They are considerably girly-men. In some ways, the mere existence of gays tend to dilute the ?manly man?s? own masculinity.
The "new" young republican movement, IMO, is a force which is reacting out of fear - fear of losing their power and dominance to the very people they used to dominate. The image of the manly-man is important to them because it make them feel strong - strong enough to overcome the threats from "others."
Every time someone mentions Ann Coulter's deliberately provocative remark she rolls back and laughs and brags this is her 17th career ending event ha ha. But you don't see a smile on a single "macho man" republican's face when the easily documented treachery and lawlessness of "their president" is paraded before the American people in sound bite after sound bite, committee report after committee report. Scooter Libby was just convicted this morning on 4 of 5 counts, are republicans and Ann Coulter laughing about that?
Sissies just start swinging because they're mad. So far, Ann Coulter has just confronted sissies. There's more than one way the career of a loose cannon can end, made toxic by their own words (just ask Scooter).
This "new" young Republican core are angry ideologues who just need to be kept fearful and angry. Some of them are ill-informed, and some of them are better-informed but viciously cynical. Their votes can be relied on as long as it seems that the Republicans will whip the Democrats, because anti-liberal anti-Democratic resentment is probably their single most important political value.
The Republicans still need another 21%. The cheesy, silly repetition of non-facts and smears is directed at the thoughtless, casual, low-information "moderates" and "independents" who still vote, based on the ambient opinion and whim.
If the Republicans succeed in the saturated free media with their message and getting it out in the gossip and snark networks, they can get their 21% from people who are thinking something like "Gore as a person just didn't seem quite right". They think that they're shrewdly exercising their intuitions about personal character, when actually they're just responding to a programmed campaign.
All of this is oral and nothing is checkable. The low-information oral-tradition voter has no memory, and there's no possibility of fact-checking. Whim voters vote today based on what they heard yesterday, and they forget what the same guy said even a week ago. For them, Newt Gingrich can be a spokesman for family values.
Evidence of the infantilizing of American politics. National elections are high-school, or junior-high school popularity contests with opponents or their backers hurling playground epithets. The media dutifully enables this like bystanders at a schoolyard fight.
Is it any wonder that outside the US we're regarded by bewildered observers as a nation of insulated, spoiled children? At one time the US had a semblance of high-level political discourse, but those days have long passed.
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