Ann Coulter

Beginning a blog is like picking out an outfit for your first day at a new school. A new middle school. Full of agressive, lunch-money-stealing hoodlums.

You must take absolute care to choose a strong topic. You must portray your whole self precisely, eloquently, succinctly.

It breeds contemplation, reflection, a search for some sense of uniformity and cohesion to one's life. And this is what I absolutely cannot get off of my mind.

I think I might hate Ann Coulter.

I feel like a bad person for even saying it, because I don't ever really hate anyone. Now, I realize this sounds reactionary and is precisely the type of sentiment for which she is searching. And I really am having some intense self-loathing for spilling more pseudo-ink over this she-devil. But I can't help it. She gets in my head like an earwig from Star Trek II. I truly believe that she represents most of what is wrong with America today. She's a bully, looking only to say the most outrageous thing so she can then mock those "prudes" who cover their mouths with horror at someone who actually "speaks their mind." She doesn't care about people, truth, ideas, or, quite simply, being a good person. It bothers me how much I dislike her, because, as the rumor goes, the opposite of love isn't hate, it's apathy. Which means she's succeeding in her war to "alienate the liberal."

What really bothers me, truth be told, is not what she says, because there are bigots everywhere who agree with her. What bothers me is that people listen to her and give her airtime. That someone has decided hers is a voice to be listened to. That her books are bestsellers. She's become what she wanted to be--a figurehead, a celebrity, an idol. She gives all the racists, bigots, ignorant people in society a place to point and say, "See! That's how I feel! That's what I'm talking about-- she's smart, she writes books, that must somehow justify my opinions. Now I don't have to go learn on my own."

She is the soil that allows hatred to grow in America discourse. And I wish I didn't care so much about the whole thing.

Grrrr.