Ann Coulter: Writer of terrible books, racist, Fox News contributor and all-around horrible person. I know, I know, “racist” and “Fox News contributor” in the same sentence is essentially redundant. But for the sake of this post, let’s call them both out anyway. I can’t quite decide if I think Ann Coulter is horrible because she actually believes the racist crap that she continuously spouts or because she doesn’t really believe it, but says it anyway because she knows the incendiary racial stuff makes her a conservative superstar. I simply can’t decide. Recently, I’ve had the crazy thought that she’s some sort of performance artist — the pitch-perfect reality troll. I mean who could be so comically racist? Her latest bit of vitriol is so ridiculous you’d think the story was brought to you by the Onion.
While talking to Sean Hannity on Fox in regards to the Obama Administration’s post-Newtown push for more regulation on firearms, she had an interesting take.
“If you compare white populations, we have the same murder rate as Belgium,” Coulter said. “So perhaps it’s not a gun problem, it’s a demographic problem.”
You know, it’s bad enough that the NRA has blamed everything from the violent movies to video games from 1992 for all of the death that should be attributed to guns. But eventually I guess it had to come back to black people. And who better to deliver that message than Ann Coulter? Who cares about the proliferation of assault weapons, extended clips, lax background checks, a toothless ATF, or the fact that you can get ammunition in some of the same places that you can buy produce? If only we didn’t have all those murderous black people, our children would be safe. Right Ann? Wrong.
Mother Jones complied a list of all of mass shootings in the U.S. Here are the pictures of the last five American mass shooters in 2012, from Adam Lanza (Newtown, Dec. 2012) to James Holmes (Aurora, July 2012):
 |
 |
 |
 |
LOOK AT ALL OF THEM BLACK PEOPLE. Oh, wait. Funny thing about Ann’s “demographic problems” — that may be true, but not in the way she thinks. There’s not a brown face in the bunch. This is why I’m almost inclined to believe this is some form of performance art piece. Not even the mentally deficient could look at those pictures and think to themselves, yup, we definitely have a Black problem. Then again, she just did. Racism as mental deficiency will be delved into at a later date. The article extends back to 1982 and lo and behold, black people represent the fewest of the mass shooting perps. They’re barely on the list at all. The picture that emerges is one where the vast majority of those murderers were white. David Sirota from Salon magazine wrote about this bizarre form of white privilege.
Let’s review: Any honest observer should be able to admit that if the gunmen in these mass shootings mostly had, say, Muslim names or were mostly, say, African-American men, the country right now wouldn’t be confused about the causes of the violence, and wouldn’t be asking broad questions. There would probably be few queries or calls for reflection, and mostly definitive declarations blaming the bloodshed squarely on Islamic fundamentalism or black nationalism, respectively. Additionally, we would almost certainly hear demands that the government intensify the extant profiling systems already aimed at those groups.
Yet, because the perpetrators in question in these shootings are white men and not ethnic or religious minorities, nobody is talking about demographic profiling them as a group. The discussion, instead, revolves around everything from gun control, to mental health services, to violence in entertainment — everything, that is, except trying to understanding why the composite of these killers is so similar across so many different massacres. This, even though there are plenty of reasons for that topic to be at least a part of the conversation.
If as David Sirota suggests, white privilege prevents us from even considering racially profiling white men, then what should we call this? Super White Privilege? Now neither I nor Mr. Sirota is actually suggesting the we should profile any one group of people, because that’s asinine. But only Ann Coulter could come to the conclusion that black people are the problem behind American mass killings when the vast majority of mass killers are white men.
Ann Coulter has been a ravening bastion of right-wing lunacy for upwards of a decade now, so much frothier than the rest that even in today’s shockingly fringe-friendly conservative Republican party, she stands out for her single-minded dedication to every wrong thing on the fucking planet Earth. With that in mind, I typically wouldn’t devote valuable blogspace to debating a person who I and most everybody else already knows is insane. But in the context of Sirota’s article, and for the sheer 1984-style fact-free spin on the “source” of America’s gun violence problem, I thought this particular nugget of nonsense was telling. Truly — let’s have these conversations. Let’s talk about the vicious and community-destroying violence in certain urban areas across America. Let’s also talk about horrific mass shootings in sleepy suburbs and small towns. But let us be 100% clear: the issue that both of these discussions have in common is not black people. It’s guns and guns.
Who am I kidding. This isn’t performance art, and it certainly isn’t a call to meaningful dialogue — she’s a racist piece of shit. Por ejemplo, in the same interview where she spoke about the “demographic problem” she went on to say that “liberals are pushing, pushing and pushing to have more minority mass killers.” I’m not totally sure which quote earns her a better spot in Hell’s bleachers. And her latest book was entitled Mugged: Racial Demagoguery from the Seventies to Obama (per the publisher, the book “fearlessly explains the real history of race relations in this country” — with not even a hint of irony).
There’s still time for ironic MLK gift ideas, folks.
Categories: Random Rant
A Gender Lost In Space 
PSA on #imnotracist 
License To Kill 
Link Round-up November 2014 
The Non Blogosphere 
This woman needs to stop. I am totally disgusted everytime she opens her mouth. I really think she is purposely saying ridiculous things to sell her books to the “demographic” she is aiming for and who can tolerate anything she say’s – Racist diots. She has nothting else to offer to the world but ignorance and there is a fool born every day waiting to buy anything.
Yeah her book would make an awesome gift lol
You are absolutely right though, racist morons like her blame all the violence in the universe on black people. In the mean time, the real predator is sitting at her table at Thanksgiving!! I have yet to hear one news story of a serial killer or a mass murderer who is not white! Ugh, she makes me sick!