Like the mad scientists in the horror movies of the '30s, today's media can't resist the temptation to play God. They employ brilliant jolts of electricity to bring their patchwork creations to life, but, too often, are powerless to control them when they misbehave in public. Today, pop-cultural icons emerge from the primordial ooze as if on a conveyor belt. Their smiling visages appear first on the covers of People, Time, The New York Times Sunday Magazine or via 60 Minutes, Entertainment Tonight and Larrry King Live. The hype travels outward, eventually finding its way to ads on the sides of buses.
At a time when the winner of American Idol received more votes than George W. Bush or John Kerry, should it surprise anyone that a political commentator, Ann Coulter, has joined the ranks of the Chosen Ones? The "leggy blonde," as she's become known, is right up there with babies Shiloh, Sean Preston and Suri, the martyred Princess Di, the evil Barry Bonds and Donald Trump. Think of her as Paris Hilton with a dictionary.
The Michigan Law graduate made her bones as an adviser to presidential accuser Paula Jones' legal team. In an effort to keep Jones from agreeing to an out-of-court settlement, Coulter leaked word of President Clinton's "distinguishing characteristic": a "bent penis." An accomplished wordsmith and the only Republican mouthpiece likely to flatter a micro-miniskirt, she would soon be accorded a syndicated column, the cover of Time, a nearly permanent spot on The New York Times best-seller list and countless talk-show appearances.
Approaching the release of her fifth book, Godless: The Church of Liberalism, her star could hardly have been brighter. Even though most celebrities are put out to pasture by 44, Coulter has retained most of her looks and generated heat every time she appeared on The Today Show, The O'Reilly Factor or Real Time With Bill Maher. For a talk-show booker, ratings and headlines are the only things that matter.
Hubris caught up with Coulter on the publicity tour for Godless. By taking on a small group of women widowed by the events of 9/11—"the Jersey Girls"—the New York-born flamethrower found a way to offend both her enemies on the left and friends on the right. Even though she, too, had lost a close friend in the attacks, Coulter's ill-considered vitriol called into question everything else she's said or written in defense of conservative American values.
"These self-obsessed women seemed genuinely unaware that 9/11 was an attack on our nation and acted as if the terrorist attacks happened only to them," she wrote. "These broads are millionaires, lionized on TV and in articles about them ... I've never seen people enjoying their husbands' deaths so much."
Not even the good ol' boys of right-wing radio wanted any part of that. Liberal-baiting is one thing; accusing widows of "enjoying their husband's deaths" went way beyond the pale. Coulter would add, "Now that their shelf life is dwindling, they'd better hurry up and appear in Playboy."
Their crime, in a nutshell, was lobbying President Bush for answers to lingering questions about 9/11 instead of blaming Bill Clinton for the attacks.
Maybe if she'd written that the women were "exploiting" rather than "enjoying" the deaths of their husbands, Coulter might have gotten away with it. The right was able to skewer antiwar activist Cindy Sheehan by accusing her of opportunism. Instead, those two paragraphs now threaten to derail the gravy train.
Early sales of Godless have been good. Her marketability remains uncertain, however. Tom Cruise was a Golden Boy, too, until he began spouting off about Scientology and his freakish relationship with Katie Holmes. Either way, Coulter's no dummy and has yet to seek forgiveness. Indeed, a message on her home page taunts detractors by inviting them inside for more abuse. That's chutzpah.